The other day I came across a series of articles, seemingly unrelated – except they weren’t.  The first was about why Vietnam is now producing perhaps the majority of great young chess players in the world.  The second was a news report on the Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition in Salt Lake City, and the third was a table of the average salaries of U.S. university professors by area of specialty.

The Vietnamese are producing chess champions and prodigies, it seems, because [gasp!] they pay them.  Gifted young players are paid from $300 to $500 a month to learn and play chess, and the best get all expenses paid to play in tournaments world-wide.  These are substantial incentives in a country where the average monthly family earnings are around $100.  Of course, American teenagers spend more than that monthly on what the Vietnamese would likely consider luxuries, and in the United States young chess players must count on the support of family or charitable organizations… and despite being one of the largest and most prosperous nations in the world, we have comparatively very few international class chess masters.

The finals of the Gina Bachauer Piano Competition were held in Salt Lake City last week, and of the eight finalists, one was Russian, one was Ukrainian, and the other six were Asian. This pattern has been ongoing for close to a decade, if not longer.  We haven’t produced a true giant in piano performance in decades, but then, the top prize is a mere $30,000, hardly worth it for Americans, apparently, not when it takes 15 plus years of study and hours upon hours of daily practice – all for a career in which the top-flight pianists generally make less money than whoever is 150^th on the PGA money list.

All this might just tie in to the salaries of university professors.  The three areas in which university professors’ salaries are the lowest are, respectfully, from the bottom: theology/religion; performing and visual arts; and English.

I’m cynical, I know, but I don’t think that this is coincidental.  In the United States, mainstream religions [who generally require some intensive theological training] are losing members left and right.  The highest-paid performing and visual artists are those who can provide the most spectacular show, not the most technically sound performance, and most “professional” pop singers could not even match the training or technical ability of the average graduate student in voice, but technical ability doesn’t matter, just popularity, as witness American Idol.  As for English, when 60% of all college graduates aren’t fully technically competent in their own language, this does suggest a lack of interest.

The other factor in common in these areas is that the average semi-educated American believes that he or she knows as much as anyone about religion, singing, dancing, acting, and English as anyone.  And that’s reflected in both what professors are paid and in what experts in those fields are paid. The problem is that popular perceptions aren’t always right, regardless of all the mantras about the “wisdom of the crowd.”  The highest paid professors – and professionals – in the United States today are in the field of business and finance.  That’s right – those quant geniuses who brought you all the greatest financial melt-down since the Great Depression, not to mention the “Flash Crash” of a month or so ago when technical glitches resulted in the largest fastest one-day decline in the market ever.  Oh… and just as a matter of national pride, if you will, why do professors of foreign languages get paid 8-10% more than professors of English? Especially when the mastery of English is at a decades-low point?

More to the point, it’s not just about singers, writers, English professors, but about all of society.  We may complain about the financiers and their excesses, but we still allow those excesses.  We may talk about the importance of teachers, police, firefighters, and others who hold society together, but we don’t truly support them where it counts.

As a society, we may not always get what we pay for, but you can bet we won’t get what we don’t pay for.

I noted some time back that the scholar Jacques Barzun had documented in his book From Dawn to Decadence what he believed was the decline of western culture and civilization and predicted its eventual fall.  One of his key indicators was the elevation of credentials and the devaluation of achievement. Along these lines, the June 27^th edition of The New York Times [brought to my attention by an alert reader] carried an article noting the emergence and recognition of multiple high school valedictorians. One high school had 94, and another even had 100!

While many factors have contributed to this kind of absurdity, two factors stand out: (1) rampant grade inflation based on an unwillingness of educators and parents to apply stringent standards that measure true achievement and (2) a society-wide unwillingness to recognize that true excellence is rare – except perhaps in professional sports.

So many problems arise from this tendency to over-praise and over-reward the younger generation that I can’t possibly go into all of them in a blog.  But I do want to address some of those of greater import, not necessarily in order of societal impact, but as I see them.  First of which is the fact that, beyond high school and certainly beyond college, there can’t be multiple “winners.”  There will only be one position at the hospital for a new surgeon, one or two vacancies for new teachers each year at the local school or a handful at most.  Graduate schools only take a limited number of applicants from the overall pool, and they do make choices.  Sometimes, the choices or the grounds on which they’re made may not be fair, just as a bad grade in freshman PE may keep a high school student from becoming valedictorian [if only one is chosen, the way it used to be], but the plain fact is that, in life, economics and need limit what is available, and students need to learn that not everyone gets to be top dog, even if the differences between the contenders seem minuscule,

Second, by recognizing multiple students as “valedictorians,” schools and parents are both devaluing the honor and simultaneously over-emphasizing it as a credential.  As a result, more and more colleges are ignoring whether students are “valedictorians” and relying on other factors, such as, perhaps regrettably, standardized test scores.

Third, like it or not, as former President Jimmy Carter once stated [and for which he was roundly criticized], “Life isn’t fair.”  It may not be “fair” that one teacher somewhere in the past didn’t like this or that student’s performance and gave them an A- rather than an A, and that kept them from being valedictorian.  It’s not “fair” that Ivy League schools now require better grades from their female applicants than from their male applicants because more female students work harder and the schools don’t want to overbalance their student bodies with women.  Unfortunately, what society can do in “legislating” fairness is not only limited, but impossible to produce anything close to absolute fairness in real terms.  All society can do is set legal parameters to prohibit the worst cases.  We, as individuals, then have to do our best to act fairly and learn to work around or live with the instances where “life isn’t fair,” because it isn’t and never will be.

Fourth, frankly, in cases of similar or identical grades, other factors should be weighed.  They certainly are in all other occupational situations in life, because they have to be. When there are limited spaces, decisions will be made to determine who gets the position.  Not observing this practical factor in high school is just another aspect of giving students an inflated view of their own “specialness,” or, if you will, the continuation of the “trophies for everyone” philosophy.

But… is anyone listening?  Apparently not, because there’s more and more grade inflation, more and more valedictorians, and more and more emphasis on how “wonderful” every student is.

Recently, Brad Torgersen made a lengthy comment about why he believed that F&SF, and particularly science fiction, needs to “popularize” itself, because the older “target market” is… well… old and getting older, and the younger readers tend to come to SF through such venues as media tie-in novels, graphic novels, and “popular” fiction.  While he’s absolutely correct in the sense that any vital genre has to attract to new readers in order to continue, he unfortunately is under one major misapprehension – that publishers can “market” fiction the way Harley-Davidson marketed motorcycles.  Like it or not, publishing – and readers – don’t work quite that way.

Don’t get me wrong.  There’s quite a bit of successful marketing in the field, but one reason why there are always opportunities for new authors is that it’s very rare that a publisher can actually “create” a successful book or author.  I know of one such case, and it was enabled by a smart publisher and a fluke set of circumstances that occurred exactly once in the last two decades.  Historically, and practically, what happens far more often is that, of all the new authors published, one or two, if that, each year appeal widely or, if you will, popularly.  Once that happens, a savvy publisher immediately brings all possible marketing tools and expertise to publicize and expand that reading base and highlight what makes that author’s work popular.

In short, there has to be a larger than “usual” reader base to begin with, and the work in question has to be “popularizable.”  I do have, I think it’s fair to say, such a reader base, but, barring some strange circumstances, that reader base isn’t likely to expand wildly to the millions because what and how I write require a certain amount of thought for the fullest appreciation of readers, and the readers who flock to each new multi-million selling new novelistic sensation are looking primarily for either (1) entertainment, (2) a world with the same characters that promises that they can identify with it for years, or (3) a “fast” read, preferably all three, but certainly two out of three.

All this doesn’t mean that publishers can’t do more to expand their readership, but it does mean that such expansion has to begin by considering and publishing books that are likely to appeal to readers beyond those of the traditional audience, without alienating the majority of those traditional readers. And in fact, one way that publishers have been trying to reach beyond the existing audience is by putting out more and more “supernatural” fantasy dealing with vampires, werewolves, and books with more explicit sexual content.  The problem with this approach is that, first, such books tend not to appeal to those who like science fiction and/or tech-oriented publications, as well as also tending to alienate a significant percentage of older readers, as opposed to, as Brad pointed out, media tie-in novels, which appeal across a wider range of ages and backgrounds. Another problem is that writing science fiction, as opposed to fantasy, takes more and more technical experience and education, and fewer and fewer writers have that background.  That’s one reason why SF media tie-in novels are easier to write – most of the technical trappings have been worked out, one way or another.

I don’t have an easy answer, except to say that trying to expand readership by extending the series of authors with “popular” appeal or by copying or trying to latch on to the current fads has limited effectiveness. Personally, I tend to believe that just looking for good books, whether or not they fit into current popularity fads, is the best remedy, but that may just be a reflection of my views and mark me as “dated.”

In any case, Brad has pointed out a real problem facing science fiction, in particular, and one that needs more insight and investigation by editors and publishers in the field.

Several weeks ago, I attended a science fiction convention where the guest of honor was a writer who spent some 20 years as what one might call a “high mid-list author,” someone able to work full-time as a writer and pay the bills.  Except… several years ago, this came to an end for the writer.  Oh… the writer in question still publishes two books a year, but they aren’t selling as well as earlier books, although those who read the books claim they’re as good, if not better, than earlier work, and now to make ends meet requires outside additional work as a consultant and educator.  To make matters worse, at least from my point of view, this writer produces work that is more than mere entertainment and mental cotton-candy.

Interestingly enough, more and more of the books cited by “critical” reviewers in the F&SF field [with whom I have, as most know, certain “concerns”] seem to come from smaller presses.  This is creating, I believe, an almost vicious cycle in F&SF publishing. The more the books praised by reviewer come from small presses, the more larger publishers get the message that “good” or “edgy” or “thoughtful” books don’t sell as well, and the greater the almost subconscious pressure to opt for “fiction-fun” or “fiction-light.”  To their credit, certain publishers, including mine, thankfully, are resisting this trend, but I’m still seeing more of those novels that are gaming and media tie-ins or endless series.  And yes, the Recluce Saga is long, but… as I keep pointing out, no character has more than two books.  I don’t have eight or ten or fifteen books endlessly spinning improbable stories and extensions about the same character or characters.

With the drastic changes in wholesale distribution over the past decade or so, virtually no mid-list books receive such distribution, except perhaps lower-selling titles of big-name authors.  As a result of these trends, the midlists of at least some large publishers that were once the home of “thoughtful” books are shrinking. Some such midlist writers have found homes with the smaller presses, but small press distribution systems often are not as extensive. That has resulted in lower sales for the authors who wrote those books, and lower sales means lower incomes, and either cutting back on writing or holding down more other jobs… or… trying to re-invent one’s self with another form of “fiction-light.”

I’ve heard many who believe that e-book sales can help here, but the sales figures I’ve seen suggest that e-books do more for those books that have high sales levels and wide distribution in hardcover and paperback – and those aren’t the midlist books.

It almost appears that the midlist F&SF titles are going to become a ghetto within a genre… and that concerns me, and it’s certainly affecting all authors, but particularly those who once wrote good midlist books and made a living at it… and now can’t.

Even with spam “protection,” the amount of junk email that my wife and I receive is astronomical – less than one in fifty emails is legitimate.  The rest are spam and solicitations.  Now I’m getting close to a hundred attempted “spam” comments on the website daily, all of them with embedded links to sell or promote something. That’s just one facet of the problem.  Another facet is the continual proliferation of attempts at phishing and identity theft.  It makes one want to ask – have there always been so many people trying to make a buck, rupee, ruble, Euro, or whatever by freeloading or preying on others?

I know that con artists have been around since the beginning of history, but never have such numbers been so obvious and so intrusive to so many.  Is this the inevitable result of an electronic technology that makes theft, fraud, and blatant self-promotion at the expense and effort of others a matter of keyboarding at a distance?  At one time, these types of offenses had to be carried out in person and embodied a certain amount of risk and a probability of detection and usually criminal punishment.  Now that they can be accomplished via virtually untraceable [for practical purposes] computer/internet access, they’ve proliferated to the point where virtually every computer connected to the net runs the risk of some sort of loss or damage – a form of computer Russian roulette.

But what I find the most disheartening about this is the fact that so many people, once the risk and criminal penalty factors were so dramatically reduced by technology, set out to exploit and fleece others.  Even those of us not yet fleeced or exploited have to take time, effort, and additional software to deal with these intrusions.  I have to sort through the potential comments quarantined by the system several times a day, because a few are legitimate, and deserve to be posted, and I still have to take time to delete all the unwanted email.  I have to pay for protective software, and so forth.  In effect, every computer user is being taxed in terms of time, money, and risk by this radical expansion of the unscrupulous.

Now… those who are extreme technophiles will claim that the downsides of our technologically based communications/computing systems are negligible… or at least that the benefits far outweigh the downsides.  But the problem here is that most of the benefits, especially in terms of costs, go to large institutions and the unscrupulous, while the downsides fall on the rest of us.  I don’t see that, for example, that the internet enables more good writers; it enables writers who are better self-promoters, and some good writers are, and a great many aren’t.  In trying to evaluate honestly what I do on the net, I suspect that my internet presence is similar to treading water.  I’m not losing much ground to the blatant self-promoters, but for all the effort it requires, I’m not gaining either, and it’s time spent when I can’t be writing.  Yet if I don’t do it, especially with, I have to admit after looking at recent sales figures [and yes, some of you were right] the recent spurt in the growth of e-books, my sales will suffer.

I don’t see that the internet is that useful in enabling small businesses, because there are so many, and the effort and ingenuity require to attract customers is considerable, but it certainly allows large ones to contact everyone.  And it certainly allows every variety of cyber-criminal potential access to a huge variety of victims with almost no chance of getting detected, let alone prosecuted and punished.  The idea of privacy has become almost laughable, even for those of us who don’t patronize social networking sites.

Cynical as I may be, my hopes have always been that technology would be employed to enable the best to be better, and the rest to improve who and what they are.  Yet… I have this nagging feeling that, more and more, technology, particularly communications technology, is dragging down far more people than it is improving, especially ethically… and, even if it isn’t, it’s creating a tremendous diversion of time from actual productive work.  That diversion may be worthwhile in manufacturing-based industries, but it’s a definite negative force in areas such as writing and other creative efforts.  In a society that is becoming ever more dependent on technology, unless matters change, this foreshadows a future in which marketing and hype become ever more present and dominant, even as the technophiles are claiming communications technology makes life better and better.

Better and better for whom?  And what?