In a previous blog, I mentioned a student who failed an art class, simply because he never showed up – and because he never showed up, he never did any work. Failure to show up goes far beyond education, however. Many, many years ago, I was a lifeguard at an outdoor pool, and in the last week of August, we got a snowstorm that dumped half a foot of snow on everything. I figured that with all that snow, there was no reason to go to work. I didn’t… and I almost got fired because my supervisor thought it would be a good time to do all sorts of maintenance. While I didn’t get fired, I wasn’t hired back for the next summer.

The often praised and also often criticized actor/director Woody Allen once observed something to the effect that ninety percent of success is just showing up. I think he got the percentages wrong, but the idea is simple: If you’re not on the job, or working at what you do, you’re not going to be successful. And if you’re there, but your mind isn’t, then you’re also not there, and sooner or later, you’ll fail… or worse, you’ll do something careless and someone will be hurt, lose money, get angry at you, or even die.

Unhappily, there are many ways not to show up, besides not being physically present. The latest version of this is to be present, but to keep most of your attention on your smartphone so that you won’t miss any texts or tweets… or to be driving with your attention on whomever you’re talking to… or walking and doing the same. If it’s in class or a meeting, well… you might flunk or get fired, and if you’re walking or driving in traffic, you might get killed… or kill someone else.

Even if you’re at seated at a desk at work, comparatively safe physically, do you really think your peers or supervisor don’t know? Think again. When I was in charge of a department with some fifty odd employees, I had a very good idea who was really “there,” and who wasn’t. Most good bosses know. I made a habit of dropping in on those who had a tendency to space out, and then I’d ask about their latest project or assignment.

If the job is that bad, why are you there? If you’re there because you need the money, then you’d better be “there” if you want to keep getting paid. That sort of behavior on the job might just lead to a bad recommendation or reference, unless, of course, your boss just wants you to leave, but betting on that is akin to occupational Russian roulette.

Along the way, in the writing business, I’ve come across a handful of authors and would-be authors who really weren’t “there,” but it was amusing to see how soon they snapped back into reality when a big-name author or publisher appeared. Most of them didn’t make it, either.

The fallout continues, at least in some quarters, about the controversial, but very legal, “ballot stuffing” of the nominations for the World Science Fiction Convention’s annual awards – the “Hugos.” Essentially, as I’ve noted before, slates proposed by the “Sad Puppies” and the “Rabid Puppies” [which overlapped greatly] gained enough votes that the vast majority of the finalists for the awards were from those combined slates, swamping most votes cast by the more “traditional” attendees and voters [termed “social justice warriors” (SWJs) by the Sad Puppies]. As a result, at least two nominees have withdrawn their work from consideration, and Connie Willis has relinquished her position as the presenter at the awards’ ceremony because she felt she would be collaborating with the Rabid Puppies.

From what I can tell, no side claims to be inclusive of all readers, but the message I’m getting is that all of the conflicting factions believe that the others are less inclusive. And that’s probably true, because the reading public that favors fantasy and science fiction is so much larger than the number of those who are squabbling. Although more than 10,000 people were eligible to vote for the Hugos, slightly over 2,000 nominating ballots were cast this year, roughly a hundred more than last year – less than a twenty percent turn-out of eligible voters, and those eligible voters could only represent a fraction of one percent of just the U.S. F&SF readers.

Let’s put that in perspective. More than half a million readers bought copies of each volume of Game of Thrones and The Wheel of Time, and even more bought the Harry Potter books. I’m far from the top-selling fantasy author, but the Saga of Recluce has sold close to three million copies. And we have separate groups all contending about whose “slate” or preferences are most representative of F&SF – based on 2,000 votes representing three specific interests, votes effectively changed by a bloc-vote of 200-300 voters?

In one respect, the Sad Puppies group is absolutely correct. The traditional/SWJ voters are a self-selected group whose membership represents a definite view, one tending to be more “liberal” [for lack of a better word], more interested in authors of different ethnicities, gender orientation, and cultural diversity who write in a way to illustrate those issues, and that viewpoint has tended to ignore writers who don’t write that way. And there’s nothing wrong with having a preference. There is something wrong with claiming that such a preference is the only one that represents “the best” in F&SF. At the same time, the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies can be faulted for exactly the same sin – because what their slates represent is even narrower, and the “leader” of the Rabid Puppies is so far right as to make the Tea Party look moderate.

What also gets lost here is that one of the initial purposes of Sad Puppies was to point out the narrowness of the traditionalists, but that has degenerated into much name-calling and many assertions of literary and moral high ground. Diversity, social liberalism, multi-culturalism, and gender issues and problems should be a significant and continuing part of S&SF, but they shouldn’t be canonized, either.

In the larger sense, this is actually very much analogous to our political system, where the activists of the left and right have come to dominate the issues and the debate – and for exactly the same reason… because most of those eligible to vote don’t get involved in the initial political process before the nominations are made.

George R.R. Martin has commented to the effect that the Hugos may be broken, possibly beyond repair… and that’s possible. But if the Hugos become captive to any one interest or viewpoint, no matter how praiseworthy that outlook appears to that group, then are they worth saving?

Unlike our political system, however, it appears to me that most F&SF books are not published primarily in hopes of being nominated for a Hugo and that F&SF readers could care less about the Hugos. They just want to read a good book of the type they like by an author they like, and that’s something for which I’m very grateful, especially to all my readers.

Yes, I know that’s a quote and rip-off from Walt Whitman’s elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln, but it also expresses my feelings about the lilacs in my front yard. I confess that I love the scent of lilacs, and I look forward every year to their blooming… and four out of five years I’m disappointed. This year is no exception. After two months of spring in winter, yesterday, just as the lilac blooms began to open, the temperature dropped to twenty degrees and it began to blow and snow, and it wasn’t just a few flurries, but a good half foot. Most years where we live, it’s like that. No matter when the poor lilacs attempt to bloom, it snows, and I don’t get to enjoy their fragrance.

Last year, I planted more lilacs, a slightly different variety, and put some of them in more sheltered locations. It didn’t matter. When you have temperatures in the twenties and winds over fifty miles an hour, and snow coming down hard, the lilac blooms don’t stand much of a chance. Now, of course, in two days, the temperatures are forecast to be back in the sixties, but that’s a bit late for the lilacs.

Houseman had it right, except his cherries seemed to bloom without fail every spring; my lilacs face much longer odds.

Still… there’s always next year,

But the lilacs remind me that those rare times of beauty, whether floral or otherwise, are to be cherished, because no matter how things are planned, especially where beauty is concerned, you can’t count on anything except what’s there at the moment to enjoy.

Last week Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team, issued a blistering attack on the NCAA, declaring that college basketball was “horrible” and “ridiculous,” and that the college game wasn’t preparing college players for the professional game played in the NBA.

Cuban may well be right about how inadequately college basketball prepares players for the pros, but his attack illustrates two enormous problems with American colleges and universities and an equally large problem with American business.

The first problem is why colleges and universities are paying enormous sums of money to field sports programs at a time when the cost of a college education has gone through the roof. No matter what anyone claims, college sports don’t pay for themselves. No doubt some particular sports at given universities might, but given the new contract awarded to Urban Meyer [over $5 million annually] by Ohio State, I have my doubts about even that.

The second problem is that not only does Mark Cuban regard college as a vocational school, but so do most state legislatures and students, and the problem there is that in today’s fast-moving and ever-changing society and business culture most students can expect to change professions a minimum of seven times, if not more. For them to be successful throughout life, they need more than a single set of skills. They need critical thinking and decision-making skills, not to mention written and verbal communications skills – all of which are skills sadly lacking in far too many college graduates, even for a significant percentage of those obtaining graduate degrees.

Cuban’s comments also illustrate an on-going basic problem with not only the professional sports businesses, but American business in general. They all want someone else to do the hard work of training and screening potential employees, and a college education largely fulfills this requirement. In the past, a large portion, if not all, of this training/screening was paid for by state legislatures through state tax revenues, but state funding as a percentage of each student’s education cost has dropped to an all-time low.

In effect, Cuban wants someone else to train his players at their cost, and he’s complaining that the NCAA isn’t meeting his standards. So sad…

All too many years ago, I was a Navy pilot who flew helicopters both for odd utility missions and then for search and rescue off a carrier. Back in those ancient days, the first “big” helicopter I flew was the Sikorski H-34, the last front-line helicopter to use an internal combustion engine – the nine-cylinder Wright 1820 Radial. For those of you for whom this conjures no image, the H-34 is the bird that attempts to retrieve Gus Grissom’s waterlogged capsule in the movie The Right Stuff.

The other Sikorski I flew was the H-3, a twin turboshaft powered helicopter originally used for anti-submarine warfare, but many were converted to search and rescue birds during the Vietnam era because the Navy’s principal SAR helicopter – the Kaman H-2 – was originally only a single turboshaft helicopter that lacked the power to do heavy lifting in the high density altitudes of Southeast Asia. I flew the H-2 for a short time as well before transitioning to the H-3.

Like most helo drivers of that time, I loved the Sikorskis. They were strong, durable, and reliable. And they definitely didn’t have all the glitches of the H-2s , about which I wrote a SF story, in a way [“Iron Man, Plastic Ships”].

So… I was rather shocked to learn that United Technologies (UTC), the parent company of Sikorski, is looking at “strategic alternatives” for Sikorski, including spinning off the company as an independent entity. Why? Because its projected annual growth rate is only 3-5%, and its profit margin is only 10% – on annual revenues of $7-8 billion, compared to 15% for Pratt & Whitney, the other principal division of UTC . Although Sikorski has an order backlog of $49 billion, more than any other military helicopter manufacturer in the world, and firm orders and deliveries scheduled into the late 2020s, this apparently isn’t profitable enough for the suits at UTC, despite the fact that Sikorski just landed over a billion dollar order from the Indian navy.

One of the oldest helicopter manufacturers in the world, with solid profit margins, and lots of future sales, isn’t making enough money. And Sikorski builds really good helicopters. But apparently, making solid profits and producing an outstanding product isn’t enough for corporate America.

And that’s more than sad.

There’s currently a kerfuffle over the “Hugos,” otherwise known as the World Science Fiction convention’s annual awards for best writing, art, etc. The uproar lies in the fact that one group agreed on a “slate” of novels, short stories, novellas, editors, artists, etc., eligible for the award and legitimately used social media and the rules for nomination to essentially overwhelm the traditional members. The upstart “Sad Puppies” movement did this because, if I understand the matter accurately, they felt that the “traditional” voters were more interested in diversity and social issues than story itself, which is apparently why they labelled those traditional members/voters as SJWs [social justice warriors].

From where I stand on the fringe of this literary internecine kerfuffle, the conflict boils down to the contention by the Sad Puppies that the SJWs have essentially marginalized “story” in F&SF fiction writing while giving awards for non-story concerns such as multi-culturalism, gender diversity, and other liberal beliefs. The so-called traditionalists seem to believe that “good” fiction requires more than merely plot and action.

That’s probably a simplistic summary, but I think that’s the gist of the conflict, in which case the issue is really over just what it takes for fiction to be really good.

As often occurs, I find myself firmly in the middle, because I find straight “action” stories or novels, no matter how intricate the plot, and no matter how clean the style, rather shallow. On the other hand, I find anything that is used that overshadows the characters and the story to be excessive. Yes, there is a place for multi-culturalism, diversity, sexual/gender issues, or any number of environmental and political issues – but only if they’re an integral part of what affects the characters and the development and resolution of story and plot.

I also don’t think that writing an issue-oriented novel for the sake of the issue usually results in the best fiction. I write about women and their issues because, with my background, I’ve been surrounded by intelligent and highly competent women with stories to tell. Likewise, with a long history in politics and environment, I know the stories to be told there, but I never set out with “an issue” as the main focus of a book. The issues arise because of the characters and the story, not the other way around.

So my feeling is that issues shouldn’t drive the story, nor is a novel or a story that ignores the issues that would arise in such a setting anything more than wish-fulfillment escapism – and there’s nothing wrong with that… except that escapism that ignores the issues that should be there if the whole story were told usually fails to be the best fiction, perhaps the best escapism, but not the best fiction.

Do the people of the United States have anything close to a common goal for the future of the country… or of the world?

From what I’ve observed, there is a welter of conflicting goals, and the vast majority of those goals are highly personal, and most could be reduced to two words: “more” and “celebrity.” That is, most people want more of everything, and they want to be famous… or at least become “someone.” And there is also a large contingent of people who just want to be “happy.”

Now, I’d be the last one to deny personal ambition, but I’d like to point out that the big problem with these three “goals” is that people seeking them directly will almost always fail. They’re all by-products of other acts and ambitions. Yet more and more my wife the university professor sees students with these sorts of general and vague visions and goals. When I was young, a long time ago, young people had much more specific and focused ambitions. They wanted to be doctors, professional athletes, pilots, president of the United States, or to build houses or buildings, to be the first man or woman on the moon. The focus was on accomplishments, not upon the results of accomplishments.

There are still young people with specific accomplishments as goals, but there are far fewer of them. Equally unfortunate is the fact that virtually no national politician or aspiring politician seems able to articulate a clear vision of a future for the nation except in general terms, such as “to return to the values of the past” or “to be a force for good in the world” or “to strengthen our nation and economy” or “to seek equality and fairness” and so forth.

Exactly how are we supposed to accomplish any of these, even assuming that they’re worthwhile, and I have grave doubts of that in the case of some of these general platitudes?

Any policy or goal that’s specific seems to get shot down before it can even be discussed. Rebuild our infrastructure? Too expensive. Enact measures to stop global warming? Also too expensive, and besides we couldn’t really do anything. Improve health care for those who lack it? You can see what happened there.

All of this raises a more fundamental set of questions. Do we really want leadership and challenges? Or do most Americans just want “more” ?

In a recent review of one of my books, the reviewer stated that, for a “United Statesman,” I was remarkably contemptuous of business. The reviewer was not an American, obviously, and his views suggest that outsiders believe that Americans are far too pro-business, and that I’m an exception. Yet, I have to say that I never thought of myself as being contemptuous of business in general. Certainly, I’ve been contemptuous of certain sectors, such as finance and mortgage banking and Walmart-style corporations that exploit part-time workers, but corporations and businesses come in all flavors and types, ranging from those on which no amount of contempt would be sufficient to describe their actions to those who act in the manner one would hope all businesses and corporations might.

The problem is, in dealing with business, those meriting contempt and/or regulatory/legal actions to rein in their corrupt and self-dealing excesses are also the most visible, just as the most corrupt and violent individuals are often the most visible. In addition, often unethical or excessively self-serving acts are legal under existing law, which also points out the fact that law can only do so much, and usually does less because of the pressure on lawmakers by those businesses with great resources.

As I’ve stated before, I believe that no truly viable society can long exist without an economy based on at least some form of market economy, but in our world market economies come in all varieties and operate under differing cultural and social constraints. In some countries, the government controls tightly just what aspects of the market are permitted to operate and how. In others, it appears that business can’t be done without some form of bribery, and bribery is a part of their market economies.

Most western industrialized economies either frown on wide-scale direct bribery or theoretically outlaw it, but in the United States we pretty much turn a blind eye away from campaign contributions, which often have operated as either slush funds or deferred retirement accounts for elected officials, meaning that such contributions were nothing more than bribery one step removed. In any case, corporate involvement in the political system has become a larger and larger part of the market economy, simply because the political system sets the rules under which business operates.

And yes, I am contemptuous of those businesses and businesses who attempt to use political influence to tilt the economic playing field in their favor. But then, shouldn’t all of us be contemptuous of that sort of behavior, whether it’s “legal” or not?

Why aren’t things improving in the United States for more people? Some recent studies give a seemingly simple answer with extraordinarily complex facets – because anything that would make a meaningful improvement can be, and usually is, blocked by some entity with the power to do so… and the United States has the most venues for blocking legislative or regulatory action of any industrialized country in the world… and those venues don’t even include the multitude of other options for stopping things from getting done.

For example, one reason [but not the only one] why Republicans opposed Obamacare was that the ACA didn’t include tort reform – putting a cap on outrageous medical malpractice legal settlements. Why Obama didn’t was because the lawyers opposed it, particularly trial lawyers, and they’re big contributors. Those who opposed tort reform claim that malpractice awards are the only check on bad doctors, which is total bullshit. Malpractice claims don’t stop most bad doctors; they just increase the cost of medical insurance for all doctors, most of whom aren’t bad, which increases overall health costs. Stronger rules for medical disbarment would do far more to rid the field of incompetent physicians than malpractice legal lawsuits.

Despite air pollution that is so bad in some areas that thousands are literally dying, air emissions standards that would make the air breathable have been delayed or halted for years because coal and power generation companies have the funds to block them. In Utah, which suffers incredibly bad inversions and air pollution along the Wasatch Front (where most people live), the utility lobbyists have successfully persuaded the overwhelmingly Republican legislature that tighter air standards would be bad for business, despite popular opinion that indicates something should be done.

Then take a look at Congress, in particular, the House of Representatives, where essentially the more conservative Republicans can effectively block legislation, even though they represent a minority of the American electorate, and where the NRA can influence representatives enough that measures favored by seventy percent of Americans can’t even get passed. In the Senate, either party can block – and has – legislation with national support.

Checks and balances are fine, but their application in practice has become a competition to see who can block what, rather than a way to work out differences and get something done.

As economists have observed for years, countries that don’t have “market economies” tend to have severe economic and social problems, but outside of textbooks, and even inside them, there’s a problem defining exactly what a market economy is. The traditional economist’s definition of a “free market economy” is one where a willing buyer and a willing seller agree on the price of a good, the idea being that government stays out of setting the terms of the transaction.

There are at least two catches to this definition. First, the term “willing” is usually constrained by reality. So if the only food market in town charges 50% more than the market in the next town, and you don’t have transportation and don’t want to starve, you may pay the prices, but how “willing” are you? In practice, of course, except in times of disasters, the various price differentials aren’t that great, but they do exist.

The second catch lies on the seller’s side. In practice, a seller of a good has to price a good at a level that covers his cost of production or acquisition, as well as his costs of selling it, with enough of a profit to support himself or his business. What has been historically overlooked to a great degree, if less so today, is that many of the costs of production have historically been foisted off on others and not included in the final cost of the good or service. The most notable example of this is air, land, and water pollution, and the costs of cleaning up after industry have become so great that most industrial countries impose regulations on the producers of goods limiting or prohibiting the creation and emission of pollutants. Industry, of course, has historically protested that such regulations stifle a “free market.” That’s not quite accurate. What such regulations do is to give a cost-of-production advantage to those producers who make their products in places with less costly regulations, which is why many multinationals have off-shored their production facilities. What gets overlooked in this “economic” debate are the costs of clean-up and the added costs of health care incurred by those living around highly polluting facilities.

All of this leads to the proposition that a “true” or a “full” market economy is only possible if ALL costs of production are factored into the price of a good or service. Obviously, this isn’t possible, certainly not at present in a world of over 200 nations with differing environmental and other regulations, but it should be used as a standard against which economies should be measured as to the degree of their compliance with market principles.

The idea of the so-called “free market economy” has come to mean in practice the amount of freedom a producer has to foist off costs on the rest of society. The amount of such freedom a producer has is largely determined by two factors – the regulatory structure, or lack thereof, in which it operates, and the amount of financial resources, i.e., capital, it has, which affects its power to influence regulatory oversight. If people who work for a producer or seller of goods cannot live on what they are paid – and that includes not only food and shelter, but medical care and other necessities – and society deems that those workers and their families need assistance to live, in effect the producer has shifted some of his costs to society as a whole, and everyone is taxed to pay for that assistance.

So, in point of fact, goods producers who complain that government regulations hamper the “free market” because those regulations force them to clean up their toxic or unhealthful emissions or by-products or require a living wage are complaining that they’re not as free to impose costs on society as producers in other states or countries are.

And that’s why there is a difference between a “free market” [or capitalistic market] economy and a true market economy.

As most of my readers know, at least in some of my books, people actually sing… and the lyrics almost always have sections that rhyme. For some writers, apparently, this can be a problem. I was recently asked to offer favorable comments on a novel in which song and its singers were absolutely essential elements… and I never found a single rhyming line in any of the lyrics, and no discernible meter, either. Needless to say, I did not comment on the songs, and it was a pretty good book otherwise… but it still bothered me, because I expect more of professional writers – their songs should have meter and rhyme. There are some writers who are actually singers of one sort and another, ranging from classically trained opera singers to bar-room balladeers, and so far, at least, I haven’t seen any of them just toss out phrases and claim that they’re songs.

Heaven knows, the song lyrics in a book don’t have to be great, because the lyrics in most popular songs in most cultures aren’t great, and the folk songs tend to be comparatively straight-forward tales with couplet endings and common rhymes… and most have at least a chorus or refrain.

Some writers have copped out by saying, in effect, “they’re speaking another language, and the song rhymes in their language but not in ours.” Oh? Does that mean the author might not be “translating” the other things they’re saying accurately? If you can’t write proper lyrics… don’t. Just have the characters talk about “another folk song with the same old clichés” about whatever is a cliché in that culture. Or say that the singer’s accent or diction was so bad that the character has no idea what the song’s about. And if you really need a song to make sense, find an old folksong or something that isn’t copyrighted and then change the words to convey what you want in a way that preserves the meter and has a different rhyme.

The other thing about song and culture is that, generally speaking, the less technological the society is, the greater the role of participatory song and music in the life of the average person. Passive listening to song and music is a luxury reserved for the rich or well-off until cultures reach the industrializing level. That’s also why folk tunes have rhyme and meter – because when you’re relying on memory to learn songs, rhyme and meter make it far, far easier.

The same is also largely true of music as an organized form of propaganda. While the American colonists used satiric songs as a motivating tool against the British, and Sam Adams used them in rallies, organized and wide-spread use of music was limited by the lack of technology to amplify the music to reach larger numbers and create motivating spectacles. It’s not an accident that the Third Reich was the first government to choreograph public spectacle and music.

Music is always there in human societies, but how and where it is used, and for what, is greatly influenced by affluence and technology.

Just a few thoughts…

The Utah State legislature completed its usual two month annual session last week. In the course of two months, the legislators increased just slightly the funding for education, but not enough to even come close to changing Utah’s position as the state with the lowest funding per student in the entire United States, or to increase the pay of teachers and university professors, among the lowest paid in the country – but they did approve 35% plus pay increases for the governor and top state elected officials.

Nor did the legislature do anything to deal with the air pollution along the Wasatch Front – where something like 80% of the people live and where winter air quality is so bad that healthy people are often advised not to exercise and asthmatics and those with respiratory problems literally take their lives in their hands by venturing outside. In fact, the legislature passed a bill that forbid any restriction on the use of wood-burning stoves, even at times of the very worst air quality.

The Utah Senate did pass SCR 4, a resolution declared that energy development and grazing were the “highest and best use” for the Cedar Mesa area of Utah, in effect stating that industrializing the Mesa through energy development should be prioritized over preserving sacred cultural sites, Native American traditions and a breathtaking natural landscape that draws visitors from around the world.

Because the legislature was concerned about the availability of drugs for execution through lethal injection, the legislature decided to revive death by firing squad as an alternative.

Oh, yes, the legislature also refused any expansion of the Affordable Care Act in Utah, even though the federal government would pay for it, and even voted down a far more modest proposal offered by the Republican governor.

To cap it all off, after all that, the legislature then approved a bill, and appropriated funds, to pay “stipends” to football players at Utah State – in addition to their full scholarships, for the ostensible reason that doing so would bring more tourism to USU and Logan, Utah.

Some of the responses to my recent blogs illustrate a tendency that illustrates a particularly human foible – the tendency to attribute a problem or a success to a single factor. I recently suggested that there were multiple causal factors lying behind fatal police interactions with young blacks, and a number of individuals basically insisted that the sole or the overwhelming cause was the racist excessive use of force and position by police officers and the policing system. There’s no doubt that in many cases, as in Ferguson particularly, such racist excessive use of force exists.

But there are other factors, also important, that have led to situations such as the Michael Brown and Anthony Robinson cases, and they’re continually minimized or dismissed as self-serving conservative or establishment rhetoric.

Young black males commit over a quarter of all homicides in the United States every year, yet those young black males comprise less than one percent of the population. Young white males also have a much higher homicide rate than the average as well, committing 16% of all homicides, but there are six times as many young white males as young black males. It’s not surprising that black males commit the majority of black homicides [roughly 90%], just as 84% of white homicides are committed by whites, because the vast majority of homicides are committed by people who know the victim.

But cities with primarily black police forces, such as Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, have only slightly lower murder rates than the ten worst cities in the U.S., with rates well above the national average, and the murder rates in many cities with high percentages of black police officers are among the highest in the country.

Regardless of all the rhetoric, there are a myriad of factors contributing to the higher percentage of blacks being killed by police than racist police officers. Poverty is an enormous contributing factor. So is the prevalence of dysfunctional and single-parent families, as is a bias against education among all too many young black males, as are poor schools in all too many minority communities, not to mention the gang structure in many inner cities and minority communities.

And, just as there isn’t one cause of the problem, there isn’t going to be one single solution, no matter how politically convenient that might be.

With all the uproar over the shootings of Michael Brown and now Anthony Robinson, I’m very definitely getting the impression that both the protesters and the media are simplifying the situations to the point of tragic absurdity in their single-minded focus on police bias and misbehavior. And no, I’m not condoning any police incompetence, bias, or excessive use of force. But there’s another critical factor that is being totally overlooked. And it’s very fundamental.

Teenagers and even adults in their very early twenties are stupid in their lack of judgment. Virtually all of them, black, brown, white, multi-racial, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered, it doesn’t matter. Their brains are reprogramming themselves, and people in this age group make a far greater percentage of bad decisions than they will at any other time in their life. They allow peer pressure to override better judgments because belonging becomes a paramount value. They make unwise spur-of-the-moment decisions based on how they feel right at that instant. They become so focused on the moment that they’ll ignore the dangers involved in texting/cell phones while walking and driving to the point of getting themselves injured or killed or killing someone else. Their hormones are raging and readjusting, and the combination of hormonal and neural readjustment taking place simultaneously often results in poor judgment.

This is nothing new. Societies have known this behavior pattern for millennia, even if they haven’t understood the cause. They also imposed, in various ways, fairly stringent social codes… and the understanding that there were definite and often fatal consequences for bad judgment. For a myriad of reasons, in American society today, the entire thought that there are indeed consequences for actions has been minimized. Add first to that the fact that our advanced technology multiplies the impact of bad judgment. Add second that the pie-in-the-sky idea that any child can do anything. This combination has proved, and will continue to prove, deadly, especially to those young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

A number of the recent high-profile incidents in which young blacks have been killed began with illegal actions that escalated into confrontations. In a good many cases, the police officer felt his life was threatened, and certainly in some, the officer was injured before he fired a weapon. Everyone is asking why the police had to use force, possibly excessive force, and that is a good question, and one that needs to be asked, and answered, and those answers used as the basis for improving policing.

But no one I’ve seen is asking the other question. Why didn’t any of these young individuals understand the fact that there were likely to be adverse consequences for their actions, possibly severe ones — even if the police had managed to avoid using excessive force? Where were the adults who should have pointed out that even petty crimes can blight one’s future? Just recently, the actor Mark Wahlberg petitioned the governor of Massachusetts for a pardon to remove a minor felony conviction from his record because that record of conviction could make it difficult if not impossible to engage in certain business activities. If the white and wealthy Wahlberg is having trouble over one felony conviction, shouldn’t that suggest to minority youth – and their parents — that it’s a very good idea not to engage in illegal activities, that is if they want the best possible future? Or that, even if the police are arrogant and high-handed, getting into a confrontation on the street isn’t exactly conducive to future happiness and success?

This lack of understanding of consequences isn’t a problem confined to minorities, either. My wife, the university professor, deals with it on a daily basis. A significant percentage of first-year college students seem to think they shouldn’t be downgraded for failing to turn in reports on time… or failing to show up for lessons or classes. Many are so thin-skinned that even telling them that they need to improve brings tears to their eyes [and that includes young men]. The music department holds auditions for admittance to the program and to determine which students will get financial aid based on vocal ability. The audition dates are posted on the departmental website, and all students who have expressed an interest are also informed well in advance. Yet applications flood in well after the dates, often even after acceptances have been sent and scholarships awarded. Then there are the college students who don’t understand that they can flunk a class that is largely participation, such as chorus, if they don’t attend. Students are often stunned when they lose financial aid after their grade point average drops to unacceptable levels – but they have more than enough time for partying and social media.

The issue of rape on college campuses is another example – cases of young men from “outstanding” backgrounds not even considering the implications for them and their future – and the fact that such a felony on their record will close off most professional occupations, assuming they can even finish college after a prison sentence.

My niece, a high school art teacher who has won a number of awards for her art and teaching, was verbally assaulted by an angry parent who wanted to know how his son could be flunked from an art course. The parent either didn’t seem to understand that never turning in an assignment for the entire semester and missing a huge percentage of classes was an easy “F” or didn’t even know that his son was such a flake-off.

All across our culture, the message these young people are getting is that the consequences for failing to act responsibly are minimal… and that it’s all the teacher’s fault, or the administrator’s, or the police officer’s. Where are the parents and adults who should be pointing out, early on, that actions have consequences, and that failure to act responsibly can have permanent, if not deadly, consequences?

No…the police and the educators are far from blameless, but blaming it all on them is also a deadly societal cop-out, and it’s also incredibly hypocritical when the police are under immense public pressure to reduce crime and when teachers take all too much of the blame for parental shortcomings.

The problem with the political extremists on the left and right could be described, crudely, is that each side doesn’t believe their excrement is odoriferous. What do I mean by that? For example, the right-wing business types won’t accept the fact that there are some businesses that will do anything to make a profit, no matter who gets hurt. For them, all business is good and can do no wrong. Oh, in theory, they’ll admit unethical behavior exists, but I don’t see many, if any, calling out their wrong-doing peers for excessive greed or unethical behavior. On the left, in similar fashion, there is no such thing as a minority, no matter what that person has done, who can’t be saved by the proper incentives, government programs, therapy or what have you. For gun nuts, everyone should have the right to a gun. For libertarian extremists, any government restriction on behavior or action is bad. I could spend hundreds of words describing extremists of all sorts who deeply, truly, and honestly believe that, if everyone followed their beliefs to the extreme, there would be fewer problems in society, and everyone would be better off, and each one of them can easily point out why any opposition to their views is wrong.

Unfortunately, people aren’t ideals, and almost no one lives up even to their own ideals. There have always been business people who abuse trust, workers, clients, and customers. There always will be. There have always been lazy bums that no amount of coaxing, schooling, therapy or what have you will ever turn into industrious citizens. There are vicious criminals who’ve come from the “best” of backgrounds. That is why societies that work have laws to put restrictions on the worst of those who cannot be trusted to act honestly and ethically.

And for all the pressure for all young people to have a college education, the plain fact is that a significant fraction of young people don’t belong in college and never will. That’s not to say that many of them can’t pursue remunerative careers or fields, because they can, and many of them, if given the right opportunities, may well make more money and be much happier than if they went to college – but this side is never raised by the “no child left behind” or “college for everyone” extremists.

Problems arise, also, when certain groups of people don’t believe that “their group” contains unethical or criminal elements. The financial meltdown of 2008 was essentially caused by two groups of people who had no restrictions on them – financiers out to make a buck at any cost and people either too crooked, too uneducated, or too deluded to pay those mortgages. Both were aided and abetted by Congress and various administrations, which passed laws and regulations mandating, effectively, that almost anyone could take out a loan to buy or to refinance a home, and in fact, made it difficult if not impossible for many lenders to refuse to make loans.

Yet, I’ve seen each side claim that the other was totally responsible, saying, in effect, my shit doesn’t stink, but yours does.

This attitude, although illustrated in the primary cause of the Great Recession, goes well beyond that. Democrats push cost-ineffective social programs on the basis that everyone can benefit, and Republicans push tax breaks and subsidies on the same grounds. The fact is that some social programs work, and some don’t. The fact is that taxes that are either unrealistically low or prohibitively high don’t work, either. And again, both sides agree in theory, but when it comes down to practice, every social program is sacred to that side, and every tax break sacred to the other side.

But, as a society we’ve gotten to that point where the “leaders” in any field refuse to deal with the beams in their own eyes, while decrying the motes in their opponents’ eyes. Because, after all, pragmatism and cooperation are dirty words to extremists of any stripe… and right now, because of partisan gridlock, the number of extremists in the United States appears to be growing.

Outside of one snowfall right after Christmas, where we live in Cedar City had experienced on of the driest winters on record. From the second week in January until the third week in February, we also experienced record highs for winter, with the high on many days in the sixties and the low not even freezing. In the twenty-one years we’ve lived here, we’ve never seen anything like this. We had tulips actually leafing out – two months ahead of time. Even in a time of climate change, this couldn’t possibly last, and sure enough, it didn’t. On Sunday, February 22nd, it began to snow, and by the time it cleared, Cedar City had experienced another record – 24 inches of snow, an all-time record. By Wednesday, it was into the high forties, and then we had more snow flurries, and on Saturday – the day my wife was directing a multi-state regional singing competition at the university, at five in the morning it began to snow again… and when it stopped snowing at six that evening – about the time the competition ended – we had another foot of snow. Sunday was mostly clear, until sunset, when it began to snow once more, and when that snowfall ended on Monday afternoon, we had another ten inches of the stuff. And yes, I was again very glad for the snowblower I purchased last fall.

Now… we’ve certainly experienced more snow in our lives – every year when we lived in New Hampshire at the foot of the White Mountains, but Cedar City is high desert, and the water content of the snow was also a record. While weather is not necessarily indicative of climate change, what we’ve experienced tends to suggest that climate is indeed changing.

Of course, the fact that local weather and world-wide climate aren’t the same, or even close at times, is a fact lost on certain powerful Republican politicians. While the eastern U.S. has had one of the colder winters on record, the fact is that the planet as a whole is experiencing, so far, the warmest on record, and the west and southwest, and even large sections of Alaska have had far warmer winters than usual. In fact, the part of the U.S. suffering record-low winter temperatures comprises less than 3% of the world’s land, and roughly just as much of the U.S. is experiencing record-high winter temperatures. But then again, when did most politicians ever look farther that their own bubble… or the views of those who elected them?

On a lighter, or at least, more amusing, note, on Monday morning, my wife received an email, as did all the faculty at the university, stating that because of the massive amounts of snow blanketing the university, campus mail would not be delivered until further notice. Classes, however, were neither delayed nor cancelled. Now… if the mail carriers can’t even trudge across the four block by four block central campus… how does the administration expect students and faculty to do so?

Several weeks ago, a police officer in Salt Lake City went to investigate a report of a man with a snow shovel behaving erratically. When the officer found the man, he asked for his name. Within moments, the man attacked to officer with the shovel. The officer shot and killed the man – but only after that officer had received significant injuries, including a broken arm and foot. The officer was wearing a body cam, and the footage of that camera shows unequivocally that the officer in no way threatened the man and that the man attacked the officer with no provocation.

In late January, in Denver, Denver police stopped a stolen car containing five teenagers. Police testimony stated that the officers fired at the car when the driver aimed the car at the officers and struck one, breaking his leg. The driver died from the gunshots. The teenagers insist that the police stopped the car, then were stepping away when the officers shot the driver, who lost control of the car, which then struck the officer. The teen testimony tends to overlook one critical fact. If the car was stopped and not in gear, it couldn’t have moved when the driver was shot, and everyone agrees that it did. Moreover, the driver had been stopped by the Colorado Highway Patrol several weeks before and cited for driving 25 miles per hour over the speed limit and attempting to elude the highway patrol officer.

Then there is the Michael Brown case. No matter what anyone says, Brown had committed two crimes and attacked a policeman.

I’m not saying that law enforcement is always right or sacrosanct. Law enforcement is like any other profession. Most of the police are basically good people, but every large law enforcement agency has its bad apples, just as the medical, legal, software, and any other profession have their bad apples. And the media is right to run stories that call attention to possible wrong-doing, provided that the reports are accurate and as objective as possible.

What angers me is that those people close to the shovel wielder, the Latino teenager, or Michael Brown immediately come up with stories about how good those individuals were… and how awful the police were… and the media immediately broadcasts them. I’m sure each of those individuals did in fact do some good deeds, but so have some of the worse criminals on record. That doesn’t excuse the fact that in these cases, the police officers had reason to fear for their lives – and that their attackers were not the innocents portrayed by the media… and that all the demonstrations and the publicity given them represent misplaced media hype.

Yes… we could stand improved police training in using lethal force and in dealing with underprivileged citizenry angry with years of discrimination, but trumping up media coverage in dubious cases such as these is counterproductive. Maybe I’ve missed it, but where was the national coverage of the black man shot in a Walmart while inspecting a BB gun? Where are the news stories about true minority innocents actually victimized by shoddy or prejudiced law enforcement? I’m sure there are some, and probably a lot, but discovering and covering those takes work. Covering the sensational instances doesn’t. Just load up your instacam or whatever and listen to those with an ax to grind. Quick work and high ratings, just like that.

But the result of quick and easy coverage is, in effect, a sensationalist demonization of law enforcement, rather than a thoughtful examination of both sides. What I’ve been seeing doesn’t represent anything close to impartial news reporting. It’s simply ratings gathering that contributes to societal polarization. It’s also making it harder and harder for many law enforcement agencies to attract top quality recruits.

But then, who really wants objectivity? It’s all too clear that, no matter what people say, most just want news that confirms their beliefs… and too much of the media, at least right now, appears to be too profit-driven to be anywhere close to objective in dealing with hot-button issues. And that means we all lose.

Most human beings would like to believe that they are moral or ethical individuals, at least in their own terms, and most would like to prosper or, especially, succeed beyond their wildest dreams while retaining that morality. Most also have a definite idea on what constitutes moral/ethical behavior in life and in literature. The majority of F&SF novels comment on morality and ethics, either directly, indirectly, or by omission, because most books are, in the end, about some aspect of power, and what intelligent organisms do in response to or in pursuit of power reveals who they are in ethical terms.

But who the characters of a book are in moral or ethical terms is also defined by the ethical traits and background of the reader. I’ve seen this more than a few times in regard to characters in my own books, where one reader will declare that a character is morally weak or has no moral fiber whatsoever, and other reader will find the same character highly ethical. This is scarcely surprising, not when we see the same diversity in views among political pundits, politicians, civic leaders, and other public figures – and that’s just in the United States.

Obviously, a significant fraction of Islamic believers feel that any depiction of the prophet Mohammed is immoral, and a significant fraction of Western journalists and cartoonists see nothing immoral in presenting satiric images of the prophet.

At the same time, there are certain ethical issues that are universal. How much should one compromise one’s morals in order to survive? The moral extremists would opt for little or no compromise, but that raises another issue. One cannot be ethical or do good in the future if one is dead. Nor can one raise one’s children to be “good” people if one is dead. So if that moral compromise does not injure others and allows one to survive to do good in the future, is it that immoral? But then… one compromise can lead to another… and another… and may set a terrible example for others. Yet we’ve seen in life that that is not necessarily the case. There have always been those individuals living in despotic societies that were frankly immoral by any meaning of the term who professed allegiance to the regime in order to survive… and then helped others to survive and escape.

The conflict of values with survival and power have always interested me, and that’s why I write about them so often, and with different viewpoints in different situations, in a way, trying to show that matters often are not nearly so simple as they seem. Despite what has often been said, doing what is “right” is never as simple as it seems… and that usually makes a good book… and just as often that’s also why one reader finds a book good and another despises it, not because the book is necessarily badly written, although that’s often the justification given, but because what’s presented conflicts too much with the belief system of that reader.

In almost every artistic field, there are awards for excellence and achievement, and the F&SF world is no exception. While it isn’t as well known a field to many people, it’s not exactly small, either. In 2014, the number of F&SF original novels published by the big five and known and established small presses was around 1,000, and the self-published F&SF novels likely exceeded that several-fold.

Supposedly, the Hugo is the most “prestigious award” in fantasy and science fiction [at least, it’s billed that way], and who wins the Hugo in various categories [short story, novella, novel, best editor, best artist, etc., for work published for the first time in the previous year] is determined annually by vote. To vote, one must be a member of the current World Science Fiction Convention, or as I recall, the previous WorldCon or the forthcoming WorldCon. In short, it’s a popularity contest generally voted on by insiders, although anyone can become one of those insiders by paying for a full WorldCon membership or a less expensive, supporting [non-attending] membership. Over the last twenty years, WorldCon membership numbers have generally fluctuated in the three to six thousand range, with the exception of last year’s WorldCon in London, which had over ten thousand attending and supporting memberships.

Theoretically, voters are supposed to nominate those works which display excellence, since the works are for “the best” in each category. The problem, as I’ve discussed in other areas and blogs, rests on what each voter/reader feels is “best.” In more cases than not, I suspect, “best” refers to those books enjoyed and liked the most, not necessarily the best, but what institution offering a “prestigious” award would want to admit that it’s really a “readers” favorite? I’ve so often disagreed with the nominees that I might as well not have voted in almost every case. As a side note, I might add that the folks at RT [otherwise known as Romantic Times] label their awards as “Reviewers’ Choice Awards,” which strikes me as a bit more honest. [I mention this because they actually do give awards to F&SF books].

The other “major” set of awards in the field are the World Fantasy Awards. While members of the World Fantasy Convention can nominate works, the majority of nominees – and the winners – are determined by a panel of five judges who are professionals in the fantasy publishing field. Each judge serves for one time in his or her life for one year, and as the saying goes, in the interest of full disclosure, I was a judge almost twenty years ago. It was a brutal year, and I read parts of more than three hundred novels and all of more than fifty. We did the best we could, but there’s no doubt in my mind that we likely missed or overlooked works that could easily have been nominated and possibly won with other judges in other years.

Having seen both processes at work, I’d say that neither is anywhere close to perfect, but I do feel that the World Fantasy awards do come close to presenting a slate of good to excellent books, while the Hugos are far more of a hype and popularity contest, where the works of authors with expansive social media, egos to match, ebullient public personae, and enthusiastic, if not rabid, fan bases tend to be nominated and win in greater measure than the quality of their work might otherwise merit, at least in my anything but humble opinion.

But then, I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the wisdom of crowds, especially where a certain level of intelligence and perception is required, as well as a wider vocabulary, which is also why I don’t care much for the majority of “popular” music these days.

This past weekend I was at LTUE – a science fiction and fantasy literary symposium/conference in Provo, Utah [and the reason why there was no blog last Friday was because my not-so-trusty and relatively new laptop crashed right after I arrived there]. I was on a fair number of panels, but in the course of convention events, I found one of my basic tenets about writing being reinforced. It’s simple. All realistic and real worlds have history, and that history is NEVER just the “dead past.”

Over the past fifty plus years, I’ve read a considerable amount of science fiction and fantasy, and although the majority of writers who dealt with invented literary worlds or even future human society made an effort to create workable societies, while I could see how those societies might work, in far too many cases I could see no way as to how such societies or cultures could have evolved and developed into what the writer presented. Most likely, for most readers, that really isn’t a problem, but, perhaps because I am a student of society, politics, and history, it bothers me a lot.

Just think about this. How many of the killings, the wars, and the terrorist threats we face today are the result of past Islamic history and teachings? Mohammed may have lived over 1400 years ago, but that part of history and how it has evolved affects the entire world today, and certainly thousands if not tens of thousands of followers don’t act as though he’s dead and forgotten. World War II was effectively the result of historical conflicts and rancor between France and Germany that date back to the time of Louis XIV, if not before. Obvious as this may seem, in too many F&SF books, there’s little if no sense of real history woven into the background of the story… or how that history affects the present. Everything is in the here and now.

Or sometimes there’s an eternal empire. Eternal? I have my doubts. Although one can claim with some degree of accuracy that the basic structure of Egyptian government was essentially unchanged for almost three thousand years, dynasties rose and fell; invaders periodically intervened and ruled; and in the end, the structure toppled. And that’s the most long-lived empire/pseudo-empire in human history. The British Empire, the one on which the sun never set, lasted less than a century in any true imperial form.

William Faulkner once made the observation to the effect that the “dead past” is not only not dead, but it’s not even past. Obviously, I agree.