I don’t use Siri, that helpful aide on my I-phone. In fact, I’ve never even enabled Siri. Nor do I use Cortana, the aide on my Microsoft Surface Pro. I don’t have Alexa, either. Despite the fact that each of these “helpful” digital aides were created and manufactured by different corporate behemoths, they all share one characteristic.

And, no… it’s not that they can be as frustrating as they are helpful, not that I’ve experienced such, but I’ve certainly witnessed others fume while trying to use such devices.

What’s most insidious – and depressing – is that they all arrive on your device programmed to perpetuate a sexist stereotype. They’re all devices that, at least in theory, must obey their “master,” and they’re initially programmed with female voices. I’m certainly not an extreme and radical feminist, and I’m probably slow to come to this conclusion, largely because I don’t use any of them, but I find it troubling that “subservient” devices are programmed with clearly feminine voices – not male voices, not androgynous voices, but women’s voices.

Whether intentional or not, whether it’s a marketing decision or not, the use of women’s voices for such electronic “servers” is a continuation of the cultural assumption that all matters dealing with the home or subservient clerical tasks are “women’s work.”

I read widely and voraciously, and I only recently came across a reference to this (in the latest issue of Science), although Siri, Cortana, and Alexa certainly aren’t new, but the fact that the use of the female voice as a subconscious indicator of subservience is so widespread and so unremarked indicates to me exactly why women are still fighting for equal rights and treatment in so many areas. In a very real sense, every use of Alexa, Cortana, or Siri reinforces a cultural stereotype of women’s roles as subservient.

The latest phase of the coronavirus pandemic is just beginning, and it’s becoming very obvious here in whitebread Utah. The case numbers have skyrocketed in the last week with the total number of cases the past week increasing by nearly 50% over the previous week, and setting a new daily high of nearly 1,200 cases yesterday. Why? Because students have gone back to college and they’re tired of being cooped up, and all sorts of “underground” parties are taking place.

The most blatant example of this occurred in the Provo, Utah, area, home of BYU and Utah Valley University, the two largest universities in the state, with a combined enrollment of over 85,000. There, a company founded and incorporated by two young entrepreneurs has hosted a number of massive dance parties, and, predictably, the majority of the coronavirus cases has come from this area. Oh… and the company’s name is “Young and Dumb.” [I’m not kidding.]

In a way, all of this is incredibly predictable, for a number of reasons. First, fatal and/or serious cases of coronavirus are exceedingly rare among the college-age group, roughly ½ of one percent. Admittedly, those few who do get Covid-19 in that age group are in for a very rough time. But most who are infected likely won’t even show symptoms, and most of them know this. Second, pretty much the majority of Americans under 40 with any amount of college education have been coddled, showered with praise and told they’re wonderful in an educational system that, in general, has been dumbed down over the last fifty years. Their concept of applied social responsibility (i.e., actually doing something) only exists in so far as it extends to their in-group, if that. Many of them have no real concept of fiscal responsibility, and the concept of really hard work is foreign to the majority. Plus, a significant percentage have real contempt for their elders.

So why not party? They’re not the ones who will get hurt by spreading the disease. And that’s what’s happened here in Utah and in more than a few other locales.

But don’t blame them. How do you think they got that way?

They got that way because most parents didn’t want them to fail or have their feelings hurt. They got that way because most parents wanted their darlings to do well in school, and the public education system, in general, has been dumbed down. They got that way because we’ve eliminated the worst of immediate consequences for bad choices from their young lives. They got that way because there’s no requirement for public service [like a drafted military or required peace corps or the like].

And when they bring home the coronavirus, just remember who raised them… and how. [By the way, I’m from the so-called silent generation, and my offspring were raised old-style.]

It’s called payback… or karma.

Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, all societies and all religions have faults. Now, for too many privileged individuals in any society, what this translates to is that every society and every faith but theirs has faults… and too many individuals take great offense when someone, especially an author, points out those flaws.

I do my best to be even-handed about this, pointing out the flaws and foibles on all sides. So far, my writing about faith and society in F&SF societies in cultures or worlds that aren’t our own or in a future or alternative Earth that’s markedly different usually hasn’t created too many outraged readers, but I have to say that I’m getting worried.

I see authors who portray traditional ( i.e., western European post-Victorian) social and sexual mores in their work being called out and labeled as unwilling to embrace diversity, but I also see them attacking writers and critics with a more liberal, PC, pan-sexual, and diverse outlook. I see publications and awards effectively ignoring writers whose views and works aren’t “flavour du jour,” and while that has always been true, it seems to me that this is the first time in my life that this tendency has been so pronounced… and too often vitriolic

More important than that, though, is that it’s becoming almost impossible in the United States to point out factual problems in society that are counter to beliefs. I fully understand the outrage when an innocent and unarmed person of color is murdered by police, but I have great difficulty when a national movement makes martyrs out of petty criminals.

Yes, when police over-react, especially abusively, they should be subject to the full force of the law, particularly because they’ve abused a position of trust and authority. But petty criminals are still criminals, not martyrs, and abusive police officers are also criminals, not the untarnished blue line, no matter what the right-wing law and order crowd thinks. Yet each “side” seems to think that “their” lawbreaking is minor or necessary, and what the other side does is beyond the pale.

I have the same difficulty when right-wing Republicans make a deity out of a lying, cheating, real-estate con man who assaults women and who has habitually stiffed contractors and workers out of their earnings, and who denies that he’s mismanaged the entire Covid-19 pandemic… and that’s just for starters.

And the abuses of religion, all types of religion, have been legion over history, and on all continents, including North America, and those abuses continue, often violently, but heaven help the person who points out a particular religion’s abuses, particularly if the religion, cult, or sect isn’t Christian.

That’s why attempting to point out such facts in life, or in fiction, risks creating violent anger, and, if you’re not careful, especially with the far right or far left, bodily harm.

I’ve used UPS to ship overnight or two-day packages for years… but not any longer, not after a rather “interesting” encounter.

My wife the professor, who’s been overwhelmed by the combination of the university term beginning, complying with all the additional procedures and necessities as a result of Covid-19 and the additional problems of a university insisting on transitioning from a semester system to a trimester system at the same time, asked if I’d take care of shipping a few small presents to a daughter-in-law for her birthday.

I made the mistake of deciding to send them in a modest sized box – 12x12x9, inches, that is – with some light-weight padding as insurance against breakage, filled out my shipping label, since I have a UPS account, then took the package to the UPS office, which verified the weight as two pounds. Except that when I got the bill, the total shipping cost was for one hundred dollars. Because the package was so light, UPS charged me for the size of the package, not the weight, and that didn’t make any sense to me, either. I’ve sent ten pound manuscripts to the same area for $55, but even after I protested UPS was absolutely firm – one hundred dollars, sucker. I can see a modest surcharge, but a $60 surcharge?

And it’s not that UPS is hurting because of Covid-19. In fact, UPS has never been busier, but apparently with that surge have come more charges and more and more packages damaged in transit, most likely because UPS is overloading its existing work force.

At the same time, the current administration is trying to hamstring the U.S. Postal Service, which, had I known and thought better, I could have used to send the package priority mail for a fifth the cost of UPS, and it only would have taken one day longer.

But the USPS remains hamstrung by a pricing model that’s totally senseless, whereby mail-order businesses can print and mail millions of catalogues, the majority of which are discarded unread, a huge subsidy to such businesses, while not having enough revenue to cover costs.

Because we live in a university town in the middle of beautiful but sparsely populated lands, we do a fair amount of catalogue/online shopping, but we’ve seldom if ever found any of the unsolicited catalogues of any value, and I’m putting 20 plus pounds of unread catalogues into recycling every week. As I’ve pointed out before, if that kind of marketing is cost-effective, it’s only because taxpayers and first class mailers are subsidizing it.

Because of the business and package-mailer subsidies, and the failure of Congress to make up the revenue losses caused by such subsidies, USPS revenues are inadequate for the tasks required of it and mail-handling is slowing… but USPS can certainly deliver Amazon packages on Sunday. At the same time, alternative transmission systems, like UPS and FedEx are increasing rates for rapid-delivery services, both directly [and indirectly, as I just discovered].

And who’s going to end up paying most of the increased costs, one way or another? Everyone but business.

In this time of Covid-19, I suspect more than a few of us are ordering items for delivery. In order to be able to get better ventilation while teaching singing, my wife the voice professor needed two enormous floor fans. Since there were no such fans to be had in Cedar City, she ordered them. Given their size, I was the designated assembler.

The first fan arrived. I got everything out of the battered and enormous cardboard box, and tried to make sense of the directions. It soon dawned on me that two critical parts were missing, one of them the lower support for the fan. How it vanished from the box I have no idea, but considering that it was a steel tube nearly three feet long, I definitely couldn’t have misplaced it. So everything went back in the box, and I carted it (literally, since the box declared it was a “two person lift) to the SUV, levered it inside, and drove to Home Depot to return it. That took over an hour, and I reordered the same model (they couldn’t just replace it; they had to refund the money, and then order another new one), which wouldn’t arrive for a week.

In the meantime, fan number two arrived, just slightly smaller. I got the base and fan assembly together, despite the instructions, which insisted that I place the high tension spring inside a tube that was smaller than the spring itself, but when it came to attaching the fan motor assembly to the support structure, I ran into a “small” problem. The support bolt was round on one end and was to be secured in place by a hexagonal nut, which fit into a hexagonal hole. The problem was that to tighten the bolt meant tightening the round end of the support bolt. Even with channel lock pliers, I never could fully tighten it, despite gouging the metal of the bolt head. What idiot designed the end of the bolt that had to be tightened as round? I did manage to get it assembled and working, but I had to set the fan higher because the motor assembly drooped slightly.

Then the replacement for fan number one arrived, with all the parts. Once again, the directions were less than clear. There was no mention of where the support spring went, or the bolt cover assembly, but the biggest problem was that the diagram for the fan motor assembly was printed in faint gray ink on shiny paper. Now, although my vision is about 20/25, the only way I could read the directions was under high illumination with a magnifying glass. But I did get it together, and so far it’s working well.

These are certainly not the only problems I’ve run across in goods requiring assembly, but a little more competence in directions would be useful. And, of course, it’s unlikely that my recently acquired expertise in fan assembly will be of much use when the next item of a different type arrives with similarly inadequate directions.

In 1968, the average annual poverty income level ($3,410) for a family of four was almost exactly what a minimum wage worker could earn in a year of full time work. Today, given inflation, the average annual poverty level for a family of four is $26,200, but a worker receiving the federal minimum wage working full time for a year only makes only $15,000, 43% below the poverty line.

For the last forty years, or since the beginning of the Reagan administration, Republicans and businesses have opposed raising the minimum wage, claiming that it hurt business and the economy. In truth, raising the minimum wage does hurt certain businesses, often small businesses, but that should never have been the question. The first question should have been whether it was fair to penalize workers on the edge of poverty to keep marginal businesses going. Supposedly, the idea behind the minimum wage was to keep business from taking advantage of poor workers.

Now… when minimum wage workers can’t make enough to live on, what happens? They suffer, and so do their families…and they start applying for federal and state benefits. Those benefits are paid for by taxpayers, in effect subsidizing the various businesses benefitting from paying lower wages. The use of part-time workers, who don’t make as much and don’t get benefits provides an even greater indirect subsidy to those businesses.

Those indirect subsidies aren’t primarily paid by corporations, but by individual taxpayers, including the higher paid employees at those businesses, which is another revenue stream to support this indirect business subsidy.

The second question is what is the overall economic effect of keeping the minimum wage low. Because salaried wages are to some degree pegged to the minimum wage, especially those of workers paid by the hour, this depresses wage levels compared to prices. Combined with the loss of purchasing power by minimum wage workers, the result is that a significant proportion of workers have less and less money to spend. Add to that the fact that the lower a family’s income is, the greater the percentage that’s spent. Tht means that when lower-paid workers have more money, the economy benefits more than when those funds are hoarded in corporate coffers. Because the U.S. is essentially a consumer-driven economy, people buy less and the rate of economic growth slows.

A comparison of the minimum wage to the poverty level indicates an overall trend that, on the average, there has been more economic growth when the minimum wage is closer to the poverty level and that growth rates have generally declined as the minimum wage was frozen and costs-of-living have increased.

It’s simple. When people don’t have enough money they can’t buy things. Moreover, when the government is providing a greater share of the income of underpaid workers, because they can’t earn it, not only can’t people buy as much, but the deficit also grows, the indirect subsidy to business gets greater, and economic growth slows.

And, in a way, keeping the minimum wage below the cost of living is essentially a form of fascism, supporting business through government intervention.

Over the last several years, I’ve certainly read and heard a great deal of speculation about the future of publishing and books. When ebooks were first introduced, some viewed them as a trendy but short-lived novelty, while others felt that they’d dominate the entire industry. Only a few old-time industry professionals and not many more of the newcomers foresaw the way the market has sorted itself out.

One aspect of publishing that’s overlooked is that that the non-fiction and fiction markets are very different, even though most major publishers handle both. So, if you look at overall publishing revenue, print books outsell ebooks almost four to one, but those figures don’t break out non-fiction from fiction (at least the figures I can easily find) and they don’t include the full impact of independent authors self-publishing, which is largely e-publishing. Non-fiction also tends to sell a higher percentage of print books, as opposed to ebooks, and much of the printed non-fiction sells for higher prices than fiction. So aggregated revenue figures tend to misrepresent the market.

One of the more interesting statistics I ran across was that in 2019 ebook sales comprised 18% of the total book market by revenue generated, but 36% of the number of books sold, and that 36% number tracks fairly closely to my unit sales figures – excepting audiobooks.

Not surprisingly, sales of mass market paperbacks for most authors have declined precipitously. Regardless of all the rhetoric, for most authors mass-market paperback sales have declined to a third or less of what they were twenty years ago, and that assumes that a traditional publisher will even print mass-market paperbacks for midlist (or lower) authors.

Right now, unless there’s major shift in the economics of publishing, mass market paperbacks are on the way out for most authors. Only million-copy sellers are likely to be published in mass market paperback within a decade, if not sooner. Hardcover volume for fiction seems likely hover in the same range and may even increase slightly for non-fiction.

My personal belief, backed by no statistics, is that the number of self-published “indie” authors will taper off and only track future growth of the fiction-reading public, for several reasons. First, while indie authors get a much larger percentage of sales revenue, readers expect “indie” books to be cheaper (with the growth of indie sales, some readers also expect ebooks published by traditional publishing firms to be cheaper, which I don’t see happening, except for promotional events). Second, most indie authors sell fewer copies per book. That means writing more books per year. That’s damned hard, especially if an author wants to maintain any quality, and if the author outsources editing, that adds to costs.

The other factor is that ebooks can be easily pirated, and I don’t care what anyone says or what any studies purport to show, piracy cuts revenue to authors. The drop in mass-market paperback sales has in no way been compensated for by a corresponding and equal growth in ebook revenues.

So, however it turns out, I don’t see authors or publishers getting any great windfalls from ebooks.

Every once in a while, I read comments by readers, which my wife insists I shouldn’t, but, because I’m a glutton of sorts for punishment, I do. The words on the left are what the reader wrote. My translation, based on the rest of their comments, follows on the right. I will also add that such reader comments were comparatively rare… but this is my way of suggesting that some few readers are, shall we say… less than perceptive. I say that, because it should be obvious from all the years of writing and comments that, while I do have a fair amount of action, especially in some books, I don’t write action for the sake of action. I write action scenes as a result of what people think, desire, and feel.

Boring: It doesn’t have a fight, murder, battle, or explicit sex in every chapter.

Repetitive: The protagonist actually has a job and responsibilities.

Anticlimactic: No battles or deaths to end the book.

Too much military detail: Forget about logistics, training, and discipline; get on with the slaughter.

Marginal excitement: Not enough battles.

Uninspired: The protagonist succeeded as he planned.

Poor Ending: It has a happy ending.

Pedantic: There’s actually explanation.

Too much political intrigue: Wanted more action

Tedious: Too much detail.

Bland: Too subtle.

Too PC: Women are actually people in the book, and men are portrayed accurately.

Needs editing: Cut out the details and get on with the action.

Disappointing: Not enough action.

Now… those are my translations… and they’re obviously somewhat subjective, but occasionally writers get to be subjective about readers, rather than the other way around.

One of the biggest reasons why Congress is deadlocked on everything, why the major political parties are polarized, and why people are at each other’s throats over politics and national policies is, in my view, because we live in a culture of denial, based on the feeling that “we” are totally right, and “they” are wrong or totally misguided.

Despite the fact that the purchasing power of the minimum wage is more than 40% lower than it was fifty years ago, and is possibly worth less than that, given the “adjustments” made to the CPI in recent years, conservatives deny that this has created enormous hardship for poor working Americans, regardless of color or class.

At the same time, while the left understands this and wants change, they deny that there are financial and fiscal limits on federal spending with the simplistic mantra that taxes on the super-rich will fund their entire array of social programs.

While I happen to agree with the fact that the ultra-rich need to be taxed more, increasing their taxes even dramatically won’t come close to solving the problem. The current federal debt is over $26 trillion. So far just this this year, the federal deficit is nearly $3 trillion dollars. According Forbes magazine, the total wealth of all 630 U.S. billionaires amounts to $3.4 trillion. That means that even confiscating the wealth of all those billionaires would barely cover the deficit for two years, let alone provide significant additional revenue for major program improvements. Even if you confiscate all the wealth of those worth $100 million, you only add another $3 trillion.

And there are plenty of other denials.

Anti-vaxxers deny the proven efficacy of vaccines, while the extreme right denies proven public health methods, such as masks and stringent social distancing, to control the spread of Covid-19.

The right denies a history of economic, political, and cultural subjugation of both the poor and minorities, while the left denies the problems created by political correctness.

Even though self-esteem movements, rampant grade inflation, and student evaluations have played a major role in dumbing down education at all levels and in turning out the most fragile students in the history of the U.S., too many of whom are largely ignorant of the history of their own country, the liberals refuse to see it, let alone address it, while the conservatives blatantly deny the negative impact of local education funding based primarily on property taxes, which effectively means that “rich” districts almost invariably get better education.

The extreme conservatives deny the human-caused aspect of global warming and the future costs of not slowing or preventing it, while the far left denies the magnitude of the costs of mitigating global warming.

The far left can’t recognize that EVERY form of power generation has environmental downsides, while the fossil-fuel intoxicated conservatives ignore the immense climate and immediate pollution created by excessive and unregulated use of fossil fuels. In fact, the best we’ll ever be able to do is fit the environmentally appropriate power source to the climate, geography, and water resources of the locale it serves.

The right denies that Trump has any significant flaws, while the left did the same for Hillary Clinton.

And both reject compromise, especially significant compromise based on verifiable facts.

The biggest reason why the Democrats could, and likely will, lose the election [unless they change their campaign tactics] is that they’ve forgotten the basics. The election isn’t about money; it’s not about racial injustice; it’s not about Trump; it’s not about ideology; it’s not about police brutality.

It’s about power.

Now, in the U.S., power isn’t money; power’s not religion or the strength of belief; power’s not guns, or mass movements, or bodies in the streets demonstrating, peacefully or otherwise.

It’s about votes – pure and simple.

Money, ideology, civic involvement can be ways to get votes…but they don’t always translate into votes.

The Republicans have spent almost twenty years working with state laws and governments to make it harder for Democrats to vote. They’ve worked legislatures to gerrymander districts. They’ve just tried to slow down mail delivery for the same purpose.

During the last Presidential election, Hillary Clinton polled almost three million votes more than Trump… and lost. Election scholars have estimated that Democrats have to average 53% of the vote, in general, just to break even with the Republicans.

The second problem Democrats have is that they so far don’t have a single unified message. Trump does. It’s simple – keep America white. It’s not phrased that way, but it’s the basic theme.

The Democrats have lots of good ideas – and they’re still arguing over which one is best. Forget it. Now is the time to agree on a single simple theme – one like “A better life for all working people.” Don’t get hung up on details, just emphasize “a better life” or something else simple and positive that people can get behind. And then work like hell to turn out every possible voter.

An old and very successful political pro, who elected some pretty disreputable characters in his day, made this point to me: You can’t beat someone with nothing. What he meant is, no matter how awful the other guy is, you have to give voters something to vote for, not just something to vote against.

Third, all great ideas mean nothing if you can’t elect enough people to pass the laws to change things. Winning the election comes first.

Finally, most voters, especially the ones most likely to vote dependably, are risk-averse. They don’t like radical proposals, violent demonstrations, shootings, and the like. A recent study of the 1968 elections indicated that riots reduced turnout and likely support for Democrats, while peaceful actions or even peaceful protests improved turnout.

So… Democrats… if you want to hand the election to Trump, keep on with your scattered radical messages, bland unfocused generalities, and claim those messages and all the riots and violent demonstrations are just demonstrating free speech. Being “right” in that way before the election may well insure that you’ll never get the power to actually change things.

Every so often, I get a reader comment about my “unpronounceable” names, and I don’t know whether to be amazed, irked, or just disappointed, because every name in every one of my books is perfectly pronounceable. The spellings may differ from “standard” usage, and many of them are derived from names or words in other languages. I’ll admit freely that I don’t use “Bob” or “George” or “Sam” or other simple “meat and potatoes” names, but there’s reason behind the names, one way or another.

“Quaeryt” – the name of the protagonist in Scholar and four subsequent Imager Portfolio books – is derived from the Latin verb “quaero,” which means to seek or to question, and, incidentally, is also the root for “question.” And Quaeryt is definitely a seeker and a questioner. The woman he loves is Vaelora, a name derived from the Latin verb meaning “to be strong,” which she certainly is.

In Quantum Shadows, Corvyn is the protagonist, and is known as the Raven or the Shadow of the Raven, and that makes sense because his name comes from the Latin “corvus,” meaning “raven,” and “Corvus” is also the species name for ravens and crows. The vast majority of names in Quantum Shadows come from or are derived from the names of deities from other cultures, which is essentially required, given that Corvyn is searching through future religious hegemonies to seek out a power that could destroy the world of Heaven.

Sometimes, I play with names. Blaine Donne is the protagonist of The Elysium Commission, and he has the last name of the poet John Donne. I sprinkled short allusions to and quotes from Donne’s poems throughout the book. Part of that was just to have fun with my editor, David Hartwell, who, in addition to being an editor and a scholar of F&SF, also had a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature. Johan Eschbach is the protagonist of the “Ghost” books; it’s also the name of one of my ancestors. Gerswin, the main character of The Forever Hero, has a special musical talent, and guess where his name, modified slightly, came from?

In the Recluce Saga, variations on names sometimes get passed down through the generations, just as in our world, but even there, I occasionally steal. The co-protagonist of The Towers of the Sunset is Megaera. I stole her name from Greek mythology, where Megaera is one of the Furies, known as the jealous one… and “my” Megaera is definitely furious and jealous of her sister.

I don’t know how other authors come up with names, but there’s almost always a reason for those I choose, beyond the fact that a name sounds good… and the names are all pronounceable, even if they don’t appear in American/English lists of names.

These days, almost all of us face not only the principal requirements of our occupation, but also all sorts of little chores and duties, both at work and at home, and I’ve noticed that most people take one of two approaches to dealing with the “little shit.” The most common approach is to ignore it until it either goes away or until it can’t be ignored any longer, often in order to concentrate on “the important stuff.” The second approach is to devote almost all available time to the little shit, usually because the individual really doesn’t want to deal with his or her major occupational requirements.

Because people are different, different methods are in order for different personalities. Since I’m mildly obsessive-compulsive, anything left undone nags at me. So back when I was managing lots of people in a situation where there were unending urgent demands from people who couldn’t be ignored [yes… it was in my political life], I devoted the first hour of the day to dealing with as much of the little stuff as I could. That way, the list of the little items didn’t become longer every day, and my subconscious had less to worry about.

As a full-time writer I still follow that general formula, if not quite so rigidly, answering email, updating the website, even paying the bills, etc., before I get down to what earns the money to pay the bills, and that’s the writing. For me, that approach means I have less on my mind to distract me from writing, but one reason why that works for me is that the little stuff is secondary to writing, and I just want to handle it as efficiently as possible. I also know that most of it doesn’t go away, and it often multiplies if unaddressed.

But… that’s me.

I know others, writers among them, who would never get around to doing real work if they followed my approach, because they’d never escape the little stuff, which they find more appealing than dealing with what they ostensibly should be doing. So…they need to set firm limits on dealing with less important matters.

Then, there’s the third group…whose “little stuff” would consume their entire day, even if handled quickly and efficiently. All they can do to survive is triage the little stuff, ignoring what can be safely ignored, delegating anything that can be delegated, and dealing with anything that is likely to multiply immediately before it can… while making time to hunt for a new job.

Once upon a time, that is to say before June 16, 2015, while the major party candidates for President played rough and took liberties with the truth, those liberties usually consisted of telling partial truths and slanting the facts favorably. Once elected, to the same or to a lesser degree they continued the same practice. At times, they managed to imply unfavorable characteristics or behaviors about their opponents with edited or tailored photos or quotes. They often claimed that, once elected, their opponents would do terrible things. Lyndon Johnson ran a tear-jerking but brutal ad that implied Barry Goldwater would lead the U.S. into a nuclear war… and it worked.

But, with one horrendous exception, there was a general consensus that blatant falsehoods, particularly about the other candidate’s life, were not to be used and that, unless someone in a candidate’s family was a political figure in his or her own right, they were off-limits, as were politicians who had retired from the arena. That didn’t mean that unflattering events that actually happened weren’t used. They certainly were. Terribly misleading and even factually impossible claims about a candidate’s plans and how terrible things would be under his leadership were often presented, but blatantly false lies were seldom employed. Nor were degrading personal epithets often used.

They may not have been perfect, but those were the traditional political manners.

When Donald Trump decided to run for president, and even before, he decided to break all the rules, most of all those accepted political manners dealing with truth. He continued to trumpet the falsehood that President Obama wasn’t a citizen, and he’s quietly pushing the idea that Kamela Harris isn’t either. He claimed that Mexico would pay for his wall. It’s tragically absurd when a President has non-violent protesters tear-gassed for a photo-op to appeal to the religious right, or when he says that the U.S. is handling the Covid-19 pandemic better than other nations, given that, with 5% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the cases and 21% of the deaths.

When The New York Times documented thousands of Trump’s complete falsehoods, what was Trump’s response? He claimed those who pointed out those falsehoods were peddling “fake news.” What’s even worse is that those who support him have adopted the same methods.

I mentioned above the one horrendous instance when those traditional political manners broke down before – that was when, in the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy ran around claiming that anyone who opposed him was a Communist or a Commie-sympathizer. It was a dark period in American history and one not remembered by many and seldom taught in schools.

But right now, what Trump is doing makes McCarthy’s acts pale in comparison… and Trump’s supporters either don’t know that or, more likely, don’t care, which is why the rest of us should, more than ever.

One definition of a novel is “a long narrative work of fiction with some realism, often in prose form, and published as a single book.” Another is “any extended fictional narrative in prose that represents character, either in a static condition or developed as the result of events or actions.” A Glossary of Literary Terms provides a five page definition, which I’m not about to quote.

As a writer, I’ve learned that every reader has his or her own definition of what a “satisfactory” novel is, and what aspects are absolutely necessary for that reader.

There are readers for whom action is what is absolutely necessary, and any aspect of a book that slows the action makes it less pleasurable for those readers. There are readers who don’t like graphic sex and violence, and readers who don’t like books written in anything but third person past tense. There are even readers who are stopped cold in their reading by the slightest of typographical errors.

When I started writing, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I wrote poetry. Along the way, I discovered that the traditional definition and forms of poetry were falling out of favor. I liked those forms… and I persevered, and found my publication opportunities pretty much limited to VERY small literary magazines, and not many of those, at that. That was my first encounter with reader/editor rejection based on what one might call “popular form preconception.”

Then, after I began to write science fiction, I was just trying to tell a story. This was in the post-pulp, “Golden Age,” pre-New Wave (or whatever) where authors just wrote… or so I thought. Most of what was printed back then was presented in straight-forward narrative, usually in third person past tense with predominantly male protagonists… and, although there were a few exceptions (very few), most SF novels had vaguely similar structures, and everyone reading SF “knew” what a novel was. Except what I was writing was on the fringe of that conception, and I was rejected by every major F&SF house until one enterprising editor [David Hartwell] decided to buy my work, first for one start-up ][Timescape] and then, after Timescape was folded, for Tor.

Those days are long gone, for which I’m thankful, but most readers, from what I’ve seen, have a subconscious idea or model of what they think a novel should be, and many of them tend to be disappointed when a favorite author departs from the model or type of novel that first hooked that reader. That’s one of the reasons why many newer writers use different pen names when they write different kinds of books. It’s why I have readers who only read my fantasy or my SF, although there are many who read both.

What I don’t understand, and probably never will, is why some readers keep buying the work of authors they seemingly don’t like because the author doesn’t fit their mental model… and then complain about it. I try quite a number of authors who write well, but whose approach or style don’t click with me. That’s fine. I’ve tried them, and unless it’s clear that a later work is very different, I probably won’t try them again, but I don’t badmouth them because they’re not to my taste. And even if their approach is, and they do it badly, in my opinion, I still don’t. I’d rather talk about the books that intrigued me.

Today, especially with Indie publishing, the range of what’s being published is wider than it’s ever been… and there should be authors out there who appeal to readers with different views of what a novel is and should be.

Right now, it seems as though not a day passes before there’s not another news story about some form of protest against wearing a mask. A number of people have been shot, and some have been killed, for asking or requiring others to wear masks.

Shooting someone who’s trying to stop the spread of Covid-19?

It doesn’t make sense. First, requiring a mask doesn’t endanger your health, nor is it a significant restriction on personal freedom. Second, legally, public health proscriptions are indeed constitutional. And third, if you’re caught, you’re going to spend a number of years incarcerated.

The so-called “freedom” not to wear a mask is a declaration that non-mask-wearer has the right to infect others, some of whom will get ill, possibly seriously, and some possibly fatally. But some individuals have declared that the vulnerable should just lock themselves up until a “solution” is found.

There are several problems with that assertion. First, while we know certain groups of people are vulnerable, there are still significant numbers of deaths and longer-term health effects among people not thought to be vulnerable. Second, as I’ve noted before, in many professions, from 20% to as many as 35% of those professionals are in the vulnerable category. Potentially endangering even a fifth of a range of professionals, whether teachers, doctors, nurses, or others, is going to harm them and those who need their services. Third, failure to wear masks by even a fifth of the population will prolong the epidemic. Fourth, a longer pandemic will penalize the vulnerable economically and socially, and in fact, will penalize society as a whole.

In the end, any individual who asserts his or her “freedom” not to wear a mask is declaring that he or she has the right to harm others through such “freedom.” That’s not freedom, it’s extraordinary narcissism masquerading as freedom… but what can we expect when the President continues to set an extreme example of narcissism at the highest levels?

The other day, I realized that I needed to change some details on a bank account and to switch to another class of account. While the representatives with whom I talked were knowledgeable and helpful, the process took close to two hours. Why? Because of the combination of federal regulatory and bank/federal security requirements, even though I’ve been a customer for more than thirty years. They could not legally use the information on file. Every bit had to be re-verified, and I had to listen to several federally required disclosures.

What’s interesting about this is that it takes far less time to open a new account than to make changes to, or close, an existing account.

I understand the need for such precautions, and, unfortunately, they’re necessary, in today’s modern economy, where bank accounts can be hacked and identities stolen. But it’s essentially a “modern” problem. Too many people have no realization that the first true credit card wasn’t issued until 1958 [although that’s in the dark ages for most people].

The simple fact was that, if someone wanted to buy something, they had to pay cash for it. Banking was strictly local. There were essentially only three types of financial crimes, high-level stock and financial swindles, embezzlement, and bank robberies. The growth of commercial credit, amortized mortgages, and, finally, the internet changed everything… because the user convenience and availability also increased access for criminals, with the result that the FTC estimates financial crimes in the U.S. cost the victims $50 billion annually.

And that’s despite all the security systems and procedures.

The bottom line is that when a society gets wealthier and technology improves, there’s more to steal and more ways for criminals to do so, and that means that simple matters like changing accounts become far more complex and time-consuming…and that requires more time and effort.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that improved technology results in my having less and less free time and being required to deal with more and more minutiae every year.

The other day I read a “guest” editorial in The Salt Lake Tribune, a moderately liberal paper that’s won a lot of awards for journalism. The editorial was fairly well-written, but I had no idea what the point was, unless the “editorial” was just an expression of frustration and rage (about which I earlier blogged), but all I could figure out was that the writer was clearly unhappy about the conduct of one of the members of the Salt Lake School Board. Even after reading the editorial three times, the only point I could discover was that the writer was upset at the perceived patronizing attitude of the school board member. I had no idea whatsoever what issue was under discussion (and with all the Covid-19 school and teaching related issues, I’ve been following the news in those areas closely). Nor could I determine who had what position and why.

Now, I’ve taught, and I’ve also had a number of children in very different school systems over the years. In all those years, I’ve seen dedicated and knowledgeable educational professionals at every level. I’ve also seen arrogant and patronizing buffoons. I’ve not only seen parents with more knowledge and understanding than the teachers they’re addressing, but also parents who are opinionated, ignorant idiots who just want things their way.

So why did the paper print what amounted to a non-specific rant, with no supporting facts, except for the fact that the school board member replied with a six page letter that the writer didn’t appreciate [because the writer saw it as patronizing], and not even a hint of what the issue was.

I have no idea why it was printed, only that it shouldn’t have been printed in the form in which it was presented. Disagreement is certainly part of life and news, but unless a reader was actually at the meeting and read the written response, I’d defy anyone to decipher what was going on, and even then they might have trouble.

While this was an extreme example, I’ve seen way too much of this kind of editorializing over the past few years, where very angry people assume that everyone knows what their issue is and the basis for their anger. Guess what? Even well informed and educated individuals may not, and, even if they do, they may have reasons for not agreeing, but they certainly can’t support such anger if they don’t know what to support, and many will tend to make up their minds about the writer based on that anger, rather than the facts.

But, of course, that’s what some political figures want… and it’s a very bad example of leadership.

Shirley Jackson’s famous story – “The Lottery” – is a horror tale about how a town chooses who periodically gets killed for reasons they have long since forgotten. The victim protests that the choosing wasn’t fair, but to no avail.

Right now, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, teachers feel the same way, particularly in states like Utah where school boards are planning face-to-face teaching, starting in two to three weeks, despite the fact that cases and death rates are climbing, not declining. One teacher protesting at the state capitol carried a sign proclaiming: I can teach from a distance. I can’t teach from a coffin.

Too much of the uproar about getting children back in school, face-to-face, concentrates first on the students and second on their parents needing to get back to work (and the economy). In making decisions about when face-to-face teaching will resume, almost no one is asking about the effect on teachers and whether the school systems have the resources to safely resume teaching.

Not only are the resources not there, but in most cases, traditional teaching can’t be resumed without a high risk of contagion. When professional athletic teams, with their millions of dollars, can’t resume even practicing without spreading the disease, just how are underfunded and overcrowded schools supposed to resume classes without spreading the coronavirus?

Add to that the fact that almost 30% of public school teachers are over age fifty and 17% [close to a fifth] are over fifty-five. In Utah, the majority of substitute teachers are retired full-time teachers. At the university level, nation-wide, the situation is even worse, with more than 35% of university faculty being over age fifty-five.

On top of all that, at least here in Utah, both secondary schools and universities are still talking about resuming fall football and basketball.

Welcome to the latest version of Jackson’s lottery.

A recent blog comment claimed masks, especially cloth masks, were only “theatre.” That’s simply not true, and you can prove it yourself… but first a few basics.

A cough can travel as fast as 50 mph and expel almost 3,000 droplets in just one go. Sneezes can travel up to 100 mph and create upwards of 100,000 droplets. Several studies found that larger droplets [from someone not wearing a mask] easily carried for more than two meters and as far as six meters. Those droplets and aerosols can hang around for hours, and longer in poorly ventilated areas.

The British medical journal The Lancet recently released a meta-analysis on studies dealing with “person-to-person virus transmission.” Among the many findings was one that masks were an effective way to reduce transmission, since they function as an effective “source control” restricting the flow of droplets and aerosols.

This past July 16th, the CDC released a statement specifically addressing cloth face coverings, stating that they should be used, and that studies showed that they were effective in reducing the spread of Covid-19. Masks block direct airflow, which reduces the amount of virus expelled and the distance it can travel… and that reduces contagion.

And if you’re still skeptical… look at the world map. Places with high masking rates and social distancing are doing MUCH better than we are.

By themselves, masks aren’t a cure-all. They are rated at reducing the risk of virus transmission by roughly 70%, but many flu vaccines don’t do much better. Masks also have one other problem. My mask protects you twice as well as it protects me. In effect, my fate lies more in your hands than mine. Now, that’s always been true in every functioning society, but most people don’t see it or like to admit it. We are indeed our brother, or sister’s keeper.

And that’s a problem in a country where some 40% of the population believes a President whose operating maxim is effectively, “Me first, screw you.”

Now…for that personal proof. Hold your hand fully extended in front of your mouth. Cough, hard. If you’re reasonably healthy, you should be able to feel the airflow from your cough on your fingers. For most people that’s a distance of a little less than three feet. Put on a mask, and do it again. When I do it, and I have fairly strong lungs, I can’t feel any airflow through the mask [mine is cloth, with HEPA filter inserts]. Some airflow will escape through the edges of the mask, but any aerosols or droplets emitted will stay close to the body, and combined with social distancing and adequate ventilation, will effectively protect others.

As for masks being theatre… that’s not quite true. Wearing a mask isn’t theatre, but not wearing one is… and it’s called tragedy.

“Americans can always be relied upon to do the right thing — having first exhausted all other possible alternatives.”

This quote has often been attributed to Winston Churchill, but there’s no evidence Churchill ever said or wrote it, although one of his biographers suspected that he felt that way, and, historically, the U.S. has certainly acted in that fashion.

A number of the Founding Fathers felt slavery was wrong and should not have been allowed, but, because they allowed it, the result was the prolongation of a barbaric practice, followed by a Civil War, and another 150 years of suffering. At some point, we might actually get around to finishing doing the right thing.

The same could be said of the right to vote for women, and equal pay for equal work, regardless of gender. Or our failure to confront Hitler when it wouldn’t have cost so many millions of lives. It took rivers actually catching fire and air pollution killing people before the U.S. would enact environmental protection legislation. The carcinogenic effects of smoking tobacco were first noticed in 1912, and definitely established by the late 1930s, but the tobacco industry was disputing that evidence well into the 1960s. There are numerous other examples as well, such as automobile seatbelts and lead in paint and gasoline.

And now we have another – the fact that masks definitely reduce the spread and the fatality level from Covid-19. What’s key about this is that the greatest effect of masks is that of keeping the wearer from spreading the contagion.The medical and health professionals can and have documented this, but the President and many state governors won’t mandate masks, and because masks are inconvenient and uncomfortable, all too many people won’t wear them unless they’re mandated.

And, once again, we’re not only not doing what’s right, but adopting strategies that are demonstrably incorrect and dangerous, and which will cause tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths and cases of permanent health damage.

And people wonder why there’s a trend toward authoritarian governance [even though it has an even worse record than democracy]?