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.

Right now, from what I can tell, there seems to be a bit of an emphasis by some who think themselves experts on F&SF on the need for more “character-driven” fiction. Then, perhaps this has always been true. Whether or not it’s a resurgent emphasis or a long-standing one is irrelevant. It’s wrong. Dead wrong.

Now, before you scream for my head, I’d also like to say that dominance or emphasis on plot-driven or device-driven or any other form of “driven” is also wrong. The best fiction should always be an intertwined blend of character, plot, setting, and style.

If all a serious/experienced reader notices is one of those elements, whether it’s the characters, the plot, the setting, or the style, the work is not all it could or should be. I use the term “serious/experienced reader,” however, most advisedly, because we all have preferences, and we praise those books most highly that reflect our likes. Some readers want most of all to know the characters better and see what they will do when faced with both adversity and success. Others are most intrigued with the plot and how matters will work out. Others concentrate on the world-building or the setting, and for others the way in which the words are used is of paramount importance.

I’ve seen this one-aspect-focus with respect to my own work, where one reader will praise a book for its style, while another will denigrate the style, where another will praise the characterization, and another will declare the characters cardboard cutouts. Part of this results, of course, from each individual’s background, because words and phrases which are evocative and filled with both connotations and implications for one reader may convey nothing to a reader with a dissimilar background or tastes. Generally speaking, but not always, or exclusively, readers with wide-ranging tastes and experience pick up a wider range of what an author may convey… or they may understand all too well that the author’s presentation is merely slick superficiality.

“Character” doesn’t exist in a void, independent of the setting or the action, and both impact how character is revealed. In one novel I wrote years ago, there is a scene where a character has learned that a woman he loved has died in combat. He does not moan or say a word to anyone. He takes a throwing knife and keeps flinging it at a target until the target is mostly splintered wood and his hands are bloody. Yet some felt that this character was cardboard because he said nothing. Characters reveal who they are in various ways, but always more by their actions than their words. In another book of mine, the main character lies early in the book. He does not reveal that he lies, even to himself at the time. The words he utters are far less important than the fact that he has spoken them. He says nothing about it, nor does he reflect on those words. Other than that, he is most honorable in his actions, yet that lie reveals more about what he feels than any other single act in the book… and almost no readers have caught it, even though the lie is totally in character and vital to the conclusion.

And, just for the record, in my view, the only way in which the choice of words in a novel truly reflects the various characters is by the dialogue, those words spoken by each person. All the rest of those beautiful — or not so beautiful — words reflect on the setting.

Does this mean I’m against beautiful words — or lovely flowing sentences? No. It means I’m against sentences that are “beautiful” for the sake of being beautiful, just as I’m against flamboyant characters for the sake of having flamboyant characters or against miraculously crafted settings for the sake of the settings. In short, I’m in favor of what works best for the story at hand, not for what might be termed literary special effects.

The other day I came across a blog that questioned how a number of well-known F&SF writers could physically produce the amount of work that they do. The blogger’s obvious and pat answer was that they could because “they’re hacks, and their readers have minimal expectations.” He then went on to mention some well-known mainstream authors who are prolific… but stated that these mainstream authors were quality writers. The blog had a clear implication that genre authors who write quickly must be hacks, unlike prolific mainstream authors.

As H.L. Mencken was reputed to have said, and as I recall, “For every difficult and involved question, there is an answer that is clear, simple… and wrong.”

Not only was the blog’s conclusion an insult to the genre writers, but it was also an insult to their readers.

The writers in question [who will remain nameless, because this is not exactly about them, but about preconceptions] have won more than forty “literary” awards, including the Hugo. Between them, so far as I was able to determine, their books have received more than 30 starred reviews from “mainstream literary” sources such as Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus. Several of their works have been named as “books of the year” by Kirkus and Booklist. Some have even won awards from Romantic Times.

Yet this blogger [it would be an insult to professionals to term him a writer] could only term these successful genre authors as “hacks” because of the number of books they wrote in the speculative genre. I’d call them professionals, who have worked long and hard at their craft and who have been able to please both fans and literary critics. Pleasing both is far from easy.

Yet there remains a preconception that any writer who is prolific must be a hack, because good writing must be agony and take forever. I’m sorry. It doesn’t work that way. I’ve seen terrible novels that took the writer ten years or more to produce and good novels that a talented writer produced in less than a year. A good novel is a good novel, regardless of how long it took to write it, and the same is true of a bad novel.

As for time… think about it this way. There are 52 weeks in the year. Assume a writer only works five days a week like many people [this isn’t true, but assume it is], and that he or she sits before the computer or pad of paper or old-fashioned typewriter seven hours a day [an hour off for lunch and other sundries]. If that author writes one hundred words a hour, or 1.7 words a minute, at the end of a year, he or she will have written something like 175,000 words. This is not exactly breakneck speed. It’s also why I don’t have much patience with so-called professional authors who complain that they can’t produce a book more than every other year.

Now, obviously, that’s just for purposes of illustration, because there’s a need for such matters as research, editing, and lots of rewriting. Still… if that writer speeds up to three words a minute, that leaves a full five months of the year for rewriting, research, and “inspiration.”

On the other side of the “numbers mean hacks” issue are the readers. Yes, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of readers who are only looking for a story that will pull them in, and there are plenty of authors who can do that. But there are also thousands and thousands of readers who are looking for more than just a “quick read.” This latter group of readers can be quite critical, as I well know, and they don’t continue to support authors who don’t meet their expectations. Those expectations are not based on how many books an author publishes, but how well he or she writes what is published.

And, as I will repeat, quality is often independent of quantity, especially in our field, something that the blogger I’ve referenced didn’t seem to understand. Judge the books, not their numbers, nor the field in which they’ve been published.

An asteroid appears likely to hit the planet Mars. Several years ago, a large comet impacted Jupiter, and its fragments created disturbances in the Jovian atmosphere that could have encompassed much of earth. Geologists have discovered the remnants of massive craters on earth itself, most of which totally restructured the environment and the atmosphere, not to mention life itself.

Another impact such as these could well threaten, if not destroy, life as we know it on earth. Does anyone care? Really care?

In 1968, the movie 2001:A Space Odyssey came out, and in it, Kubrick postulated space stations with tourists and space travel within the inner solar system, and an expedition to Jupiter. That was almost forty years ago, and despite all our advances in technology and computers, we haven’t even been back to the moon since 1972 — 35 years ago.

We have the basic technology to ensure the future of our species, and, with relatively minor improvements, to remove the threat to our planet from such asteroid or cometary impacts. And… what have we done? We’ve cut back on NASA and space research. And frankly, a number of the scientists haven’t helped much when they point out that unmanned missions are more cost-effective for gathering data. They doubtless are, but data isn’t likely to help us much if we need a large and powerful space drive to move an asteroid or plant a colony somewhere other than on an earth about to be devastated by some cosmic catastrophe.

That catastrophe will occur. The only question is when. The problem is that we’re a short-term culture facing an inevitable long-term problem, and our outlook is becoming more and more short-term year by year.

Look at the reaction to global climate change… or even to how many Americans continue to smoke, or drive while impaired, whether by cellphones or intoxicants. At the same time, we’ve glamorized making money and short-term fleeting fame to the point where fewer and fewer American students pursue advanced scientific studies and careers, and then we limit the access to foreign students who would do so, and who have consistently done so to our own benefit in the past.

As a society as a whole, the United States has become less and less interested in anything long-term, anything truly ethical [and I’m not talking about religion, which, unfortunately, ranges from a few deep and ethical believers to a mass of seekers of quick salvation], and far more interested in the quick acquisition of assets and things, the proliferation of entertainment options, interactive video or internet games, or who controls Iraq and Iran, or which theology should be dominant in what culture and society.

Long-term issues, like global catastrophe and environmental degradation, just don’t have much appeal. Admittedly, such issues have never appealed to most people, trying to survive day-to-day, but there were, from time to time, elites and educated individuals who did care. Where are they now, and what is the public reaction to them?

That reaction, it seems to me, is mostly along the lines of: I don’t believe you, and, besides, even if something does happen, it won’t be in my lifetime, and that means it’s not my problem.

And we’re supposed to be a sapient species?

I recently read a reader’s review of one of my books that complained that I’d used the same “device” in several Recluce books — a use of order/chaos and drugs that suppressed memories. Earlier, other readers complained that surely, in a high-tech future, there would be more fantastic weapons than space torps. These “reviewers” then concluded, on this basis, that the books were repetitive.

My first reaction was, “Come off it, idiots!” My second was, “Why do you bother reading when you obviously don’t understand much about human nature and culture… and clearly don’t want to?” My third reaction was to write this blog to attempt to clarify something that has come up more than a few times, not only in regard to my writing, but in regard to the work of more than a few other writers.

Let’s start out with one basic point that I’ve discussed before, and that Heinlein pointed out in print more than 35 years ago. There are no new plots. There are only differing ways of addressing the eternal basic plots.

The second point is that human beings use tools. We develop them; we use them; we keep using them so long as they work. Hammers have been in existence for as long as we have historical evidence, and for at least some 50,000 years, if not longer. They meet a need, and they aren’t going away.

Now… how does this apply to F&SF? It’s so simple that I’m almost embarrassed to put it in print, but it’s also so simple and basic that more than a few readers obviously haven’t thought about it. When a writer creates a fantasy world and its subcultures, assuming that these cultures are populated by beings with human or humanlike characteristics, these beings will use tools, techniques, and the like for replicable results. They will continue to use them so long as they work, or until they are supplanted by something else which they find better. That means that they will hone and use the “magic talents” that they possess that are useful. They will not throw them away or forget about them unless they are not useful. Thus, fantasy series that are true to societal nature will in fact — and should — present various techniques and tools used over and over again by those who can.

Likewise, these tools — whatever they may be in whatever books by whatever authors — will always be used in furtherance of human motives along one or more of the basic plots in human literature.

New gimmicks merely for the sake of introducing new gimmickry to avoid reader “boredom” are not only fraudulent, but bad writing. They may provide momentary excitement, like a sugar high, or other highs, but there’s not much behind it. And like those addicted to other highs, readers who continually desire new gadgets, gimmicks, and twists can seldom fully appreciate much beyond such.

Now… those who desire the continually “new” will and do argue against writing too many books in a given fantasy universe, but I consider that about as valid as saying writers should stop writing mainstream fiction because people use weapons to get their way in all cultures or because bribery is endemic, or asking why people all travel by one of the limited means of transport in a given culture.

By the same token, hewing to the “traditional” for the sake of the traditional and because the unfamiliar is unacceptable is just as much a fault. Neither new for the sake of new nor tradition for the sake of tradition makes for good writing.

At least in western European cultures, we have entered the holidays, and much has been written about how the time has changed from a period of spiritual rejoicing to unbridled materialism, if a materialism leavened by those who still endeavor to do good and by that small minority that always do their best, regardless of season.

In that mixed light, I’d like to reflect on speculative fiction. Although I can scarcely claim to be impartial, given my occupation, I do believe that speculative fiction, certainly at its best, and even at its worst, does convey some blessings upon this troubled world, and, if more people read it, would convey even greater blessings. Am I saying I like all that’s printed in the field? Heaven forbid. I’m not certain I even like or agree with the majority of it. But what speculative fiction does that no other form of literature or entertainment [for the most part] does is speculate on cultures, ideas, likes, dislikes, prejudices, technologies, governments, sexuality and its variations, and much, much more. By doing so, the field offers readers the chance to think about things before they happen. Admittedly, most of what appears in print won’t happen, and much of it couldn’t happen, for various reasons. But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the ideas and the reactions and actions of characters to those ideas and places and events give readers not only an intellectual view of them, but a view with emotional overtones.

The emotional overtones are especially important because, for most people, an idea or a possibility has no sense of reality without an emotional component involving a feeling of how it impacts people. What speculative fiction does at its best is to involve readers with new ideas and settings in a context that evokes a range of feelings.

So often, when people or nations are confronted with a perceived danger, fear reigns, and thoughtful consideration is overwhelmed, if not submerged. And unscrupulous leaders and demagogues prey on that fear to enhance their own power and prestige. The most deadly fear is fear of the unknown. Speculative fiction explores the unknown, and the more people who read it and understand it, the smaller that sphere of the unknown becomes, and the less prone to political manipulation those readers become. To some degree, this is true of all fiction, but it is more true of speculative fiction.

And that is, I believe, one of the blessings the genre conveys, and one of which we who write it should always be mindful.

The other day, as I was driving from one errand to another, I was listening to an NPR radio talk show where two independent budget analysts were discussing the federal budget and taking listener calls. One caller wanted to know why Congress didn’t stop all that wasteful foreign aid and use it to deal with the Social Security and Medicare problems. When the analysts both tried to point out that foreign aid is less than one percent of federal outlays [and they were absolutely correct], the caller insisted that they were wrong and that the government was giving foreigners money from other accounts hand over fist. Now, I spent nearly twenty years in and around the federal government, and I left Washington, D.C., some eighteen years ago. I started out as a legislative and economic analyst for a congressman, and I heard the same arguments and complaints about all that wasted foreign aid back then. Those arguments were numerically and statistically wrong in the 1960s and 1970s… and they’re wrong today.

Polls reveal that Americans believe that as much as ten to fifteen percent of federal spending goes to foreign aid, if not more. We’re talking about almost forty years of people believing in this total untruth. Why?

Despite the war in Iraq, the consistent trend in federal spending since WWII has been to spend a smaller and smaller percentage of the federal budget on defense [and foreign aid] and more and more on various domestic programs… and a majority of the American people still don’t know this, or the fact that domestic programs comprise over roughly 75% of federal spending and defense spending just over 20%.

Various groups of people, of varying sizes, believe in other “facts” that are not in fact true, including matters such as, but not limited to, the fact that the moon landings were a hoax, that the United States is a democracy [for those interested, it’s technically a form of representative federal republic], that Social Security taxes are invested, that the line you’re not standing in always moves faster, that North America was a barely inhabited wilderness at the time of Columbus, and that the world was created in 4004 B.C. [or thereabouts]… or [pick your own example].

Moreover, if you ever attempt to explain, rationally or otherwise, why such “facts” are not so to those who deeply believe in them, you risk indignation, anger, or even great bodily harm.

And many well-meaning souls will say in defense of those believers, “Everyone is entitled to his or her own beliefs.”

To what degree? Is a man who “believes” that the federal income tax is unconstitutional free not to pay his taxes? Does he deserve the same benefits as do other citizens? Is the soldier who enlists free to refuse to fight in a war he or she doesn’t believe in?

On another level, what happens to public policy making and politicians when large groups of their constituents believe in such facts and demand more domestic programs and lower taxes because they “believe” that there’s enough in the budget for those programs so long as foreign aid and waste are eliminated? Or when one group believes that abortion is murder and starts murdering doctors who practice it and another group believes it’s a woman’s right to control her own body and they start attacking politicians, financially, verbally, and otherwise, who insist on opposing abortion at all costs?

Just what is a “truth,” and how far can one go ethically in supporting it? And what does society do when that “truth” is an untruth? Or when large segments of the population believe in opposing “truths” and are willing to go to great lengths in support of their particular truth, as is the case in Iraq and other nations around the world, and as appears to be a growing trend in the United States?

In an earlier blog post, I intimated that at least some of those who espouse feminism in politics or science fiction were not so much interested in changing the structure of society as changing which sex had the socially dominant position. This leads to a related question: In any society, who’s actually in control?

Despite all the political scholars, the media talking heads who pontificate on the subject, the professional politicians, and the academics on both the left and the right and elsewhere, all of whom claim something along the line of “Whoever it is that’s in charge, things would be better if we were,” the answer is far from that simple.

Today, most polls suggest that the war in Iraq is unpopular with more than half the U.S. Yet we live in what is technically termed a representative democratic republic, and those representatives seem unwilling or unable to bring the war to a halt. Less than a third of the population is in favor of either the President or the Congress, and yet both the President and the members of Congress have been elected democratically, albeit by an actual minority of qualified electors.

Those merely slightly less cynical than I would claim that “apathy” is really in charge, but I can only find it chilling that with each expansion of the electorate two trends have continued to predominate if not accelerate. The first is that the intelligence of the average member of Congress has increased dramatically while the quality of decision-making has deteriorated equally dramatically. The second is that the numbers and scope of pork-barrel, earmarked, federally-funded projects have sky-rocketed.

Could it just possibly be that the expansion of the electorate might just have resulted in a political system where ever-brighter politicians use increasingly sophisticated technology and techniques to pander to the wishes of a majority of their constituents, regardless of the long-term consequences or the overarching national considerations?

Could it be that the majority of those voting are actually in charge? How could that be? Surely, the astute citizens of our great land would not continue to vote into office politicians whose principal interest in maintaining position and office translates into an ever-increasing drive to funnel federal bacon into their states and districts, to the detriment of larger national interests. Surely, the desire to do right could not degenerate into merely doing whatever is necessary to perpetuate one’s self in office… could it?

After more than thirty years as a published professional author, I’ve seen more than a few statements, essays, comments, remarks, and unprintable quotations about writers and writing, and, as I noted in an earlier blog, I’ve seen the proliferation of lists of “bests.”

Just recently, Brian Aldiss published an essay in the Times of London that pointed out how neglected and overlooked so many good speculative fiction writers happen to be.

But… is what constitutes “good writing” merely a subjective judgment?

At the risk of alienating almost everyone who writes and who reads, I’ll go out on a limb and say that I don’t think so. I firmly believe that there are certain basics to good writing that, if we had the tools, which we do not, as of yet, could be measured objectively. But since those tools have yet to make an appearance, I’ll merely offer some subjective and scattered observations.

Some aspects of writing can already be measured objectively, such as basic grammar. When subjects and verbs do not agree, the writing is bad. When punctuation is lacking, the writing is certainly suspect. When six different readers come up with six totally disparate meanings for a passage, the writer’s skill is most probably lacking.

Beyond such basics, however, writers, English professors, reviews, and editors can argue vociferously. Some believe that style is paramount, and that beautiful sentences, impeccably crafted, with each word sparkling like a gem in its own precisely placed setting, are the mark of good writing. Certainly, well-crafted sentences are indeed the mark of a good writer, but when the sentences take over from the meaning, the emotional connotations and overtones, and the plot, those beautiful sentences become purple prose, no matter how well-crafted.

Still others advocate the stripped-down Hemingwayesque style of short direct and punchy sentences and actions. My personal feeling, which I’ve discovered is shared by very few, is that in the best writing neither the reader nor the reviewer notices the writer’s style and sentences, because story and style become one. Put another way, the style becomes transparent in allowing the reader to fully experience the story. When the way in which a story is told is noticed more than the story itself, the writing is not as good as it could or should be.

Others cite originality in plot and the need for every book by an author to have a different plot. This particular fixity seems far more prevalent in F&SF; certainly mystery and romance readers don’t seem to mind the same basic plot time after time, and more than a few “great” writers have used a limited number of basic plots. In fact, Heinlein noted that there were only three basic plots.

Even today, there are editors who believe that any novel that is written in any other tense or persona than third person past tense cannot possibly reach the highest level of literary and artistic perfection. Unlike them, I believe that the choice of tense and persona should be dictated by the story itself and represents an integral part of the novel or story, and that the default third-person, past tense is only a general guideline and certainly not part of a set of objective criteria for excellence in writing.

Endings clearly vary from genre to genre. Certainly, very few “great” mainstream novels have happy or up-beat endings, while very few fantasy novels have endings leaving the main characters as miserable — or as dead or dysfunctional, if not both — as do those mainstream novels. The implication from the “literary” critics seems to be that a novel cannot be good or considered as great unless it leaves the reader lower than a snake’s belly, while the fantasy critics tend to believe that a book cannot be good unless the supply of nifty magic “stuff” is not endlessly innovative and unless the hero or heroine suffers and triumphs over hardships and difficulties so massive and entrenched that the efforts of entire societies had theretofore proved insufficient to surmount. [And I confess that, once or twice, I have succumbed to this weakness, and I do hope that I will possess the fortitude to resist the temptation to go forth and do the same in the future.]

The human condition, in general, tends toward optimism in a world whose behavior tends to reinforce the reality of pessimism. For that reason alone, my personal feeling is that “good” writing should encourage and represent realistic hope.

Final examinations are nearing at Southern Utah University, and student stress is building to incredible levels, as it does near the end of every semester these days.

Every day, my wife, who is a full professor at S.U.U., is deluged by students who are “so stressed” that they’re having trouble coping. They have great trouble dealing with the term papers, the projects, the juries, the performances, and the examinations that all come due in the last week of the semester. Now… such requirements aren’t exactly new. They’ve been a part of collegiate curricula literally for generations, and my wife and other professors continually warn students not to procrastinate and attempt to get them to think ahead. But very few of them do, and this generation seems to have far more difficulty in dealing with the situation than any previous generation. Yet the world that awaits them beyond school is filled with deadlines and pressures, and eliminating or reducing such pressures from college, as some institutions are apparently attempting to do, hardly seems a good way to prepare students for “real” life.

Why? Is just that they’re more verbal about the pressures? No… I don’t think so. There are too many other indications that they actually do feel stressed out. But why? Why should these college students be so stressed? They have the highest standard of living of any group of students in history and the most opportunities. When I was their age, the country was in turmoil, and there were riots about the Vietnam War, and a goodly percentage of young men faced the draft or military service in the service of their “choice” before the draft claimed them for the Army. When my parents were students, it was the middle of the Great Depression, and Germany was turning to Nazism, and World War II loomed. When their parents were students, the era of the Robber Barons was in full swing, and the nation was heading into World War I.

The vast majority of problems faced by today’s students are internal, arising out of their own chosen life-style and habit patterns. Yes, there is a drug problem, but they don’t have to use or abuse; that’s a matter of choice. Even war, for them is a matter of choice, given that we have an all-volunteer armed services. HIV, AIDS… those too are essentially a matter of choice, except in very rare cases. Whether one gets into the “right” university or graduate school is not a matter of survival, unlike being conscripted for WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. And while the “right” school may confer greater opportunities, those opportunities don’t come down to actual survival, but to a higher level of income and prosperity.

Yet “stress” and college counselors abound, and most students seem to complain about being “stressed out.”

I’d submit that this wide-spread epidemic of stress is the result of our “instant society.” Back before the age of computers, doing something like a term paper required a certain amount of forethought. Papers, strangely enough, were far longer then, and required more research, with extensive footnotes and bibliographies. Typing them required more time, and anything more than punctuation revisions could not be made without retyping the entire page. Tables had to be carefully measured and hand-typed. Graphs were hand-drawn. What can be done in minutes today on a computer took hours and then some.

Today’s students are used to getting everything “instantly.” When I was a student, unless you were wealthy, telephone calls required either lots of quarters and a pay phone [now nearly obsolete] or a recipient who would accept the charges. That necessitated at least some forethought. Today, it’s just flip open the cellphone and call. There was exactly one fast food restaurant in the town where my alma mater is located, and it was a long walk from campus, and the college grill closed at 10:00 p.m. And late late or Sunday shopping for paper or supplies… forget it.

Now… I’m not praising the “good old days.” I’m just saying that they were different, and that difference required a basic understanding that you couldn’t do everything at the last moment, because very little in society was “instant.” Even so, some students procrastinated… and flunked out. Today, they can procrastinate, and technology sort of allows them to throw something together… but it’s often a mess… and they end up stressed out.

No matter what anyone says, it just doesn’t occur to most of them to plan ahead. Why should it? Between watered-down high school curricula where last minute preparation usually suffices, especially for the brighter students, and a society that caters to instant gratification on all levels, very few of them have ever had to plan ahead in terms of dealing with day-to-day work and studies.

They’re intelligent; they’re incredibly quick at some things, like video and computer games and tasks and internet searches. What they aren’t good at is foreseeing the convergence of the mundane into a barrier that can’t be surmounted at the last minute. Nor are they all that good at seeing beyond the immediate visual superficiality and assessing how what they see may play out in the long run.

So… we have stressed-out students, many of whom will turn into adults who will end up even more stressed out when it turns out that neither technology nor the instant society have an instant solution for their lack of forethought… when they truly have run out of time.

Last weekend, as with almost every weekend this fall, the college football pundits were proven wrong once more as Oklahoma upset Missouri and West Virginia lost. The commentators were wrong. All this got me to thinking about just that — commentators.

We have sports commentators, who are “experts” on everything from bowling, golf, and football to anything that appears on some form of television — and that’s anything that’s professional, in additional to the collegiate “money” sports. We have financial commentators. We have political commentators. We have news analysts and commentators. We have religious commentators. We even have F&SF reviewers and commentators.

Yet all too many of these commentators are really just dressed-up versions of Monday morning quarterbacks, with explanations of why things happened after they already did. Pardon me, but anyone with a certain amount of intelligence and knowledge about a field ought to be able to explain what did happen. But how many of them, particularly outside of sports, have that good an average in predicting what will happen?

Besides, what about the old idea of thinking for one’s self? Doesn’t anyone think out their own views — by themselves — any more?

While it’s always been obvious that a certain percentage of any population is unable to formulate coherent and logical opinions about much of anything, I have to wonder whether many are even trying these days. Oh, I’m certain that people retain that capability, but with instant polls on everything from whether anyone agrees with what Celebrity X is doing to who leads in what Presidential primary state or whether the results of the Hugo voting are superior to the results of the World Fantasy Awards or whether some other writers and books really deserved the “award,” we’re inundated with commentary and interpretation of news, polls, and events, so much so that it’s often hard to find a complete set of facts by which one might, just might, have the opportunity to make a judgment based on facts, rather than on commentary.

It almost seems that, in more and more fields, commentary is replacing facts and news about the events, as if readers and viewers could not be bothered with learning the facts and deciding by themselves. I know that I have to take and read more and more periodicals, often more obscure ones, just to find information. Even news stories in the local papers are filled with speculations and commentaries on why something happened, so much so that it’s difficult, if not sometimes impossible, to discover the facts.

I’m dating myself, but I really miss the attitude of Jack Webb on the old Dragnet, when he’d say, “Just the facts, sir, just the facts.”

That’s one reason why I’ve been so pleased with the unpredictability of the college football season. At least somewhere, real life is destroying the false image of the infallibility of “professional” commentators.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that various readers and reviewers have remarked on the fact that I seemed obsessed with the “theme” of power, and sometimes the “theme” of gender and sexual politics. Other writers get identified with these or other “themes,” and usually, but not always, the noted identification carries the implication that the writer under discussion should get on with it and stop pounding at that theme.

But… is there a distinction between observation of human nature and a theme that underlies human behavior? Or is it just a matter of reader and reviewer opinion? Is it a repetitive and unnecessary theme when the reader or reviewer doesn’t want to accept the observations, but merely life-like when they do?

For better or worse, before I became a full-time writer, I spent almost thirty years in the worlds of the military, business, and government and politics, and in these worlds I received a thorough education in how power is used and abused in all fashions by human beings. As many others before me have noted, and as doubtless many others after me will note, very few people really understand and know how to use power effectively, and even fewer use it for what might be called the “greater good.” This is not a “theme.” It’s an observed fact, and if I include fictionalized versions and variations on what I’ve observed, as an author, I’m being true to human nature.

This issue applies to other aspects of writing science fiction and fantasy as well.

In the Spellsong Cycle, Anna continues to use the same tactics, often in battle after battle. So do various others of my characters in other books, and some readers have complained that was “unrealistic,” that such tactics wouldn’t continue to work. In combat, effective tactics are based on the abilities of the combatants, the weapons at hand, the geography, and various other limited factors. The range of effective tactics is indeed limited, and tactics are used effectively over and over again. This is why military strategists study ancient and modern campaigns. In addition, weapons change their form, but their functions change slowly over time, and sometimes not at all over centuries. Today, the function of the vast majority of modern weapons is the same as two centuries ago — to apply various destructive and explosive devices to the most vulnerable aspects of the enemy. We’ve gone from musket balls to cluster-bombs and RPVs, but the function remains the same. Even in science fiction, this observation holds true.

Likewise, so does another human variable — the slowness of human beings, especially in groups — to learn from experience. Even after WWI, the armies of most industrialized nations, including the U.S., still retained cavalry units — with horses — despite the clear knowledge that mounted cavalry was ineffective and counter-productive against such weapons as the machine gun. Castles took a long time to vanish after the development of artillery. Yet I can’t count the number of times I’ve had readers complain about — and even some reviewers comment on — why one side or the other doesn’t learn how to cope with something after one or two battles. Borrowing from another media… Duhhh!

After a certain amount of experience, I learned that fights of all kinds consist of short and violent action, punctuated by far longer periods of comparatively little action. As a beginning Naval aviator, I was told that flying was “99% boredom and one percent sheer terror.” In a sense, it’s true. Most time in the air is spent getting to a place where intense action occurs or is undertaken before you return. Some missions are designed to have no action; you’re either gathering information or waiting on station in the event something might happen. Yet far too many books depict only the action and all action… and more action. To me, that’s incredibly unrealistic.

Yes, fiction has to offer entertainment, and no one wants to read, and I certainly don’t want to write, something as boring as a moment-by-moment adaptation of boring reality. By the same token, not taking into account the crux of human nature and human brilliance and stupidity — and at least some of the waiting in between — can only result in the written version of a high-speed video game.

I don’t write those, but they do get written, and that’s part of the marketplace. I don’t mind that, either, believe it or not, but what I do mind is when readers and reviewers with a “video-game” mindset criticize those authors who are trying to enlighten and educate, as well as entertain, because their books are more true to life. Some themes are true, both in life and fiction, and ignoring them is one reason why conflicts like Vietnam and Iraq, or the Middle East, or… [pick your favorite politico-military morass] have occurred and will continue to happen.

Overused theme or time-tested observation? In the end, it still depends on the reader’s viewpoint.