The 2023 WGA strike is the labor dispute between the Writers Guild of America — representing 11,500 screenwriters — and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. It began at 12:01 a.m. PDT on May 2, 2023. Primarily, the strike is over pay and working conditions. The industry wants to cut down on costs by having smaller writers’ rooms (mini-rooms) or doing without them altogether and relying more on “gig” writers. This isn’t setting well with writers, given that writers only receive about 2% of the total revenues generated out of their work.

While it doesn’t affect me directly and personally, I certainly understand the struggle, because it’s symptomatic of more than just broadcast and cinema media, representing as it does the struggle between “creators” and “packagers.” This dichotomy doesn’t just exist in entertainment; it’s just more obvious there.

There have also been recent incidents in the “book” side of the F&SF industry, where it came out that Disney was refusing to pay royalties to authors whose books had been made into movies. I don’t have that particular problem, since none of my books have ever been turned into movies or television series, but some authors have, and the Disney incident is indicative of just how little corporate CEOs value the ideas and craft behind what they market.

At the same time, I suspect very few F&SF fiction writers make the kind of money that run-of-the mill screenwriters make, but then, we usually don’t have to operate under the deadlines that they do.

Authors published traditionally share certain concerns with the WGA writers, such as how the publishers (i.e., packagers) present their work. Indie authors who publish their own books have greater control over their presentation – but also take on a great deal more work.

I have mixed feelings about the WGA strike, except that I definitely share the strikers’ concerns that the industry “packagers” are minimizing the strikers’ contribution to the final productions, not that it’s anything new.

Many long years ago, when my children were much younger than my grandchildren currently are, they watched the original version of Sesame Street. Among other jingles I recall was one presenting four items to a song entitled “One of These Things” (Is Not Like the Others). The idea was for the youngsters watching to pick out the item that was different.

When the latest predictable Republican flail came up, this time about Hunter Biden, I wondered if any of those Republicans had watched Sesame Street. Probably not, because it was likely too liberal for their parents. But they should have because the vast majority of Republicans in Congress seem unable to make any sort of meaningful distinctions about anything.

They don’t see the difference between dangerous immigrants and those willing to work hard and obey the laws of the land. They don’t see the difference between involuntarily or unwittingly retaining a few classified documents and returning them as soon as they found out and deliberately taking and hiding hundreds, if not thousands of classified documents, and then justifying it by legal falsehoods. They don’t see the difference between paying taxes late in one or two years and bilking the government with falsified records for decades. They don’t see the difference between limited shading the truth and making over thirty-thousand false or misleading statements over an entire term.

They not only don’t see the difference, but they’re trying to prosecute Democrats for minor failings while blatantly ignoring massive disregard of the laws and longstanding U.S. traditions (like the peaceful transfer of power).

But if they reject the concept of knowing the difference as expressed on Sesame Street, because it’s too “liberal,” what about the concept as expressed in their favorite book – the Bible? The one that says:

“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

Nope… they even don’t follow their own holy book… except when it serves to oppress others in some fashion.

Most people seem to like the combination of the internet and electronic communication, but what happens if that’s all you’ve got, and something goes wrong? And you can’t get a real person to even address the problem, no matter what you try?

Think that’s an unfounded worry? A skeptic’s dystopia that can’t happen?

Let me tell you about our struggle with a meal delivery service called Tovala, that delivers meals for quick preparation with a computerized oven/broiler. Weekly, you select what you want from the menu and the meals are delivered the following week.

Some six months ago, we signed up for a food delivery system from Tovala. While there were a few meals we didn’t care for, the system worked reasonably well, and it definitely cut down on meal preparation time.

But the warning signs were there early. In March, my wife asked the electronic system to skip a week. That was an option on the ordering schedule. The system took the instructions, but we still got and were billed for the delivery of another week’s worth of food.

When the university semester ended, and we had more time, we paused meal deliveries for the summer, an option available on the online ordering system. But the following Wednesday, we got another order. We persisted, sending an email to Tovala, asking to stop meal delivery service. But the next Wednesday, we got another delivery, for which we were billed, even though the Tovala system indicated that our orders had been suspended indefinitely.

I tried to call the company, but could only find one telephone number, which had a recording telling me to use the on-line service or email Tovala. We lodged a complaint by email and got a response saying that deliveries had been suspended. We emailed the customer service section of the credit card company asking that charges from Tovala not be honored, but there was no response to that.

We thought the problem had been resolved when, the next week, there was no delivery from Tovala. Except the following week, there was another delivery, for which we were billed. So, we finally got a real person on the line, but only from the credit card company – who informed us that there was no record of our request to stop payment to Tovala, but who promised to look into the matter.

That didn’t work, either, and the next week we got yet another shipment.

After another hour of internet searching, my wife finally found a number that connected to a real person. That real person insisted that the order hadn’t been cancelled. My wife persisted. The real person actually searched and discovered that, for some reason, my wife had two accounts, and that they’d cancelled the inactive one. My wife definitely never signed up for two accounts, and we never received two orders. In any event, the real person promised that both would be cancelled.

Finally, this week, we didn’t receive a shipment of food we didn’t want and hadn’t ordered. I’m still a bit worried that, despite it all, we might get a shipment next week.

But my question is: How many people are going to be overcharged, hurt, or worse by electronic/AI systems with no way to get to someone who can actually address the problems? We’ve spent hours dealing with this problem so that a company can save a little money, and it’s cost us not only time, but dollars for meals we weren’t around to eat, not to mention the waste of food.

So far as I can see, these systems are too often one way — cost saving for the company and endless hassles for the customer.

Yes, I know. There’s no such word as simplisticity, but there should be, because it’s a perfect word to describe false and simplistic comparisons between events or facts.

The GOP and the right have an amazing tendency to rely on simplisticity. Equating Trump’s deliberate and massive heist of classified documents to a handful of classified documents inadvertently kept by Pence and Biden or to conversational email references to classified subjects by Hillary Clinton is definitely simplisticity.

So is equating the January 6th armed uprising to peaceful protests.

Or equating Trump’s thirty thousand plus documented misstatements and lies to literally any other U.S. national political figure. Well… except for George Santos. Yet I’ve heard Republican after Republican dismiss Trump’s lies with the statement, “All politicians lie.” They may, but nowhere to the extent that Trump has and continues to lie.

Another area where simplisticity reigns is in arguments over taxes and tax policy. Those on the right cite statistics generally based on “taxable income” and percentage of taxes paid, or occasionally on proportion of taxable income generated by the wealthy and the percent of that income that’s taxed federally. The problem with that simplistic approach is that the majority of income held by the wealthiest Americans isn’t taxed or taxable under current tax codes. Likewise, because poorer families pay a greater percentage of their income in state, local, and Social Security taxes, comparing the percentage of income taxed based on federal income taxes misrepresents their tax burden.

Simplisticity isn’t new. I can recall from my childhood people saying that blacks were stupid or ignorant because they bought expensive cars and lived in run-down neighborhoods. At the time, I was young and didn’t realize that in some cities and areas, that was because of various restrictions, such as redlining, that made it impossible for them to own or rent houses in more upscale neighborhoods.

So, when you have a simple and popular view about something, it might be a good idea to ask whether it’s actually accurate… or just comforting simplisticity.

Year 92 From the Forest (January 2024)

Year 101 Overcaptain (November 2024)

Year 103 Sub-Majer’s Challenge ( September (?) 2025)

Year 104 The Last of the First (2026 (?)

Year 410 Magi’i of Cyador

Year 418 Scion of Cyador

Year 801 Fall of Angels

Year 803 The Chaos Balance

Year 815 Arms-Commander

Year 825 Cyador’s Heirs

Year 833 Heritage of Cyador

Year 1075 The Mongrel Mage

Year 1076 Outcasts of Order

Year 1077 The Mage-Fire War

Year 1093 Fairhaven Rising

Year 1300 The Towers of the Sunset

Year 1590 The White Order

Year 1600 The Magic Engineer

Year 1605 Colors of Chaos

Year 1900 Natural Ordermage

Year 1903 Mage-Guard of Hamor

Year 2050 The Order War

Year 2110 Wellspring of Chaos

Year 2112 Ordermaster

Year 2250 The Magic of Recluce

Year 2255 The Death of Chaos

The years date from the founding of Cyad.