Recently, in his column about Arthur C. Clarke in the New York Times, Dave Iztkoff explored whether present and future writers would be as successful as Clarke had been in envisioning future technologies. Over the years, various writers and academics have attempted to quantify in a rough fashion just how accurate SF has been in predicting the future. In his Foundation series, written around 1940, Isaac Asimov did anticipate the pocket calculator — and even the color of the numbers — but he thought it would be thousands of years before they were developed, instead of twenty or so. Clarke himself thought we’d have expeditions to Jupiter by 2001, and he lived to see that men hadn’t gotten farther than a few missions to the moon. In his book, The Forever War, first published in 1974, Joe Haldeman envisioned interstellar travel by the twenty-first century, and we still don’t even have interplanetary travel.

At the same time, in most areas, we’ve advanced further than Verne and the visionaries of the late nineteenth century imagined, sometimes much further. So what happened? Why has that changed?

I’d submit that the failings of later SF writers to anticipate the future rest on three factors. The first is that while our world has become far smaller than anticipated by early writers, our solar system, galaxy, and universe are far larger and more complex than even most scientists truly understood. The second is that future advancement depends on an increasing share of our resources being devoted to science and technology. And the third is that most predictions, either from scientists or from SF writers, are based on extrapolating from the known, because it’s difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of what lies beyond the known, without basing it on what is known. Yet many technologies have come from what was not previously known or understood. In short, most predictions suggest more of the same, except with changes that imply the future will be better… or worse, but not all that different. Human motives and emotions aren’t likely to change; that’s true enough, but the framework within which they’re expressed is likely to change greatly.

In fact, the future is likely to be different, and most probably both better and worse. Given the great advances in micro-electronics and communications, as David Brin has suggested, future society is most likely to be the “transparent society” where almost everything can be discovered by almost anyone, and the most valuable commodity may be privacy. In some of my work, particularly in The Elysium Commission, I’ve explored this to some degree, but I don’t think I’ve more than scratched the surface in terms of how that kind of technology will change society, and I’ve seen very few books that do explore that possibility.

All too many future SF stories postulate trade between solar systems. In fact, the only trade, if there is any at all, will be knowledge or unique art or artifacts, because the energy cost of such travel would be so great that any good could be produced within any given system far more cheaply than it could possibly be transported and sold.

What about finance? We’ve just seen the world-wide impact of the failure of a U.S. financial subsystem consisting of sophisticated and highly leveraged mortgage-backed securities. What sort of new financial complexities lie down the road — and what sorts of regulations?

A recent study I ran across suggests that people who are not good readers are far more susceptible to manipulation by con men and politicians and more likely to take at face value what they see on video presentations. Add to that the fact that the rise of a video visual culture has almost halved the percentage of supposedly “educated” people in the USA [those with a baccalaureate degree] who have the reading skills to follow sophisticated written arguments and statements. In other words, less than 30% of those with a college degree can do so. What are the political implications of that? What sort of future — and stories — might come from it?

Even ten years ago, could anyone — did anyone, except the Israelis — imagine citizens of the United States lining up for security searches more reminiscent of communist Russia just to get on an airplane?

In almost any area or discipline where one might look, there are similar changes beneath the surface, and all of them will impact the future. What is certain is that, beyond the next decade or so, the future won’t be what we’re likely to think it will be. But then, even for scientists and writers, it never has been.

I tried to get deposit slips from a well-known financial institution for almost a month. I’m pleased with all the services and features, except this one thing. They wouldn’t send me more deposit slips. I finally received them two weeks after contacting a vice president. Considering that I first requested replacement slips over two months ago, it’s rather amazing that I have to send them money in care of a vice president with a cover letter because they can’t get around to sending me replacement slips. After all, shouldn’t we be able to do better in our computerized high-tech society?

Sadly not, I have to conclude. While we have progressed immensely in our ability to move information and electrons around, our infrastructure for moving much of anything else seems to be on the decline. Another example is mail. My mother lives a ten hour drive from me. I can get to her house almost entirely on interstate highways, with only a quarter mile drive from my house to the interstate and a mile from the interstate to her house. So why, exactly does it take 4-5 days on a regular basis for the U.S. Postal Service to get a letter in either direction? Since 1950, the consumer price index has increased some 760%, that is, the average of all consumer goods costs more than 7 ½ times what the same goods did in 1950. The cost of a first class postage stamp is up 1233%, or more than twelve times what a stamp cost in 1950. In 1950, the vast majority of first class mail was delivered within three days, and many cities still had twice a day deliveries — and the Post Office wasn’t running a deficit. To get a chance at three-day delivery now will cost you a minimum of $4.60.

It’s not just the U.S. Postal Service, either. Last year, we ordered a loveseat from a well-known furniture manufacturer — and this is often necessary because we live many miles from any significant furniture retailer — and it took eight weeks to get it. It arrived broken, and another five weeks passed before we received a replacement.

I just returned from ICFA [the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts], where three boxes of books sent from various publishers — with tracking numbers — had failed to arrive, and two different “overnight” shipping companies had no idea where they were. Then, there is the business of stocking supermarket shelves. Why is it that they always run out of one brand of tea, or one brand of potato chips, week after week, month after month, and never stock more of that brand? Is it incompetence? Or merely a stock and price fixing arrangement that might violate any decent antitrust legislation? Speaking of which, why can’t the techno-whizzes who create all those stock-trading algorithms come up with something that might flag more precisely insider trading or fraudulent mortgage lending?

I won’t mention — except in passing — the state of airline baggage. But I will ask why we seem to have more trouble delivering “stuff” and finding it when we have more technology than ever before at our fingertips and why so little of that technology is employed to deal with the nagging glitches in life.

According to “The Philanthropy Hormone,” an article published in the April issue of Discover, one third of all U.S. philanthropic giving in 2006 went to religious groups. The next largest category, at 14%, was education. Foundations and human service organizations each received somewhat more than 10%, while cultural/arts organizations and international affairs groups received about 4% each, with other categories receiving smaller percentages. All told, on average, Americans contributed 2.2% of their after-tax earnings to charity.

This distribution of charitable giving is intriguing, particularly because it suggests, as is also the case with morality, that charity is strongly linked to belief in a higher being of some sort. One could almost make the case that a great deal of this charity comes from religious-based fear — punishment in the afterlife — or this one — by a divine being. At the very least, one could suggest that at least some of the giving in other areas might also be inspired by “divine guidance.”

Of course, there might be another reason for the predominance of religious giving. It simply could be that religious establishments provide a critical social function in knitting communities together, and that the contributions they receive are a form of payment for that social cohesion and not “charity” at all.

All this raises another question. Why is there so little F&SF dealing with the issues in and around charity? Certainly, there are more than a few novels dealing with religion, some notable, like Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, and I’ve certainly taken on belief and religion, but offhand out of the thousands of F&SF novels I’ve read, I can’t think of one notable title dealing with the issue of charity and its impact on humans and humanity in general [and as sure as I’ve written this, someone will comment and raise a title I should have remembered].

Either way… what exactly do the numbers above suggest about the human species? Are there any writers out there who want to take a crack at it?

In some ways, the first three books of the Spellsong Cycle are among the most realistic fantasies I’ve written, particularly in dealing with sexual politics and intrigue. Interestingly enough, each of the five books received starred reviews from some literary source or another, and the last book was a book of the year for one literary review. None of my other fantasy series has received anywhere close to that sort of critical acclaim, but the books of the Spellsong Cycle don’t sell as well as those in my other fantasy series.

It can’t be because there’s no sex, since none of my books — except one, published more than 20 years ago — contain anything other than indirect allusions to sex. Is it because the main character is a middle-aged woman? Is it because the source of magic is the fairly technical application of song and accompaniment? Or is it because I dared to show certain very direct components of sexual discrimination?

All of those may play a part, but I suspect that the real reason is the same reason why my science fiction novel Archform:Beauty won plaudits and awards and only sold modestly. The success/failures of characters in both books hinge on the value of experience. No young hero saves the day against impossible odds. In the Spellsong Cycle, Anna bides her time, utilizes the bitter lessons of academic politics and a failed marriage to position herself so that, when the time comes, she can act effectively. She doesn’t hate men, but she has few illusions about either their strengths and weaknesses, and she’s not any easier in assessing those of her own “fair” sex, either.

In Archform:Beauty, the experiences of the five viewpoint characters — all told from the first person — interact and combine to create the resolution, and like most such resolutions in life, the results are bittersweet and mixed… and, also like life, anything but world-shaking.

This does bring up a point that has certainly been debated for years, if not centuries, and that is whether, except in exceedingly rare cases, books that hew closer to the realities of human emotions and experiences can ever be wildly popular. Is popularity based on the defiance of experience, the dream of identifying with what we as readers know to be impossible, but would still like to believe? Does it matter?

This might seem like an “eternal question,” but in a sense, it’s anything but eternal, because in terms of human culture, the modern novel is an extremely recent innovation. While epic tales date back millennia, and one of the first examples of what we would consider a novel is the eleventh century Japanese work, The Tale of Genji, such examples were either essentially oral traditions or hand-written longer works with extremely limited circulation. The modern novel needed the printing press, and a number of scholars suggest that Richardson’s Pamela, published in 1740, is the first of the modern novels.

And in practical terms, until the 1950s, and the wide-spread advent of paperback books, novels tended to be restricted to those who could afford them, and not a large percentage of the population could. While book publishers were clearly interested in profitability, “popularity” didn’t become the dominant issue with book publishers until the late nineteenth century, and didn’t become an overriding imperative until the last 50-75 years.

But the interplay of popularity and content do raise further questions. What is the point of publishing a book? To sell as many copies as possible? To make a great profit? To entertain? To enlighten? To educate? To raise issues? What trade-offs do publishers make… and why?

I’ve certainly been fortunate as an author to have been backed by a publisher who has allowed me to raise issues, sometimes less than popular ones, in what I’ve hoped is an interesting and entertaining manner… and I’ve seen other publishers who do, but I have to wonder, as I watch the media conglomerates strive for market saturation and pure profitability, how long truly thought-provoking books will be widely published.

I came across a comment by a reviewer that condemned [yet again] one of my characters [not Van Albert, surprisingly enough, who has taken much abuse over the years since The Ethos Effect was published] for killing “innocents” when she destroyed a city ruled by those who had inflicted great evil on others for generations. The evil wasn’t questioned, but the extent of the “collateral damage” was, and it was questioned on the grounds that it was akin to condemning all Germans in WWII because Hitler was the German head of state.

Now, it could be that I’m just cynical and jaundiced because I spent some twenty years in and around national politics in Washington, D.C., but evil governments aren’t just foisted off on hapless people. All those evil lobbyists? Are they really so evil? I mean, if General Conglomerated Amalgamations doesn’t get the contract for the SPX-Vortex, the good people of West Podunk will lose a thousand jobs. And if we don’t contract out to Halliburton and Blackwater, why… to keep the war going in Iraq we might have to extend Army and National Guard tours of duty, or even re-institute the draft, and isn’t it much better just to handle these disagreeable tasks with good old American private enterprise?

There’s something about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.

And the same realization should permeate good fantasy and science fiction. That evil king who tortured peasants and abused young women in ways too degrading to mention… did he do it all alone? Who supplied the torture tools? Who staffed the dungeons? Who grew the food that fed the castle? Who made the spears and swords? Were all his subjects so cowed by his army that they could do nothing? Perhaps, but what cowed the army and the generals? They had the majority of weapons, and why couldn’t they suggest that torture wasn’t a good idea? Besides upsetting people, it’s really not very effective in getting accurate information.

The same questions arise in SF, in future high-tech terror states. Exactly who’s behind all the spying, the loss of freedom, the midnight raids? Is it just the president, the prime minister, the head of the military? Or might it be also the industrial combine that supplies surveillance gear, and the people who work there who want to keep their jobs and their paychecks? Or the weapons manufacturer and its employees… or the communications giant..

As I and others have noted, no government in history has survived against the will of the majority of its people. Many haven’t even survived against the will of a small and determined minority. That does have a tendency to suggest that when evil individuals rule a land, fictional or real, they do so with either the tacit acceptance or the willing support of the majority of the populace. And under those conditions, just how innocent are the “innocents” who accepted the benefits of that government while claiming it wasn’t their fault?

In short, does the responsibility for evil rest solely on the designated head of state? It’s so convenient and reassuring to think so, but should we, as writers, really foster that comforting illusion?

Last week, my editor, his assistant, and I were “discussing” some elements of a book I’d turned in. I use the word “discussing” in very loose terms. My editor was having a hard time with the situation in the book. I won’t go into the specifics here, because some of you might read the book, but both my editor and I did agree on the facts, on the credibility of the situation, and the culture. But, in essence, the issue turned on one point — that to be sympathetic to the reader the protagonist should find a “better way” to resolve the issue. Either that, or all the “bad” characters should be so overwhelmingly evil that no matter what the protagonist did, every reader would cheer.

I resisted this — and time and your future comments will reveal exactly how readers do in fact react — because I’ve gotten more than a little tired of culture-centric societal illusions, in particular, American culture-centric illusions. I’m not talking about ideals, where we strive to do better, and often fail, but illusions.

I’m certainly not the first writer to tilt at this windmill, and I seriously doubt that I’ll be the last. In Slaughterhouse Five, for example, Kurt Vonnegut took dead aim at the American illusion that all it takes to become rich is hard work and virtue.

I’ve addressed this issue before, if not presented in quite that way. In The Ethos Effect, the protagonist discovers that his own culture has turned from a relatively open democratic society into a xenophobic, militaristic, homophobic, and repressive society that opposes all efforts, internal and external, to return to what we might term a relatively free society. He takes drastic steps, and more than a few readers were appalled, making the almost inevitable and rhetorical statement that there had to be a”better way.”

And my discussion with my editor, not surprisingly, centered on that same great American illusion — that there’s always “a better way,” a better solution to a problem that involves less work, less cost, and sometimes, less loss of life. The problem is — sometimes there isn’t, and no one wants to face it.

If we really want to get rid of some ten thousand homicides annually in the USA, i.e., those committed with firearms, “all” we have to do is collect all the guns. That would be the most effective way, wouldn’t it? Just try it, and you’ll see how far that gets you. The illusion, because a vocal and large minority opposes gun control, is that we can reduce those homicides through a “better way.” So, in search of that better way, we enact this and that regulation, and this and that restriction, and the impact is statistically minimal. We create the illusion of doing something, and that’s “better” than giving up society-wide gun ownership. Of course, all those regulations haven’t made much of a dent in the homicide numbers, and there is no “better way” both to allow weapons and reduce gun-related homicides.

We also foster an illusion of equality, and we’re quick to cite the Declaration of Independence, in that “all men are created equal.” I’m sorry. While the birth process is the same, the results are anything but equal. A crack baby is seldom, if ever, going to be equal to a healthy one. A child born to less advantaged parents will always have a greater struggle to achieve what can be attained by one born to more privileged parents. And all the Head Start and pre-natal care and enrichment programs won’t erase all of that inequality. Am I saying such programs aren’t worth anything? Heavens, no. I’m saying that, necessary as they are, they won’t bring about complete equality, not even complete equality of opportunity, because for a society to function well, the best qualified people should be hired and promoted. Like it or not, individuals in any society are not equal. But fostering the illusion of equality allows people to ignore the realities of inequality, the true costs of remedying even just a portion of it — and the fact that it will always exist.

All societies have illusions. They always have, and they always will, but to me, one of the tasks of a writer, in addition to entertaining, is to at least occasionally draw back the dark curtain and shed a few rays of light on such illusions, even if indirectly through fictional or fantasy cultures… and even if it means occasionally disagreeing with my editor.

As some of my readers know, I was trained as an economist, and economists occasionally lapse into statistics, and, in this case, I will offer some figures associated with recommendations about purported quality of the books that you read.

Last month, the vaunted Locus published its list of recommended books released in 2007, 40 in all, of which 22 were science fiction and 18 were fantasy. Since these books were deemed to be of quality by Locus reviewers, as someone who is skeptical of any one source, particularly any one source of experts, I decided to make a comparison of the Locus findings to the reviews, or lack thereof, in Publishers Weekly.

Of the forty books Locus listed as superior, PW gave exactly 11 (or 27.5 %) starred reviews, their mark of quality. I would have made a similar comparison with other “authorities,” such as Booklist and Kirkus, but, alas, I don’t have access to their full databases, nor do I wish to pay their exorbitant rates for that privilege, but I will note that a number of books which did receive starred reviews from other sources such as those were not included on the Locus list. In the interests of full disclosure, I will point out that none of my books figure into these statistics, since nothing I published for the first time in 2007 received any listings by Locus or starred reviews [not that I know of, at least] from anyone else.

Having some interest in statistical oddities, I also noted that the Locus list predominantly featured male authors [72.5% of the recommended books were authored by males]. The breakdown by gender and genre did change slightly, since 77% of the SF titles were by males, as compared to a mere 67% of the fantasy titles. From my infrequent perusing of Booklist and Kirkus review summaries, I do retain the impression that at least several of the books receiving starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus, and not included in the Locus list, were written by women.

For another comparison, the final Nebula ballot lists five novels. So far as I can determine, exactly one of them got a starred review from PW, but three of the five were on the Locus recommended list. And, of course, four of the five Nebula nominees were written by men.

All this suggests that there’s definitely a difference in who and what are considered quality between those officially “in” the F&SF field, and those not so in. But then, haven’t we always known that?

ADDENDUM: After I originally posted this, the thought occurred to me, as it might to many readers, that the selections by Locus reviewers and the Nebula voters might merely reflect the gender distribution of authors and titles in the F&SF field. So I did a quick analysis of the 2008 advance title listings of the twelve publishing imprints that are projected to issue more than 30 books. Of the twelve, six will publish more titles by men, and six will release more titles by women. Overall 56% of the more than 750 titles listed for those imprints will be authored by men and 44% by women [and I gave 1/2 credit to each gender where there were mixed gender co-authors]. To me, that does seem to suggest a certain gender disparity.

A great deal of campaign rhetoric seems to concern itself with issues involving institutions or faceless groups — the greedy corporations who shift jobs to third world countries, the illegal immigrants who take low-paying jobs and keep decent wages from being paid to Americans, the predatory lenders and banks, the automobile industry that lobbies against decent mileage standards for cars, the health-care industry that bankrupts the forty million Americans without health insurance… and so it goes.

And more than a few politicians and public figures all have ways to punish these groups and institutions. Satisfying as thinking about punishing such institutions is, any such punitive solution won’t solve the problem, and it’s likely to hurt other individuals even more, often those who’ve already been injured.

No…I’m not being a corporate apologist… just a realist. The reason why corporations are corporations, why they incorporated in the first place, was to limit, if not to eliminate entirely, personal liability for its executives and employees — except in clear cases of direct criminal behavior.

So… if lenders market mortgages to low-income or high-risk borrowers whom they know are likely to default… or who end up paying far more than they might have with a 30 year mortgage… and then the lenders securitize those mortgages and sell them to investors, what can anyone do? The government will find it difficult, if not impossible legally, to regain the lost assets, and will spent millions in attempting anything. The borrowers will still lose their houses, and the investors will lose a great deal of the money they paid for the securities. The original homeowner or homebuilder might not lose money, but, then again, they might end up with a devalued property. Since a significant portion of mortgage lenders nationwide were involved to some degree, punishing them all would only make buying homes more difficult for everyone. Punish the “more guilty?” Where do you draw the line, legally and practically? How can you legally punish someone for bad judgment and for ethically reprehensible but legal lending practices?

If government changes the law to deal with abuses, as it has done many times in many areas, two things inevitably happen. The overall transaction costs go up, and seldom are any but the worse of the abuses curtailed, because the perpetrators go on to find another legal way to do the same thing.

The problem with corporate and institutional misbehavior is two-fold. First, corporate law effectively shields corporate decision-makers from being held liable for bad or questionably legal corporate decisions. Second, even if corporate misbehavior is wide-spread, the fall-out from negative actions will still fall disproportionately upon the innocent. In the case of Enron, for example, employees at all levels of Enron headquarters knew that the company was running a phony second trading room. They may not have known about the off-book financial manipulations, but scores if not hundreds, knew about the phony trading room, and few if any reported to authorities about that bit of fraud and deception. But, before the collapse, Enron had 5,600 employees, the vast majority of whom were innocent, and most of whom lost their jobs, their retirement, and their future. A handful of executives were found guilty, but that did nothing for the thousands who suffered.

Similar events unfolded with Global Crossings and WorldCom, although the unraveling of both those corporations had far more to do with bad management. Still, in the end, that bad management had disproportionately negative impacts on innocent employees, suppliers, and investors.

Is there a workable governmental solution? I honestly don’t know, but it’s clear that corporate law creates a real barrier to individual responsibility at the corporate executive level. It’s also clear that corporations continue to fire incompetent or unsuccessful CEOs and send them off with “golden parachutes” paid for by consumers, the shareholders, and, in some cases, even indirectly by government.

The same factors are at work in government, another institution. To get elected, politicians promise what the majority of people want, but they seldom, if ever, tell anyone how they’ll pay for it, except in generalities, usually targeting the “rich” and corporations. That doesn’t work, because the rich have better lawyers and accountants, and the corporations are legally structured to pass on all the taxes and costs to the consumer. Add to that the fact that government isn’t generally all that efficient, and we wind up paying more taxes for programs and services that usually don’t satisfy anyone… and then we blame the politicians — every one of them except “our” representative, who did what “we” wanted. After all, more than 90% of all incumbents get re-elected.

Of course, the most workable solution would be if we, as a culture, backed off the demand for more and more at the lowest possible price to ourselves… but then, we couldn’t blame the government and all those greedy corporations for doing whatever they legally can to meet our demands. And who’s to say that the corporate executives, and the higher education executives, and the health care executives, not to mention the politicians, just wouldn’t keep padding their expense accounts and payrolls?

Of course, a greater societal emphasis on individual ethics and responsibility over “fame and fortune” wouldn’t hurt, either. But… I confess a certain skepticism about seeing that happen anytime soon in the reality-TV culture we’ve developed.

Why do human beings go to war? This is a question that scholars, psychologists, historians, economists, military leaders, and others have debated over the ages. I won’t propose an answer to the question, but I will raise some questions about some of the commonly accepted reasons.

If human beings are generally aggressive, and war results from that aggression, why is it that we always go to war against comparative strangers and attempt to kill them, when most violence experienced by most people is from those they know and to whom they are far closer? Historically, in the United States, approximately 22 percent of murders were committed by family members of the victim, while in 53 percent of the cases, the offender and victim were acquaintances. Other offenses, from rape to robbery, from fraud to assault, are not committed against us by those in other lands, against whom we make war, but by those in our own communities.

Another reason given for war is a national need for resources or economic gain. Yet most wars cost far more than any potential gain to either party. By definition, the loser doesn’t gain and may lose independence and resources, and its citizens can lose personal freedoms, if not their lives. But the winner often loses far more than it can possibly regain. The current estimate for the relatively “small” [and it is, in historical terms] war in Iraq is an annual cost of $200 billion. Almost five years into this war, the U.S. cost alone is approaching one trillion dollars and has resulted in nearly 4,000 deaths of U.S. military personnel. This doesn’t include, depending on who is making the estimates, the deaths of between 60,000 and one million Iraqi soldiers, terrorists, and civilians. And for this expenditure, exactly what did we gain, either economically or politically? We aren’t getting any more oil, and we haven’t lowered the price of crude oil. In fact, before the 2003 invasion the price of crude was running at around $30 a barrel, and lately it’s been running over $90/barrel, and sometimes over $100/barrel, and we’re more dependent on imported oil than ever.

Another reason that people give for war is the need to project or protect power and leadership. Let’s see. We seized the Philippines from Spain in the Spanish American War, occupied the islands for over 40 years, lost men defending them in WWII, spent billions propping up corrupt governments, and finally turned over billions of dollars of facilities to the Philippine government when the last U.S. military bases were closed in 1992. Fifty years after we lost over 50,000 men in Korea, we’re still faced with a renegade regime in North Korea that is flirting with developing a nuclear capacity, and we’re still paying to maintain troops in South Korea. Thirty-five years after we lost over 55,000 soldiers and pulled out of Vietnam, we’re the ones begging for trade concessions from them… and from China. After two invasions of Iraq and one of Afghanistan, we haven’t stopped Al Qaeda, and we’ve lost more soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan than we lost civilians in the 9/11 twin towers disaster.

Another reason for war is “to protect ourselves.” I’d be naive not to say that at times this is a necessity, as in the case of WWII, but I have trouble seeing how the war in Iraq has increased our safety, or how fighting in Vietnam made us safer.

Another reason given is to “protect human rights.” Again, pardon me, but history doesn’t show the United States exactly rushing to protect all the Jews of Europe against Hitler. We did show great sorrow after the fact, but pretty much all of the major non-Nazi powers of Europe, as well as the United States, ignored what was going on until after WWII. We’ve ignored, except for a few diplomatic notes and protests, the genocide in Darfur, and the abuses of Stalin, Pol Pot, and countless other dictators — except when it suited other purposes. And now, we tolerate a president who claims that restricting torture of suspected terrorists will make us weaker as a nation.

So just exactly why do we as humans have to fight so many wars? Could it just be that, all protests to the contrary, as a species we really like conflict?

I’ve only seen this addressed directly once in SF, in Alan Dean Foster’s series The Damned. And, from what I recall, that series didn’t do all that well. He postulated that humans were bred to be warriors… and we didn’t want to face it. Neither did many of the critics. Imagine that.

A well-known publisher often tells a story of his early days in the publishing business when he visited a large commercial book-buyer to present the titles forthcoming from the firm he then represented. After the presentation, the buyer looked at the young salesman and said, “How can you say all that with a straight face? Last year, you came and told me that those titles were the best ever, and the ones you just told me about are better than the ones that were the best ever? I only have so many feet of shelves, and every year you and the others come and tell me that this year’s offerings are the best ever…”

If the Locus annual review of the number of F&SF titles published is accurate, and I have no reason to believe that it’s not as close to the real numbers as any such compilation could be, last year 1,710 original F&SF books were published, of which 693 were hardcovers, along with 1,013 reprints of already-existing titles. But how many were “really good books?”

How about 1,710? After all, these publishers wouldn’t publish books that they didn’t think were good, would they? Well… maybe a few that would appeal to people with, shall we say, “particular tastes.”

Of course, this all brings up the question of what “good” means. For some people, it means a fast and exciting read that removes them from their not-so-wonderful day job and otherwise mundane circumstances. For others, it’s all about the choice of words and structure of the sentences [I kid you not; I’ve seen books described as classics that had NO plot and no action]. For others, it’s the play of ideas or the characters.

Even the so-called experts don’t agree. I’ve seen SF books listed as “Best of the Year” by Kirkus or Booklist that don’t make the annual and long Locus recommended reading list. Books that get starred reviews by Publishers Weekly can get poor reviews from various genre reviewers. One of my books that got starred reviews from most sources and won awards got a very mediocre review from Romantic Times [which, believe it or not, reviews lots of F&SF].

All this confusion may well explain why the largest reasons people pick up books are either because they already know the author OR because a personal friend or close relative has recommended it. I suspect the latter works because we tend to know what our friends like, or don’t, and can factor what we know about them into our choices. It works both ways. If one friend in particular raves about a book, I’ll probably never read it because I know from experience that I’ll most likely hate it.

One reviewer lamented recently that she could find fewer and fewer books to recommend, but is that because there are fewer good books… or merely fewer books of the kind that meet her criteria for excellence — or, perhaps, a little of both?

In the end, though, I’d have to say that there aren’t nearly so many good books as the publishers claim and more than any individual reviewer would admit. But then, that’s just my opinion on “really good books.”

There’s always been this human feeling that sometime, somewhere in the past, was a golden era, from which we as humans have fallen. For the ancient Greeks, it was the Golden Age, for devout Christians, the Garden of Eden. For those of English heritage, it was Camelot, and for at least some Americans, it was the American Camelot of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The problem, of course, is that none of them existed as envisioned by their believers. Early Greek history was blood-soaked, with life brutal and short, and that was if you were male and free. Even under the original terms of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had to be unperceptive and not-too-bright, because they weren’t allowed a full range of knowledge, and if the archeologists are correct, the original garden was located in an area near the Persian Gulf that was conflict-ridden. The time of the Arthurian Camelot was the warlord-torn period following the retreat of the Romans from Britain, when no one was safe and nothing secure, and during the Presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, literally nothing was accomplished except a failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the near-Armageddon of an atomic conflict over Cuba, and the most philandering in the White House in history [facts papered over and/or conveniently ignored by revisionists of all stripes].

Today, politically, Barrack Obama is appealing to that yearning for change, and those who long for Camelot and the Golden Ages that never were are flocking to him, his incredibly well-spoken words, and his visions. While that yearning for a golden and simpler time is certainly understandable, and an eternal human wish, wishing for and following such a spellbinding orator is nothing more than another manifestation of the human desire for a better life paid for by someone else. This isn’t to say that such desires aren’t powerful and that they can’t change things. They do… and seldom for the better.

Hitler promised dreams of a better life, and so did Mussolini, and so did Huey Long in Louisiana. Lenin roused the proletariat, and Mao marched the Long March toward peace, prosperity, and improvement… and one thing that they all had in common was the desire to take from one group to give to another in the name of a more perfect society.

Me… I’m much more impressed by an imperfect Winston Churchill’s promise of only “blood, sweat, and tears,” because that’s how the world is improved, not by harkening to times that never were and suggesting that they can be achieved just by “wishing” for change or voting for or supporting a particular man or woman on a white horse.

All too often those dreams of a Golden Age have only presaged a lifetime of nightmares.

The vast majority, if not all, of evolutionary biologists believe that one of the critical factors in the rise of the homo sapiens, as reflected in the species terminology, was the ability to think, an ability that led to sophisticated tool-making, agriculture, organized societies, and so forth. The combination of thinking and a tool-making culture has led to the creation of ever more sophisticated tools and a greater understanding of life and the universe.

But… if a trend observed by two U.S. researchers continues to take hold, all that may change. The two studied graduate students using high level computational tools and found that, when solutions eluded the students or when the results were unsatisfactory, almost invariably, the students attempted to figure out new and different ways to use the computerized tools and never addressed either the structure of or the assumptions behind the questions they had posed or the approach they had taken in addressing the problem at hand. In short, they had stopped truly thinking analytically and had reduced themselves to mental mechanics, as opposed to higher-level thinkers.

This isn’t just a problem for doctoral students in the sciences. It’s already everywhere. Because a large number of students have never really learned basic mathematics, they can’t estimate solutions, and if a calculator or computer is wildly off, they often never catch it. Many retail employees have trouble making change. Students seem to assume that all the answers are somewhere on the internet.

These and other examples suggest that people are blindly relying on the answers and methods provided by modern technology, instead of asking questions and thinking about the approaches and implications. Again… this isn’t new. A good twenty years ago, when I was working in the environmental field, I watched researchers and public policymakers get sucked in by mathematical models and accept the output relatively uncritically… and when, as a consultant, I asked some rather pointed and critical questions, they all deferred to the models as if they were infallible. They’re only models of reality. Sometimes they come very close, and sometimes they don’t, but it takes thought to determine which. That was twenty years ago, and today it’s even worse. Most trades on the stock market are handled by the computers of large funds, and those trades are in turn determined by mathematical algorithms, which are based on certain assumptions. But what happens if the assumptions change? Who’s watching?

This isn’t necessarily a problem when such thoughtlessness occurs in those people whose occupation isn’t supposed to be thinking, but it seems to be happening more and more often among those whose expertise is supposed to include analytical thought.

Now… just take this trend another step forward, to when we get more and more intelligent computer systems, even AIs. Certainly, Kubrick and Clarke anticipated this in 2001: A Space Odyssey with Hal… but very few viewers seem to see the parallels to our own culture today. Will homo sapiens give way to homo unsapiens without anyone even thinking about it?

One of the problems most, if not all, writers have is that, no matter what most of us claim, we tend to dwell, if not obsess, over what the readers and reviewers don’t see that seems perfectly obvious to us. And each of us, as writers, has certain predilections. One of mine, shared by some other writers, is to write about strong and powerful individuals.

I don’t and can’t bring myself to write about detective mages so stupid that they make four or five major mistakes, any one of which should have killed them, in every book. I don’t write about weepy and helpless women, nor about powerful but stupid villains.

But, of course, a good book is about overcoming challenges, and readers want to see protagonists tested to their limits. One reader told me, “Make sure you really abuse your heroes.” One of the possible problems with this is that external challenges may not be the real obstacles. I’ve seen incredibly talented people essentially throw their lives away, and I’ve seen moderately talented but ambitious people succeed where more talented but less driven individuals failed. So one of the formulas suggested by writing gurus is that internal challenges should mirror the external ones, or vice versa.

All that said, very little can stop an incredibly talented, intelligent, and driven individual. This means that, in books as in real life, powerful individuals are seldom realistically threatened or done in by others. Yet there seems to be a feeling that fictional characters who are “too strong” are not believable because they have no weaknesses. Part of that is because most of us can’t identify with them, and we’d prefer to identify with the underdog. That’s why the story of David or Goliath — or Seabiscuit — still resonates with people. But strong characters do have weaknesses. They can be done in by a combination of other powerful individuals, by their own weaknesses, or especially by their ties to others.

This certainly isn’t a new concept, but it tends to be overlooked, although it was laid out fairly bluntly in Gordon Dickson’s Soldier, Ask Not. No one can stop Tam Olyn… but he turns aside from destroying an entire culture because of love — and would in fact be devastated if anything happened to Lisa. There’s certainly no one individual who could stop my own character Alucius by the end of Scepters, but he is and will always be held hostage to the love of his homeland, which is highly vulnerable, and his way of life. In the end, the near-invincible Mykel and Dainyl both end up vulnerable and hostages to life and those they love. In a similar sense, the women of Sheri Tepper’s Gate to Women’s Country control everything, and yet remain hostages.

Yet, all too many readers and reviewers tend to think of external vulnerabilities as the most challenging. Whether external or internal vulnerabilities are the greatest depends on the character and the situation, which is as it should be, not upon a preconceived assumption that large and visible dangers are always the hardest to overcome.

What if we’ve all missed the point of the war in Iraq? What if the real agenda of the Bush Administration was not to keep the Iraqis from establishing a Euro-denominated oil bourse, or to ensure U.S. access to Iraqi oil once Saudi Arabia collapses to revolution, or to assure future significant revenues for the Bush family’s consulting firm? What if the real agenda was to weaken and destroy science education and training in rational thought in the United States, in order to further creationism and fundamental religious beliefs?

Now… some may claim that might be going a bit too far, but, in support of the Bush war budget, the latest Congressional appropriations take huge cuts out of fundamental research in physics, so much so that Fermilab in Illinois and Stanford’s Linear Accelerator Center together will lay off more than 300 scientists and employees, essentially closing for all practical purposes. Why? Supposedly because the something like $95-$100 million required is needed more to fund the war than for physics research.

Pardon me, but I don’t see cuts in $200 million bridges to nowhere, and the cuts in federal funds for physics research amount to tenths of a percent of the annual costs of waging the war in Iraq. Such research cuts won’t add anything meaningful to the war funding, but they will cripple American physics research for years, if not longer.

We’re already suffering a decline in U.S. born and bred scientists, not to mention science and math teachers, and we’ve adopted “security measures” that effectively curtail the education and possible future assimilation of foreign-born doctoral students in the hard sciences. Could all this just be another part of the grand creationist conspiracy to damp down and wipe out critical scientific thought?

I mean… how could it be anything else? After all, much of American economic and military success has been based on our historic ability to entice the best minds and thoughts from around the world and to offer them rewards well beyond what they could ever have achieved in their homelands.

Surely, no thoughtful person would want to destroy one of the fundamental bases of American success and prosperity just through stupidity and oversight, would they? So there must be a reason for this policy. There has to be, doesn’t there? What else could it be but a great fundamentalist and creationist plot?

While some readers will doubtless laugh at what follows, I still have the feeling that I went, almost overnight, from “up-and-coming writer” to “he’s-been-writing-forever.” It wasn’t all that many years ago when my editor asked me to introduce myself to a young writer who had just sold his first book. I introduced myself and got a blank look, followed by the statement, “I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of you.”

That was less than eight years ago, and I’d published almost thirty books. Now, I see comments like, “The Recluce Saga is older fantasy, but still good.” A former publicist remarked that, “I can’t believe the Recluce Saga is still going.”

Times do change, and I’ll have to admit that my reaction to one of the changes probably marks me as being of the “older generation.” This change has to do with how writers tend to get started. When I first began to write seriously, my naive thought was that, if I wrote well enough and worked hard enough, I’d get published. And I did… and it happened. It also happened for other writers.

Today, I can think of more than a few would-be writers who seem to spend more time promoting themselves on the internet than writing or attempting to improve their craft. And in a way, they remind me of juvenile ravens, because they tend to collect in a gaggle [although technically and grammatically and practically, the term is an “unkindness”], where they spend an inordinate amount of bandwidth and space commenting on the writing field and promoting the new works of the younger writers, whom they wish to join. Call it the support of the “new” by those who wish also to be the newest of the new.

I don’t mind that aspect of it. A majority of the “young” have always done that. I never was in that majority, but that’s another story that won’t be told. But what concerns me is the amount of time that this represents. This is not, for the most part, time spent refining one’s craft as a writer. It is not time spent creating stories or novels. It is sheer personal promotion, often before the writer is question has much of worth to present.

Is it understandable? Absolutely! Now that only one or two F&SF of the major publishing firms accept unsolicited manuscripts, how else can a writer find a way to get either an invitation from a publisher or an agent interested?

Is it good? I don’t think so. More than a few editors have suggested to me privately that the technical quality of submissions is declining. That’s not to say that some are not good, or that all of that decline results from the shift of energy from writing to promoting, but they’re fewer and harder to find. It also is a trap, I suspect, because maintaining a high-visibility website takes a tremendous amount of time. If the site declines, so does viewership… and visibility. But in a culture that is incredibly media-driven, not “improving and advancing” is seen not as stability, but as failure. So, in order to attract “attention,” more and more effort is required for promotion, and less and less time is available for actual writing and learning the craft.

Add to that an increasing pressure to produce profits by the parent companies of larger publishers, and what happens? More and more profit is generated by a handful of books and by media knock-offs, while good books that don’t appeal widely don’t get published by the majors and/or are put out by smaller presses.

From that point of view, it seems to make sense for a newer writer to try to build a following through the internet, but the problem is that when they’re all chasing the “flavor de jour” they’re all trying to appeal to the exact same audience, and that audience is still not a majority of the book-buyers, even in F&SF, and the rest of the audience is often put off by the “flavor de jour” and purchases fewer books.

Do I have an answer? I’d suggest that more new writers take a risk, a real risk, and concentrate on writing and not promotion. Remember, neither J.K. Rowling nor Robert Jordan needed a website presence to get started. They just needed books that lots of people, and not just the internet crowd, wanted to read.

As some of my readers know, I spent time working at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency all too many years ago, and later as a consultant dealing with environmental regulations, among other matters. One of the most contentious matters then, and still, was the issue of what a human life was worth. If an environmental regulation costs industry [and consumers, because the end user eventually always pays the cost] ten billion dollars, but saves a thousand lives… is it worth it? What if it only saves ten lives?

This issue, whether we like to think about it, is everywhere. Why do we buy life insurance? That’s a form of valuing life. Why do we spend precious hours in exercise and physical fitness? It’s another way of valuing life by attempting to prolong it in better health.

But there’s one area where our laws and our attitudes are far, far behind — and that’s in the area of financial fraud and embezzlement. Just last week, the second largest bank in France announced that a rogue trader employed there had effectively lost over $7 billion by diverting over $50 billion in bank funds to personal speculative trades. This is the largest loss ever created by a single individual, but it’s not anything new. The fraud at WorldCom, Global Crossings, and Enron resulted in billions and billions of dollars of losses. The amount of mortgage fraud arising from the latest real estate bubble has yet to be tallied.

And what does this all have to do with the value of lives?

It’s simple, actually. Most people work. They invest their lives in working and in trying to save or buy a house or stay at a company long enough for their pension to vest or put aside money for an IRA. When embezzlement and fraud cause them to lose all or part of those investments, in effect, part of their life has been taken. The same thing happens when someone is scammed or phished out of funds on the internet.

In the federal regulatory system, although no one wants to talk about it openly, essentially regulations have established a range of values for human life. Depending on the situation and other factors, at one time that range was effectively from one to twenty million dollars. Doubtless, it’s higher now.

Take the current French situation — seven billion dollars. Seven billion dollars taken from people, admittedly in smaller bits than a whole life, but… if a life is worth twenty million dollars, then the embezzler or fraud artist has committed the equivalent of 350 murders.

Far-fetched, you say? Think about Enron. How many lives were shortened because of health insurance lost? Or because employees lost their retirement? How many investors lost income, either directly or through other pension funds, and what did that do to their lives? How many families’ lives were disrupted?

We’ve tended to treat this kind of white-collar crime as if it were almost victimless, but it’s not. It’s just that the embezzler and fraud artist take a little bit of life from thousands or millions of people, and we seem to think that it’s somehow not nearly so bad as single heinous murder. Yet, I’d be willing to bet that every major fraud/embezzlement case results in actual deaths or at least early deaths among the victims. Most major embezzlers and fraud artists lose what assets they have and serve a few years in jail — maybe ten at most. Some, like the head of Global Crossings, actually get to keep their ill-gotten gains and serve no time at all.

Maybe, just maybe, if the damages incurred by the victims of embezzlement and fraud were converted into the equivalent of murders… then we might have a bit more deterrence, and possibly certainly more justice.

I don’t see this happening… but it should be considered, if not adopted.

Recent sociological studies and experiments strongly suggest that human beings, indeed most if not all primates, have a genetically based “sense of fairness.” One experiment, for example, sets up a situation where one individual is given something of value, which either directly by its nature, or indirectly through trade or money, can be split. That individual then proposes sharing the item with a second. The first individual gets to propose the terms of division, and, if the second agrees, each gets to keep his or her share.

So… I’m given a hundred dollars. I can offer you anything from $1 to $99 [zero or a hundred wouldn’t allow a split]. If I offer you even $10, we’re both better off than before. But… neither people nor primates think or feel that way. In experiment after experiment, for the most part, people rejected anything less than a 30%-70% split — even though that meant neither got anything. The results, using food and other items, were similar among the primates studied.

So what are the implications of this finding?

One conclusion is that “justice” in human societies is not just a social, governmental, or even a practical requirement, but a fundamental physio-genetic one. If this were the only implication, matters wouldn’t look too bad for the future. After all, even in a totally secular society, it would appear that most people would still have a sense of fairness and justice.

A second and more worrying conclusion is that this feeling is not “rational,” not in the sense of being thought out. A “rational” individual would take any split, because in rational terms, he or she would still end up better off. And that implies that humans have great difficulty in being rational, no matter what we think.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that there’s yet another and far more disturbing possibility. First, of course, one must consider one of the basic conditions of the experiment, and that condition was that the recipient knew that neither party would get anything if “unacceptable” terms were offered and rejected.

Now… consider the world political situation today, with what appears to be an ever-growing divergence between the developed and the undeveloped world, as well as an increasing discrepancy between the wealthy and non-wealthy in the developed world. Throughout history, there have always been the haves and the have-nots, but until the age of modern and near-instant communications, those who were poor, whether the urban poor in the ghettos of developed countries or the masses of the poor in less developed lands, really had limited means of knowing how those who were so much better off lived. In a sense, they didn’t know how the resources were split, and how little they received. Now they do.

Could it just be that some, if not a large portion, of the current global unrest might just be the result of our species’ genetic need for “fairness,” a need that has not been historically as much of a factor because before modern communications the “terms” were not widely known? Interestingly enough, from what I can determine, prior to the eighteenth century and the beginning of “modern” communications, there were very few revolutions fomented by the middle class and supported by those below. Even the American Revolution was essentially an upper-class led uprising. “Popular” revolutions seem to be a comparatively recent development.

Equally important, rational and logical explanations of why these resource divisions are the way they are, such as capital investment, cost of innovation, payback for taking risk, the cost of advanced education, will not change most people’s opinions, because their response is in fact genetically programmed and results in an immediate and ongoing emotional reaction.

So… for all the rationality behind the increasing separation of the meritocratic elite and the working classes, or the distinction between the developed and developing world… with the “fairness gene,” how wide can that separation become and how long can it last?

When retail sales levels for the United States were recently announced, stock prices in the USA immediately dropped, and a number of large retailers immediately announced plans to close down “unprofitable” outlets. My initial reaction was to think that, well, if sales were down, that would be understandable. Except sales weren’t down. They were up three percent. They only increased three percent over the sales levels of the previous year, as opposed to the four percent sales increase registered in 2006. Today, the market plunged again…even after the Federal Reserve announced an interest cut of three quarters of a percent, a rather large one time cut, and the largest in more than 16 years. The market recovered somewhat but remains down at the time I write this.

Three percent is an increase. It’s an increase greater than the rate of U.S. population growth. And yet the economists, the stock market, the retailers, and the commentators are all saying that we might be entering a recession… unless government gives them the means to borrow money more cheaply and provides more “stimulus.” They may well be right.

What exactly does this say about the United States and modern economies in general? That we can’t maintain close to full employment and prosperity without an ever-increasing amount of consumption and production in a world that looks to have finite resources? That steady and sustained growth isn’t enough, that for us to be happy and prosperous, we need incredibly high growth rates that are unsustainable without government deficits and subsidies…and loans at artificially cheap rates?

This obsession with more permeates everything. In the past generation, the size of the average house has nearly doubled, and Americans in general have more cars, more televisions, more “stuff” than ever before. I’m not against improvements or new devices that make life better, but I don’t need a new computer every year or every other year, or even every third year. Nor do I need a new vehicle anywhere close to that often. Frankly, while there are those who do need frequent replacements and updates because of their occupations, most of us don’t, and many of those who do only need those replacements because the computer and other industries employ a combination of “improvements” and planned obsolescence that makes older but still functional equipment incompatible with the “new” models and software.

Yet this obsession with “more” is highly selective. We reward hedge fund managers with annual earnings in the millions and hundreds of millions of dollars, and their only contribution to society is success in high level and legal gambling, all of the rhetoric about the need for arbitrage notwithstanding. We reward high profile CEOs, and yet recent studies have shown that, in general, the lower profile and lower-paid CEOs do a better job. We pay a comparative handful of entertainers and athletes incredible amounts, but every time the economy slows a trace, all across the country, the salaries of teachers are frozen, and the increases given to those at the bottom in government and industry are minimal or non-existent.

Not only that, but market response and public reaction appear nonsensical. Oil prices are above $90 a barrel, and yet the stock prices of oil companies that made great profits when the prices were “only” $70 a barrel are down, and neither their production nor their reserves have changed significantly. Food prices are increasing, and the government subsidizes ethanol made from corn, which further boosts the cost of corn without making any significant difference in the amount of imported oil or in air pollution.

We spend billions on “measuring” various kinds of progress, from retail sales and output of goods and services to educational testing… as if the measurements were reality, and as if the resulting numbers automatically equate to immediate and significant changes in the economy, or the educational system. But, once we have the numbers… what happens?

Most of the time, there’s a demand for “better” numbers and measurements… or the results are ignored. Or… as in the current case, there’s universal dissatisfaction with a federal commitment over more than $145 billion. Of course, that’s somewhat less than the $150-200 billion U.S. companies spend annually on radio and television ads, in hopes of increasing sales and profitability, because, after all, sales were only up three percent, but what can one expect from government?

Now, if I or any other SF writer created a future world that portrayed such idiocy in this kind of graphic detail, such a novel would either be regarded as far-out satire or patently impossible.

Last week, I was talking to an editor, and he made the observation that, overall, paperback book sales of bestselling authors have been declining steadily but inexorably over the years… and the situation is even worse for other authors. Now… if this were a trend where those paperback sales were being replaced by e-books or the like, I’d chalk it up to changing technology. But it’s not. As I understand it, in science fiction and fantasy, it wasn’t uncommon to have first paperback printings of 50,000- 100,000 books for a publisher’s top writers [excluding, of course, the very small handful of runaway best sellers like J.K. Rowling and Robert Jordan]. Today, it’s more like 30,000 – 50,000.

One immediate response is along the lines of, “What do you expect when new paperbacks are eight dollars?” But I’m talking about what’s happened in the last few years… AFTER paperbacks had reached the $6-8 range. Besides, the real costs of other items have increased in the same way as those of books.

At the time when an Ace double was 35 cents, I could get a hamburger, fries, and a Coke from MacDonald’s for the same amount. Now the average paperback F&SF book is three times as long as that Ace double and costs $7.99. People are buying full meals from MacDonald’s for about the same amount, but the difference is that the market for fast food has exploded, and the market for books has not.

Certainly, one factor is the “profit motive.” All of the large F&SF publishers have been gobbled up by one of the media conglomerates, and conglomerates want to make money first, and publishing books is only a means by which this is possible. The same is also true of the booksellers. The results are anything but good for the fiction market.

No matter how many or how few books are printed and shipped, some are always returned. For example, one of the more popular best-selling F&SF authors has a “sell-through” of 70-80%. That is extremely high. The “normal” range for successful authors is more like 50-60%. One critically acclaimed author once actually achieved a dismal sell-through of 4%, i.e., 96% of the books printed and shipped were returned unsold. Now… enter the accountants of the bookstore chains. They look at the sales of even a best-selling author and note that they didn’t sell all of the books of that author’s last book… and they order fewer copies of the next book. Even if the sell-through ratio goes up considerably, say ten percent, and that is a considerable increase, the total number of books ordered and sold goes down… And for the author’s next book, the chain’s initial order will again decrease… and so on.

Then add to that the fact that reading among Americans under the age of thirty has dropped precipitously, for a number of factors, including the internet, computers, and media-created attention-deficit-disorder which makes reading boring, because it requires sustained concentration and thought. And all the technology and convenient e-book readers won’t help with those who can’t concentrate in the first place.

What does this mean for publishing?

I’d say that a certain trend is already emerging. The larger publishers are cutting loose more and more authors who were once “mid-list” because their sales numbers are falling and because the break-even point for larger publishers is a higher number of copies than in the past. Authors who have a small but loyal following are turning to the smaller presses, who are now providing higher quality products, and who can produce fewer copies “economically.” Add to that print on demand.

But… the basic problem is that the number of outlets for books is continuing to diminish, and except in the mega-stores or the minimal numbers of F&SF specialty stores, the range of choice is almost non-existent. While the mall bookstores are being replaced in some places by anchor chain bookstores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble, thousands of malls have no book outlets at all. While every Wal-Mart has a book department, it’s a rare Wal-Mart that stocks more than 20 F&SF titles — and that’s one percent of the number of F&SF titles published in a year, and those 20 don’t include anything from the small presses.

So the small press editions are mostly relegated to online sales, local sales, specialty F&SF stores [of which there are only a few handfuls left], and convention sales. These outlets aren’t enough to expose new readers to the true range of speculative fiction, and without such exposure, the number of new readers will remain low, and, unless matters change, as the older readers die off, the reading base will diminish.

Does this mean that in another generation, the only devoted F&SF readers will be gray-haired and restricted to a few specialty stores and one carrel in the chains?

I hope not… but it’s not looking all that promising [unless you all go out and buy more paperbacks!].

The other day in a science publication I came across a wonderful term — evidence blindness. Evidence blindness occurs when someone turns a blind eye to evidence contrary to his or her personal convictions, dismissing such evidence on whatever grounds possible, sometimes logical, sometimes anything but logical.

The writer, whose name I can’t recall at the moment, made the observation that science works despite the evidence blindness of scientists themselves because theories, discoveries, and claims are subjected to scrutiny by a large and wide body of scientists. While this is a messy process that doesn’t always work as well as it might, in general it does weed out bad science over time, and progress does occur. But that progress only occurs because of two factors: (1) the claims have to be able to be empirically tested and (2) nothing is allowed to remain “sacred” once disproven.

Today, as I’ve intimated in earlier blogs, although I didn’t use the term “evidence blindness,” our society is setting itself up for collapse because our institutions are actually moving away from the logic of the science model and are fostering a growing epidemic of evidence blindness.

We have politicians who claim that we can pay for all the social programs for the elderly and the uninsured and the impoverished children just by slightly raising taxes on the wealthy. Whether or not this is ethically or politically wise is one question, but no one is pointing out that that, practically speaking, it’s impossible. The top ten percent of the taxpayers in income terms already pay close to 70% of all federal income taxes. Even if one could confiscate all the wealth of all the U.S. billionaires, the combined total wouldn’t run the government for even a year. Add in all the millionaires, and there might be funds for another year… and we’d be a socialist nation, with not much incentive to strive. This isn’t, as they say, rocket science. The numbers are out there. But the numbers aren’t there for those who wish to believe otherwise. They’re evidence blind.

On the other side, the free market/business model types are forever extolling the virtues of so-called free competition and business practices, and trying to extend them everywhere. We deregulated the telephone industry [and I will note for the record, in the interests of full disclosure, that years ago I was part of a team that looked into and published a study on the likely impact of long-distance deregulation]. Deregulation effectively created two main outcomes: long-distance costs went down, and every other telecommunications cost went up. Ma Bell got broken apart, and now AT&T has been taken over by one of the regional Baby Bells, and we have regional monopolies in land lines, as opposed to a national monopoly, and an oligopoly in cell phone service, not to mention an associated dotcom bubble that burst, with an incredible amount of fraud, loss of jobs, and dislocation. Our free-market in healthcare results in some of the most advanced medical techniques and drugs — and the highest rate of medically uninsured citizens of any major industrialized nation. Such”free-market” gyrations do indeed result in a “more efficient” allocation of resources, the economists assure us, but they also produce human and economic costs that are anything but insignificant, and yet the champions of the “free market” appear evidence blind to such costs.

Transportation is yet another intriguing area. The United States built a nation that initially was tied together with canals, followed in turn by the railroads, then with the interstate highway system, and then with the airplane. Yet all of these transportation systems that support our “free market” were subsidized heavily by government. George Will, the commentator, who actually once was a transportation analyst for a U.S. Senate committee, observed that without state, local, and federal subsidies no airline company ever in the United States would ever have made a profit. The federal government operates and maintains the air traffic control system and the federal safely regulatory structures. Local governments build and operate the airports, and the landing fees paid by aircraft come nowhere near paying for those services. Railroads were once heavily subsidized, but now that there are only minimal passenger service subsidies, in all but a few areas and routes, passenger trains are vanishing. What we subsidize most heavily is the automobile, and that creates excessive demand that overwhelms what we’re willing to pay in taxes for highways and roads. But do most people see that? No… they’re evidence blind. They may talk about it, but they buy larger vehicles and oppose higher taxes.

We do provide a vast array of government subsidies and services to businesses of all types and classes, and yet the cry from the business community is always to “get government off our backs.” They’re evidence blind to the benefits they receive, and all most of them see is the taxes they must pay.

They also talk about the need for a business model in government and education. Everything needs to be priced in terms of what it brings in. If music education or physics classes cost too much, increase tuition or fees or cut the programs. If fares don’t cover the costs of mass transportation, don’t increase subsidies, but raise the fares or cut services. Yet when politicians point out that business needs to pay for the pollution or environmental degradation that it creates, that’s imposing unnecessary costs on business.

We all receive services from governments, but so often the services that don’t provide tangible cash returns are the ones that we slight — particularly law enforcement and teachers. More and more often I see business leaders complaining that the schools don’t provide the training that they need in workers… but the vast majority of these same “leaders” aren’t out there championing the need for more resources for better education. Oh… they want efficiency, and that translates into spending less. Yet study after study has shown that three factors are paramount in successful education: smaller class size, teacher subject matter expertise, and classroom discipline. For various reasons, almost everyone seems evidence blind to these key factors. They just focus on efficiency and management, yet the size and cost of school administration, and the number and amount of tests required have ballooned out of control. Teacher education programs focus more and more on techniques of teaching and less and less on subject matter expertise. And heaven forbid that anyone suggest that any student isn’t wonderful or that there are rules and requirements and expectations awaiting him or her out in society.

Why has all this occurred? One significant reason is because honest debate has vanished. If you don’t like what someone says, you don’t have to confront it or examine it. Just flee to whichever and whatever specialized media niche or religious belief structure that comforts and reassures you. Avoid paying attention to all the unpleasant truths and concentrate on those few that are important to you.

After all, you’re free to believe what you want… unlike those poor scientists, who actually have to test and prove their beliefs.