The other day I came across a blog that questioned how a number of well-known F&SF writers could physically produce the amount of work that they do. The blogger’s obvious and pat answer was that they could because “they’re hacks, and their readers have minimal expectations.” He then went on to mention some well-known mainstream authors who are prolific… but stated that these mainstream authors were quality writers. The blog had a clear implication that genre authors who write quickly must be hacks, unlike prolific mainstream authors.

As H.L. Mencken was reputed to have said, and as I recall, “For every difficult and involved question, there is an answer that is clear, simple… and wrong.”

Not only was the blog’s conclusion an insult to the genre writers, but it was also an insult to their readers.

The writers in question [who will remain nameless, because this is not exactly about them, but about preconceptions] have won more than forty “literary” awards, including the Hugo. Between them, so far as I was able to determine, their books have received more than 30 starred reviews from “mainstream literary” sources such as Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus. Several of their works have been named as “books of the year” by Kirkus and Booklist. Some have even won awards from Romantic Times.

Yet this blogger [it would be an insult to professionals to term him a writer] could only term these successful genre authors as “hacks” because of the number of books they wrote in the speculative genre. I’d call them professionals, who have worked long and hard at their craft and who have been able to please both fans and literary critics. Pleasing both is far from easy.

Yet there remains a preconception that any writer who is prolific must be a hack, because good writing must be agony and take forever. I’m sorry. It doesn’t work that way. I’ve seen terrible novels that took the writer ten years or more to produce and good novels that a talented writer produced in less than a year. A good novel is a good novel, regardless of how long it took to write it, and the same is true of a bad novel.

As for time… think about it this way. There are 52 weeks in the year. Assume a writer only works five days a week like many people [this isn’t true, but assume it is], and that he or she sits before the computer or pad of paper or old-fashioned typewriter seven hours a day [an hour off for lunch and other sundries]. If that author writes one hundred words a hour, or 1.7 words a minute, at the end of a year, he or she will have written something like 175,000 words. This is not exactly breakneck speed. It’s also why I don’t have much patience with so-called professional authors who complain that they can’t produce a book more than every other year.

Now, obviously, that’s just for purposes of illustration, because there’s a need for such matters as research, editing, and lots of rewriting. Still… if that writer speeds up to three words a minute, that leaves a full five months of the year for rewriting, research, and “inspiration.”

On the other side of the “numbers mean hacks” issue are the readers. Yes, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of readers who are only looking for a story that will pull them in, and there are plenty of authors who can do that. But there are also thousands and thousands of readers who are looking for more than just a “quick read.” This latter group of readers can be quite critical, as I well know, and they don’t continue to support authors who don’t meet their expectations. Those expectations are not based on how many books an author publishes, but how well he or she writes what is published.

And, as I will repeat, quality is often independent of quantity, especially in our field, something that the blogger I’ve referenced didn’t seem to understand. Judge the books, not their numbers, nor the field in which they’ve been published.

An asteroid appears likely to hit the planet Mars. Several years ago, a large comet impacted Jupiter, and its fragments created disturbances in the Jovian atmosphere that could have encompassed much of earth. Geologists have discovered the remnants of massive craters on earth itself, most of which totally restructured the environment and the atmosphere, not to mention life itself.

Another impact such as these could well threaten, if not destroy, life as we know it on earth. Does anyone care? Really care?

In 1968, the movie 2001:A Space Odyssey came out, and in it, Kubrick postulated space stations with tourists and space travel within the inner solar system, and an expedition to Jupiter. That was almost forty years ago, and despite all our advances in technology and computers, we haven’t even been back to the moon since 1972 — 35 years ago.

We have the basic technology to ensure the future of our species, and, with relatively minor improvements, to remove the threat to our planet from such asteroid or cometary impacts. And… what have we done? We’ve cut back on NASA and space research. And frankly, a number of the scientists haven’t helped much when they point out that unmanned missions are more cost-effective for gathering data. They doubtless are, but data isn’t likely to help us much if we need a large and powerful space drive to move an asteroid or plant a colony somewhere other than on an earth about to be devastated by some cosmic catastrophe.

That catastrophe will occur. The only question is when. The problem is that we’re a short-term culture facing an inevitable long-term problem, and our outlook is becoming more and more short-term year by year.

Look at the reaction to global climate change… or even to how many Americans continue to smoke, or drive while impaired, whether by cellphones or intoxicants. At the same time, we’ve glamorized making money and short-term fleeting fame to the point where fewer and fewer American students pursue advanced scientific studies and careers, and then we limit the access to foreign students who would do so, and who have consistently done so to our own benefit in the past.

As a society as a whole, the United States has become less and less interested in anything long-term, anything truly ethical [and I’m not talking about religion, which, unfortunately, ranges from a few deep and ethical believers to a mass of seekers of quick salvation], and far more interested in the quick acquisition of assets and things, the proliferation of entertainment options, interactive video or internet games, or who controls Iraq and Iran, or which theology should be dominant in what culture and society.

Long-term issues, like global catastrophe and environmental degradation, just don’t have much appeal. Admittedly, such issues have never appealed to most people, trying to survive day-to-day, but there were, from time to time, elites and educated individuals who did care. Where are they now, and what is the public reaction to them?

That reaction, it seems to me, is mostly along the lines of: I don’t believe you, and, besides, even if something does happen, it won’t be in my lifetime, and that means it’s not my problem.

And we’re supposed to be a sapient species?

I recently read a reader’s review of one of my books that complained that I’d used the same “device” in several Recluce books — a use of order/chaos and drugs that suppressed memories. Earlier, other readers complained that surely, in a high-tech future, there would be more fantastic weapons than space torps. These “reviewers” then concluded, on this basis, that the books were repetitive.

My first reaction was, “Come off it, idiots!” My second was, “Why do you bother reading when you obviously don’t understand much about human nature and culture… and clearly don’t want to?” My third reaction was to write this blog to attempt to clarify something that has come up more than a few times, not only in regard to my writing, but in regard to the work of more than a few other writers.

Let’s start out with one basic point that I’ve discussed before, and that Heinlein pointed out in print more than 35 years ago. There are no new plots. There are only differing ways of addressing the eternal basic plots.

The second point is that human beings use tools. We develop them; we use them; we keep using them so long as they work. Hammers have been in existence for as long as we have historical evidence, and for at least some 50,000 years, if not longer. They meet a need, and they aren’t going away.

Now… how does this apply to F&SF? It’s so simple that I’m almost embarrassed to put it in print, but it’s also so simple and basic that more than a few readers obviously haven’t thought about it. When a writer creates a fantasy world and its subcultures, assuming that these cultures are populated by beings with human or humanlike characteristics, these beings will use tools, techniques, and the like for replicable results. They will continue to use them so long as they work, or until they are supplanted by something else which they find better. That means that they will hone and use the “magic talents” that they possess that are useful. They will not throw them away or forget about them unless they are not useful. Thus, fantasy series that are true to societal nature will in fact — and should — present various techniques and tools used over and over again by those who can.

Likewise, these tools — whatever they may be in whatever books by whatever authors — will always be used in furtherance of human motives along one or more of the basic plots in human literature.

New gimmicks merely for the sake of introducing new gimmickry to avoid reader “boredom” are not only fraudulent, but bad writing. They may provide momentary excitement, like a sugar high, or other highs, but there’s not much behind it. And like those addicted to other highs, readers who continually desire new gadgets, gimmicks, and twists can seldom fully appreciate much beyond such.

Now… those who desire the continually “new” will and do argue against writing too many books in a given fantasy universe, but I consider that about as valid as saying writers should stop writing mainstream fiction because people use weapons to get their way in all cultures or because bribery is endemic, or asking why people all travel by one of the limited means of transport in a given culture.

By the same token, hewing to the “traditional” for the sake of the traditional and because the unfamiliar is unacceptable is just as much a fault. Neither new for the sake of new nor tradition for the sake of tradition makes for good writing.

At least in western European cultures, we have entered the holidays, and much has been written about how the time has changed from a period of spiritual rejoicing to unbridled materialism, if a materialism leavened by those who still endeavor to do good and by that small minority that always do their best, regardless of season.

In that mixed light, I’d like to reflect on speculative fiction. Although I can scarcely claim to be impartial, given my occupation, I do believe that speculative fiction, certainly at its best, and even at its worst, does convey some blessings upon this troubled world, and, if more people read it, would convey even greater blessings. Am I saying I like all that’s printed in the field? Heaven forbid. I’m not certain I even like or agree with the majority of it. But what speculative fiction does that no other form of literature or entertainment [for the most part] does is speculate on cultures, ideas, likes, dislikes, prejudices, technologies, governments, sexuality and its variations, and much, much more. By doing so, the field offers readers the chance to think about things before they happen. Admittedly, most of what appears in print won’t happen, and much of it couldn’t happen, for various reasons. But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the ideas and the reactions and actions of characters to those ideas and places and events give readers not only an intellectual view of them, but a view with emotional overtones.

The emotional overtones are especially important because, for most people, an idea or a possibility has no sense of reality without an emotional component involving a feeling of how it impacts people. What speculative fiction does at its best is to involve readers with new ideas and settings in a context that evokes a range of feelings.

So often, when people or nations are confronted with a perceived danger, fear reigns, and thoughtful consideration is overwhelmed, if not submerged. And unscrupulous leaders and demagogues prey on that fear to enhance their own power and prestige. The most deadly fear is fear of the unknown. Speculative fiction explores the unknown, and the more people who read it and understand it, the smaller that sphere of the unknown becomes, and the less prone to political manipulation those readers become. To some degree, this is true of all fiction, but it is more true of speculative fiction.

And that is, I believe, one of the blessings the genre conveys, and one of which we who write it should always be mindful.

The other day, as I was driving from one errand to another, I was listening to an NPR radio talk show where two independent budget analysts were discussing the federal budget and taking listener calls. One caller wanted to know why Congress didn’t stop all that wasteful foreign aid and use it to deal with the Social Security and Medicare problems. When the analysts both tried to point out that foreign aid is less than one percent of federal outlays [and they were absolutely correct], the caller insisted that they were wrong and that the government was giving foreigners money from other accounts hand over fist. Now, I spent nearly twenty years in and around the federal government, and I left Washington, D.C., some eighteen years ago. I started out as a legislative and economic analyst for a congressman, and I heard the same arguments and complaints about all that wasted foreign aid back then. Those arguments were numerically and statistically wrong in the 1960s and 1970s… and they’re wrong today.

Polls reveal that Americans believe that as much as ten to fifteen percent of federal spending goes to foreign aid, if not more. We’re talking about almost forty years of people believing in this total untruth. Why?

Despite the war in Iraq, the consistent trend in federal spending since WWII has been to spend a smaller and smaller percentage of the federal budget on defense [and foreign aid] and more and more on various domestic programs… and a majority of the American people still don’t know this, or the fact that domestic programs comprise over roughly 75% of federal spending and defense spending just over 20%.

Various groups of people, of varying sizes, believe in other “facts” that are not in fact true, including matters such as, but not limited to, the fact that the moon landings were a hoax, that the United States is a democracy [for those interested, it’s technically a form of representative federal republic], that Social Security taxes are invested, that the line you’re not standing in always moves faster, that North America was a barely inhabited wilderness at the time of Columbus, and that the world was created in 4004 B.C. [or thereabouts]… or [pick your own example].

Moreover, if you ever attempt to explain, rationally or otherwise, why such “facts” are not so to those who deeply believe in them, you risk indignation, anger, or even great bodily harm.

And many well-meaning souls will say in defense of those believers, “Everyone is entitled to his or her own beliefs.”

To what degree? Is a man who “believes” that the federal income tax is unconstitutional free not to pay his taxes? Does he deserve the same benefits as do other citizens? Is the soldier who enlists free to refuse to fight in a war he or she doesn’t believe in?

On another level, what happens to public policy making and politicians when large groups of their constituents believe in such facts and demand more domestic programs and lower taxes because they “believe” that there’s enough in the budget for those programs so long as foreign aid and waste are eliminated? Or when one group believes that abortion is murder and starts murdering doctors who practice it and another group believes it’s a woman’s right to control her own body and they start attacking politicians, financially, verbally, and otherwise, who insist on opposing abortion at all costs?

Just what is a “truth,” and how far can one go ethically in supporting it? And what does society do when that “truth” is an untruth? Or when large segments of the population believe in opposing “truths” and are willing to go to great lengths in support of their particular truth, as is the case in Iraq and other nations around the world, and as appears to be a growing trend in the United States?