At our house, after twenty years, we’ve finally decided to remodel and add to the dining room and kitchen. Given that the so-called dining room is scarcely larger than an extra-large walk-in closet [no, I’m not kidding], and that I’ve been promising my wife that I’d do something about it for fifteen years, it’s definitely overdue. Why so long? Let’s just say we’re conservative about spending and raising eight children was expensive… but that’s not what the point of this is all about. It’s about stuff.

When you remodel, we’ve discovered, you have to move things out of the space to be remodeled, and in our case, out of the adjoining garage. And then you discover the stuff… stuff you vaguely realized you had and kept, just in case. But, guess what, in all too many cases, just-in-case never came, and you’ve still got the stuff. Like fifteen baskets, of different sizes and assortments. Like five boxes of extra tiles for counters and the like [which we’ll now never need because the 1980s tile is going].

Then there were the flower vases. My wife’s a performer and director, and she gets flowers occasionally. I also send her flowers. They come in various vases, and we’ve kept the really nice looking ones – and then in cleaning out things, you discover several boxes of really nice flower vases, some of them red glass and green glass, and a couple – maybe more than a couple – that look like crystal but really aren’t… and only three or four have ever been used again.

And paint! There were four gallons of dried-up gray floor and deck paint,not to mention five separate gallon cans so old, and of such strange colors that I wondered if they might have been left by the previous owner, except that they never left anything. I did keep the newest can of deck paint.

Now, not all stuff is useless. I really wondered what I was going to do with the eight different socket sets I inherited from my father-in-law, but having those eight socket sets has saved me more grief over the years… and the same with the four sets of Allen wrenches,and the fifteen that don’t belong to sets. Why does every furniture manufacturer, every tool maker, everyone who makes everything use a different dimensional Allen screw?

But then I found more replacement parts for the sprinkler system than I ever recalled buying, most likely because I couldn’t find the first sets because they were in another box, neatly stacked, but unlabeled, on the garage shelves. We’ve always been fairly neat and organized, but when you don’t look in those neat and organized boxes and stack another neat and organized box on top, well…

And, oh, yes, the broken Christmas deer lawn decorations – three gathered over the years and left stashed in the garage attic because they wouldn’t fit in the mandated city garbage cans, and I never took the time to make the ten mile trip to the city dump [and yes, it is ten miles away, in an abandoned open pit iron mine, but that’s another story]. I could go on, but I think I’m made it clear.

And the sad thing is… we really thought we were organized and only kept what we really needed.

As a science fiction writer, I’ve generally tied to keep my “space drives” at least tenuously related to scientific reality as we currently know it, but that distance is likely more attenuated than many readers realize.

In doing some research for my next book, I came across the speeds of the fastest outbound human space craft, which is currently Voyager 1, at 38,610 mph, or roughly 10.7 miles per second.  For those who are interested, the speed is measured outbound, because anything launched toward the sun will have its velocity increased by the sun’s gravity.  As an example of that, when Comet ISON was discovered in 2012, between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, its inbound speed was calculated at roughly 10.5 mps, but by the time it reached perihelion, that speed was between 63 mps and 360 mps (or 1,300,000 miles per hour)[that depended on who was doing the calculating, because exact figures were not possible, given that ISON was either so close to the sun or actually on the far side of the sun from earth at the time around perihelion]. The fastest sun-grazing comets could theoretically reach a speed of over 400 mps.

If a human spacecraft could attain and maintain such a speed headed out of our solar system, it would still take over 118 days to reach the average orbital distance of Pluto from the sun… and something like 2,300 years to reach Alpha Centauri [those are rough calculations; feel free to refine them].  These figures indicate why SF writers tend to focus on interstellar travel through “jumps,”  “warps”, wormholes or the like, especially since there’s the not-so-small problem of what happens when one encounters a comparatively immoveable object at that velocity.  While space is largely empty, it appears as though most solar systems have all sorts of objects scattered around their periphery and approaching any other system with that sort of velocity would be problematical.  So, of course, we writers come up with screens and shields, and never mind the energy consumption required for such powerful drive systems and the requisite shields.

Then, too, according to Einstein, any object approaching the speed of light would also gain a huge amount of mass, possibly infinite mass… and there’s not enough energy to push that mass.  So… we’re back to getting around the speed of light and all those pesky relativity problems.

Theoretically, from what I’ve read, a so-called Hawking wormhole could be used to thwart the speed of light limitations.  There’s just one catch – to create one would require the energy of a small black hole… each time it was used.

Is it any wonder that more fantasy and less hard SF is being written?  And that the vast majority of all the space operas [including, I must admit, some of my own SF] ignore those facts? 

What most people in the United States accept without thinking about it too much is that American democracy – or our representative democratic republic, if one wants to be technical about it – rests largely on voluntary compliance with the laws of the land.  We also have a Congress designed to update and make new laws as necessary, and an elaborate judicial system designed to interpret those laws under the guidelines laid out by the Constitution.

The situation that developed in Bunkerville, Nevada, between rancher Cliven Bundy and the BLM is an example of what can happen when people adopt a view of what laws apply to them and what do not, and defend their position with force.  There is absolutely no doubt that Bundy is a fairly big-time law-breaker.  He is grazing his cattle on federal lands without permission;  he has not paid grazing fees for over fifteen years; he owes the federal government over a million dollars; and he and the other ranchers and close to a thousand hangers-on with fairly heavy weapons gathered to oppose the BLM round-up of the offending cattle. Fearing bloodshed, the BLM backed down, at least for the moment.  Bundy justifies this on the grounds that his family has grazed on the lands since the 1870s and that he therefore has a “right” to those lands.  Unfortunately, according to news reports, some local officials are sympathetic.

I’m not sympathetic to Bundy’s views.  I’m outraged, and anyone who understands American democracy and values it should be equally so.  Why?

First, Bundy’s claims aren’t even good law.  Second, allowing the force of arms to flout two fundamental bases of the American system sets an example that could more easily than many understand lead to an even greater breakdown of law and order…or equally unpleasant, an even greater establishment of preferential law enforcement based on the power of arms and money. As for the legal “issues,” those are basic.  According to the treaty of Guadalupe Hildago in 1848 that ended the Mexican War, all of the states of Utah and Nevada became U.S. territory, and any lands owned by Mexican citizens remained theirs and all others belonged to the federal government.  Since Bundy’s ancestors weren’t there at that time, and the only inhabitants were native Americans, either the lands belonged to the federal government or to the local inhabitants.  If Bundy is claiming that land rights belong to who was there first, then the lands rightfully belong to the native Americans.  Otherwise, legally, they’re federal lands.

The more troubling issue is the use of “second amendment rights” to flout federal law on federal lands. If the government used force to arrest Bundy and seize his cattle, it would have resulted in bloodshed and outrage on the part of the ranchers, which would, in turn, have justified in their minds the need for arms and protection against the government for taking away “their rights.”  But, by backing off, the BLM reinforced the idea that the government defers to power of some sort, especially if one considers the economic meltdown of 2008, where hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes, their jobs, and often everything… and where not a single bank or mortgage company has ever been indicted for fraudulent loans, and where financial executives are once again getting enormous bonuses. We have the highest rate of imprisoning people in the industrialized world, and possibly in the entire world, and most of them are people without power. More and more government is portrayed as the enemy. As an illustration, one right-wing Washington, D.C., newspaper put it this way, “the elites in D.C. aren’t happy about the drubbing that they took at the hands of a citizen’s movement in Nevada… Their protest sent a message to anyone with a beef against Washington that if you stick to your guns, you can win.”

Exactly how long before voluntary compliance with law and ethics erodes even further? Especially with about one quarter of the population stockpiling weapons, and with continuing dissatisfaction, and with more and more examples of corporations and others with power either avoiding the law or paying it off?

And how long can one keep a democracy when it’s clearer and clearer that power trumps ethics and law – apparently always?  And even if the BLM does punish Bundy, how many people will just see it as a case where justice is only enforced against those without the power to oppose it?

Over just the past few years, I’ve gotten the general impression that the reading public’s attention span in dealing with new books has shortened, but that impression was gained mainly from my observation of other authors’ book sales from the outside and what I observed in far more detail from everything surrounding my own books, i.e., the sales patterns, the reviews, the blogs, internet commentary, letters, etc. What I observed in my own case was that, besides changes in overall sales figures, the initial sales “bump” and associated “buzz” have been compressed into shorter and shorter periods after, first, the initial hardcover release, and then again, at the time when the mass market paperback sale, and lower ebook price, occurred. Because we all have the tendency to generalize based on our own experience, my first thought was that, because I’m an older author, this just might be particular to me… and possibly to other authors with a similar career profile.

So I started looking for other figures that might confirm or refute my impression. A quick look at The New York Times listing of books remaining on the fiction bestseller list for extended periods showed that the number of books with long runs on the bestseller list had a pattern – of sorts. That is, there were about the same number of books with a long time on the list in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1990s and 2000s, but not in the 1970s or 1980s… or since 2010. Looking deeper into the lists, I discovered something else. While there still remain a few “mega-seller” books every year that stay on the lists for months, sometimes, years, as in the case of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, the percentage of fiction bestsellers with moderate runs, say more than five weeks on the list, shifted fairly significant in the late 1990s and early 2000s, so that a far larger percentage of best-sellers are “one and dones,” if you will, or perhaps hold on for two weeks. Speaking frankly, that’s certainly been the case for my books. My only multiple-week best-seller was in the 1990s, although, in hardcover sales numbers, my biggest bestsellers have been after that shift, several even after 2010.

At least in a general sense, those figures tend to confirm that “peak sales” are being squeezed into a shorter and shorter period for all but literally a handful of mega-authors. While a short sales period has been the norm for first-published authors as long as I’ve been writing, the shortened prime sales period for all but the mega-authors appears to be a comparatively recent development. Whether that causes a shorter period of heightened “buzz” about an author, or whether those who create the buzz are only interested when a new book comes out… or a combination of both, I couldn’t determine in any factual sense, not unless I wanted to invest months in market research and analysis… and I left that career behind a long time ago.

At the same time, it’s a mixed blessing to learn that my perceptions based on my own situation weren’t totally off base, because it shows on the one hand that I wasn’t too self-deluded, but on the other it does indicate a much shorter attention span on the part of readers in dealing with new books and authors, and I can’t help but think that hurts not only up-and-coming writers whose work is good and solid, even outstanding, but not flashy, but also mid-list authors who don’t get the media and internet buzz for as long a period as before… and this has to impact their sales to some degree.

P.S.  Interesting enough, just after I posted this, I read an entry on Tor.com [ Under the Radar: Mid-Series from the Mid List ] that has a related theme.

Why do civilizations or nations fall?  There are many specific reasons, but, in the end, they all boil down to one point – the inability or unwillingness of the majority of inhabitants to pay the price necessary to sustain that civilization or nation.

Sometimes, that inability is largely the result of factors beyond the control of the inhabitants. One can certainly argue that the fall of Angkor Wat, the Pre-Columbian Mayan civilizations, Mohenjo-daro, and the Anasazi cultures of the American Southwest were all due to massive changes in rainfall patterns than rendered physically impossible the continuation of those civilizations as they were then constituted.  That does not mean the inability to live in those areas, but the inability of that “civilization” to survive under those conditions.  A good example of that is the collapse of the Norse settlements in Greenland.  At the same time the Norse were dying off or leaving the Inuit were successfully moving in and thriving.

The classical Greek culture never reached the heights, at least comparatively, of the Periclean era for one simple reason.  The Greeks would never pay the price of political unity, or accept the need for a core of shared values.  This is borne out by the fact that until the modern era, and even perhaps now, Greece has never been united except by an outside conqueror – Philip and Alexander, the Romans, the Ottoman Empire. It wasn’t that the Greeks didn’t lack talent or ability, but they couldn’t harness either in a shared fashion.  Ironically, a huge factor in the success of the Roman Empire was the use of those brilliant Greeks.

 So why aren’t people willing to support their nation and civilization?  Because no one really values civilization per se.  We all want what we want, and so long as our nation/civilization gives us what satisfies our needs, we’ll support it.  When it doesn’t satisfy the needs of a significant majority, however… that’s where the trouble begins.  I’m seeing signs of this all across the United States, and the “range war” problem in Utah and Nevada is symptomatic of what is occurring. 

The ranchers of the southwest want to hold on to their way of life, a way of life that extends back some four generations. But that way of life was developed in the 1880s at a time when there were fewer demands on the land and greater levels of rainfall. As average rainfall has decreased, overgrazing became more common.  The federal government attempted to manage the land by reducing grazing allotments, and, frankly, little else.  The ranchers haven’t seen much active management by the BLM, but they have seen the government reduce their grazing rights in favor of protecting wild horses and the desert tortoise.  On the other hand, as I noted earlier, federal grazing fees are far lower than the fees on privately owned land.  The BLM has not lived up to its own plans in managing wild horses, and that upsets the ranchers because they believe that threatens their way of life.  The environmentalists believe that excessive grazing is destroying the environment, and that will eventually harm everyone. In Iron County, the BLM currently permits grazing rights for 21,000 cattle animal unit months [AUM], and one AUM refers to a cow and a calf.  But… there are currently slightly more than 2,000 feral/wild horses on federal and private lands in Iron County, 1,700 more than allowed under the wild horse protection laws, and the range won’t support both.  Nor does the $1.35 BLM charges the ranchers cover the management costs for just the wild horses.  But the political power of the ranch and farm lobby keeps the fees low, and from what I’ve seen, if the fees were higher, I suspect that the revenues would be diverted for more “urgent” federal programs.  So we have a threatened way of life, a threatened environment… and the majority of Americans are clearly not wanting to pay more for either… and particularly not to support ranchers who are in fact being subsidized by the government.  The ranchers don’t see it that way.  Believe me, they don’t!  That’s why almost a thousand of them turned up in Nevada last weekend, many of them armed, and why the BLM backed down and released the cattle they’d impounded because Cliven Bundy hadn’t paid over a million dollars in grazing fees.

If this were just the case here, it wouldn’t be so bad, but various types of protests are occurring across the United States because people aren’t getting what they want.  Many women are angry because Congress won’t support legislation that would make it easier for them to get equal pay.  Same sex couples want the same “marriage” rights as heterosexual couples;  religious groups see their “rights” and way of life being threatened and want those rights put into law, even if that disadvantages others who don’t share their beliefs.  Businesses want the right to maximize profits, even when that profit maximization denies workers affordable health care.  Workers want affordable health care even if that means their employer is less profitable… and may even close.

And… the thing is, that even though we have as far higher standard of living than two centuries ago, our wants have increased far more than the standard of living.  Yet, when enough of those wants aren’t satisfied, then we’ll end up losing our civilization because, collectively, we won’t pay enough to maintain it.