Religious extremists all over the world, and in the United States – as well as religious figures who would never consider themselves extreme – are currently demonstrating the dangers when religious true believers hold power and government. In the Middle East ISIS is busy exterminating anyone who doesn’t hew to their extremist views. Iraq is being torn apart over religious differences. Religious differences accounted for the civil war in Sudan, one of the bloodiest and possibly the longest civil war in Africa, which lasted fifty years by some accounts, and now a prominent radical Islamic cleric is declaring that women and children of faiths other than Islam are no different from soldiers and can be killed according to the words of Muhammad. Mass killings for religious reasons are now endemic in Nigeria, where the Islamic Boko Haram movement has slaughtered thousands and kidnapped and possibly killed hundreds if girls and young women. In Myanmar [Burma] Islamic/Buddhist strife is rising. Religious killings continue to rise in Pakistan.

Whether believers in any faith want to acknowledge the role religion plays, it’s rather obvious to me that the vast majority of believers are totally convinced that their beliefs and ways are the only “right” way to live, and far too many of those believers feel that any ends justify the means in giving their faith the power to compel others to follow those “right” beliefs. The religious “moderates” differ from the extremists in this only in the degree of compulsion they believe is permissible. Thus, in the United States, evangelical Christians trumpet “religious freedom” and attempt to use the laws, rather than bullets and blades, to impose their beliefs on others who do not share their views. This is more civilized than slaughtering those who oppose you, but the principle is still the same – using a form of power to force compliance with a religious belief.

This is, of course, more obvious where I live in Utah, the all-but-in-name theocracy of Deseret, where sixty percent of the population is LDS and ninety percent of the state legislators are LDS, and where nothing of significance opposed by the LDS Church can be enacted, where the wage differential between men and women is among the highest of any state, if not the highest, reflecting the very obvious, but always denied, patriarchal dominance of the culture.It’s also the state where Cliven Bundy, the rancher who provoked an armed-standoff with the BLM and who owes millions in unpaid gazing fees addressed a meeting of the American Independent Party last week, declaring that his armed resistance to the BLM was inspired by God and that, in effect, he was only supporting the Constitution, Jesus Christ, and the LDS faith. While several prominent LDS individuals claimed Bundy did not represent the LDS Church, officially the Church has not taken a stand. It’s rather interesting that Kate Kelley can be excommunicated for advocating that women be allowed into the LDS priesthood, while Cliven Bundy can offer armed resistance to the federal government after failing to pay grazing fees and claim God was behind him… and remain in good standing with his church.

But that exemplifies the underlying problem with religion – for true believers, adherence to belief trumps everything… and that’s exactly why the Founding Fathers didn’t want government making any laws that amounted to establishing a religion – a principle that the Roberts Supreme Court seems to avoid considering.

Much has been written about technology, and there’s been a great deal of discussion for at least a century about technology, its benefits and drawbacks, and rebellions against its use in replacing old ways go back at least as far as the Luddite Rebellion in England in 1811. Although that rising and some twenty years of violence against machinery replacing laborers has been too often depicted as mindless violence against better technology, it was anything but mindless, and it wasn’t directed so much against better technology as against the economic and social impacts created by the use of that technology, which replaced modestly paid skilled work with low paid and almost poverty level semi-skilled work in the textile mills and elsewhere, leaving weavers and textile artisans literally starving in some places.

There’s no doubt that technology has improved the quality of life of those who benefit from its use, but what tends to get overlooked in the praise of technology is that, while technology often “solves” problems of the society which employs that technology, there are always those who bear the costs of those improvements, costs which are not inconsequential, and the employment and utilization of new technology in turn creates its own set of problems, problems which, almost invariably, are dismissed by the innovators who benefit from the technology, but are lamented loudly by those who suffer from it.

The industrialization and “technologization” of the United States created great wealth and a much higher standard of living for the upper class, the middle class, and initially, the working class. It also created in the beginning almost intolerable conditions in factories and sweatshops, incredible environmental problems, and air and water pollution, none of which were addressed until legislation forced the users of technology to do so. High-tech industry is pursuing the same path, except the pollutants are now include trace amounts of highly toxic substances, greenhouse gases, chemical-laced waters from fracking, and continued atmospheric pollutants. With the advent of highly automated manufacturing, the costs of many goods has declined, but that automation – and the outsourcing of formerly skilled and semi-skilled manufacturing jobs – has decimated the formerly economically prosperous semi-skilled working class in the United States, one of the reasons why whole urban areas, exemplified by Detroit, have become economically depressed, with swathes of barren and abandoned structures. The wide-scale use of personal higher-tech transportation has created cities where breathing the air is hazardous to health, and the indiscriminate use of medical antibiotics, while clearly benefitting people overall, has also resulted in the creation of more and more antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Each “improvement” in technology has, in fact, also created another level of problems, and each higher level impacts a wider area, to the point that new technologies are having global impacts. Pesticide residues are now routinely found in the arctic ice. CFCs diminished the world’s protective ozone layer, actually destroying it in places. Tiny bits of plastic are found in all the world’s oceans with negative impacts on the aquatic eco-system world-wide.

Yet, if we abandoned technology, most of the world’s current population would quickly starve. At the same time, because technology is a tool, and one whose costs of use fall disproportionately on those who do not benefit, as well as increasingly on the world as a whole, and one whose advancements inevitably create new and different problems, seeing technology as the total solution to all current problems is a fool’s game. Like all tools, technology can and will be misused. As with all tools, those with power will attempt to use it for their own personal benefit, regardless of the cost to others. And those who suffer most from its use will oppose it, at times close to mindlessly… and the politicians who, unhappily, are the only ones with the power to restrict its misuse and regulate its beneficial use, will listen only to money and votes.

The author David B. Coe (also writing as D.B. Jackson) wrote a piece last week on his pet peeves, one of which was reviews – reviews of any sort. Among other things, he made the point that we writers are ultra-sensitive and that one nasty or negative review remains indelibly etched in our minds, to the point that he can quote from such a review, even if it appears amid a host of positive ones. I’m not quite that sensitive, and I can’t quote the reviews I hated word for word, or maybe I’m a bit more able to mostly ignore such reviews – after the initial fuming and muttered, and sometimes not so muttered, words – feeling that those few reviews are the result of a certain lack of understanding. And part of the profession is understanding that certain reviewers and certain editors simply don’t like certain approaches… and never will. Nonetheless, even telling oneself that doesn’t lessen the initial sting.

It’s possible that any writer can write and publish a bad or substandard book. But no writer published for years by an established press is going to write bad book after bad book – because a string of truly bad books won’t generally sell [there are doubtless some very limited exceptions to this observation, because there are exceptions to every generalization]. So if a reviewer continually pans an author’s books, while other reviewers offer favorable observations, all that means is that the reviewer either hates that author [sad to say, it does happen] or that kind of book. And if a writer sells lots of books and lots of reviewers don’t like that writer, then it’s pretty clear that the reviewers don’t want to look at what makes that writer popular… and there are some books that tell a great story in absolutely terrible prose, and others that use brilliant prose to tell what amounts to an unworkable story. [I read one of those earlier this year.]

The problem most writers face is that we want people to like, or at least appreciate, what we write, no matter what we may say in public, and any writer who denies this is either lying or self-deluded (and there are almost NO exceptions to this generalization). We all think we have a story to tell, if not many stories, and that we can tell them in a way that readers will enjoy and appreciate. The problem, of course, is that no writer can appeal to all readers, no matter how much we writers tell ourselves that if readers just tried a little harder, they’d really like us. Nope. It doesn’t work that way.

And that means, like or not, writers have to expect at least an occasional review where the reviewer really doesn’t understand what’s going on or is so tied to his or her preconceptions of how a writer “should” have done it… and that gives the writer license to fume about “idiot reviewers.” There are books, very occasionally, that do deserve scathing reviews, but far fewer than reviewers think there are, and there are a lot of books – most of them – that could be better, but what too many people tend to forget is that writing is a business, and if I, or any other writer, spent the time necessary to assure that a book had absolutely not a single error, both the publisher and I would be broke. Very, very good in technical terms is possible; faultless is not economically practical, something that too many readers don’t seem to get… or just don’t consider. My long-time editor, David Hartwell, has often said, “A published novel is an unfinished book,” or words very much to that effect, also observing that any book could be better.

But the bottom line is that no one likes really nasty criticism, especially criticism that we feel is unjustified… and writers are people, and we don’t like it any better than anyone else. As for the comment that such criticism goes with the job, it does indeed, but keep in mind that comparatively speaking, most writers make far less than professionals in comparable fields, and very few of even the highest paid ones make anything close to what investment bankers, specialty surgeons, senior partners in law firms, or corporate CEOs do, and very few of those individuals face the public scrutiny that writers do. Of course, they should, but that’s another story.

The other day I overheard a conversation in which one person made the observation that already rising sea levels were affecting millions and that in a century, higher sea levels would make many places inhabitable, if not destroy them. The other individual replied, “So? It’s not the first time that’s happened. Let ‘em move.”

A third person said, “It won’t be a real problem for centuries.”

A few days later, in referring to the thousands of children who have recently flooded into the southern United States, someone else said, “Just send them all home. We’ve got enough problems.”

I wish these were isolated instances, but I’ve heard more and more comments along these lines in recent years, dealing with everything from global climate change to mid-east violence to immigration and air pollution, and almost all of which were along the lines of, “It’s not that big a problem, and it’s not our problem.” Those words remind me of the most likely apocryphal words of Marie Antoinette who reportedly said, upon hearing that the poor of Paris had not even bread to eat, “Then let them eat cake.”

The Russian aristocracy didn’t think the problems of the poor and middle class were their problems, and the British and the French didn’t want to get involved in German politics when a certain rabble-rouser began rallying the disaffected to his cause, because it really wasn’t their problem if a few Jews were being persecuted. Neither did we freedom-loving Americans care much if minorities in Europe were being stripped of their rights; we didn’t care until it became our problem.

What most people don’t want to understand is both the physical and financial impacts of global climate change, and the impact those have on everything else. History shows that comparatively modest climate changes, on the global scale, far less severe than those we face, have toppled quite a number of civilizations, as have mass migrations of people. We’re now facing the largest change in the global climate in at least human history, and something like fifty percent of the human population now lives within sixty miles of the ocean coastline, including the majority of mega-cities, with trillions of dollars of buildings and infrastructure.

Hurricane Sandy was only a class two hurricane when it hit New York, and it caused more than $75 billion of damages, and there are whole communities that still have not recovered or been rebuilt almost two years later. What happens when water levels rise further and storms intensify, which they have been doing? Add to that the fact that the entire U.S. infrastructure – highways, bridges, power and water systems, dams, and ports – is generally in poor condition and vulnerable to disruptions.

Yes, climate change is nothing new, if more widespread and occurring more quickly, and neither are social and political unrest, and, unfortunately, neither is the human desire to believe that such matters are either not a problem or are someone else’s problem.

Recently, USA Today published an article stating that a “middle class” living standard in the United States would require a couple with two children to come up with $130,000 annually. I’d heard this figure cited, and decided to look into it. USA Today broke the numbers down into three categories: essentials ($58,591), extras ($17,009), taxes and savings ($54,857).

Topping the essential category was housing costs, at $17,000 a year. Obviously, this cost would vary enormously by area, but a thirty year mortgage on a $150,000 home, with 20% down, would run around $700 a month, which is middle class if you live in a low-cost area. In much of the country $250,000 is closer to the mark, and that would raise the annual cost of just mortgage and insurance to close to $18,000. I also thought car expenses, figured for a single mid-sized SUV at $11,000 annually, were actually low, because these days it’s difficult if not impossible for most families to get by with a single wage-earner, and that means transportation for two. We’re a two-car family with one 15 year old car that gets 30 mpg and a five year old moderate SUV that gets 15mph, both paid off, and we’re very low mileage drivers – and our annual car costs are still close to $5,000 a year – with no car payments and low insurance. When I was commuting into Washington, D.C., with a small car that got 35 mpg, the gas costs alone for just that one car were over $3,000 annually, and with current gas prices, they’d would be closer to $6,000. USA Today lists medical expenses at $9,000 annually. For a family of four, insurance costs alone will total that – unless that’s a benefit paid by the employer. And total utility expenses of $2,000 a year? My base sewer, water, and trash services are $700 annually, without including gas and electricity. A clothing allowance of $2,600 for four people for a year, when two are children, especially when they become teenagers? All in all, I found the USA Today figures for “essentials” low for a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.

The $17,000 “extras” category included vacations ($4,500), entertainment and eating out ($7,500), communications, such as satellite, cable, cell phones, internet ($3,000), and miscellaneous ($2,000). I do wonder about the entertainment and eating out expenses being far too high, but if one has even the basic version of the communications services listed, I’d like to know how they manage on that little, because we live in one of the lowest cost areas of the country, and the lowest cost variety of each of those services right here total just about $3,000.  Now, obviously, many of these “extras” are just that, but some aren’t, and doing without any of them means you really aren’t living a middle class living standard.

The last category is the one that I have the most trouble with. The total tax bill of $32,000 seemed high initially, but if one assumes an income level of $130,000, for most couples, the combination of Social Security/Medicare taxes, federal and state income taxes, a six percent sales tax, property taxes, etc. comes to between $25,000 and $40,000 for most families, depending on where they live. On the other hand, I don’t see most middle class families saving $23,000 annually. Perhaps they should, but the figures show it isn’t happening.

Overall, after looking at the expenses used to arrive at the USA Today cost figures, I was surprised, because except for entertainment and eating out, most of the costs cited seemed all too in line with actual costs, and sometimes even low, for what one might expect for a middle class life-style. And that’s disturbing, very disturbing, considering the median family income is around $55,000, which, in turn, might explain why more than a few people in the United States are less than pleased with their situation. As a side note, I saw a similar study that made a similar conclusion about Great Britain. What’s happened to those of us divided by a single language?

When I was a Navy helicopter pilot all too many years ago, the only “real” helicopters in the world were U.S.-built, by Bell, Kaman, Boeing, and especially Sikorsky. That’s no longer true, and hasn’t been for a number of years. In the commercial market, the biggest sellers are Airbus Helicopter and Agusta Westland, and what U.S. sales there are happen to be mostly military, based on designs dating back to the 1970s.

UAV development? Israel leads in unmanned aircraft design and sales. Sweden’s MBDA has the most advanced air-to-air missile with its ramjet powered Meteor. At the same time, more and more U.S. military equipment, or key components of that equipment, is based on foreign designs and often foreign supplied parts and sub-assemblies.

In the one area where the U.S. does maintain a lead, if a dwindling one – fighter aircraft – acquisition and operating costs are continuing to skyrocket. Current costs of the F-35 fighter are running $100 million for each aircraft. Proponents claim that once full production runs are reached the cost will drop to a mere $85 million. The operating cost per hour for some types of F-15s runs over $40,000, while the F-18 E/F Super Hornet is the least costly U.S. tactical aircraft to operate, at a “mere” $17,000 per hour.

At one time, again back when I was flying, there were three U.S commercial aircraft manufacturers, and they essentially controlled the market. Now only Boeing is left, and it tends, for the moment, to split the major commercial markets with Airbus, while Embraer and Bombardier, Brazilian and Canadian respectively, currently lead in production of 100 passenger or less commercial aircraft.

What happened?

Actually, from what I’ve observed, several factors have been in play. First, military aircraft became increasingly sophisticated and phenomenally expensive to design, produce and operate, which has meant far fewer are built every year. So, overall, there’s less business to be had. Second, the procurement process on the military side has become a nightmare. Third, U.S. aerospace companies have focused increasingly on profits at the expense of R&D. Fourth, the Pentagon has focused on the one-size-fits-all for new aircraft, and, frankly, I don’t see how designing an aircraft that meets mission specifications for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force can be anything but more expensive – no matter what all the cost analysts say, and there have been major cost overruns for just that reason all too frequently.

Then, add to that the fact that foreign competitors are building better aircraft than before, some of which are claimed to have advantages that U.S. aircraft don’t, and many of which offer high performance at far lower costs. There have been more than a few recent reports that Airbus has better pilot emergency warning systems than does Boeing, especially in dealing with auto-throttle and stall warning systems. Boeing’s response has been, essentially, “We don’t need to be any better.” And, for, now, with the cash cow that the 737 has become, apparently Boeing feels it doesn’t need even to address those claims.

Behind all this is another ominous aspect. As the U.S. production and technology lead in aerospace has been eroded, so have the number of high-tech, high-paying jobs, not to mention the number of workers. With fewer jobs, the young talent has to go elsewhere, either to other industries or other countries.

There is far more at stake than whose airliner we ride on, or how much profit the remaining aerospace companies make. In fact, U.S. aerospace profits were up last year… even as the rest of the world continues to overtake us… because niche markets, R&D, and competing for sales with a wider range of aircraft and aircraft systems all eat into this year’s profits, and apparently like every other U.S. industry, this year’s profits are all that matter to U.S. aerospace manufacturers.

The other day I got to thinking about political revolutions, especially about the “successful” ones, and a few of those that seemed successful for a while. From those that I know of and those I’ve studied, it occurred to me that the vast majority fall into two categories – those countries where the leader of the revolution became a despot, or something similar, and those where the revolution swallowed the early leaders, and more cases than not, where a dictatorship of sorts ensued. Now, of course, neither of these happened in the United States, which is why we tend, I suspect, not to look at revolutions in the terms I’ve laid out. And I’m not counting events in countries where the form of government changed gradually and relatively peacefully as revolutions.

Armed and violent revolutions tend to occur when large percentages of a county’s population are unhappy, angry, and feel that they have little or nothing to lose… and almost usually are fomented and led by those who belong to what might be called the educated-alienated or the marginalized middle class who have personal and/or economic grievances against the existing power structure.

Revolutions tend to fail when not enough people feel that disenfranchised and/or when the government has an overwhelming monopoly on force – and when the soldiers who constitute that force are loyal to the regime.

Some historians make a distinction between movements that seek to change who rules and those that seek to change the entire way in which a country is ruled, which might suggest that merely replacing a ruler is a coup and changing the governmental structure by force is a revolution.

Is a revolution possible here in the United States, with all the cries for secession, and the increasing acrimony between the two political parties? History has shown that almost all lands with any lasting history suffer either government evolution, revolution, or coups, if not all three. The United States has revolted against British Rule, suffered through a bloody civil war, and seen a gradual but massive change in the structure and power of government… and faith and support of Congress is at an all-time low, combined with a close to all-time low in public confidence in the financial sector. Interestingly enough, faith in the President, while lower than his average ratings, is nowhere near all-time lows for a President.

Is that enough dissatisfaction to spark a rebellion? It’s certainly enough for some people, but I have my doubts if it’s enough, at least so far, to support any massive change in U.S. government, meaning that the deadlocks will have to get worse before anything – constructive or destructive – happens.

One of the largely unacknowledged aspects of the incredible speed at which personal and professional communications technology change is the fact that such changes not only often waste more time than they save, but that they pander to and foster self-centeredness.

I’ve mentioned the time-wasting before, but I continue to be reminded of it again and again.  Almost every month, my editor’s publishing firm changes some aspect of their software, which means that when I ask my editor for certain information, it always takes longer because it seems that just as he’s learned all the bells and whistles from the last upgrade, the company changes something else.  The same thing occurs at my wife’s university, and even with all those upgrades her computer got ransom-virused – and she’s never used it for anything but business [her IPad is much more convenient for the personal stuff, and I have to admit it doesn’t seem half so prone to viruses, even if it does have other glitches].  Because I have to keep current for a number of reasons, I’m now wrestling with some annoying features of Windows 8.1, and I’m still angry about the fact that the latest version of Word occasionally effectively deletes what I’m working on – without activating the automatic back-up/save if I type too fast and accidentally hit a three key combination that has an H in it.  I don’t mind too much activating spell check or creating a new document, but deleting what I’ve just written has me wanting to assassinate the system designer or marketing manager who decided such add-ons were good. All of these rapid and continuing “improvements” waste most people’s time, but because just enough people upgrade, if you don’t, before long you’re getting documents you can’t open.  So what’s convenient for a comparative handful of IT techies and tech geeks becomes anything but convenient for the rest of us, especially for those of us who use technology as a tool to accomplish something else, rather than to create “new” features just in order to make that claim.

The other aspect of our modern communications revolution is that it both isolates individuals and encourages a self-centered attitude.  Take cellphones.  We now have acquaintances, and even some friends, who switched from landlines to cellphones. Most of them don’t even tell anyone, as if everyone should know.  Then, maybe they posted it on Facebook, as if it happens to be everyone else’s duty to find out.  And when you can’t reach them, they’re the ones who are upset, but it’s rather difficult to reach people without their phone number, either for texting or talking, especially now that more and more of them are abandoning email, except for business.

And social media.  What if I don’t want to be on Facebook or LinkedIn or… whatever?  Or tweet on Twitter?  That’s my choice; it’s anyone’s choice, but now, the attitude of all those on Facebook is that they no longer have to make an effort to actually reach out to others; they just have to post on Facebook, and others have to reach out to them to find out how things are going.  It’s not that people are more selective.  They can’t be, not if they’re posting on social media sites.

But then, maybe that’s not because they’re self-centered.  Maybe it’s because they’ve spent so much time wrestling with technology that’s supposed to be easy, and isn’t, that they only have enough time to post on social media and send 128 character tweets.

Unfortunately, the problem of “rights” is even larger than just religion, as adjudicated in the Hobby Lobby case, because first amendment to the Constitution also states: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” The Roberts Court has effectively declared in the case of funding political campaigns that restrictions on contributions are a restraint of freedom of speech. The problem with the Court decision is that it doesn’t address the question of what occurs when the combination of massive amounts of money combine with high technology to assure that the predominant publicly disseminated “speech” dealing with elections is that of the wealthiest one tenth of one percent of the population. In effect, the multi-million dollar megaphones of the rich drown out the views of anyone else. Yes, those without that kind of funds can speak, but their words go largely unheard.

In certain respects, this isn’t a new problem. Because of their position and wealth, the founding fathers had greater access to the press, and often used it, at times not in the noblest of ways, to further their own interests and ends, but because of the lack of instant communications, a press that was largely local, and diverse regional interests, none of them had access to the entire society either continuously or in real time, nor did they have the ability to buy ink and exposure in all media outlets in all states. They could not and did not conceive of the media concentration and penetration that exists today. Their interest was to assure that all views had a chance to be heard.

Yet in citing the Constitution to allow unlimited political contributions and “independent” political media expenditures that are effectively unlimited by individuals who can keep the amount of their contributions hidden, as well as their very identity unknown, the Roberts court has effectively undermined the very goals of the founders in crafting and adopting the first amendment, because the combination of money and technology effectively diminishes the freedom of speech of those who lack both money and access to technology, and, not incidentally, diminishing any public “right to know.”

Yet the far right trumpets this as a victory for free speech when it is really a victory for anonymous plutocratic propaganda.

I don’t watch soccer/football much, in fact, seldom, but I did end up watching the World Cup semi-final match between the Netherlands and Argentina… and the result underscored something I’ve said before, except with regard to basketball. Mastery of the simpler aspects of anything is key to continued success.

The Netherlands and Argentina played to a scoreless tie after regulation, and then after another 30 minute additional period the game was still scoreless.  Argentina converted four out of four penalty kicks in the shoot-out, while the Netherlands failed on two out of three attempts. While a penalty kick isn’t nearly as easy as a basketball free-throw, it’s far, far easier than scoring a goal in play, when it’s often difficult to even get near the goal with the ball, let alone get a clear shot.  Argentina made that abundantly clear, by not being able to score a single goal in two hours of play, but by putting four out of four shots in the goal in the shoot-out.  The Netherlands lost by not being able to accomplish the simpler tasks in the game.

This “case study” goes well beyond soccer or basketball.  I’ve seen people lose jobs because they failed to write a simple thank you note, or to recognize a former colleague or superior in a different setting.  I’ve seen more than one beginning writer destroy/abort his or her career by arguing violently with editors who have seen scores of writers come and go.  I’ve seen political careers tanked because no one asked a simple question – How did things get this way? – before going off in a direction that considering the answer would have most likely precluded.  I’ve seen singers lose competitions because, when talents were evenly balanced, the singer with more carefully chosen attire and polite mannerisms topped sloppy dress and flip mannerisms. And in all these cases, and others, the individuals involved were anything but stupid.  They just relied on their innate brilliance or talent and ignored mastery of simple skills.

A successful writer needs more than mere story-telling ability and more than mere skill with words, and, more than sometimes, some of those extras are simple skills, such as tact, thank-you notes [NOT emails,unless you’re in the tech world, where hand-written or print thank-yous have become a symbol of backwardness], and a certain amount of respect for those who control one’s fate.  And, oh yes, just plain showing up on time…or getting manuscripts in on time — and, here George R. R. Martin is the exception who proves the rule.

More than a few times, I’ve commented on how important it is for a fantasy or science fiction writer to understand basic societal economics if that writer wants to portray a workable and realistic fictional society.  In recent years, more and more writers have become clearly aware of this, and their books reflect this.  More recently, however, the comparative absence of finance and banking has struck me, yet some form of banking, whether it be counting houses, money-lenders, or the like, has existed in virtually every human civilization that became sophisticated enough to have iron tools. Any form of wide-spread trade requires at least a rudimentary financial system, and a financial system allows what one might call an oligarchical concentration of power and wealth, which in turn feeds intrigue and scheming.

One of the problem with portraying stock exchanges and banks is that few writers really understand them enough to portray just how much they can multiply either evil or good…or how quickly they can turn what seems to be good into total disaster. And, of course, the usual depiction of the banker/financier ranges from Shakespeare’s Shylock, to Dickens’s “early” Scrooge, to Mr. Potter in Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life,   to, more recently, the bankers and brokers in Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street. The problem with such one-sided depictions is that they actually understate the impact finances and financiers have on society and government.

The key role a financial system plays in any economy is to provide liquidity, because without liquidity transactions and trades become almost impossibly difficult.

I recently read an incredibly detailed massive fantasy epic, one that depicted almost all aspects of society – traders and their formal and informal associations, rulers and their bureaucracies and sycophants, military types, barbarians, entertainers, crafters, laborers, merchant princes, even authors – but not any financiers or bankers, despite a welter of trade and conflict between adjoining lands.  A great story – but I kept wondering what financial structure was behind it all, and why the bankers, or their equivalent, didn’t put the brakes on some of the idiocy, because successful bankers do tend to be conservative [except in today’s USA], sometimes foolishly so.

So… for better or worse, don’t forget the bankers… or their equivalents.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the Hobby Lobby case, declaring that companies, at least those privately held, are not required to provide birth control benefits under their health insurance plans when providing those benefits is against the religious beliefs of the company’s owners.  Whether the decision sparks other lawsuits or remains a relatively narrow example of an owners’ religious beliefs being able to dictate the scope of health benefits provided to employees remains to be seen.

The underlying issue that the Supreme Court did not address, and which Congress has also steadfastly ignored, is the degree to which Constitutional and statutory “rights” of individuals have been either enhanced or diminished by the exercise of the “right” to apply religious freedom” to others.

In the Hobby Lobby case, the Court verdict essentially states that an employer can effectively limit the access of employees to health care, solely on the basis of religious beliefs.  The employer is not denying birth control services to employees, because employees can theoretically purchase those services on their own.  But there are other aspects to consider, which the Court either did not consider or decided were not important enough to be a factor.  First, when an employee must pay additional funds for health services that the law declares other businesses must provide to their employees, the employee’s access is diminished or costs are increasing, if not both, and they are in a position whereby their total effective compensation is effectively lowered by the employer’s assertion of religious freedom. Additionally, other businesses, which do not have a religious exemption, will likely pay higher costs for employee healthcare insurance.

Thus, in effect, others must pay for Hobby Lobby’s “religious beliefs.”  Obviously, this would not be the case if there were not a law requiring insurance coverage, but there is, and the Court did not strike down the ACA as infringing on religious beliefs. In effect, the Court’s decisions declare that a public policy requiring health care coverage is Constitutional, but that effectively any employers with a clear religious affiliation can refuse to provide coverage for any procedure against their beliefs.  This effectively equates privately held corporations with churches, even though churches are non-profits, and money-making corporations like Hobby Lobby not.  All this brings up an interesting situation, because the Constitution declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” but there’s nothing in the Constitution to forbid the Court from issuing a legal opinion that effectively states that religious beliefs trump civil law and can be used to deny some citizens benefits that most others are entitled to receive under that civil law.  This strikes me as a rather dangerous precedent, particularly when it is endorsed and supported by so many of those who have railed against the fact that Islamic Sharia law supersedes civil law in the Middle East.  It’s wrong for Muslims to have Islamic law trump civil law, but fine for American corporations to sue, and win, for religious beliefs to trump civil law?

Not that any of the far right will see, or care, about the hypocrisy involved. They got what they wanted, and that’s all that matters to them.

In Starship Troopers [the book, not the movie], one of Heinlein’s characters makes the point that the society which governs Earth at that time isn’t necessarily the best, but that it has one redeeming feature – it works and operates reasonably well.  There are many aspects to that society with which critics have taken issue over the years, especially in recent years.  Some of that criticism reflects changes in society from the time at which Heinlein wrote the book, such as the fact that there is no longer the underlying feeling among a majority of the U.S. population that patriotic male citizens owed a certain unqualified duty to support their country with military service in times of war. The criticism about the details of Heinlein’s future society tends to overlook the basic point he was making about governments – they have to work well over time if they are to survive and their people are to prosper.

In turn, for popularly-supported governments to work reasonably well, the citizens have to have a common set of core values and socially and legally enforced basic rules that apply to all. Today, I think it’s fair to say that the U.S. government may still work, but there’s a real question as to whether it works reasonably well, and an even greater question as to how long it will work under the current deadlock between the two political parties, whose espoused core values are becoming increasingly divergent, and who keep coming up with more and more exceptions to those core values with which one group or another disagrees.

In the worst of cases when the core beliefs of citizens differ widely, each side perceives the other as an extremist, if not an out-and-out enemy, which is the case in all too many Middle East countries today. In the United States, the situation is structurally different.  Those who are politically active tend to be more extreme in their beliefs.  Whether politics attracts extremists or extremists flock to politics to attempt to impose their beliefs on others, the result is exactly the same. Those active in political parties are more extreme in their views than the vast majority of Americans, and the most extreme views tend to dominate party politics.

This growing extremism among political activists has several impacts.  First, the percentage of Americans who identify with either major political party has declined steadily, to the point where independent voters outnumber either Republicans or Democrats. In 1940, for example, less than 20% of voters identified as independents, while today the number of independents is approaching 50% of those eligible to vote. Second, the ideological gulf between Republicans and Democrats is at the widest point ever measured, and widening, and greater percentages of each party are inclined to portray the “other party” as the enemy.

Current and past history demonstrate clearly that great and unbending ideological differences make workable governing difficult, if not impossible, and yet the extremists in both Democrat and Republican parties, particularly the Republican party at present, are advocating even greater extremism as solution to governmental deadlock.  Neither seems willing to recognize that extremism in pursuit of ideological purity has never resulted in a workable government and has, if unchecked, always led to disaster, and that in the end, the only beneficiaries are the arms merchants and the undertakers.  But then, the extremists always insist that it’s the other party that’s extreme.

Obviously, different writers have different styles, and some writers’ styles are almost indistinguishable from others, and some writers’ styles are very different. Occasionally, a writer’s style is so unique that it’s virtually impossible to imitate or emulate, and, in general, such writers tend not to be huge financial successes, although a very few do manage it, usually those whose styles do not scream out the nature of their uniqueness.

That’s easily said, but what is style? According to the sixth edition of A Handbook to Literature, “Style combines two elements: the idea to be expressed and the individuality of the author. From the point of view of style it is impossible to change the diction to say exactly the same thing; for what the reader receives from a statement is not only what is said, but certain connotations that affect the consciousness.” Or what about this definition? “In fiction, style consist of the codified gestures by which the author tells the story.” Or this one by the mystery author Nancy Curteman? “Style is not what an author writes, but the manner in which she writes it. It is an author’s unique way of communicating ideas. One might say that style is the verbal identity of a writer. An author defines her style in word choice and syntax.”

The last definition centers on how a writer chooses words and sentence construction to convey the story to the reader. There are two aspects of that conveyance. The first is whether the words and structure are clear and in general accord with the “rules” of grammar, or at least enough so that the reader understands what is going on. The second is how the reader perceives that construction, and often that perception is based on the reader’s skills as a reader, having little to do with the writer’s skills as a writer. Use of unfamiliar terms, less common tenses, or extremely complex sentences are often cited as “stylistic” flaws, but their use, per se, is not a stylistic flaw. Only their misuse is.

Another question about style that’s especially relevant to fantasy and science fiction is whether the ideas presented are themselves part of style, or whether only the way in which they are presented represents style. This may seem like hair-splitting, but it’s really not, at least not in F&SF. In mainstream fiction, including mystery novels, frankly, the ideas are all out there. Most of them have been there for centuries, if not longer; so the stylistic issues center around the presentation of the ideas, not the ideas themselves, and this this mindset is reflected in the Curteman definition above.

By presenting new ideas or new perceptions about technology that does not yet exist or magic, which may never exist in our universe, except in the sense described by Arthur C. Clarke, an author changes the reader’s context, and by changing that context, influences, and perhaps even creates conflict with, the reader’s normal connotations of what some words may represent. By initially presenting “black” as the color of order (with the associated connotation of “law”) in the early Recluce books, I definitely challenged certain perceptual connotations, at least for American and western European readers. In a different way, the “culture” novels of Ian Banks also create challenges to standard connotations, and certainly so do the works of China Mieville and others.

Add to this the possibility that the presentation and development of an idea in fiction cannot truly be separated from the way in which it is presented and developed, and that suggests that critics and readers who talk about a writer’s style and ideas as if they are separate are missing the point. Over the years, I’ve read and heard comments about writers along the lines of “great ideas, poor style” or “great style, weak ideas.” That’s missing the point. Ideas are a part of style, not separate from it. Elegantly crafted sentences without the support of ideas well-presented are the literary equivalent of empty calories, and ideas thrown baldly at the reader might be classed, using the food metaphor, as raw meat of some type or another, possibly digestible, but hardly palatable to most. Or put another way, good style is when an author captivates you to the point where you enjoy the meal without thinking of either the ingredients or the way in which the chef put it together.

As I’ve noted before, almost all human beings desire certainty, except for the adrenaline-junkies and thrill-seekers, and yet, as more than a few savants have noted, nothing in life is certain except death, and, usually, taxes. In terms of personal and political action, the problem with waiting for absolute certainly is that the price for that certainty is too often astronomical. At the same time, acting precipitately on too little information may be unnecessary or also costly with no positive results.

That’s the dilemma that politicians face today. Given that any action by government is costly, and given that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to throw a senator or representative out of office for failing to act, it’s no wonder that most elected officials are loathe to act on anything that doesn’t either approach a certainty in the minds of their constituents, or that has any significant cost. When I was the legislative director for a congressman, he said that the problem most elected officials had was that they addressed problems that hadn’t really proved to be problems. Needless to say, he was very conservative, and he wanted certainty before committing himself. In fact, however,the only things that approach a certainty in politics are the views of the extremists of either party, which is likely one reason why the Republicans in the House of Representatives have voted over fifty times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, even though it is just as certain that the Senate Democrats will block any vote on repealing the ACA in the Senate.

Despite an overwhelming majority of climate scientists declaring that global warming exists and that it is man-made, those who oppose the actions necessary to address global warming insist that there is not enough certainty in the existing evidence. This is tantamount to declaring that they have no intention of changing their minds until there is no possible doubt that global warming exists and is anthropogenic. Given that the rate at which global warming is proceeding – which is, by the way, without any doubt, the fastest rate in the history of the planet – it will likely be a minimum of twenty to fifty years, if not longer, before there’s enough evidence to convince a significant fraction of the doubters… and at that point, we’ll most likely have locked in a sea-level rise of at least fifteen feet over the next two centuries, with even greater increases in sea-levels, tremendous long-term damages, and remediation costs in the trillions of dollars.

Now… if global warming does not proceed that quickly, exactly what will be the effects of earlier remediation efforts? First, they will reduce the amount of greenhouse gases and atmospheric pollutants. Second, greater use of cleaner and renewable energy sources will extend the life of all energy sources needed for a technological society. Third, reforestation and sensible land use will benefit people across the globe. Fourth, better management of industrial, corporate, and personal wastes will result in cleaner land, rivers, and oceans. And most important, since global warming will proceed, the overall costs will be lower. None of these are exactly undesirable for either the United States or the rest of the world… or our children or grandchildren.

Can we really afford the cost of waiting for “absolute” certainty?

… all believers are irrational, sometimes mildly so, and sometimes wildly so. When I mentioned this to someone I know, she replied, “Belief makes people stupid.” I don’t know that I’d go that far, at least not with all people, but what people do in the name of belief is sometimes puzzling, and at times mind-boggling.

Here in Utah, there was a newspaper story about woman, described as an intellectual, who was ex-communicated from the LDS faith years ago because of her “liberal” views, who still attends church services, although she cannot enter a temple or take part in any “higher” church functions. This is a faith that has just threatened to excommunicate LDS women who have spoken out decrying the lack of women in church leadership. Why do they still want to be LDS priests and bishops in a faith that, for all its protestations to the contrary, minimizes the position of women, as evidenced in cold, hard fact? Utah, with a legislature overwhelmingly male and LDS, has the greatest pay discrepancy between men and women. It also extols marriage for time and eternity, yet has a divorce rate above the national average. There are also LDS gays and lesbians who still want to be “part of the church.” Why? Why would anyone wish to be part of a faith that funded the initiative in California to outlaw gay marriage, or part of a faith that denounces acting on same-sex attraction as a sin against God and nature?

Christians don’t fare any better on the rationality test, either. One study showed that eighty percent of Christian pastors under the age of 45 did not believe in global warming. Seventy percent of evangelical Christians don’t, either. According to a Pew survey, over 80% of American Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. More than 60% believe that the story of Noah was factually accurate and that the entire earth was covered in water within historical times.

“Belief stupidity” isn’t limited to religion, either. Why is it that almost a third of conservative Republicans, the Republican true believers, insist that President Obama is a Muslim, while only eight percent of Democrats do? Or why 75% of Tea Party Republicans deny global warming, while 67% of the population as a whole say that it is occurring? Devout Democrats are no better in their irrationality; they’re just irrational on different subjects. More Democrats than Republicans believe that astrology is scientific; lasers are made from sound waves; genetically modified foods are harmful; vaccines are harmful; organic food is more nutritional than conventional food. And when facts conflict with political beliefs, studies show that something like sixty percent of both Democrats and Republicans will choose their political loyalties over conflicting facts that are scientifically and factually verifiable, and then they’ll argue that the facts are “wrong” or go well out of their way to find one example or fact that seems to support their views.

All of which suggests that perhaps the most dangerous words are “I believe.”

Just the other day, a dissatisfied reader charged me with using “hard-to-say” names, and there have been a few comments about the names I’ve used over the years, as if I had committed a horrible sin by not using plain Anglo-Saxon-English names. But… if I’m depicting other cultures, why would they necessarily have plain English names?

That said, are my choices of names that outrageous? Let’s see about protagonists’ names from recent books: Lerial, Quaeryt [more about this one later], Vaelora, and Paulo. Protagonists’ names from older books: Lerris, Creslin, Dorrin, Justen, Nylan, Cerryl, Lorn, Kharl, Saryn, Anna, Secca, Alucius, Mykel, Dainyl, Rhennthyl, Van, Tyndal, Trystin, Jonat, Johan, Llysette, Ecktor, and Keir. Perhaps not always usual names, but hardly tongue-twisters, and almost all of either one or two syllables.

Now, there are a few names that are a little harder to pronounce, such as Quaeryt, Megaera, Seliora, Luara, Kiedron, or Emerya, but “Quaeryt” is derived from the Latin “quaero,” meaning to search or question, and isn’t that much different in spelling from “query.” “Megaera” is a direct crib from mythology; she was one of the Greek/Roman furies. “Luara” is actually a Russian name, and apparently is also the name of an up-and-coming young pop singer [although I used the name in print when she was only five]. And while I thought I made up the names Kiedron and Emerya, it turns out that Kiedron is a Polish name, and Emerya is Turkish, which suggest that quite a few don’t think those names are so out of line.

What the complaints about the names reveal, unhappily, is a form of cultural chauvinism on the part of the complainers, a form of “if it’s not immediately recognizable, I feel uncomfortable.” The complaints also reveal something about the way people were taught to read. While I can’t prove it, I strongly suspect that readers who have trouble with the names tend to be those who weren’t taught reading on a phonetic basis and who are thrown by even slightly unfamiliar spellings. I will also freely admit that since I borrow, if not outright steal, from classical sources [as well as others], readers with either open minds or wider educations are less likely to be put off by the references.

But while the Bard said,

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;”

I’d have to disagree. Names do have connotations, and sometimes even denotations, that convey differences, and I believe an author should choose or create names that do so… whether or not they’re plain English or not.

I receive a certain number of comments about my work.  Some readers cannot wait for the next book, and others, an apparently much smaller number, dismiss my books as repetitive. With that wide a gap, is one group wrong… or deluded… or not comprehending?  I’d have to say, “No.”

This kind of dichotomy has likely existed from the time of the first novels and lies in the basis of the human psyche.

Obviously, at least obviously to me, a novel or story must initially entertain or otherwise provide some form of satisfaction to the reader. However….a novel which merely recounts a series of adventures or events, without an underlying value structure that motivates or challenges the protagonist and the reader, no matter how threatened the protagonist may be or how great his or her achievements may be, is essentially a mindless adventure story, or, if there are no adventures, a totally meaningless mass of words, even if each sentence is perfectly polished.

This would suggest that readers who continue to read my novels, or those of any other writer, for the entertainment value alone, but find them “repetitious” aren’t getting the refreshment or reaffirmation of their deeply held values because the values depicted through the story don’t resonate with them.  After all, we all know that there’s nothing more tiresome than someone telling stories that reiterate old platitudes that we’ve rejected, found unsatisfying, or that don’t match our perceptions of how “the world” operates or how we’d like it to operate. That’s why one group of readers can find a book deeply satisfying and another group, equally intelligent and perceptive, can find the same book repetitious and “boring.”

While a large number of readers read primarily for entertainment and escape, a significant number read for more than that, for a greater understanding, often of who they are and what they believe, as well as to affirm – and sometimes to challenge – what they believe and hold dear..

Although I doubt there are any sociological studies that test this thesis, to me it makes perfect sense why Game of Thrones is so popular and resonates with so many viewers and readers.  The values, or lack of values except self-interest, and the comparative moral relativism embodied in Martin’s work reflects a widely held popular perception about the current power structure in the United States and other technological societies – that everyone is corrupt and venal to some degree and that everyone is, foremost, out for his or her own self-interest, regardless of the consequences to others.

That’s why, frankly, I have little interest in Game of Thrones, and found the one book I forced myself through to be a well-written but boring repetition of violence and human venality that held little appeal to me, while millions of others find it absolutely spell-binding.  And I suspect many of those millions would find, and have found, my work “repetitious.”

All this suggests that when someone reads the work of a long-published and successful author and labels it repetitious, it’s far more a reflection on the views of the reader than an objective assessment of the work in question.

I generally don’t write about conventions and the like, but since my trip to Phoenix involved my very first comicon, I thought I’d make an exception, particularly since my first F&SF convention was almost thirty years ago, and that means this is likely to be one of the few convention reports I ever make.

Yesterday, I had just checked in as a guest author at the Phoenix Comicon when, out of the blue, sirens blared, and lights flashed, and loud-speakers announced a possible emergency and ordered everyone to walk quietly to stairs and exits and not to take elevators and escalators and to leave the building… out into 108 degree heat.  The problem?  A concession stand had been located too close to a heat sensor. And that was my introduction to the Phoenix Comicon.

Later on Thursday, there was a science fiction and fantasy author kickoff panel, and I found myself seated between Carrie Vaughn and Naomi Novick, and the three of us were flanked by Patrick Rothfuss and John Scalzi, with Scott Lynch and Seanan McGuire next to John, while a pair of troubadours named Paul and Storm serenaded us with a semi-rock parody ballad which was a sort of ode to George R.R. Martin” that extolled George to “write faster, write like the wind.”  I can’t remember much of the rest of the song because I was laughing too much, except for the line complaining about “killing all our favorite characters” and wondering if there’d be anyone left to kill after the next book.

I also discovered I had an actual table, conveniently next to Gini Koch, who writes books much funnier than mine, and across from Yvonne Navarro, and some twenty yards from the empty table of John Scalzi, who clearly has no need to talk to fans – actually he has to avoid them after his popularity almost caused a riot at the San Diego Comicon, or so several very reliable sources reported to me.  I did a signing at the Tor booth on Friday, and Tor actually gave out free copies of The Magic of Recluce for me to sign.  The time for the signing ended just about the time the copies ended; so that was for the best.

Saturday I had a panel on World Building economics, and it showed just how far F&SF has come in terms of economic sophistication. Twenty years ago, almost no one but me talked about or made economics central to their fantasy. At this panel, I had Pierce Brown on my left, who also has a degree in economics as well as spent several years in the financial industry, and Scott Lynch on my right, who has engaged in extensive studies of medieval and Renaissance-level economies and banking systems.  Possibly the best F&SF economics/worldbuilding panels I’ve ever been on… and Scott and Pierce were also most humorous.  Sunday brought back-to-back panels: “The Really Epic Epic Fantasy Panel” and “Keeping A Long-Running Fantasy Series Fresh.”  Both followed their descriptions.

On Monday, I got to the airport early, but possibly not early enough, because I discovered that my flight to Salt Lake had been delayed, and that I’d just missed an earlier flight, meaning that I’d miss my flight home to Cedar City.  As I write, I’m sitting in the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, wondering whether I’ll make the Cedar City flight in Salt Lake [highly unlikely, but barely possible, at least theoretically, if I sprint through the Salt Lake airport, provided there are no more delays] or whether I’ll have to cool my heels in Salt Lake for five hours and have to have my wife drive 60 miles to pick me up in Saint George slightly before midnight.

In any case, that’s the only cliff-hanger I can provide.

LATER NOTE:  I did have to hasten [half run/ half brisk walk] through the Salt Lake Airport to make my connection.  I made it, just as they were closing the doors, but my suitcase didn’t.

There’s an old, old advertising maxim that says something to the effect that “you don’t sell the steak; you sell the sizzle.”  It was true sixty years ago, and it’s even more true today… especially in F&SF.

At almost every science fiction convention or conference I’ve attended over the past five, possibly even ten years, there’s been at least one presenter or guru, if not a whole raft, insisting that the first step to becoming a successful author is, in essence, establishing a huge internet/social media presence.  And there’s at least one very successful author in our field who’s done that, as well as a great number of other moderately successful authors who’ve also done the same thing. While I fully understand the rationale in this day of hype, personality, and instant access, I have to wonder what this does to the amount and quality of actual fiction writing.

On the one hand, if you want to be a professional author and paid for your work, there’s little point in writing something, no matter how excellent, if no one knows you’re writing it and if no one buys it because they don’t know it’s there.  And, like it or not, with the tight margins in publishing these days, very few first-time authors get overwhelming amounts of support from publishers. This problem is compounded by the shorter window during which new books – by almost any author except those extremely well-established – receive attention from readers, bookstores, bloggers, and other media. In short, authors have to work harder to be visible.

The problem is that the nature of the internet is “instant.”  If there’s not something out there practically every day, all too many readers lose interest. I’ve tried to avoid the posting every day syndrome by posting my blogs twice a week and by trying to make them “deeper” and not nearly so much about matters I regard as trivial.  That’s not snobbery, but a recognition of my own limits.  I don’t do light humor and personal trivia well, certainly not along the “cat on bacon” variety.  Even so, posting blogs just twice weekly means that I’m writing 50,000 words a year for the website, and those aren’t words that are going into books.  Both my editors and publicists have been able to see a certain effect from that, especially compared to authors of my vintage and style who have not established even a modest internet presence, but it’s difficult to quantify how much difference it makes.

Is that difference in sales because of the website, forum, and other internet efforts?  Or is it merely because what I write is still appealing to readers?  Both?  Some of each?  How much of each?

Then there’s the other question.  How much are readers affected by a writer’s internet presence and persona?  The other day I read a comment suggesting that one popular author [not me, thankfully] was a far better blogger than an author, but that was something that the author’s readers didn’t seem to catch, because, according to the blogger, the writer was a competent author and an outstanding blogger, and readers thought the author was outstanding in both areas.

My gut feeling is that the commenter is on to something, and that a good internet presence creates an impression of greater authorial ability than may exist, while a poor or non-existent internet presence likely has a negative effect – but only among readers who are active on the internet.

All that said, there’s a real question about the trade-offs.  To what degree does all the effort to develop and maintain an internet presence detract from an author’s principal task, which is to write good and entertaining books?  A website and blog, no matter how entertaining, won’t bring in much income, but if a new author isn’t an instant best-seller, without some form of vigorous self-promotion, he or she may not be around too long, no matter how good the writing.  And then, once you’re established, what happens if you try to cut back on that daily and continuing internet presence?