This year, the buzzword at the local university is “retention.” What it amounts to for faculty and staff is, essentially, to do anything possible to keep students in school. Act as their friend or their counselor. Give them any way you can to pass courses. Ensure that they get instant positive feedback.

Along with this comes a blizzard of brand-new acronyms, a program to train faculty as emergency counselors and psychologists [because the three new counselors the administration hired are so far behind that they’ll never get through the caseload of students], and the very clear message that university faculty members are responsible for getting students through in five years or less, faculty and no one else.

Since most entering students have never really had to work hard to learn and study, they’re not really prepared for college-level work, and it often seems like they can’t wait to get out of class and return to their smart-phones and ear-buds.

And that doesn’t include the facts that the local university is located in a culture where more than half the students take off two years for a Church mission, where women are pressured to marry and have children young, and where the majority of students feel “crushed,” if they get a grade below an “A” even when they don’t do the work. That doesn’t take into account that roughly half of the students are working part-time or full-time because families averaging five children spaced close together can almost never provide anywhere close to the funds necessary for college.

Then add to that the fact that many classes are taught by underpaid adjuncts who are juggling other jobs and commitments, and that the administrative loads dumped on full-time teaching faculty continue to increase and result in longer and longer hours providing information and reports to administrators that have very little to do with teaching.

And, of course, it’s absolutely taboo for a faculty member to even hint at asking whether some of these students should even be in college or whether the university is doing those students any favors by trying to keep them in classes as long as possible.

The truly miraculous aspect of it all is that so many faculty members struggle to do their best for students who are seldom grateful and an administration that’s preoccupied with numbers and thinks that excellence can be quantified by retention numbers.

I’ve always wanted to understand, and worked at developing my own abilities to do that whether the subject happened to be technological, historical, political, or otherwise in nature. One of the many things I’ve learned through these exercises is that while I may think I understand something, there’s always more to be learned… but there comes a point where additional knowledge adds little to understanding. Likewise, understanding is only the first step in resolving problems, and far too many individuals seem to believe that if they just “understand” the situation or problem, it can be solved or resolved.

Years and years ago, A.E. van Vogt wrote about non-Aristotlian [Null-A] thinking, presenting it as rejection of “single-valued” or straight-line logic or thinking and suggesting that a multi-valued/perspective logic structure was better for dealing with problems. That kind of approach sounded good on paper – as a good author can often make something sound – but I had a feeling that there was something inherently flawed with the idea.

Recent interactions have brought to mind that feeling, and I realized exactly what van Vogt had missed. While his proposed Null-A thinking may well work better in solving technological and physical problems, it’s limited, and often useless, in dealing with people problems, because the overwhelming majority of people don’t think that way… and don’t want to. Every individual has his or her own value system, in most cases differing slightly from that of others in his or her society, but those systems are essentially based on “either-or” assumptions. Either something is “good” or it’s not, and when something goes wrong, or is not to their liking, their default feeling is that someone else or something else is wrong or the problem.

Sometimes, that may be largely the problem, but usually, from what I’ve observed, most problems, especially human problems, have multiple causes and contributing factors, and most people reject their own contributing factors and insist that the problem is caused by other people or other factors.

Now… you can analyze this to death and come up with and list all the factors. You can point out all the psychological impediments those involved with or concerned with the problem have. But all that analysis does nothing to solve the problem – because those involved have emotional anchors to their point of view, and a number of studies, some of them quite recent, have indicated, those emotional anchors are far more powerful than either facts or logic. Only an emotional impact of some sort will change those views.

And all the analyses and data don’t seem able to change that. Likewise, bashing those who observe that this is in fact an accurate observation of current human nature doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of human beings are governed by emotionally-based, either-or feelings and decision-making.

You might say that I’m an idealistic romantic, tempered by time and experience into a somewhat cynical pragmatist, who’s been caught more times than I can count between extremists on both sides who insist that their view is the only “true” one, and that their interpretation of events and facts is the only accurate one. I’ve also self-classified myself as a moderate, dangerous as that has become in a culture that has become more and more self-oriented and more and more polarized. Why do I say dangerous? Because attempting to point out that there are truths and lies on both sides can subject one to attacks from the true believers on each side. And, unhappily, there are “sides,” whether they’re called that or not, because people do have differing beliefs, based on their environment and their heritage, and, yes, even their genetics. I’ve seen this in my own extended family where, at times, siblings of the same parents have very different views of fundamental issues.

I’ve also observed that today there are fewer and fewer people who want to steer a middle course, and more and more who believe that moderation, or an understanding that one can’t remedy evils just with the enactment of a law or a proclamation, is a sin of the first order and who believe that a simple and extreme “solution” is the answer, ignoring the fact that virtually all such extreme solutions can’t be implemented, either practically or legally.

Both the extreme “Trumpists” and the extreme “Sandernistas” also seem to have the feeling that, if they don’t get all of what they want immediately, the system is rigged. And, in a way, they’re right. The Founding Fathers designed our government so that immediate and radical change in government was close to impossible. That doesn’t mean change can’t occur; it just means that you have to work at it for much longer. But some of these people turn their backs on what has been accomplished because they didn’t get everything they wanted immediately, which is another expression of the current situation, because not only is the electorate polarized, but the extremes on both ends want their polarized goals and ideology implemented instantly.

The current presidential election highlights this cultural disaster, because surveys indicate that the factor motivating most voters is not support FOR a candidate, but opposition to that candidate’s opponent. And how did this all come about?

In a single word – dissatisfaction.

Despite the fact that the United States and a number of other industrialized nations enjoy historically the highest standard of living overall, and certainly the best level of health, all too many people are unhappy. The have-nots are unhappy because they feel that too much of the recent economic gains go to the top one tenth of one percent, a feeling not unjustified by the fact that over eighty percent of American families have seen either flat or falling incomes (in real dollars) over the last ten years and that in the recovery since 2008, 85% of the income gains have gone to the top one percent of earners. Add to that the fact that somewhere between sixty and eighty percent (depending on the study) of new jobs have wages that pay less than $17.00 per hour, and roughly half pay below $13.50 [which amounts to annual wages barely above the poverty line for a family of four.

Much of the middle class and former middle class is unhappy, simply because, at best, their incomes have remained flat while costs of everything, especially education and medical care, have climbed.

Those who make more aren’t exactly happy either, because they’re working longer hours for minimal increases in income, at a time when U.S. non-hourly employees and professionals already work the longest hours in the world.

Only the top one tenth of one percent are doing really well income-wise, and they’re spending billions on the elections because there’s really only one place that there’s a large pool of taxable income necessary to cut the federal deficit or to pay for new programs – and that’s in their bank accounts and securities portfolios.

And that’s just the income dissatisfaction, without getting into education, the struggle over environmental issues, crumbling infrastructure, foreign trade, and a host of other problems.

But the bottom line is, no matter which side you’re on, or even if you have no side, problems that have been building for a generation can’t be solved as the result of one election, or simple one-time solutions, particularly if no one wants to recognize the problems that others have.

One of my guilty pleasures is watching certain sports in the Olympics, especially swimming, but also at least a little bit of volleyball, either indoor or beach. What struck me after watching parts of several matches was that what decided the outcome of those matches wasn’t which team had the most powerful serves or the best strikers or blockers, but who had the best diggers and setters, the men or women who got in there and did the hard and dirty and largely unnoticed work that took the edge off the power serves and set up the thundering spikes.

Metaphorically and practically speaking, the same is true in most human endeavors. It’s the effective gruntwork, the unseen set-ups, the unnoticed research, the careful checking and cross-checking that lead to success.

In writing, for the most part, it’s not the brilliant phrases, the basic plot, or the non-stop action that defines a really good book, but rather the expertise in all the other aspects of writing, such as the setting, the characterization, the dialogue, the subplots, and the tiny details that link everything into a seamless unity.

In politics, it’s not the brilliant speech-making or the lofty rhetoric that defines an effective lawmaker, but the skills in crafting a measure so that it will pass all the tests of legality and Constitutionality, of building effective support among both members of one’s own party and of the opposition, of doing enough research to be able to answer every possible objection to the proposal, of knowing the subject well enough to be able to explain the issue and the solution to everyone from grade-schoolers to those with doctorates, and to do so without being condescending or arrogant, and then having the perseverance to do it all again and again in order to get the job done, all the while not alienating the voters and raising enough money for the next campaign.

In business, success isn’t measured just by having the lowest prices, the best profit margin, the most efficient production process or the most productive workers. Long-term success also requires continual innovation; understanding of not only where markets are, but where they will be; an ability to discover and assess outside factors that will affect society and thus industry; and mastery of all the little details behind each of these.

My wife, the opera and voice professor, also has a listing of the details that most young singers either ignore or shortchange, including: improper posture, because that makes effective breathing almost impossible; poor everyday speaking and pronunciation, because that carries over into singing; failure to learn the musical rhythms of a song before memorizing the lyrics; lack of adequate keyboard skills; and a whole host more.

In short, all those unsexy, grubby, painstaking, unglorious tasks that are seldom, if ever, recognized are what lie behind success… and that’s something that fewer and fewer young people are taught and shown every passing year, as well as something that far too many voters fail to take into account when casting their ballots.

Yesterday, my wife the professor set out for work… and was back in less than half an hour. Why? Because the power was out at the university, and the reason was that a student who was texting while driving lost control of his car and ran into the electric power distribution transformer. The immediate result was that the entire university lost power for more than half a day, but because the transformer is actually connected to the music building, the university public works crews could shunt power to the rest of the campus, but repairs to the music building’s electric distribution system may take several days, perhaps a week. In the meantime, even without power, the building is effectively shut except for emergency access, because all the locks are electronic.

Texting while driving strikes again, and while this comparatively small accident injured only one driver and shut down a small-to-mid-sized university for half a day, the fact that all the doors are electronically actuated underscores the growing reliance of everything in society on electronics and electric power.

A far larger problem occurred early Monday morning when apparently the failure of a piece of electronic equipment at Delta’s headquarters triggered a power failure and crashed the entire computer system and grounded the airline’s flights for hours, causing more than 600 flights to be canceled and some 3,000 or more to be delayed. Delta said it didn’t know why the power outage hadn’t brought all the back-up systems on line.

And that wasn’t the first airline computer problem. A month ago Southwest airlines had to delay and/or cancel some 2,000 flights due to a computer system glitch.

These kinds of events point out the vulnerability of the United States to power outages and computer system crashes, and, frankly, the fact that it appears that we just might need to be doing more as a society to safeguard and back up both our power sources and our electronic information networks and security systems.

Perhaps some businesses are, but it appears that the cost to Delta from the latest outage/crash is going to cost quite a bit more than up-grading and improving back-up systems would have… and now back-up costs will still be incurred. From what I’ve observed of the local power company here in Utah, they’re still playing roulette with their placement of spare transformers and the like, suggesting that the efforts of electric power system providers leave quite a bit to be desired.

But then, maximizing current profits takes precedence over everything, even long-term profitability – or even survival – just as the immediate pleasure of texting appears to take precedence over safety… and even survival.

NOTE: The latest word from the university is that the damage was so extensive that it will likely cost at least several hundred thousand dollars to replace the equipment, and take six months to a year to obtain a permanent replacement transformer/distributor. In the meantime, the university is operating on a mix of a back-up generator and “temporary” re-wiring.

Over the past few years I’ve been asked how the field of writing has changed since I was first published, a question I suspect comes up because I’ve managed to stay published for a long enough time that I might have some perspective on any possible changes affecting writers, in particular.

Some of the changes are obvious to any even casual reader, such as the decline in the number of big box chain bookstores and the growth of ebooks, along with a decline in the availability of a diversity of mass market paperback books. Others are less likely to be quite so apparent, and some will be apparent only to long-time F&SF readers, such as the actual length of books.

When I started writing most SF novels fell in the 80,000-90,000 word range, and for a very good reason. Almost all science fiction was published as paperback originals, and paperback books longer than that had a disconcerting tendency to fall apart rather quickly. Also, there was very little fantasy, and for whatever reason, science fiction novels, in general, tend to be shorter than fantasy novels. The binding technology has gotten better, and now most F&SF tends to be published in hardcover first – a practice pioneered largely by Tor, I might add. And whether it’s because of better bindings, more fantasy, or something else, F&SF books are definitely longer and larger than they were thirty-five years ago.

While it’s one of those things I can’t prove absolutely, what I have observed suggests that writers who are not blockbuster best-sellers and who turn out a book a year or more infrequently are earning less than they used to, largely because bookstores carry fewer titles in backlist inventory and because media buzz, even electronic media hype, tends to die out much more quickly after a book is released than it once did. That’s one of the reasons why more and more authors find they need to publish more frequently and to establish and maintain as much of a media presence as they can. The problem with this is that maintaining a full-scale media presence takes a great deal of time and effort, and that time and effort isn’t going toward actually writing books.

At the same time, publishers aren’t doing as many author tours, except for their very top authors, as they once did, and more and more authors are trying to arrange their own appearances, pretty much anywhere that they can. This was greatly frowned upon in past years, especially by the big-box book chains. One such chain wouldn’t let me appear in any of their stores for several years because I went around corporate management and worked out an appearance in one of the chain’s stores because, for some reason, the chain didn’t seem to want me appearing in any of their stores in a certain mid-sized city, even though the local stores did. Now, the local community relations people in many of the B&N stores seem much more receptive to that, but I wonder if they’re just keeping corporate headquarters in the dark, or if headquarters is just grateful for anything that might boost sales.

Because more and more authors are doing personal marketing of some sort, the author who doesn’t is often at a disadvantage, but personal marketing takes a considerable amount of time and effort, as well as a financial outlay that can range from modest to outrageous.

Another area that’s changed is that there’s much more media interest in authors who are in some way personally intriguing or young and attractive. While this has always been true to some degree, it seems as though that’s become even more so, and that there is now a greater number of authors who get read more because of their media persona than because of the content of their books.

Not surprisingly, really accurate “hard” science fiction has declined, replaced largely by “space opera,” even steampunk, perhaps because it takes more knowledge and effort to write good solid science-based fiction, because scientific discoveries have ruled out a great number of popular scenarios, because those discoveries require more knowledge on the part of readers at a time when fewer and fewer readers are science-literate, and because more and more readers prefer exciting escapism from a world they believe is already too technically demanding.

And, of course, there is self-publishing, the growth of which is well-known, but which would have astounded followers of the field if someone had predicted its impact in 1990, and probably such an accurate prediction would have earned the forecaster ridicule. That impact was made possible by electronic books, an innovation which unfortunately has also had the impact of effectively destroying significant percentage the mass market paperback sales, while boosting piracy, with the result that most authors’ per book ebook sales don’t make up for the loss in sales of recently released books, and largely only authors with either blockbuster titles or long backlists come close to the royalty levels that existed in the 1990s.

All in all, a very mixed bag in how authors have fared.

It’s always baffled me how so many successful, usually white, usually male, individuals claim that they alone were close to solely responsible for their success, discounting or ignoring so many factors that contributed to that success.

One factor that’s so often discounted is simply the fact that it’s easier to take risks if you’ll still have a safe place to sleep and something to eat if that risk turns to failure. Another is knowing that you have the skills or qualifications to get another job. Yet another is having a lighter skin color. Another is having a manner of speaking that’s accepted. The list of other overlooked “advantages” is far longer than most “self-made” men will ever consider. And I’ve certainly had more than a few of those usually discounted or overlooked advantages.

Then, there’s luck. Now, it is true that people who work and try harder do have more “luck” than those who don’t, but in all the fields in which I’ve worked, I can name a number of people who had more talent and who worked harder that others who were more successful, largely because the successful ones were in the right place at the right time.

Obviously, it’s not all luck. I do work hard. I’ve averaged writing 2 ½ books a year for more than twenty straight years, and I’ve visited almost forty percent of the B&N bookstores in the U.S. over the past 20 years, as well as hundreds of other bookstores, not to mention the time and effort spent on the website and other activities, but there are other authors who worked that hard as well, and not sold as well as I have, and there are some who haven’t worked as hard as I have who’ve sold a great deal more.

I was a marginally successful short story writer – very marginal – until Ben Bova wrote me a critical rejection letter. He didn’t have to write it. I was fortunate that he did, because his suggestion that I should write novels was absolutely accurate. I was also fortunate that David Hartwell read all the major SF magazines, because when I submitted my first novel to him, he recalled my name from the few ANALOG stories I’d written, and that meant that he turned to reading my manuscript before those of totally unknown writers. Now he bought the book because it was good enough to publish, but I’m sure there were others good enough to publish that probably didn’t get bought for various reasons. I was also fortunate that David prompted me to do to my first SF convention, because the experience at that particular convention prompted me to write The Magic of Recluce, which I never would have considered, at least not until later, and Tor published that book with a Darrell Sweet cover just a year after The Eye of the World, the first Wheel of Time book, which had a Sweet cover, and the fact that The Magic of Recluce also had a Darrell Sweet cover and was released so soon after The Eye of the World certainly had to have helped enormously in launching my fantasy career.

Whether you call it luck or good fortune, it’s still a factor, and while I’m exceedingly happy that those events worked out that way, I’m also very well aware that they might not have… and that I could still be struggling to write short fiction while mired in a 60-80 hour a week high stress job in Washington, D.C. All of which is why I’m extremely skeptical of anyone who touts themselves as self-made. There are doubtless a handful of such individuals, but far, far fewer than most of those who claim such a title will ever understand.

A recent edition of The Economist featured an article on a series of studies conducted by Roland Fryer, a tenured African American economics professor at Harvard. Fryer was concerned that his own encounters with police as a teenager might color his views on the use of force by police officers in dealing with blacks and other minorities. His first study reviewed and analyzed five million cases from New York City from 2003 to 2013. The raw data indicated that blacks and Hispanics were 50% more likely to encounter non-lethal uses of force than were whites. Even after analyzing the data to account for factors such as attempted assault on an officer or flight to avoid arrest, blacks were still some 17% more likely to incur the use of force than were whites, and even in the case of blacks reported to be perfectly compliant by police, such blacks were 21% more likely to have some force used against them than were whites.

Another study, by Ted Miller of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, reached a similar conclusion about the disproportionate stopping and harassing of minorities.

But the most shocking figures to Fryer were those uncovered when the two separate research teams he supervised looked into the over 1300 shootings by police in ten police departments from 2000 to 2015, including the cities of Houston and Los Angeles. The raw data found that blacks weren’t any more likely to be shot by an officer than non-blacks. Fryer then dug deeper, looking through 6000 incident reports from Houston, looking at all incidents involving shooting, Tasers, or other situations where lethal force could have been justifiably used, but was not. The result remained the same. Black suspects were actually less likely to have been shot than non-black subjects, and similar results appeared in the other police districts studied.

In effect, racial bias appeared in all kinds of situations – except in the case of shootings or where police used or might have used guns or Tasers. Why was there this difference?

Fryer suggests that the reason is that incidents involving guns and Tasers all require higher-level review and that all police officers are well aware of that, and therefore take more care in dealing with such incidents, whereas less violent situations seldom see that kind of review. If that is the case, then the growing use of body cameras by police may also lead to a more equal treatment of blacks and other minorities.

But the problem of violence between police and those detained or arrested isn’t exactly one-sided. Miller pointed out that on average, every day, three people die and 150 people are treated at a hospital because they are injured by police, for total number of 55,000 annually. At the same time, Miller’s study showed that in 2012, an estimated 67,000 law enforcement personnel were assaulted, with 18,600 medically treated for injury and 48 killed. All of this shows, at least to me, that, yes, there’s a definite problem, and remedying it will be anything but quick or simple.

Like millions of Americans last Thursday night, I watched and listened to Donald Trump’s acceptance speech. The speech was about what I expected, but the reaction of the crowd was frightening, for more than a few reasons.

The speech ticked off and highlighted every concern and fear of the right-wingers, evangelicals, and “disenfranchised” white middle class males, and Trump’s answer to each concern was that he was going to fix it fast on January 20th, and that’s the equivalent of Peter Pan’s Neverland being transported to American politics.

Why? Because, first, Trump offered no specifics, and, second, that the vast majority of the problems that he highlighted (and I will admit that most are problem areas, if not always of the severity he claims) either cannot be “solved” by the President without action by the Congress as well, and Congress NEVER acts that fast, if it acts at all, or are problems that cannot be effectively addressed by the federal government at all. For example, except for the Capitol Police, under the jurisdiction of the Congress, police forces are under the jurisdiction of state and local governments. The various trade agreements that he deplores require Congressional action to be changed. So do most federal regulations, because they’re required by law.

Then there is the rather significant point that virtually every proposal he made requires more funding and more resources, and yet he proposed a massive income tax cut at a time when the federal deficit is already far too large.

The crowd, good Republicans all, was oblivious to all of this, and their chants, and Trump’s cheerleading, reminded me all too much of movie footage of Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s. What too many people either forget or never knew was that the German people felt the same way about the German parliament as many Americans do about Congress, and most either agreed or looked the other way when Hitler effectively abolished parliament, placing the blame on the communists.

At the same time, as I noted close to a year ago, Trump is raising issues that affect and worry possibly as much as half the U.S. population, if not more, although at this point a majority doesn’t appear to agree with his proposals for dealing with them. But if people perceive that these problem areas are getting worse and that Clinton doesn’t care or won’t address them effectively, Trump has a good shot at being elected President.

Add to that Trump’s total disregard for facts, his apparent failure to understand the Constitutional structure of our government (or his blatant demagoguery ignoring its limitations), and his supreme egotism, and combine those with the simplistic views of the current Republican party, and, if Trump is elected, the scene is set for some form of governmental/political catastrophe.

Are the Democrats much better? Their platform certainly promises more than Congress will ever deliver, but what Clinton proposes is at least technically doable, if not necessarily desirable, but Clinton’s less flamboyant approach isn’t likely to win over middle class males feeling disenfranchised, and those Americans with immigration and terrorists at the top of their worry lists.

In the end, the question is whether a woman promising the costly and largely possible, at the expense of the wealthiest Americans, can top a man promising to do the impossible in a campaign based on fear and nostalgia for a past that never was.

In terms of fatal risks, the most dangerous occupations in the United States are those of loggers, fishers, pilots, roofers, garbage collectors, and ranchers. Police rank fifteenth on the list, a fact pointed out by some of my readers.

The problem with that listing, though, is that it’s a single factor listing.

Compare that list to another list, that of the most stressful jobs. According to a study by CareerCast, the most stressful jobs of 2016 are, in order: enlisted military personnel, firefighters, pilots, and police, followed by 24 other positions. Other sources add to the high stress jobs such professions as surgeons, teachers, and nurses, but almost all the various high stress job ranking lists include military personnel, firefighters, pilots, and police officers in some order at the top of the list.

One of the highest factors leading to stress for most people is uncertainty, of not knowing what to expect or when. In fact, almost any job can be high stress, especially if high expectations are placed on the worker without giving that worker either sufficient resources, time, or enough control of the situation, but what’s interesting about the “top four” high stress jobs is that all of them have high levels of uncertainty, ranging from all the time to part of the time, and that three of the four, all except pilots, almost always have to operate with insufficient resources, time, and control, while pilots have to deal with a different set of stresses, such as the responsibility of hundreds of lives in their hands, often terrible and unpredictable weather, and an unrelenting schedule.

Although all of the “top four” jobs involve uncertainty, only police and pilots face it largely unremittingly, and speaking as a former military pilot, except in combat, pilots don’t generally have to worry about the possibility that at any moment someone could be shooting at them. This knowledge can’t help but trigger anticipatory stress for police as well as for deployed military personnel.

Those who hire personnel for those jobs also recognize that fact by allowing people in those fields to retire early, a tacit and real acknowledgement of just how great a toll those occupations, with their combination of stress and risk, can take on people, not only mentally, but physically, and interestingly enough, recruiting enough qualified police and pilots is becoming more and more difficult.

Recently, a reader who is also a writer trying to get published wrote me lamenting the fact that her writing is similar to much of mine, in that it doesn’t begin with an immediate crisis, killing, or an action forcing everything into a literary hundred yard dash. Or, put another way, she doesn’t write slam-bang action openings, and it appears to her – and to me – that there’s more and more emphasis in F&SF for just such openings.

Now, I have nothing against openings with action. Fall of Angels begins with a violent battle scene, followed by a failing ship, and an emergency abandon-ship scene. Of Tangible Ghosts opens with a murder. An assassination by explosives sets the stage in Imager’s Intrigue. But frankly, most of my books open more prosaically with the killings, battles, explosions, treason, wars, etc., coming a bit later. And that’s usually the way real life is.

The problem with beginning with lots of action is that anything that comes after that seems like a let-down, especially to those readers who read only for the action. Those are the readers, of course, who usually won’t enjoy my books anyway because they’re “toooo slooow,” to quote one of them. But an action-packed opening can be a trap because it tends to imply that more and more action will follow, and if the action level doesn’t increase, that lets down “action-oriented” readers, and even if the level of action stays the same, then it’s just “more of the same,” and to avoid that an author needs to ratchet up the levels of violence, and often, sex and gore.

I’ve been reading F&SF for about sixty years, and it appears to me, especially in the last fifteen to twenty years, that the violence, speed, action, and shock-value quotients, so to speak, have all accelerated and become ever more prevalent. I’m certainly not against action, or even violence, and my characters, have, upon occasion, done some terrible deeds – and I’m talking about the protagonists, not about the villains – but I have the feeling that more and more authors are relying far too heavily on action and violence and shock value for the sake of shock value, rather than on plot, character, and, frankly, the technical strength of writing, in order to reach and hold readers.

Recently, say, over the past ten years, I’ve seen an increase in letters and emails to me that say that I’m one of a handful of authors that the writer can still enjoy reading because too many authors focus on action, sex, and violence. In the first twenty-five to thirty years of my professional career, I doubt that I got even a handful of such communications. Obviously, many of these writers are older and more traditional readers, but some clearly are not.

Given this reaction, limited as it may be, and my own continuing ability to sell books, I do have the suspicion that there’s still a market for a less violent approach to writing F&SF, but, as in many things, only time will tell, but I will say to any aspiring writer that the story should trump the marketing appeal of the slam-bang opening.

Last week a shooter killed five Dallas policemen and wounded nine others at a protest held in Dallas to protest the killings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana. This is the largest single killing of police officers since 9/11.

Too many people remain focused almost exclusively on police abuses, and such abuses clearly exist. There’s absolutely no doubt that they do. And for all the light shined on such abuses, they continue to occur. Some police departments have made great strides in dealing with the issue of discriminatory “over-policing” of minorities, especially blacks, and some have done far less to address the problem of police abuse, especially of black males.

Police officers need to realize that the problem isn’t going to just die down and go away. It won’t, not so long as abuses continue, so long as black anger increases, and so long as there are three hundred million guns in the United States.

Yet, from what I’ve seen reported, the Dallas police department is one of those that seems to have been trying hard and doing well in this regard, one headed by a black police chief, and one where the officers killed were on duty protecting a peaceful demonstration, ironically against police excesses – until the shooter opened fire.

That said, the black community has to face up to some very hard facts as well. By any standard, even taking into account poverty, poor schooling, and various systemic problems that cause discrimination, including racial profiling, the crime rate among young black males is unacceptable. Other impoverished minorities face a great many of the same structural and social problems, and the crime rate of their young males comes nowhere close to that of young black males. Drive-by shootings and random violence and killing of children as a result of gang fights are not deaths caused by police behavior.

Yet all too many on each side of this divide, and it is a divide, refuse to see or address their own problems, and the anger and the shouting seem to grow louder. While neither side is totally blameless and neither side is totally to blame, too many on each side are behaving that way. In effect, it’s another example of polarization.

David Brown, the Dallas police chief, said it well, that the divisiveness has to stop, but it won’t stop until the majorities and minorities on each side in all metropolitan areas and towns take a long, hard, and honest look at their own problems. There’s been progress, but not nearly enough, and we as a society are running out of time.

Theoretically, the words “diva” or “divo” are Italian for the most prominent singers, either female or male. Among professional classical singers, usually when those terms are applied to a singer, they’re meant in a much less complimentary way, a form of shorthand for a self-important pain in the ass, who makes life difficult for colleagues, conductors, accompanists, or anyone else who does not worship at the diva’s/divo’s feet.

While such divas or divos may be even outstanding and highly acclaimed, few end up having long or lasting careers. One of the very basic reasons for this is that, compared to the number of extremely talented professional singers, the number of top-flight and high-paying opera houses is very limited, and the number of good roles suited to even the best singers in each voice type is also limited.

There’s also a misconception that divos and divas only exist in the world of music, but I’ve certainly run across them in other fields, particularly in politics, but also in education, and even among F&SF writers. No… I won’t name names, because that’s not the point of what else I’m going to say. The point is simple. If you’re enough of a pain in the ass, no matter how talented you are, sooner or later, you’re going to be replaced. If you have enormous talent and ability, it will occur later, but it will happen. This is true whether you’re a writer, an artist, or an editor.

And if you’re a beginning author, you won’t even get to the point of being recognized as a divo or diva. I know. I’ve seen it happen on more than a few occasions, where an author insists he knows more than an editor and that the editor doesn’t know how to market his book or doesn’t understand his genius… or something else. In most cases that I’ve seen, those writers never really went anywhere. [And by the way, from what I’ve seen, in writing, there are more divos than divas.]

I’m not saying that editors are always right. They’re not. But almost always, a seasoned editor is far more likely to be right than a beginning author. The seasoned editors got there by having a better track record than other editors, and if you don’t think editing is a competitive business, talk to a few editors.

All that doesn’t mean an author can’t ask why, especially if the asking is done politely. And it doesn’t mean an author can’t suggest. But unless you’re already at the top of the bestseller lists, you’d best not demand. And even being at the top of the list isn’t proof against divo-self-destruction of career. I’ve seen that happen, too.

Just like singers, we authors are kept in business and kept writing by having enough people buy our books that the royalties pay the bills for us and for our publishers – and the same is still true if you self-publish. Most editors handle a number of authors. They tend to resent authors who take up a great deal of their time unless those authors produce incredibly good sales numbers, and they still resent those authors, which means, if you’re one of those, when the sales numbers drop, that editor isn’t going to be quite so solicitous. And if you’re not one of those authors, and are barely making the sales cut, when someone else comes along who’s much easier to work with, your books will go on the back burner, and that’s if you’re lucky.

I suppose the point I’m hammering is simply: Be the best you can be, but never be a divo/diva.

Most of us, as human beings, tend to feel very strongly about those beliefs that we hold dear. In most places, those strong feelings center on religious faith, sometimes on the family, sometimes on political or social beliefs, and to a lesser degree on other matters, at least for most people, from what I’ve observed. There’s nothing inherently wrong with believing in something strongly, even passionately, but most of human history is replete with violence seemingly triggered by those passionate beliefs. Why do I say “seemingly”? Because, in the overwhelming majority of instances, those seeking power and dominance use those beliefs in causes against others in order to bolster their own position and power.

Henry VIII’s split with Rome and the Catholic faith, and his creation of the Church of England, had little to do with the vast majority of tenets of the Catholic Church, but everything to do with his desire to divorce his queen and remarry in order to have a son to inherit the crown – surely an issue of power and dominance.

Luther’s ninety-five theses nailed to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, sparked the Protestant Reformation, which was initially far more about reforming abuses of power in the Catholic Church than about changing fundamental beliefs in God and Christ.

The split in Islam, between Shia and Sunni, arose essentially over the issue of who should lead the faith after the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 A.D. While other issues separating the two have arisen, the split was basically about power and dominance, and it remains the same today.

While Ireland has seen a long history of Protestant/Catholic conflict and animosity, that conflict is far more rooted in power than doctrine, since the vast majority of those in power in Ireland after the end of the Williamite War in 1691 were, prior to the Irish Revolution of 1916, members of the Protestant Ascendency. After the partition of Ireland and the end of most hostilities in the Republic of Ireland in 1923, the Protestants retained economic and social control in Northern Ireland, and that conflict continued almost unabated until the agreement of 1998, although hostilities still simmer, largely because of economic and political inequalities.

The American Revolution, for all the talk of freedom, was about who controlled the resources and the economy of the then thirteen colonies and about British restrictions on trade and manufactures.

The Taliban and ISIS, while they claim to be Islamic, seem to be far more interested in power and control than in any of the more peaceful aspects of Islam. And certainly, the Crusades were far more about power and plunder than religion, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.

This desire for control, and wanting to have government force people who are different to “do things my way” remains a disturbing aspect of politics in the United States, and elsewhere.

No matter what anyone may say in religious terms about the abortion/anti-abortion conflict in the U.S., that conflict is purely and simply about who has control of a woman’s body – the woman or an outsider, whether that outsider is either a religious belief, her husband, or the government. All the rationalizing and reasoning, all the saying why, doesn’t change that basic fact. It’s about control. So is the issue of who can marry whom.

Yet government has to have laws, and enforce them, or there will be chaos. As a number of politicians and sages have noted, liberty also requires order. Order requires popular support. So any law that enslaves or unnecessarily controls a significant percentage of the population eventually creates unrest and often violence. This rather obvious truth tends to be ignored by those who use beliefs to obtain or maintain power over others.

As far as laws or practices being unnecessarily controlling, there’s a simple question that can resolve many of those questions. Does the law in practice physically or economically harm certain groups of people? It would seem to me, simple man that I am, that believing in a different god or the same god in a different way harms no one. Taking up a gun to force that belief does so.

The bottom line is whether beliefs are used for self-motivation and guidance or whether they’re used to force beliefs on others – or to harm or kill those who believe differently.

Beware those who trumpet beliefs while brandishing laws or weapons and ask who will gain control of what – and how.

The other day I ran across an interesting statement from a scientist (which I’d attribute if I could recall where I read it) to the effect that the “universe has no colors.” He went on to explain that what we see as colors are essentially the different energy levels of photons either emitted by or reflected from objects and that colors are the interpretation of those levels by our brains. Experiments and observation have determined that this visual perception differs from species to species and between men and women. Women perceive more different shades than men in the ranges of blue and green.

None of this is necessarily particularly surprising, and while colors may only be an interpretation of photonic frequencies by my gray matter, I certainly prefer that interpretation to shades of gray. To me, it would seem that living in a world of gray would be rather depressing, but that just might be my personal bias.

Years ago, Charles Harness wrote a book entitled Redworld, set on a world around Barnard’s Star where colors and color perception are very different because Barnard’s Star emits largely reddish light and the planetary atmosphere is an oxygen/ammonia mix. The result is that all the planetary phonic frequencies, if you will, are overwhelmingly shades of red and ochre, and the intelligent humanoid life there has evolved to discern a wide range of reddish shades, but infrequent “colors” like violet or yellow are perceived as gray or black. I won’t speak to the accuracy of this depiction, but since Harness had an undergraduate degree in chemistry, I would suspect it’s largely correct.

In retrospect, Harness was on to something, although I didn’t see it that way when I first read the short novel nearly thirty years ago. Since “colors” are more easily and quickly distinguished than are shades of gray, that interpretation enhances our perceptive ability, and as a result, our survivability as a species, and the same would have held true of Pol and his people in Redworld.

Yet how many people consider how perception colors not only our views of the world [yes, it is a terrible pun], but biases how we think? And yet, that perception of the universe varies between individuals and species… and yet, as the protagonist in Redworld is told, white [or blond] for him is black.

Earlier this year, all of the Democratic candidates for the presidency proposed a new tax, one targeted almost exclusively at the wealthiest Americans. Such a financial transaction tax (FTT) would impose a sales tax on trades of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other securities. The tax levels proposed differ, and range from one basis point [one hundredth of one percent] to as high as fifty basis points, although most economists seem to think the lower ranges will actually generate more tax revenue. Just to keep this in perspective, an FFT of one basis point would raise revenues of just ten cents on a transaction of one thousand dollars. A $100,000 transaction would raise just ten dollars.

That doesn’t sound like it would raise that much in revenue, but consider that annual trades in stocks alone in the U.S. are approaching fifty trillion dollars, and the total trading in stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other similar financial instruments exceeds six hundred trillion dollars, according to the Tax Policy Center. Depending on the tax level chosen, annual revenues would range from around $40 billion to as much as $210 billion.

The interesting aspect of the FTT is that the vast majority of the taxes would fall on the wealthiest Americans and particularly on high volume automated securities trades, those trades which contribute the least to economic growth and perhaps the most to the pocketbooks of hedge fund managers and the like. Over 75% of the tax would fall on the top fifth of the population in earnings, and 40% on the top one percent, but even for the top one percent, the tax would increase their overall tax liability by less than one percent, and for those in lower income brackets, the impact would be less than a quarter of a percent of income.

Some of those in the finance industry complain that such a tax would reduce trading volumes without decreasing market volatility, especially if an FTT is imposed with tax levels as high as those under consideration in Europe, but even the highest rates proposed to date in the U.S., by Senator Sanders, are well below the proposed European levels. Critics also suggest that an FTT would turn investors away from U.S. markets, but in practice that seems highly unlikely, given that such taxes either already exist elsewhere or are under active consideration.

Critics of the FTT tend to overlook several basic points. First of all, high-speed stock trading is simply using advanced technologies in order to get information a millisecond before other traders. High-speed trading doesn’t make markets more efficient, but it does increase stock prices, out of which the traders make money. It’s actually a sophisticated form of an old practice, called front-running, which was illegal. High-speed trading doesn’t create efficiency, but it does create the possibility of debacles like the “Flash Crash” of May 2010.

Second, use of high-speed computers, sophisticated algorithms, and confidential information unavailable to small investors doesn’t improve the productivity of financial markets. Such technology and systems just tilt the market in favor of those traders. Likewise, trading in ever more complex derivatives – making bets on bets – doesn’t add real value. It’s merely speculation that makes the system more vulnerable to big losses, as occurred in the financial crisis of 2008.

Third, one of the aspects of the finance sector that’s been overlooked is that it now produces a quarter of corporate profits while creating just 4% of American jobs. Who says speculation and computerized market-churning doesn’t pay?

Given all that, why shouldn’t we push for a financial transactions tax? Especially since most of those insisting that we need to balance the federal budget are the very people who’d pay most of the tax?

In the musical Hamilton, there’s a song, although it pains me to call it that, entitled “The Room Where It Happens,” which deals with the whole idea of compromises and deals made behind closed doors, as well as a few other matters. In counterpoint to that, a recent article by Jonathan Rauch in the Atlantic Monthly, entitled “What’s Ailing American Politics” dissects the reasons for the current failure of the American political system, and much of the reason for that failure Rausch attributes to “excessive reforms,” all made with the best of intentions, but which now, in the age of excessive media coverage, which he fails to note, interesting enough, has resulted in a situation where political compromises in Congress are essentially almost impossible, except in extreme and extenuating circumstances. In turn, that forces the President to use what administrative tools he or she has in order to get much accomplished, and that, in turn angers Congress more and further polarizes the political spectrum.

As illustrated both in history and the Hamilton musical, in the past often the bitterest of political opponents managed to hammer out compromises – except on one issue, that of slavery, which failure led inexorably to the Civil War. Some have said it was over states’ rights, but the principal reason for wanting a greater degree of states’ rights in the old South was the perceived need to continue the institution of slavery. In the end, however, that failure to reach an accommodation resulted in the bloodiest war in U.S. history. In an intellectual sense, and in terms of the views of southern landholders, the need to retain slavery is certainly understandable, since often the majority of the worth of those plantations lay as much, if not more, in the value of the slaves as in the value of the land. And no one likes the idea of an “outsider” confiscating by law family assets and changing an entire way of life, particularly when those in charge of the state governments are also generally from the ranks of the affluent landholders.

Unhappily, we’re seeing a variation on this theme today, where the current “landholders” are various segments of the one tenth of one percent of the U.S. population that don’t want their ways of life changed. The quest for profits and control have become paramount in the U.S. today, particularly the profits of massive corporations, and much of that profit has come from reducing the cost of labor as a percentage of operating costs, either through off-shoring labor-intensive processes or through automation. Although I’ve never seen it quantified, these two initiatives have resulted in the displacement of comparatively well-paid skilled and semi-skilled workers, putting them into the labor pool at a time when not as many other good-paying jobs were being created in the United States. In turn, this effectively restrained wage growth across the entire economy. The result was the effective devaluation of the worth of the minimum wage and general degeneration of middle class wage levels over the past thirty years.

Because of the popular perception that the majority of higher-paying jobs require a college or even a post-graduate degree — a perception that has a great deal of truth in it, but which neglects higher-skilled jobs requiring additional non-collegiate training and education, not surprisingly, young people began attempting to obtain those credentials at an ever higher rate, but with the demand, colleges and universities had to expand, and expansion costs money, which state legislatures didn’t want to fund. So tuition costs soared. And because a great number of parents of these younger people didn’t have the funds to pay for their children’s higher education, unsurprisingly, since their wages hadn’t kept pace, the students took out student loans.

This has resulted in a situation where the U.S. is now producing roughly twice as many college graduates each year as there are higher-paid college jobs for them, and that, in turn, has a depressing effect on the wages and salaries of those who do obtain those jobs, and a debt burden that most likely can’t possibly be repaid be those who have to settle for lower-paid jobs. Another result of all these trends is that we now have possibly the largest percentage of “under-employed” people in the history of the country.

And they aren’t happy about it, as shown by the recent presidential primary campaigns.

Yet those who are responsible for this situation seem to be oblivious to the potential forces that they have unleashed, and they oppose any changes, any compromises to deal with this continuing and growing problem, just as the old South refused to confront the growing problem of slavery. The same is also true, by the way, of the position of the NRA.

As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, while history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme. I might be missing something, but it seems to me that the Russian aristocracy of 1910, the southern landholders of 1860, and the U.S. robber barons of the 1880s all might rhyme with the U.S. economic aristocracy of today.

That sort of rhyme usually doesn’t turn out well.

I’d be the first to admit that there are people I do not like; faiths which I feel are destructive, prejudicial, and antithetical to human rights; and politicians who I believe pursue unproductive and often evil ends. But, at least so far, I haven’t gone around shooting them or filling the air and the internet with vituperation and hate speech. And I certainly wouldn’t even think about doing violence to individuals merely because of their beliefs, sexual or political orientation, gender, or their ethnic background. I might well consider violence against those who have actually committed violence against others on grounds of belief, gender, ethnicity or the like.

But what I want to know is why so many people in the world believe that it is their right, duty, or obligation to beat up, torture, kill, or restrict the personal freedom of those who do not share their religious faith, sexual orientation, or political beliefs. I can understand locking up people who commit violent acts, and I can even understand violent protests against oppression.

But what earthly or unearthly good is accomplished by staging a protest against someone’s sexuality at that person’s funeral? Especially when someone has been cruelly murdered because of their sexual orientation?

Europe was wracked with centuries of religious wars over which faith would control what government. Tens of millions of innocents died. That was exactly why the Founding Fathers wanted separation of church and state, yet today we now have millions of various religious fundamentalists here in the United States demanding that secular law conform to their beliefs.

Just because it’s far worse in much of the world shouldn’t really offer much comfort. In terms of basic human rights, why should any government have the right to support or to enforce practices that insist that leaving the faith – whatever that faith might be – merits a death sentence? Or that anyone who criticizes or mocks a faith or its tenets or its prophets or leaders deserves to die? Or that genders other than straight heterosexual males have lesser or no rights, or perhaps even no right to life?

All of that boils down to outright hatred of anyone who is different. It’s one thing to hate someone for actual despicable acts; it’s another to hate simply because people are different. Or perhaps, it’s just an excuse to grab or hold power, and that makes it even more despicable.

But then, it’s oh so much simpler just to claim that all differences are “wrong,” and should be punished… or that people deserve what comes to them because they don’t share the same beliefs. It’s funny, too, how so many people who pray to the same almighty god are so willing to kill people who don’t believe in that same god in the same way.

Hatred, anyone?

Last week I watched a gun advocate claim that household guns deter crime. Like most political claims, there is a small grain of truth behind this enormously misleading assertion, but in only one area.

Statistics from the National Crime Victimization study show that having and using a gun did reduce the loss of property against theft. Looking at crimes where the perpetrator’s intent was to steal, the victims lost property in only 38% of the incidents when using a gun in “self-defense,”compared with 56% of the incidents when taking other actions against the thief.

In all other crimes against households, having a gun seems to make little difference in the outcomes. Using a gun in self-defense doesn’t reduce the risk of injury in the case of a break-in or assault in the home. Just over four percent of victims were injured during or after a self-defense gun use — the same percentage as were injured during or after taking other protective actions.

Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) indicate there are fewer than one hundred burglaries resulting in a homicide in the U.S. each year. BJS statistics also show that there were only 1,600 defense gun uses in the U.S. in 2014, but there were more than 200,000 firearms stolen in household burglaries and property crimes each year.

Studies of all fifty states have also shown that the higher the rate of firearm ownership, the higher the rate of gun deaths. When firearms ownership goes down, so do gun deaths. Likewise, when firearms ownership climbs in an area, increased gun deaths follow, indicating that gun ownership creates more deaths, rather than the contention that people buy guns because they’re reacting to firearms violence.

Nearly two-thirds of the people in the U.S. live in homes without guns, and statistics show no evidence that they are at greater risk of being robbed, injured or killed by criminals compared with citizens in homes with guns. Instead, the evidence is overwhelming that a gun in the home increases the likelihood not only that a household member will be shot accidentally, but also that someone in the home will die in a suicide or homicide. In the case of sexual assaults, in less than one half of one percent of the assaults did the victim use a gun in self-defense.

So… given all these statistics, why is there such opposition to even modest gun control measures?

The first reason is fear. People fear being victims, and they want to take action so they won’t be, even if that action creates the certainty of greater gun deaths. It’s in effect a form of selfishness, of saying, “I don’t give a damn about what my actions do to other people; I want to protect myself and my family.” The problem is, as the statistics show, having a gun usually does just the opposite.

Over the years, I’ve seen people lobby and complain about seat-belt laws, initially insisting that seatbelts would trap you in a burning car and otherwise create more deaths. I’ve seen motorcyclists complain about helmet laws and claim that such laws restrict personal freedoms. Or companies complain about environmental laws restricting their emission of harmful pollutants because those laws would make them unprofitable or put them out of business. A tremendous percentage of the opposition to measures that make society safe comes out of the very human motives of fear and not wanting to lose control.

What the NRA and the gun lobby people don’t want to admit is that they don’t really care about anyone or anything else. Their crusade for “second amendment rights” is based on appealing to people’s fear of losing control and becoming victims. We all have that fear. It’s fundamental to human existence.

The problem is that more guns, especially guns with larger magazines and more rapid rates of fire, just make the likelihood of more people becoming victims even greater. And the more victims there are, and the more widely those shootings are publicized, the more fearful people become, and the more guns that are sold, if to a smaller percentage of households.

Fear based on irrational feelings leads to more guns and more deaths by than guns than is the case without guns, and that’s something that’s gotten overlooked in all the furor.

The other day I came across a summary compilation of health care data put out by Optum, which is said to track over a hundred different health metrics across the United States and which shows various regional differences in health problems.

Some of those differences are easy to comprehend, such as the high prevalence of hypertension in the “old South,” because a variety of associated other serious conditions also occur there, including diabetes and high cholesterol, most likely because of a higher level of rural and urban poverty, a diet higher in saturated fats, as well as other factors. Likewise, the incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) occurs in the states with both the highest levels of smoking per capita and the areas with some of the greatest percentages of deep shaft coal mining. For some reason that the Optum researchers can’t determine, lower back pain is the highest in North and South Dakota.

The area that has the highest rate of depression is, according to Optum, the “Rocky Mountain states,” and Optum opines this just might be because people there are just more willing to talk about their depression. I don’t buy it, at least not entirely. When I looked at the map Optum provided, the highest levels of depression coincide, from what I can determine, with the concentrations of LDS population. Now I can see why no health researcher would want to put that in print, but since I’m an economist by training and like looking into numbers, the coincidence was striking.

Also, to me, it makes sense. It’s a well-known and documented fact that the highest rate of Prozac use nationwide is by Utah women, which is hardly surprising, since Mormon women are under incredible social pressure to be perfect in every way, while also deferring, if quietly, to the males in their life. For whatever reason, they have, on average, more than twice the number of children women in other faiths, or no faith, in the U.S. have, yet married Utah women work at about the same percentage as other married women, and, as also documented, for lower wages and salaries than women elsewhere in the United States, and Utah is the state with one of the lowest, if not the lowest, percentage of adult women with a college degree. They’re also expected to be smiling and cheerful all the time.

This suggests to me a great deal of pressure, unrelenting pressure, and unrelenting pressure can often result in depression. This, of course, doesn’t mean all Utah women are depressed, just a higher percentage than women elsewhere in the United States. And, certainly, having more children in a lower-wage state with ten percent of your gross income going to the church might just add some stress to the men as well.

But I can almost guarantee that very few, if any, health professionals will dare to suggest that a particular religion or religion-influenced culture might just have an impact on the incidence of depression.