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]?

Here in Utah, the majority of people are effectively refusing to social distance and to wear masks. National Parks are heavily visited, if not with the huge crowds of last year, and people visiting them aren’t really social distancing or wearing masks. I suspect that this pattern is true in many other states as well. Our governor has mandated masks for anyone in government buildings, for employees of any business serving the public, for anyone in all healthcare facilities, and for all students, teachers, and educational employees.

At first glance that sounds fairly restrictive, except that it means that patrons of restaurants and businesses don’t have to wear masks, nor does anyone in public spaces. And while major chain stores are now requiring masks, most have quietly indicated that they won’t risk employee lives to enforce that requirement. The result is that less than ten percent of the population here is wearing a mask, except when absolutely required to do so.

Unless people change, and they’re showing no sign of doing so, or unless government cracks down, and it shows no sign of doing so, Covid-19 cases and fatalities are going to continue to climb.

Even as case numbers are rising, because of economic and social pressure, the state plans to open all schools and universities in September, and the local university is touting that it will have football and basketball as well.

Early studies indicate that while young children [under 8] have a very low risk of contracting Covid-19, they can still be carriers. Older students, particularly teenagers and young adults, have a much higher chance of contracting it and carrying it, especially asymptomatically, and with high numbers of cases in the state, there’s no way that some students won’t carry it into the classroom.

This problem could be handled… if caseloads were low and declining, but they’re not.

What tends to be overlooked in this back-to-school rush is that, first, teachers have families, and those families include vulnerable individuals. Second, a significant number of teachers, particularly university faculty, fall into the “grandparent” category. Third, studies show that teenagers and young adults are among the worse at hygiene and social distancing, particularly over time. Fourth, schools and universities draw students from such a variety of backgrounds that those students are bound to include those carrying Covid-19 asymptomatically or otherwise. Fifth, so far at least, there are absolutely no screening processes for students in place. Sixth, disinfecting and maintaining hygienic conditions is expensive, and thus far on the university level, class-to-class disinfecting is yet another burden being placed on faculty.

Under these circumstances, at least here in Utah, I can see Covid-19 taking out, either temporarily or permanently, a significant number of teachers. And everyone is ignoring this almost inevitable result, except for teachers, who are extremely worried, worried enough that some are retiring or resigning.

And, unless matters change, because too many people are self-centered, and won’t take precautions, teachers, once again, in yet another way, are the ones who will pay for that combination of stupidity and selfishness.

When I looked at the cover of the latest edition of the Economist the other day, the illustration held a large single word, in a black and white pattern, which I initially read as “Rage,” along with a few other words saying it was the new ideology and that there was something wrong with it.

My first thought was that rage was definitely a real problem here in the United States, but belatedly I realized that that large single word was “Race.”

In fact, both rage and race are huge problems in the U.S. and, for the most part, from what I see, the people who are the most opposed to resolving the issues around race are largely the same ones who are showing the most rage, although there are also those extremists on the left who also carry a fair amount of rage.

When employees of stores are assaulted and in some cases killed for requiring customers to wear masks, it’s more than an issue of public health. Nor is it a question of civil rights, because everyone is being required to wear a mask, but rage at having to comply with a standard they see, not as a public health measure, but as a restriction on their ability to go where they want to do dressed the way they want to dress. In short, they don’t give a damn about the health of others.

Those who loot out of rage in demonstrations about race aren’t addressing the lack of civil rights, but committing a crime under the cover of civil rights. They also don’t give a damn about others.

Where I live there’s a great deal of anger against the restrictions required to combat Covid-19, yet we’ve never had the absolute lock-downs required elsewhere. Not surprisingly, case numbers are climbing here, yet the opposition to masks and social distancing is also rising. The Mothers Against Masks broke into a school board meeting the other day, opposing any mask requirements for their children in education. I still can’t understand their rationale. Yes, children are less vulnerable, but they’re far from invulnerable, and they can certainly carry the virus to others more vulnerable.

At the same time, governors – and the President – have been reluctant to mandate masks, again I believe, because of the rage and anger it creates.

Minorities are vulnerable to economic and social discrimination that makes it more difficult for them to improve their lives, but when they protest, it’s often in anger against injustice, and it is a form of rage against long-standing unfairness. Yet their rage and the reasons for that rage have been largely ignored for generations. At the same time, blind rage against that continuing oppression just strengthens those who oppose social change.

Rage against oppression is at least understandable, if misguided, because seldom are those who suffer the effects of riots and looting the ones responsible for continuing oppression. Rage against public health standards is another matter, particularly since it’s self-centered and indulgent, badly rationalized, and, in the end, hurts everyone, particularly the vulnerable, especially poor minorities.

In either case, rage doesn’t fix public health or oppression.

Strictly in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons why the current coronavirus epidemic has resulted in so many unnecessary deaths is that this particular virus goes against medical and social expectations, as well as the “rules” of past epidemics. Part of those expectations also arose from the fact that we have vaccines and treatments for a score of diseases that once killed millions, and most Americans still can’t grasp the idea that this disease is a large-scale killer, because that goes against the societal expectations, even though those expectations have only been in place for little more than a generation.

While the effects and the mortality from Covid-19 generally increase with the age of those infected, its manifestations in those infected vary, seemingly from being symptomatically undetectable to being lethal, and lethal effects strike every age range, with the result that even young adults and even a few children have died.

Initially, the virus seemed to target the respiratory system almost exclusively and appeared to propagate primarily by contact. It now appears that, depending on the victim, it can affect a much wider range of bodily functions and systems, and a wide range of factors can affect how susceptible an individual is, regardless of age.

Recent research now appears to confirm that airborne droplets and aerosols are also a significant source of infection, something that the World Health Organization largely dismissed as a possibility until recent studies indicated the contrary.

Once the virus has a large presence in a population, it becomes exceedingly difficult to trace because so many of those infected are asymptomatic, and even those who do eventually show symptoms are contagious for days before symptoms appear.

All of the early misconceptions and the uncertainty and variability of infection basically created a feeling that Covid-19 was essentially an “old people’s” disease and that it would pass quickly. Even when it didn’t, and the data indicated that the virus was still a problem, states relaxed precautions, and opened up early. Almost immediately, younger adults started back to a “normal” life and became much more casual about taking precautions. And most states, and certainly the White House, ignored the possibility of silent contagion…and now the numbers of cases across the south and west have skyrocketed… and higher death rates will follow.

Which is another reason why it’s a good idea to follow the data… especially when that data indicates that “the rules” and expectations aren’t working.

A little more than twenty years ago, David Brin wrote a book entitled The Transparent Society, which, interestingly enough, suggested that the best way to fight the misuse of information technology was not to restrict information but to make it more widely available.

Since the book was published, between the growth of surveillance systems, the near-ubiquity of camera cell phones, and the spread of social media and the internet, it’s getting more and more difficult for most of us to hide anything [except financial shenanigans governed by algorithms, but that’s another story].

One of the reasons the Black Lives Matter movement has gained support is that people with cell phones and non-police surveillance systems have documented too many police abuses of power and spread them across the internet. Although those in the minority communities have known and complained about such behavior for decades, if not centuries, now that such events have been captured in living [and often dying] color, it becomes harder and harder for the law enforcement community to ignore or brush off those complaints about brutality and excessive force.

On a related front, while the Me Too movement was actually founded in 2006 as an effort to combat sexual harassment and abuse of women, it took off virally in social media after the exposure of the widespread sexual-abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein in early October 2017. Here, too, the use of the internet has uncovered more than a few cases of gender harassment and sexual abuse, mainly of women, but also of men, and those of other sexual/gender orientations.

With the continuing expansion and accessibility of personal communications, this trend of what could be called “guerilla openness” is not only going to continue, but will likely expand, although more restrictive regimes, such as China, will definitely try to repress it.

Here in the United States, however, socially enforced openness is here to stay, and like most technological tools, it has its upsides and downsides. The downside is that false news, incorrect or inaccurate information can easily be spread and can destroy the reputation and sometimes the lives of innocents. The upside is that institutional and personal abuse and wrong-doing are harder and harder to conceal.

All of which brings up questions. What don’t corrupt cops get? With cell phone cameras possibly everywhere, and the increasing requirements for bodycams, just how long do they think they can continue to get away with brutality and abuse? The same questions apply to sexual harassers and abusers, particularly those in high places.

Because in a world where information – accurate and inaccurate – flows everywhere, before long there may not be that many places to hide… for better and worse.

In person and with your own eyes, it doesn’t exist. From where I sit in the semi-rural, very arid, mountain west, that seems to be the prevalent attitude about Covid-19…and more than a few other matters.

There’s no need for masks, unless maybe you’re old and decrepit, and social distancing? What’s that? No need of that any more, is there?

For most of the current Covid-19 pandemic, we haven’t seen many cases. Most people here don’t even know someone who’s had it. But now Covid-19 is beginning to creep, and even leap, into southwestern Utah. But I don’t see many masks, or much social distancing.

I do happen to wear a mask when I go out, and gloves. As a former Navy pilot, my feelings tell me nothing’s going to happen to me if I don’t, but I’m intelligent enough to know that sometimes feelings are wrong. That’s why I wear a mask, one with filters in it. In ninety degree heat, it’s not particularly comfortable, either.

In the statistical world, there’s a term that very much applies to Covid-19, and that term is “low probability, high impact.” It applies very much to the current coronavirus. Most healthy people without comorbidities won’t suffer much if they get Covid-19, but that’s far from absolute. But if you happen to draw the short straw… Death is definitely a high impact effect, even if it’s low probability for those under thirty.

Recent studies show that 4% of adults in their 20s who get Covid-19 will require hospitalization. That’s four out of a hundred, and that hospitalization will likely last weeks, and it will be expensive. Now, four out of a hundred doesn’t sound too bad, but, in California over 40% of the new cases are young adults, and as I write this, yesterday California had almost 6,500 new cases, of which 260 young adults will likely require hospitalization, and three will likely die. Those numbers are just for one day, and since hospitalization lasts several weeks, if those numbers continue, just the young adults will require another 4,000 beds, more if their hospitalization lasts more than two weeks.

In some southern states, over half of all new cases are people under 30, and those are just the diagnosed cases.

And, unfortunately, death from Covid-19 isn’t so low a probability for older Americans. More than 80% of Covid-19 deaths have occurred in people over 65, and most of those cases originated through infection from much younger people.

Besides the fact that not taking precautions (like wearing a mask, handwashing, and social distancing) could literally result in the death of more vulnerable others, it could also have a rather negative effect on younger, supposedly more resistant people. That’s because the other 20% of deaths have been adults between 18 and 64, and those deaths are roughly spread evenly across ages.

Most people wear seatbelts because automobile accidents are another variety of low probability/high impact personal disaster, and that disaster can also affect others, just like Covid-19. Only self-centered idiots refuse to use seatbelts.

The same can be said of those who refuse to wear masks in public spaces.

I’ve seen and heard those words too many times in my life, most recently from a university president explaining why he was choosing to endanger faculty and students by deciding to have an in-person commencement in a month and to open classes in two, despite being in a state where the numbers of new coronavirus cases are at an all-time high and seem likely to go higher.

In a general sense, those words are accurate. If an institution, group, or country faces a problem, it’s likely to affect all those in whatever group is being addressed either directly or indirectly. I’ll grant that.

But what such rhetoric ignores or talks past is that, more often than not, the problem affects those whom the speaker addresses far more than it does the speaker. In the instance above, the university president faces a far smaller risk from Covid-19 than do the professors, instructors, and staff dealing with students. And in terms of age and medical conditions, the faculty and staff face a greater risk than do the students.

If a general or admiral says words like those about a coming military action, they’re unlikely to be the ones wounded or dying. The president of a large public company faced with hard times and possibly failing will certainly come out of a failure better than the vast majority of his employees, and if he turns the company around, he’ll definitely fare better than his employees.

I’ve seldom heard those words from really good leaders, and then usually when that leader was actually in a position similar to those he addressed, but more than a few times from those whose leadership is suspect. Maybe that’s just my experience, but I’ve been in more sectors of the economy, including business, government, and the military, and seen more geographically than most people.

To me, the phrase “We’re all in this together” is all too often an attempt to suggest that everyone shares the burden and the risk equally, to which I’d say in the words of another hackneyed phrase, “Tell me it ain’t so, Joe.”

Every time I finish a book, or get near to doing so, or sometimes even sooner, a question comes to mind. “What are you going to write next?”

Sometimes, the answer is obvious. If I’ve just finished the first book of a series or sub-series, the answer to that question is obvious – the next book about those characters. Or it’s an idea I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and finally can’t ignore. Sometimes, the answer is anything but obvious.

Many of my readers, however, do have an “obvious” answer to that question. They want another book about their favorite character or characters. Another obvious answer for some of those at my publisher [thankfully, not my editor] is more of whatever series sells well.

But, whatever the book I decide to write, and, for whatever reason, that means other books don’t get written. Sometimes, even with a character I love and the readers love, there isn’t a good enough story there, as in the case of Charyn from Endgames, who has managed to put himself in a position that any real challenge to him would have to be so contrived as to be unbelievable in terms of the world he lives in (and no, I’m not going to twist the world out of shape to drag out another story for even the best of characters). Other times, an idea strikes me, but upon investigation, isn’t going to be believable and workable, even on its own terms.

Then, there are the characters and ideas that would result in good or excellent books, but which would require more than a single book to do well… and, if I’m in the middle of another series, they just don’t get my attention, although, at times, they do eventually get written. I had Saryn’s story [Arms-Commander] in mind for years before I wrote it. Even though I’ve written, on average, slightly more than two books a year over the past 30 thirty years, there will always be more characters and stories than I’ll ever be able to write… and most of those won’t get written.

But I’ll write as many as I can, so long as I can do it well, and my editor and publisher agree.