Take two singers.  One is a talented all-around musician, with a full grasp of her craft, pleasantly attractive, but not beauty pageant class.  The other is beauty pageant class, with a good natural singing voice, and one knock-out classical song, and not much else.  Do you want to guess which one wins singing contests that involve an audition of only one song?  There are also certain singers who win or place highly in competitions, but never have a career because the only thing they’re really good at is winning competitions, just like those pleasing personalities who are so good at interviews and much less competent at doing the job.

Take the CEOs of large companies.  There are the competent-looking tall ones with a commanding presence… and then there are the others – except a number of studies over the years have shown that while there is a far higher percentage of  tall and competent-looking CEOs at larger companies (who get paid significantly more, on average), there’s absolutely no correlation between appearance and their performance as CEOs.

It’s a bit different with authors, but there are more than a few who publish one book and nothing more. Possibly the most famous authors who only wrote a single book are Harper Lee  [To Kill a Mockingbird] and Margaret Mitchell [Gone with the Wind].  The music industry is filled with singers and musicians who had only one hit song in their entire career. It’s no different in politics, and it would be hard to count the members of Congress who served exactly one term… and who are now long forgotten.

The problem with all too many of these one-hit wonders and one-trick ponies is that, all too often, their one trick overshadows others who are actually far better at whatever field it may be.  The least glamorous CEOs are generally far better than the ones who merely look good, and a great many executives who don’t have the height and “look” likely never get the chance because their talents are deeper but less obvious. There are significant numbers of authors who have produced large numbers of good, and sometimes great, books who’ve never made the big best-seller lists, but whose total sales have been respectable if not substantial over a long period. And there are authors who didn’t have the “flash” or trick to impress agents or publishers who self-published and later made the best-seller lists.  In this, Richard Paul Evans comes to mind.

There are good character actors who are far better at their craft than many big name stars, and whose careers have lasted far longer, and, unhappily, there are younger actors with the same kinds of talent and determination who will never get the chance because they’re solid, dependable… and don’t have a flashy trick… or gimmick, as the old song says.

Being married to a performing singer and university opera director means that I get to meet all sorts of people, ranging from students to retirees, from those who are very creative and interesting to those who are financially very well-off and support the arts, some few of whom are also creative.  I also have been drafted at times to craft various documents, including fund-raising letters, and this has led to some interesting situations. 

Although the university is located in the Utah county with the lowest individual and per family income, with a large rural component, and no heavy industry and only a comparatively few mid-tech or light industrial concerns, several directors of one charitable group absolutely refused to allow the use of those facts in a fund-raising appeal.  Why?  Because, first, they felt it would alienate any executives in the small manufacturing community, because it implied to them a criticism of their wage scales, even though the appeal specifically noted that the small manufacturing community was an exception to the generally prevailing low wage scale.

When I attempted to discuss this with one of the individuals who insisted on deleting the statistics, that individual provided a detailed explanation of how his company paid far higher wages than the local average and how their training program had enabled workers to move from the bottom to the top of the wage scale, all of which was absolutely true.  He then claimed that that low income problem was because of four factors: a local culture that emphasizes large families at a young age; the lack of high-tech manufacturing; a rural economy outside of the city proper; and the fact that “people choose their life-styles.” 

The executive who listed those factors was largely correct in his assessment, and, more than likely, equally correct in assessing how his peers would react, but that assessment didn’t make the problems go away. It did make it more difficult to explain why an organization needs funds for programs to benefit the children of those who are less fortunate without pointing out that more of such families exist in one’s community.  It’s as if some of these more financially fortunate individuals want to deny the reality of a situation while attempting to ameliorate some of the problems caused by that reality.

I’d be the first to admit that people make both good and bad choices, having made some of both myself over the years.  And some bad choices do lead to low incomes and, often, poverty, but the fact remains, after all the rhetoric, that the county does in fact have the lowest per capita and family income in the state, and  not all of that can be explained away by poor choices on the part of individuals.  In addition, children don’t choose their parents, what work those parents do, or what culture exists where the family lives. Geographically isolated small cities and towns without plentiful water supplies will not have much, if any heavy manufacturing.

Unfortunately, the mindset represented by those who didn’t want the facts listed has an impact well beyond local charitable appeals.  Problems of all sorts don’t go away just because there is a “good explanation” for their cause.  Put in a lighter way, one of my friends, a retired engineer, observed that, when the highway department installed a huge sign on the interstate highway stating “Bump Ahead,” the highway types thought they’d solved the problem.  They’d only described it… and solutions have to go beyond description.

A little while ago I came across a book review website/blog that pretty much trashed my 2002 novel, Archform:Beauty in a way that was clear the blogger had neither any understanding of what the book was about nor of a lot of other things.  So I simply posted the following comment on the review, “Interestingly enough, both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly gave it starred reviews.”  Not surprisingly, the blogger replied to the effect that he really didn’t care what they thought and that he was selling it back to the used book store… and by the way, that my own words said that minority voices were important.  I agreed that minority voices needed to be heard, but that didn’t mean that they were either accurate or inaccurate simply by virtue of being minority voices.  Then I was questioned about why I’d made the first comment, as if it were somehow rude to question a review offered with open comments. When the blogger then stated that I‘d never change his mind, I pointed out that my comments weren’t made for that point since it was obvious I would never change his mind. I should have left it at that, but, unfortunately, I didn’t.  I added the phrase that I wrote for people who could think, with the clear implication that he couldn’t. I understand that created a slight furor with some people.

This “discussion” of sorts, however, crystalized, at least in my mind, something that I and a great many others have talked around and about, but which tends to be overlooked.  With the proliferation of niche news, niche blogs, niche products, we are creating, or have created, a society where anyone can express the most inaccurate or misrepresentative or misleading views or selected facts for “their” following,” and because like attracts like, seldom are these facts ever challenged in that niche.  Oh, CNN may dispute Fox News, or CBS and BBC news may present very different views of a story, but there is seldom another side shown on any niche program.  What’s truly frightening to me is that there’s more discussion of the other side on the entertainment shows such as Colbert or Bill Maher, or it’s buried on early Sunday morning news shows.  Obviously, there are exceptions, but they’re few, and getting fewer. This “niche isolation” also contributes to societal polarization because the followers in each niche continually reinforce their beliefs in their interactions with each other, which makes it easier and easier to ignore, minimize, or marginalize any conflicting views.  

In addition, the internet/world wide web has become a “wild west” of information dissemination, where some sources are good, some bad, and all misrepresentative to some degree.  The web has also become more and more powerful in influencing what readers choose to buy or not to buy, and for authors that makes favorable information valuable and unfavorable information worrisome, particularly if that unfavorable information is highly misrepresentative or inaccurate.  What compounds this us that with people compartmentalizing their information intake there’s no telling if they’ll ever encounter other information to balance or expand their knowledge base about an author, particularly if their initial information comes from a source that views the author unfavorably.

Part of the reason why I made the initial comment in the first place is because I’ve always disliked anonymous snipers, particularly when they don’t know what they’re talking about. I think, far too idealistically, that such people should not go unquestioned.  But what I realized well after the fact, was that society has become so polarized that, for the most part, very few people still retain even semi-open minds when their judgments or beliefs are questioned. The problem with my reaction to the “review” is that, in all likelihood, all it did was make people who would never like my books anyway mad at me, while suggesting to those who do like my work that I’m excessively sensitive.

But all writers are.  That’s not the question.  The question is how we should balance such sensitivity when facing adverse material on the web that could affect our sales, reputation, and livelihood… and how we actually do.  It’s easy to suggest we remain above the fray, and that has historically been the best policy, but with the way the times are changing, I have to wonder if such “neutrality” is necessarily wise… and yet, I’ve seen and heard certain authors have spent so much time and money reacting to so many slights, misrepresentations, and inaccuracies that I’ve wondered if that didn’t do more damage than help.

It’s definitely a brave new world (web).

On October 22^nd, Liz Bourke’s article on “Reading, Writing, Radicalisation” appeared on Tor.com.  In the article, she notes:

“…the US market has seen near parity [in books published by male and female authors] over the last three years but the volume of noise on the internet is still, in general, louder when it comes to male authors. Now, I will freely grant that many male authors write rather good books, but the engagement/ enthusiasm surrounding them, surrounding their series, and their new releases, seems rather disproportionate by comparison. (It is certainly disproportionate in terms of what is reviewed in genre publications and what makes it onto New And Notable bookshop displays.)

She also notes that in the British F&SF market male authors published exceed female authors by fifteen to thirty percent annually.

One theme pervades both the article and the comments on the article, and that is that with the possible exception of a literal handful of female authors, such as J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer, male authors get more sales and more press than do female authors.  I’m not about to argue with that fact, because, from what I’ve seen, and the facts and figures I’ve observed, it appears to be the case. On a personal basis, I went back over the titles on my Kindle and the paper books I’ve purchased and read over the past three years, and 45% were written by women and 55% by men.  Interestingly enough, the four books I had no interest in finishing were all written by men [and no, I won’t name them].

I would argue, however, that the difference in sales and press does not lie, per se, anywhere close to exclusively in the gender of the writer, but in the approach taken by the writer, and that, on a statistical basis, those books receiving press (especially within the F&SF genre) and massive sales tend to emphasize certain obvious and often violent aspects of human behavior and culture and minimize less blatant details of culture and behavior.  In turn, from what I’ve read, in general, and only in general, since individual authors vary widely, more female authors, even some writing under male or androgynous pen names, tend to show a greater range of subtle details than do male authors and focus more on character and character development than do male authors.

Personally, I have also observed that any book that I write with a female protagonist sells far less well than those with male protagonists, even those in my best-selling fantasy series. Yet while only ten percent of my published novels have female protagonists, those books account for over a quarter of the books of mine that have received starred reviews.  So I have some doubts that it’s because the books featuring women as protagonists aren’t as good as the others.

What all this suggests to me is that certain kinds of books draw more sales and press than do other kinds [obviously], and that the difference isn’t so much because of the gender implied by the author’s name [although I will note that there are still references in places on the internet that insist that I am female, which clearly I’m not], but because of the way in which the book is written, and that, in general, the approach taken by women writers tends to be more thoughtful and detailed… and, frankly, thoughtful and detailed doesn’t sell as well… as I have previously noted in regard to what I write, which is why I think it’s somewhat misleading to suggest that the issue is primarily based on the perceived gender of the author.  I wouldn’t deny that some gender prejudice exists, because I’ve seen it in every field, including writing, but the bottom line in publishing is in fact sales, and for now, the blatant, direct, and not-very-subtle tends to dominate the publishing best-sellers, regardless of author gender.  

The other day was, as one children’s book puts it, “an awful, no-good, horrible, very bad day.”  Well… it wasn’t THAT bad, by any measure, but it was incredibly frustrating.  I discovered that a document required by a government agency, a document that had been sent twice, had apparently been lost or misplaced twice  — which required sending it once again. I also discovered that the manuscript that I’d sent to my editor by UPS two-day air had not arrived, and had been sitting for almost two days in Salt Lake, and when I tried to follow-up, no one knew where it was.  Now, I’d sent the manuscript by two-day air, at his request, so that he could get it and read it during his travels. Another day passed, and UPS finally located it in Des Moines, and I was assured it would be only a day late [which was too late for my editor, meaning a three-week delay before he could read it]… Another day passed, and the manuscript finally reached Philadelphia.  It finally reached New York and the Tor offices five days after being sent as a two-day air shipment.

Both the government and UPS are large institutions, and I think the thing that bothers me about institutional incompetence is that, in essence, no one is accountable.  If I screw up as an author, there’s no doubt that I screwed up.  I can’t blame anything but the price and the package on anyone else, and, in the interests of full disclosure, I will point out that, with the advent of electronic publishing, the vast majority of typos are my fault.  The editors and I both try to catch them, but I made them, not my editors.

The other problem with institutional incompetence is that too many of the “solutions” simply don’t work very well, particularly those which attempt to reward good employees and not less competent ones.  In every institutional, educational, and government or corporate setting in which I’ve worked, and in every one for which I did consulting work, the one thing that was common to all was that the highest rated employees were the ones who knew how to work the system.  Some of them were also quite good at their work as well, but there were many who were far less competent than lower-rated employees who were not as politically skilled, and many incompetent employees managed to keep jobs they screwed up through their political skills.  Yet, as time and experience have shown, reliance on purely “subjective” standards results in massive discrimination and even more corruption, not to mention unbridled nepotism.

Why does this happen even with laws dealing with the matter?  Because the law demands that procedures be “fair,” i.e., not only applied equitably to all employees, but also that employees be judged on objective and measurable standards.  One of the big problems there is that subjective standards are often more accurate.  I’ve watched organizations be torn apart by gossip and back-biting, by underhanded use of accurate information to misinform and to undermine the performance of others, who then appear incompetent, and sometimes do incompetent acts because of such misinformation. Individuals who engage in this kind of manipulative and unscrupulous behavior are usually skilled enough in doing it that they never violate any objective standard.  Thus, the most a supervisor can do is refuse to promote them, and that can be tricky as well, both legally and in practice.  I’ve seen individuals promoted just so that a supervisor could get rid of them.

Do I have any real and workable answers?  Not really, because, like it or not, a certain measure of incompetence is inevitable in any large structure… and that’s why I, and others, have late packages and must sometimes submit forms time and again.

More than a few times in my life, I’ve seen a legal decision and thought, “How could that ever be considered just… or even ethical?”  I’ve certainly heard others voice similar sentiments. Now, I know that while many lawyers and judges, perhaps the vast majority, believe that the highest priority of law is the pursuit of justice, I also know that as a tool for obtaining justice, the law and those who enforce and interpret it often fall short in seeking justice… or in many cases even being able to seek it. Part of the reason for that, besides incompetence or corruption, is the simple fact that we as a society must reconcile conflicting ethical hierarchies.

In the United States, the Congress and the courts have made an effort over the life of the nation to press for the equality of individuals under the law, and that includes the rights of people to be able to vote based on their qualifications rather than their appearance or color or gender, and more recently to be considered for employment based on qualifications. Obviously, we have a ways to go, but the legal emphasis on equal rights has been broadened and, in this regard, matters have improved over the years.

At the same time, with the increase and widening of individual rights, other historic “rights” have been limited, such as, at least for white males, the right to associate with those they chose and the right not to be forced to associate with those they do not choose, the right of to whom they might sell property, and the right to choose the employees they feel are “best” for a position, regardless of more objective qualifications.  So, while at one time, the right of employer’s choice and an individual’s “free association” ruled supreme, now, under current law, those former rights to discriminate on the basis of creed or color or gender have been placed lower on the legal hierarchy than the right of individuals to be considered on their other qualifications.

 The same shift in rights has also occurred in determining the membership in clubs and organizations, so that it has become far more difficult for a club to reject applicants because of gender, color, or religion.  One predictable reaction is that initiation fees at private country clubs have, in general, soared to astronomical levels, so that the discrimination has become, at least theoretically, purely economic.

There is another area where there is a conflict still playing out, and that is between the general “right to life” of a person and the right to property and to protect one’s property.  In general, the general framework of the law has historically allowed the use of deadly force in self-defense, but not to allow in a broad construct the use of deadly force “merely” to protect property, and in recent years there have actually been court cases where burglars have been awarded damages because a property owner used excessive force in protecting his or her property.  In some states, even the right to self-defense was limited if the person whose property was being invaded could withdraw safely.  And most police and lawyers say that, no matter what happened even a few moments before, shooting an intruder or attacker in the back is definitely a dangerous move from a legal standpoint.

The often unspoken justification for this particular “hierarchy” is that no property has a value equivalent to a human life, because one cannot put a value on life.  Even as a general principle, however, there are some problems with this justification. First, both government regulations for the environment and safely are based on fixed [if varied] values for human life, as are the limits for wrongful death under law in many instances. So are insurance policies. Then there’s the question of what property is and what it represents.  If you work and use some of your income to buy various goods – a house, a car, a television, a stereo – you have literally “spent” some of your life on those goods.  If someone steals or destroys those goods, in a sense, they’ve taken part of your life.   This is also true if someone hacks into your bank account or credit card.

But, for the most part, the law doesn’t see it that way.  So you have criminals who”steal,” if you will, small or sometimes significant parts of people’s lives getting minor sentences, and then serving them and returning to doing the same thing, while someone who is convicted of  killing someone will be punished more severely… yet if you add up the “pieces” of lives stolen by so-called non-violent criminals, the total damage to people in society might be far greater.

But that’s the way the hierarchy of law works.

The November issue of The Atlantic contains a feature article with the results of a survey designed to suggest on the fifty greatest inventions. I read the list before I read the article, and it struck me immediately that there was a large “something” missing from the list.  It took me a few minutes to realize what I thought it was – the domestication of animals. Now it turned out that since I didn’t read the article until after reading the list, I missed the fine print, which specified that the inventions had to have been made after the use and discovery of the wheel.

Even so, I remain convinced that human beings would not have civilization as we know it today without the development of domesticated animals, particularly large beasts of burden. As a practical matter, there has not been a technologically advanced human society that did not have beasts of burden.  Even the handicapped Incas had lamas, but for all their wizardry with stone, they never reached the level of wide-scale iron-working, for example [admittedly, the lack of trees and easily reached iron didn’t help either], but the North American native cultures had plenty of trees to work with, but no domesticated beasts of burden, except dogs, and they couldn’t make the technological leap into the iron age, either.

Why not?  Because the development of technology requires an agricultural surplus, and creating such a surplus appears to be close to impossible without organized and productive agriculture, and that has never developed anywhere on the planet without some form of large beast of burden.  A hunter/gatherer or an early planting culture has never made that leap without beasts of burden.

All of which points out to me, at least, that the vaunted human ingenuity needed some help, that we couldn’t pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, so to speak, without the horse, the ox, the water buffalo, the donkey, perhaps the elephant.  In turn, that suggests that there are indeed limits to human capabilities… something that we, as a species, really don’t like to consider.

Just a thought.

I always get amused and sometimes angered when someone insists on “debating” questions or issues that have been settled, especially those settled by science [and yes, I know, some science issues turn out not to be so settled, but those issues get re-settled by evidence, not debate].  For example, like it or not, global warming is happening, and like it or not, there is absolutely no genetic basis for “racial superiority.”  When people insist on “debating” those issues again, especially without new evidence, and either the politicians or the media give into them, it gives air time and publicity to bad ideas.  Just look what has happened time and time again, even under democratic regimes, when various bad ideas were debated, such as “racial purity” in the Weimar Republic that became as result of such issues the Third Reich, or, for that matter, segregation in the United States after the Civil War, by which racial superiority was resurrected through “debate” over the worth and capability of black Americans and ensuing legislation and then an infamous Supreme Court decision.

Here in the United States, I understand fully that the federal government cannot continue to run massive deficits indefinitely, but giving publicity and debating time to Ted Cruz so that he can espouse the idea that the United States should not pay its bills because the deficit is too high?  Not paying your bills is a bad idea, especially when the world’s economy rests on our currency.  This shouldn’t have to be debated.  Not paying our bills shouldn’t even be considered.  That’s not a debate; it’s demagoguery.  So is the always-resurrected idea that an income tax is somehow unconstitutional. 

Evolution is not speculation.  It’s a theory that has literally hundreds of millions of years of evidence behind it, not to mention some recently documented cases of evolution among current living species.  For Texas state legislators, and others, to insist that “creationism” be given equal time in the states’ high school curriculum, as if there is any factual basis to debate, isn’t debating the issues.  The issue is scientifically settled.  It’s just not religiously settled, and that’s not something that should even come into the content of textbooks in a nation founded on the idea of separation of church and state.

Debate on the basis of belief alone is a fool’s game, because it inevitably degenerates into a contest resolved by some form of power, not on the evidence or facts, and the most powerful fool wins.

As I’ve noted before,  at times there are not two equal sides to some issues, at least on a factual basis. There are times to say, “Enough.  Until you have new, real, and tangible evidence to demonstrate conditions have changed, this debate is over.” But, of course, that seldom happens, because true believers are never convinced by facts that don’t agree with their beliefs.

In the science fiction community, another well-known and controversial figure has just recently declared that no one has really debated his ideas.  In a recent interview, Orson Scott Card said about the muted uproar over his views that has followed the turning of Ender’s Game into a movie, “I’ve had no criticism.  I’ve had savage, lying, deceptive personal attacks, but no actual criticism because they’ve never addressed any of my actual ideas.”  This statement is true only in the sense that the attacks have not been made on the issues raised by either the book or the movie, but absolutely false in the sense that the attacks have indeed addressed head-on ideas that Card has expressed elsewhere. 

Card has said, “Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down…” [Mormon Times, 2008].  In an interview[Solon.com, February 3, 2000], Card actually stated that “It should be perfectly legitimate to fire somebody for that reason [for being a homosexual] or reasons like it.” 

He’s also recently said words to the effect that, while he opposed the changes in the laws that now prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation/gender and allow gay marriage on a state-by-state basis, now that these laws exist, they’ve made his past comments moot.  Legally, that’s largely true, except…he did say that he intended to bring down the government if it “changed” the definition of marriage, and those words were rather close to advocating the violent overthrow of the government.

Now, I have met Scott on two occasions, and he certainly did not come across as stridently as those quotes indicate, but the quotes I cited are anything but isolated instances of his views.  And, like it or not, those views are at variance with both the law and public opinion, and pointing out that fact is not a personal attack.  It’s a sad truth.  Scott can talk all he wants about his critics not addressing the issues, but they have.  They just haven’t addressed the issues he wants addressed.

And as a public figure, which Scott definitely is,  especially with the coming release of the Ender’s Game film and the position of the book atop the New York Times paperback bestseller list, he should also know that once you open your mouth on public issues, especially if you say something nasty or hateful to or about others, it’s not going away.  Not ever.  Just ask Paula Deen.

As long as I’ve been writing commentary on this site, I’ve received comments from proponents of  “small government,” who argue, paraphrasing Ronald Reagan and others, that small  government is better. 

What few of these proponents of “small government” seem to understand is that the combination of small government and high technology is not a recipe for freedom, but for oppression of everyone but the well-off by the well-off.  Now… I am not anywhere close to a fan of government for the sake of government or for more bureaucracy and government agencies, but the problem we face as a society is that technology, especially high technology, requires bigness, and bigness equals power, and government, and sometimes not even government, is about all that can rein in concentrated corporate power.

At one point, the United States did have small government.  We didn’t have food inspections, and the amount of tainted, spoiled, and bad food sold was enormous.  We didn’t have environmental regulations, and most major rivers were dead or dying, and little could live in them, and several were so polluted they caught fire.  The air was so filled with soot in some cities that white shirts were gray by noon. We didn’t have banking regulations, and on a regular basis there were widespread bank failures where depositors lost everything.  We didn’t even have standardized time zones, and train schedules were essentially unusable.

Today, the United States and the world is far more advanced – and complex. There are over 80,000 flights in the United States every day. Major airports average a takeoff and landing every 1-4 minutes. Despite all the complaints, the U.S. averages about one major commercial accident a year, and some years have passed without any. Without government-imposed uniform standards for operations, safety, and maintenance, those numbers would be far higher.  Without regulation of the communications spectrum, broadcasting would be either chaos or the property of broadcasters with the biggest wallets and the most powerful transmitters.

Despite the complaints and the touting of industry about its innovation, without government funding and research, we wouldn’t have the internet or the I-Phone.  Nor would we have the interstate highway system.  We would also have millions of people living and dying in extreme poverty – as they once did – as opposed to a less than perfectly efficient welfare/disability system that results in a much less than desirable and barely adequate standard of living for a majority of the unemployed or unemployable.

Yet despite the progress created by government, imperfect as it is, there is a lack of recognition of how it has improved life in the United States for virtually everyone, and the cries for small government continue.  What these people want, it seems to me, is less government regulation over that sector of commerce, business, or life that is most important to them, in particular, and fewer rules and regulations that impede their freedom of action and ability to maximize profits. 

Government is anything but perfect, and in many areas, its regulations are indeed cumbersome and sometime unnecessary.  In other areas, the regulations don’t work, and in some areas, more regulation is likely necessary.  But what that means is that we need more effective and efficient government, not the “small government” so often touted by both ultra-conservatives and ultra-libertarians. We tried small government, and it didn’t work for a moderately complex industrializing society, and it certainly won’t work for a society that’s even more complex in a world that is getting ever more complicated.

But then, the history of small government, and its copious failures, has already been forgotten, as so much of unpleasant history is, lost in the nostalgia for a time that never was.

Over the past two centuries especially, but for longer than that, authors, historians, pundits and others have debated the question of whether history repeats itself and what, if anything, we can learn from the study of history, Personally, I like Santayana’s statement about those who fail to learn the lessons of history being doomed to repeat them.  But I also like Twain’s comment that history doesn’t repeat itself, but that it rhymes.

To say that there’s been some upheaval caused by conflicts centered on the Islamic faith over the last half-century or so would be an understatement.  Some, such as Bill Maher, who dislikes all religion, but Islam in particular, have tended to overlook the historical “rhyme” presented by the crisis facing Islam today – and it is indeed a crisis, because Christianity entered a similar phase and crisis some five centuries ago, when the ideas coming out of the Renaissance, a more scientific outlook, and doubts about the infallibility of Church and the Papacy came to a head with brutal conflicts all across Europe that lasted more than a century and resulted in the Reformation and the fragmentation of the Catholic Church.  Too many Christians today tend to gloss over the brutality and the death toll that occurred during that period.  Historical records indicate that the death toll amounted to as much as half the population of the German principalities and a third of those living in Czech or Bohemian territories.  This was also the time period when the Inquisition effectively terrorized Spain, and when Protestant-Catholic strife wracked England.  In the end, the result was effectively the establishment of government in western Europe on primarily a secular basis [with a few notable exceptions], not that such governments were not initially highly influenced by religion and religious institutions.

We’re seeing a huge socio-politico-religious upheaval involving Islam today, largely centered in the Middle East and Northern Africa today, and that strife is largely the result of the impact of Western secularity and technology on societies that have essentially been governed on an Islamic basis largely at odds with the fundamental secular basis of western nations. and most likely at least partly, if not largely, incompatible with high technology and science.  Such secular beliefs as individual worth outside the religious structure, the greater personal value and political independence of women, the supremacy of science and the scientific mindset over religion and doctrine pose a tremendous threat to the existing social and religious structure in those nations – just as the Renaissance and the rise of science did to the Catholic Church five centuries ago, and that established Islamic structure is opposing and will continue to oppose change, just as happened in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, frankly, just as some fundamentalist Christian sects still oppose change.

Unhappily, the “lessons of history,” or their “rhymes,” as Twain put it, as well as what we are already observing suggest that the death toll will continue, and may well rise, because the fight over belief is central to human and social identity…and few give up old and familiar beliefs for newer “truths” without a struggle, especially if the new beliefs result in less power for those individuals (in this case, traditional Islamic males) who stand to lose the position that they have held through religion.

Recently, an article in New Scientist cited a study that showed readers of “literary fiction” displayed more empathy than did readers of “popular” fiction.  After the wave of nausea, disgust, and anger passed, I couldn’t help but think how great a disservice the  English-speaking “literati” have done to both authors and the reading public by making an artificial distinction – that supposedly represents quality – between popular and/or genre fiction and so-called literary fiction. This disdain seems to be less pronounced in the United Kingdom than in the United States, but that’s my view as an outsider to British literary circles.  Unfortunately, this distinction is reinforced by a goodly number of the F&SF publishers, possibly because they really don’t want it known that the distinction is artificial and that there are “literary-quality” genre books.  Heaven forbid, people might not read any F&SF book if they thought they might have to think, or perhaps it just makes marketing that much simpler.

Personally, I think most readers know exactly what they want to read, and even what type of book suits their mood at a particular time.  Despite the labels and marketing hype and misleading cover blurbs, experienced readers find authors who appeal to them. 

I have no problem with observations about the quality of writing, provided those observations are accurate and based on the words of the author, but I have a huge objection to automatically categorizing fiction on the basis of either genre or popularity. It’s definitely true that a great amount of best-selling “mainstream” fiction, i.e., popular fiction, does not present great depth and sophistication, and the same holds true for much of genre fiction – but not all of either is without depth and great skill in writing.  Just look at the consternation when everyone discovered that J.K. Rowling had published an “adult” novel under a pseudonym… and that it was considered rather good.

 Margaret Atwood, whether she will ever admit it or not, writes science fiction in a literary style, but it’s still science fiction.  So does Gene Wolfe, but Gene’s work is considered F&SF, while Atwood’s is literary fiction. There are more than a few F&SF titles published every month that, in terms of style, sophistication, and depth, meet every so-called “literary” criterion.  Yet, particularly in the United States, it seems to me, the literary establishment cannot seem to bear the thought that a genre writer, or a popular writer, might actually exhibit some skill while actually telling an entertaining story with depth and an exploration of life and meaning beyond the tried and true tropes that still seem to shackle so much of so-called literary fiction.

Despite the disdain of genre fiction, particularly F&SF, by American “literati,” more and more ideas and approaches from F&SF are turning up in so-called mainstream fiction, and, likewise, more “literary” approaches to writing are appearing in F&SF.  Both are very good developments;  it’s just too bad that all too many members of the self-proclaimed [if quietly and in a falsely self-deprecating manner that ostensibly denies such membership] American literati don’t understand that.  They’d do far better to concentrate on celebrating good fiction, regardless of labels.

Many years ago, I went to Washington, D.C., as a junior legislative director for a U.S. Congressman.  At that time, all or at least the vast majority of budget authorizations and appropriations bills were being passed by both House and Senate before the end of the fiscal year.  Several terms passed, and I became the staff director for another congressman, and the fiscal year was shifted several months to the present system because Congress was having trouble passing appropriations on time.  More years passed, and, after more time as a Congressional staff director, and then as a Director of Legislation at EPA, and a stint with a D.C. consulting firm,  I left Washington.  By then Congress was failing to pass quite a number of appropriations bills and relying more and more on stop-gap continuing resolutions.

We’re now to the point where, for the past three years, Congress has been unable to pass any individual appropriations bills and has lumped everything into a continuing resolution, or several sequential resolutions. And this year, Congress couldn’t even pass something like that on time and shut down a good-sized chunk of the government for half a month.  At the same time, the annual federal budget deficit has ballooned, although, as a result of a slightly improved economy and the cuts forced by the meat-ax of the “sequester,” the deficit has dropped considerably this past year.

And in another three months or so, we’ll likely go through another version of the same manufactured crisis.

Still… I have to ask, what gives?  When I left working for Congress more than thirty years ago, computers were in their infancy and most Congressional offices relied on electric typewriters and hand calculators.  So did most government agencies.  But everything got done, generally on time, if sometimes at the last moment.  Congress currently passes more legislation than it did thirty years ago, but accomplishes less of substance, and it argues over absolutely everything, or so it seems.

The Congress can’t seem to agree on much of anything, but then, from all the polls I’ve seen, and from talking to people everywhere, this lack of agreement in Congress seems to reflect a lack of agreement among those who elect members of Congress.

So is it really the fault of Congress?  Or is it ours… and it’s just much easier to blame the people we’ve elected when we insist that they follow the majority in their state or district, or we’ll remove them from office?  

Although Congress is apparently deadlocked, all members of Congress do agree on one thing.  Someone else should pay for it.  The far right wants the poor to pay… by cutting their benefits, access to insurance and various other assistance.  The left wants the richest to pay, and those in the middle want anyone else but the middle class to pay.  Those who are more affluent are tired of paying the largest share of taxes, and they want tax cuts.  Various industries want tax subsidies, and when one industry gets a lower tax bill than another, that is indeed a goody, regardless of the rationale. The same is true of tax breaks for individuals, for whatever reason.

This is likely the road to disaster, because what gets paid for will be decided by the votes bought on the extremes.  Despite paying the lowest tax rates in almost a century, the upper one percent will fight and bribe anyone they can, legally, of course, through contributions, to keep unrealistically low tax rates low, and to lower them more, if possible.

 The poorest Americans will vote where they can for programs that often provide better benefits than those enjoyed by the working poor holding down two jobs or more.  Those in the middle, if recent events are any indication, will get more and more upset at stagnant wages and higher costs of living and are likely to throw their lot in with the one percent… which will only maintain or increase the current deficit and make the increasing numbers of the poor and working poor angrier and angrier.

Corporations and businesses under pressure to post or increase profits will continue to lobby against any program or law that adds costs to their doing business and will likely press for anything to keep labor costs low, which is why they keep hiring part-timers and oppose the ACA.  The problem there is that the corporate tax rate is so riddled with loopholes that a huge percentage of large businesses don’t pay anything near the statutory rate.  In fact, the U.S. has just about the highest corporate tax rate on the books… and close to the lowest actual tax revenue, thanks to the loopholes.

Pretty much everyone in Congress seems to ask, publicly at least, “How will we pay for what we’ve done and want to do?”  But beyond that, nothing gets done on reducing long-term federal spending because each side insists that its programs are sacrosanct and its constituents are already paying too much in the way of taxes.

Right now, of course, the Republicans are blaming the President, just as two terms ago the Democrats were blaming the previous President.  What both parties publicly ignore and what the public somehow seems to forget is that the President can’t authorize or appropriate anything.  That’s up to Congress.  No one else.

Years ago, the Supreme Court declared that the President must spend what Congress orders spent… and the Administration must collect the taxes legislated by the Congress, or not collect them if Congress has legislated tax breaks.  This mess is Congress’ doing, not President Bush’s and not President Obama’s… and a good first step toward fixing it would be to recognize just that.   

The other night I was discussing the problem of gun-related deaths and violence with some friends. One declared that he saw no need for gun owners to have fifteen or fifty bullet magazine clips or high caliber long range sniper rifles. The other immediately asked, “How many domestic murders have involved sniper rifles or expensive specialty firearms?” Off-hand, none of us could think of any, although I’m certain that there must be some. Then we wondered about background checks… and something else struck me – the underlying issue behind much of what has polarized the political system.

It’s actually pretty simple… and appalling, and I’ll get to it in a bit, but first, a few observations in the way of background. Two generations ago or so, in the United States, there weren’t near as many abortions as there are now, for several reasons. First, abortion was essentially illegal, as well as morally condemned, and unwed motherhood disgraced both the mother and her family [not the father or his family, for some reason]. But there were a great number of “shotgun” weddings and “premature” births involving recently married couples. Likewise, despite the outbursts and spectacular recent killings, the murder rate is at fifty year low, but accidental deaths from guns tends to track the number of firearms in circulation. For all that, the rate of deaths from firearms in the U.S. is almost twenty times that of the average of other industrialized nations, and the reason is very simple. Most of them simply don’t allow the number and range of personal firearms that the U.S. does. With over 300 million firearms in private hands in the U.S., banning or eliminating them is a practical impossibility. So what else can be done to reduce gun deaths? Stricter background checks? The Newtown shooting wouldn’t have been stopped by that, nor by the checks most are proposing. Nor, most likely, would the Aurora theatre shooting . Far stricter standards would be necessary, standards at which most Americans would balk.

Now… add the issue of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. What has the far right up in arms is what they see as a denial of freedom, the fact that the goal of the ACA is to require everyone to have insurance. Without such insurance more than 30 million people will not have equal access to health care, and quite a number of them will die, or die earlier, from such lack of access [and the rest of us will pay for expensive partial care for those who don’t, but that’s another issue].

There’s a pattern here, and, as I said above, it’s pretty simple… and brutal. The freedom to have guns, to have abortions, and to refuse to require to insist everyone have health insurance – and for other “freedoms” as well – results in a far higher level of deaths in our society than would otherwise be the case.

To maintain the degree of freedom that we apparently insist upon means that we will incur, as a society, a great number of deaths that would not occur if we were less “free.” And the associated question that goes with that is whether those costs are willingly being paid by those who largely incur them – the poor, the uneducated, the innocent victims, often just bystanders, of shootings – or whether those costs are being foisted off on them by those who cite their need for “freedom,” because, like it or not, the freedom to bear arms or have an abortion, or not to have health insurance imposes costs, often in lives lost, on others. So does the “freedom” to hire part-time workers instead of full-timers.

In short, the price of these kinds of freedom is paid in blood, often the blood of innocents, and more often than the price is not paid by those who lobby and tout such freedoms, but by those who don’t have the advantages of those who insist on the need for those freedoms, yet I don’t see this argument being raised, except in the case of abortion. Why not in other matters? Aren’t the lives of those already born as valuable as those of the unborn? Either way, it’s a double standard that continues to go unrecognized.

The current political stalemate between a U.S. House of Representatives dominated and, in effect, terrorized by the far right and the U.S. Senate and the President is a clear indication, at least to me, that the ultra-conservative elements in U.S. politics have more in common with the Taliban than with Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton. The far right opposes the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, and has decided that, since it has been unable to prevail through the normal legislative process, it will do whatever it takes, no matter what the cost to the country and the world economy, to destroy the ACA.

In taking this stance, the far right has abandoned any pretense at principles in the pursuit of what they conveniently call principle, but which is a stand on a single issue, and nothing more, because the only principle behind opposing the ACA is to establish that access to healthcare is determined solely by economic status and  resources. Not only are the ultra-conservatives willing to destroy the economic well-being of both the nation and the world economic system to establish this “principle,” but they’re effectively bent on subverting the underlying basis of the Constitution [which they cite continually and erroneously] if they don’t get their way, despite the fact that they are in the minority. In effect, they’re demanding rule by the minority effectively outside the accepted and legal structure of our system. That makes compromise by the President and the Democrats impossible without establishing the fact that any law can be negated by a minority of members of Congress who are willing to risk destroying the system if they don’t get their way. 

In that sense, they’ve established that they’re not politicians, but political terrorists, because their actions place their “principle,” one that is not accepted by the majority through established process, above the common well-being, and they are willing to create great suffering to get their way. That’s not politics, but terrorism

The House Majority leader, John Boehner, claims that he doesn’t have enough Republican votes to pass a continuing resolution, at least not one that doesn’t defund or delay the Affordable Care Act, and the President suggested that Boehner bring up such a “clean” resolution and see.  Boehner, so far, has refused, saying that what the President demands is unconditional surrender, while the President has pointed out that giving in to the demands of a minority that cannot muster the votes to obtain what they want through the normal legislative process is blackmail, and he isn’t about to be blackmailed.

If the President gives in to the far right, it will establish the precedent that political terrorism overrides the will of the majority.  If he doesn’t, he risks great economic catastrophe on a world-wide basis and long-term higher costs for everything in the United States. 

This stalemate isn’t about federal spending.  It’s not even about Obamacare.  It’s about political terrorism and the entire future of the United States.   

In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Jack Cade proposes killing all the lawyers, a passage that has been debated, interpreted, and re-interpreted a number of times, but which is most likely based on the English dissatisfaction in the fourteen century with the legal profession’s use of its skills to bolster the position of the gentry over the peasantry and middle class. The American legal system has not yet reached that nadir, since it appears to be equally willing to litigate on behalf of anyone, that is, so long as its healthy fees are paid.  There is, however, another profession whose excesses have gone less noticed…and whose “successes” have contributed greatly to the sad state of both the American economy and society.

I refer, of course, to the accountants, those bean-counters extraordinaire who know the cost and price of everything and the value of nothing.  Nor do they understand, unhappily, business or, for that matter, economics. I don’t think it is coincidental in the slightest that all too many of the CEOs of failing companies that in fact collapsed, including Borders Books, were accountants.  Calling in an accountant when a company is in trouble is like prescribing blood-letting for a victim in traumatic shock from loss of blood.  One of the “cost-saving” tricks ordered by Borders was to return inventory to publishers in order to gain credit to purchase new releases.  Let’s see… reduce the variety and depth of what you have to sell… and you think that’s going to do what?

On my last book tour, I signed at a bookstore where the events manager informed me that “management” had informed him that he could no longer order additional back-stock for authors who were doing signings.  This is typical of accountant-idiocy.  First, at least at my signings, a healthy percentage of book sales, sometimes as much as 50%, comes from the sale of new copies of older books – that is, where back-stock is available – largely because potential new readers prefer a less expensive paperback and won’t generally buy a new hardcover of an author they haven’t already read. Second, unsold books are returnable.  Third, they’ll likely sell anyway, if over a longer period.  Fourth, a percentage of those readers who bought paperbacks will return and buy more books.  In short, there’s very little downside and a considerable upside, but the accountant only sees an immediate cost-outlay. 

This sort of short-sightedness isn’t just something that affects bookselling.  What about the CEO of J.C.Penny who tried to rebrand the store by eliminating coupons and sales in the middle of the great recession? When Penny’s greatest appeal to its core market was just those sales and coupons? That, of course, just caused sales and revenues to plummet further and faster.  And then there are all those accountants who’ve decided that hiring two or three part-time employees to replace one full-time employee to save a few dollars is the way to go, but don’t think about whether all those part-timers will have enough money to buy the goods and services that keep the economy going. Then there was that former giant of the accounting field, Arthur Andersen, which certified the accounts of Enron… and then saw itself litigated into oblivion.

In 2006, the great and revered management consultant Peter Drucker made the point to a conference of CEOs that “No one, but no one, in your company knows less about your business than your CFO.”  Despite Drucker’s observation, the number of CEOs with an accounting or finance background is at an all-time high, and so are profits… but sales are flat, and good full-time jobs are down. 

Coincidence?  I don’t think so.

A reader recently complained about the $10.99 price on the electronic version of The One-Eyed Man being too high, but the retail hardcover price is $25.99,  and the discounted on-line hardcover price is $16.85 [as I write this].  So why do some readers consider a price of $10.99 so expensive for a just-released book?  Buying a currently published book should be about the story, not about the format.  Rare books are another question, I fully grant.  But, in fact, the amount that a reader pays for the story put forth in electronic format is about the same as what another reader pays for that story in a hardcover.  The price differential is the difference in cost of how it’s presented.  Those people who insist that ebooks should be hugely cheaper because the electronic costs of production are so much cheaper are confusing the cost of physical production with the costs of creating the story itself, including… ahem… paying the author, and getting that story to the point of physical production.

I’ve read enough self-published “stuff,” as well as enough manuscripts from writers and would-be writers, to say that all the work that’s done by publishers between the writer’s turning in what he or she thinks is a finished novel and when a final product is delivered does greatly improve the work, and at times turns something nearly unreadable into a gem.  Even those writers who could handle all those details benefit, because they take time, and they also take contacts and skill. I’ll grant that there are some writers who can produce finished work and who also have the technical skills, or can muster others with those skills, to self-publish a credible product. But such authors are very, very far and few between, and many of them have learned to do so through their experience with the publishing industry… and the time spent doing such tasks is time not spent creating the next book, and that’s another cost that’s often overlooked.

The demands for lower ebook prices don’t consider another valuable service provided by publishers. They greatly reduce the time and energy required to find a readable book.  Now… I’ve heard some writers and readers claim that there are sites on the internet that will or could do that as well. So far, I haven’t seen a single one that does.  I’ve seen many sites that comment on what the publishers do, but second-guessing what someone else has done is easy.  Plowing through thousands of self-published books and analyzing and reporting on them is anything but… and I suspect the economics of doing that will limit those who can do that, especially those who could do it well.  As for reader reviews… forget it. Most reader reviews are either by fans or by those who hate a book, and few of either are that valuable to a reader unfamiliar with an author… and how can a reader unfamiliar with a self-published author tell which is which?

There’s another side to ebooks as well.  They save on storage space for apartment dwellers or others with space issues for storing hardback or paperback books. For some people, this is a great advantage.  So why do readers who seek the latest IPhone ap complain about a format that provides advantages and is actually cheaper than the hardback format that doesn’t?  And a novel in e-format is cheaper than the latest movie, or close to it, and offers the advantage of being able to read it again… and again. And costs the same, or less, than the paperback format once the paperback is released?

Just a few thoughts…

Over the past weeks and months, I’ve encountered more and more examples of people either losing jobs or having their working hours cut so that their employer would not have to pay health care benefits as a result of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.  And like many people, I’m beginning to get outraged – but not at the ACA. I’m outraged for another reason, one based on the interplay of economics and human nature.

Let us assume you have a business, one with employees, and that you provide a service or produce some physical goods, or perhaps both.  To be successful, any business must bring in more income than what it costs to provide the goods and services that generate that income.  Those costs include what you pay for raw materials, equipment, office supplies, heat, power, rent or mortgage payments for whatever property you need, parts, taxes, permits, fees for accountants, legal services …and wages and possibly benefits for employees.

If a business owner needs a lawyer or an accountant, the owner is going to have to pay more for someone with those skills and credentials.  If the business needs a mechanic, the same is true.  The only levels of employees whose wages are not “protected” in some way are those whose skills do not require specific training or credentials or those who are professionals in fields where there are substantial numbers of unemployed individuals, such as graduate academics. No one protests, or not too loudly [and if they do, few listen] about what it costs to hire a lawyer, a plumber, an accountant, a computer programmer.  But almost every business owner I know complains about the costs of lower-paid individuals, and they complain even more when the government raises those costs, through either the minimum wage or something like ACA/Obamacare, and all too many of those same business owners do everything they can to keep wage costs low for those individuals.  The same is absolutely true of state colleges and universities, with their reliance on low-paid clerical and security staff, and poorly paid teaching assistants and adjuncts.

What this shows, quite clearly, is that, at least in the United States, a sizable chunk of business, higher education, and at least certain parts of government are quite willing to squeeze everything they can out of those employees lowest on the totem pole, whether by hiring double the number of part-timers, or avoiding providing the benefits paid the higher-compensated full-timers, all the time protesting that paying living wages and health insurance for those lowest-paid employees will put them out of business, yet expecting someone else to provide health care, either government or other employers and workers [through higher health care premiums]. And, again, for the most part, those who complain the most are those most insulated from the lack of affordable health care, which, like it or not, translates into the availability of insurance for those low-paid workers.

Yet at the same time, we, as a society, make no distinction between those individuals who work hard and cannot afford health care and those who hardly work.  As a society, we have effectively determined that no one can be denied health care, even those individuals who are clear and total freeloaders.  Is that willful blindness… or hypocrisy… or some combination of both?

Interestingly enough, I also don’t see anyone asking questions on the other side of the issue.  Why should we have any interest in preserving businesses and institutions that can only survive by exploiting people who are working hard to that degree?  Or is it that we all want everything so cheaply that we don’t really care about those people?  And why do so many people vote for politicians who support that view?

The other day I was talking with people at a wedding.  The majority of them were Republicans, and all of them opposed the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.  What floored me wasn’t so much that they opposed the ACA, but the grounds on which they opposed it.  One man told me that anyone who couldn’t afford health insurance was covered by state Medicaid.  Another person insisted that if someone couldn’t afford health instance, she didn’t want to pay for it.  When I pointed out that all of us are already paying for the uninsured through higher medical prices to cover unpaid emergency room and hospital care, she said that they could go to InstaCare, as if local acute care clinics didn’t have the same problem as hospitals and emergency rooms.

 While my wife and I are fortunate enough to have health insurance and in a position where we cannot be denied coverage, we both have seen and continue to see the array of problems.  There’s the college student born with hydroencephalitis, who works minimum wage jobs and cannot get insurance nor meet the criteria for Medicaid.  There are the scores of self-supporting college students who have injuries or long-term health problems whose parents refuse to include them on their own health insurance, or whose parents themselves have no insurance. There are the Walmart employees whose hours are capped so that they cannot have health benefits.  There was the wife of a friend whose cancer treatments were not covered by his company’s health insurance policy and who died because the cancer spread while they tried to raise money for a deposit demanded by the hospitals in order to prove they could pay for the treatment.  Or the full-time retail employee who did have health insurance, but was hospitalized, required surgery, and even after insurance, still ended up owing, as a result of deductibles and exclusions, more than most of his yearly take-home pay. I could give a very long list, and not one of those I listed would be either a so-called welfare queen or deadbeat.  Beyond that, my list wouldn’t begin to deal with all the problems faced by the over 40 million Americans without health insurance.

 I can’t begin to solve these problems, but I am very much aware of them, and we’ve helped where we could, yet most of the people to whom I talked at that wedding refused even to acknowledge that such problems exist, almost as if they occurred in another world.  I’m seeing more and more of this, especially in recent years, and the current Congressional impasse over the federal budget reflects, I believe, the growing trend of Americans – and perhaps those in other industrialized countries – to deny what is happening outside their “world” – or their “bubble,” as the comedian Bill Maher terms it.  The problem with such denial is that compromise is impossible when people in different worlds refuse even to acknowledge the events that are happening to others because those events, and even facts, don’t fit into their own world.

 Put in another way – we don’t need space travel to find other worlds;  there are more than enough alien worlds right here on earth, even if no one wants to admit it.