A century or so ago, and certainly earlier, the general consensus, both among the public and the scientific community was that homo sapiens was the only tool-using creature, and certainly the only one who had self-consciousness. But recent studies of various primates, Caledonian jays, and other species have proved that mankind is not the only tool-user, merely the most advanced of tool-users. More recent studies also suggest that some primates and jays, and possibly even elephants, have at least a form of self-consciousness.

What led to this conclusion? Experiments in the use of deception and self-imagery. In essence, certain species hide food and deceive others as to where they’re hiding the food. The way in which they used deception, and the varying levels of deception, depending on the closeness and relationship of those nearby, suggests that they are aware of themselves as individuals, and are also aware of others as individuals.

What I find intriguing about these studies is that there appears to be a link between intelligence and greed and deception. Now… a wide range of species accumulate food and other items, but only a handful exhibit what might be called “greed.” Greed can be defined as the drive to acquire and maintain possession of more physical goods or other assets than the individual or his family/clan could possibly ever physically utilize, often to the detriment of others.

One thing that’s interesting about human beings is that we also possess the greatest degree of concentrated greed and deception of any species. No other species comes close. This raises an intriguing question: To what degree is intelligence linked to greed and deception?

Are greed and deception by-products of intelligence, or are they the driving force to develop intelligence?

While the evolutionary/historical record suggests that species capable of greed and deception tend to be more successful in attaining control of their environment, what happens next? Intelligence develops tools, and individuals with greed and deception put those tools to use in varying ways to enhance their own power to the detriment of other members of the species. As the tools become more powerful, their use by those who possess them also tends to concentrate power and wealth, yet almost every successful society has also incorporated deception of some sort into its social framework.

Kurt Vonnegut made the observation in Slaughterhouse Five — through a Nazi character, of course — that the greatest deception perpetrated by the American system was that it was easy to make money. Because it was then thought to be so, income inequality was justified, because anyone who wanted to work hard could “obviously” become wealthy.

Historical institutional “deceptions” include the divine right of kings, the caste system of India, Aryan racial supremacy, the communist “equality of all” myth, and on and on.

But what does this bode in an increasingly technological information age, where hacking, phishing, and all other manner of informational deception has increased, involving not just the criminal element, but industry, politics, and entertainment on all levels? Does it mean that the survivors will have to be even more intelligent, or that social structures will come crashing down because no one can trust anyone about anything? Or will we manage to muddle through? Will survival of deception be the ultimate Darwinian test of the fittest? Maybe… there’s an idea for a book…

Years ago, James Tiptree, Jr. [Alice Sheldon] wrote a novella entitled “Houston, Houston, Do You Read,” in which present-day male astronauts were catapulted into a future where there are no men. The implications of the story are that, despite their greater physical strength, men were indeed the weaker sex and perished, albeit with a little “help.” Some recent analyses of educational achievement by gender suggest that Sheldon just might have been on to something.

Over the past few years, sociologists, psychologists, teachers, and even politicians have been raising an increasing number of questions about the gender and educational implications of a high-tech society. Three generations ago, women students were a clear minority in higher education and in almost all “professional” occupations. Today, female students comprise the majority of undergraduate college students and graduates, with a nationwide ratio running in excess of 56% to 44%, a ratio that is becoming more unbalanced every year. So many more women are attending college that upon many campuses, particularly at elite universities and liberal arts colleges, they’re being subjected another form of discrimination. In order to keep a gender balance, many schools effectively require female students to meet higher academic standards than male students.

A recent report [Gender Equity in Higher Education: 2006] reported that in college men spent more time watching television, playing video games, and partying, while women had better grades, held more leadership posts, and claimed far more honors and awards.

The trend of women seeking professional education is also continuing in many graduate fields, such as law and medicine, where women outnumber men at many institutions.

In more and more state universities, women outnumber men, in some cases composing sixty percent of the student body. Even at Harvard, the latest freshman class has more women than men. The only areas where men are numerically dominant are in the hard sciences and in engineering, but even there, a greater and greater percentage of science and engineering students are female. Not only that, but in the vast majority of institutions, the majority of awards and honors are going to women. Now, admittedly, this female expertise hasn’t yet managed to reach and shatter the “glass ceiling” prevalent in the upper reaches of the faculty in higher education or in corporate America, but it’s coming, one way or another. There are female CEOs, but many women are simply choosing to create their own businesses, rather than play the “good old boy game.” Others become consultants.

Another factor that I’ve noted in my occasional university teaching, and one also noted by various family members, three of whom are professors at different universities, is that a decreasing percentage of college-age men are inclined to apply themselves in any degree that requires more than minimal effort, both physically and intellectually. This is a disturbing trend for society in a world where education and intellectual ability have become increasingly important, both to hold society together and to achieve a comfortable lifestyle suited to personal satisfaction and raising children. Even more disturbing is that this gender-based educational disparity becomes greater and greater as the income of the parents decreases. In short, men from disadvantaged homes are often half as likely to get a college degree as women from the same cultural and economic background.

Both my wife [who is a full professor] and I have watched male students turn down full-tuition scholarships because the requirements were “too hard,” while talented women literally had to claw their way through the same program.

Do these trends represent a failure of our educational system.. or is it that too many men can’t really compete with women once the playing field starts to get more level? Or that men need special treatment to achieve on an equal basis? After all, the real hunters are the lionesses, not the “noble” lion.

In the headlines recently have been more stories about how little Americans read. According to an AP-IPSOS study, twenty-seven percent of all adults in the United States have not read a book in the past year. The remainder — those who claimed to have read at least one book over the past 12 months — averaged seven books. According to another earlier Gallup poll, some 57% of Americans had not read a book [besides the Bible] in the previous year.

I’m not troubled by the fact that there are those who haven’t read any books. In any society, there are people who just aren’t readers. But I am troubled by the numbers and the way they fall out.

I wasn’t surprised that the readers of fantasy and science fiction comprised less than 5% of all readers. Nor was I exactly astounded to discover that, over the past 15 years, book-reading percentages are down for the 18-25 age group, from close to 90% to less than 60%. More than half of all frequent readers are over age 50, and more than 55% of all books are purchased by those over 50. The highest concentrations of readers are among those who are older and college-educated.

Yet book sales are up. Exactly what does that mean? I’m reminded of a study done for the National Opera Association several years ago. Sales of opera tickets were up, and everyone was pleased until they looked closely at the numbers — which showed that while the number of tickets sold was up, the actual number of patrons was down, and that the average age of patrons was increasing.

The statistics on book reading seem to be following a similar pattern, and for years now, various pundits and social scientists have been worried that Americans are losing their reading skills – and that a smaller and smaller percentage of Americans are highly literate. Yet the U.S. economy still dominates the world stage, and, despite the difficulties in the Middle East, our military machine has no equal — even in situations where we have to deal with sectarian civil wars. So what’s the problem?

The problem is information-processing. To make intelligent decisions, human beings need information. They can obtain that information in one of three ways: direct personal experience, listening and watching, or reading. The first two means, while often necessary, share one basic problem. They’re slow, and the information flow is very restricted. Even slow readers generally can process written information several times faster than auditory information, and they can always refer back to it. That’s one reason, often forgotten, why stable civilizations did not emerge until written languages developed. The invention of the printing press in Europe provided a tremendous informational advantage to western European civilization, which, until that time, had lagged behind the Asiatic cultures, particularly the Chinese. The Chinese culture effectively used an elaborate written pictograph-based character language to restrict social and political access to a comparatively minute fraction of the population, which resulted in a tremendous information gap once western cultures combined alphabet-based languages with widespread use of the printing press and the comparative decline of Chinese power and influence.

In its own fashion, an auditory-visual media culture limits and shapes information flow, first by selectively choosing what information to promulgate and second by tying that information to visual images. Now, immediately, someone will question this by pointing out the multiplicity of media outlets and the different media channels. There are hundreds of cable and satellite channels; there are thousands of blogs and web-sites. How can I claim this is limiting? First, on every single cable and satellite station, the information flow is effectively limited to less than one hundred words a minute. That’s the top rate at which most people can process auditory input, and most facts have to be put in words. Second, while the internet remains primarily text-based, the vast majority of internet users is limited to what best might be called “common access” — and that is extremely limited in factual content. If you don’t believe me, just search for Mozart or Einstein or anything. In most cases, you’ll find hundreds, if not thousands, of references, but… you’ll seldom find anything beyond a certain “depth.” Oh… I’m not saying it’s not there. If you’re a university student, or a professor using a university library computer, or if you want to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in access fees, or if you live in a very affluent community with integrated library data-bases, you can find a great deal… but Joe or Josephine on the home computer can’t.

In reality, the vast majority of internet users circulate and re-circulate a relatively small working data-base… and one which contains far less “real” information than a very small college library, if that.

Then add to that the fact that close to 60% of college graduates, according to a Department of Education study published last year, are at best marginally literate in dealing with and understanding information written at the level of a standard newspaper editorial.

These lead to the next question. Why does all this matter?

I’d submit that it matters because we live in the most highly technical age in human history, where no issue is simple, and where understanding and in-depth knowledge are the keys to our future… and possibly whether we as a species have a future. Yet the proliferation of an auditory-visual media culture is effectively limiting the ability of people, particularly the younger generations, to obtain and process the amount of information necessary for good decision-making and replacing those necessary reading and researching skills with simplistic audio-visuals and an extremely limited common informational data-base. This makes for a great profit for all the media outlets, but not necessarily for a well-informed citizenry.

Like it or not, there isn’t a substitute for reading widely and well, not if we wish what we have developed as western semi-representative governments to continue. Oh… some form of “civilization” will continue, but it’s far more likely to resemble a westernized version of the pre-printing press Chinese society, with a comparatively small elite trained in true thought and mental information processing, all the while with the media and communications systems types enabling “sound-byte” politicians with simplistic slogans while trumpeting freedom of expression and banking greater and greater profits.

Come to think of it… I wrote a story about that. It’s entitled “News Clips from the NYC Ruins.” If you didn’t read it in The Leading Edge, you can read it in my forthcoming story collection — Viewpoints Critical — out next March from Tor.

A recent article in the Economist suggested that the U.S. space program was headed further astray by concentrating on manned missions when so much more knowledge could be obtained at a lower cost from instrumented unmanned missions. After reading that, my first reaction was to disagree — on the grounds that unmanned missions keep getting their funding cut because they’re “just” research, and research always tends to get cut first in any consensus budgeting process, either in the corporate world or in government. In addition, I had the feeling that most people don’t identify with space cameras, comet probes, asteroid probes, near-earth orbit surveys, and the like, despite the cries and protests from many in the scientific community that “science missions,” as opposed to astronaut missions, are being under-funded, even though they provide far more information per dollar spent.

But then, ever since the Soviet space program collapsed, much of the impetus for U.S. space development seems to have collapsed as well, whether for manned or unmanned projects. Only when Americans perceive an immediate and real threat do we seem able to press for research in technological or military areas.

As I considered these points, I began also to reflect upon the time I spent at the U.S. EPA, when there was a great furor over the possible contamination from leaking Superfund sites. Now, there was no question that a considerable number of abandoned waste sites were in fact leaking and contaminating the environment near those locations, and public opinion was clear and decisive. Fixing Superfund sites was top priority. Somewhat later on, the Agency looked further into the environment priorities, and issued several reports. The gist of the findings was that, in general, that the public’s priorities for environmental improvement were almost inversely related to the real dangers to people and health. The actual illnesses and deaths from leaking Superfund sites were far lower than those from at least five other major environmental issues. How could this be? It happened, I believe, because we are an anecdotal and egocentric species. Those dangers we see and hear personally, those we can understand easily, and those which can be related to us personally by those we know and trust — these are the dangers we believe in. When chemically-caused cancer occurs in a local community because of groundwater contamination, we react. But when the EPA or a state health agency notes that fatalities are rising from exposure to natural radon or skin cancer caused by the thinning of the ozone layer, we don’t. When health agencies point out that smoking is a far greater health hazard than any of the environmental concerns, such notice has a comparatively small effect. Even when the massive damage claims arrive from increased hurricane activities, we tend not to put as much personal priority in looking into why hurricanes seem to be more of a problem — and we just want someone else to pay for the repairs.

We all want our problems solved first. Then, and only then, will we devote resources to other people’s difficulties. This is a practical and natural approach from a Darwinian and historical point of view. If we don’t solve our problems first, we and our children may not be around to solve anyone else’s problems. But what happens when a non-immediate problem could become a far-larger problem threatening us and everyone else?

This difficulty isn’t a new problem in American society, and it’s not a problem confined to the U.S. Prior to roughly 1938, no one wanted to consider the implications of what Stalin was doing in the USSR or Hitler in Germany, or Mussolini in Italy. No one in the “western” world paid all that much attention to the Japanese “rape of Nanking” and what it foreshadowed. Today, because the area has no oil and no strategic import, and because few Americans have seen or experienced the brutality and continual death, most Americans don’t really pay much real attention to the genocide in Darfur.

This same mindset applies to the exploration of space — or the issues surrounding global warming. If something doesn’t pose an imminent danger or have an immediate entertainment or economic value… one that can be exploited quickly, why bother?

Then… add one more complicating factor. In neither space exploration nor global warming do we truly have a certain solution. While we’ve reached the point where it appears that a majority of the knowledgeable scientific community believes that there is some form of global warming occurring, there is no strong consensus on what might be called a workable strategy. What one group calls workable is called punitive by another. Reducing carbon emissions is one possibility, but that will penalize third world and developing nations disproportionately, if carried out. Unilateral action by industrial nations means their citizens bear higher costs. Reducing greenhouse gases is another possible approach, but that cost falls more heavily on the high-tech economies. Requiring more fuel efficient cars increases costs and decreases choices more for those who require cars to get to their jobs… And so it goes.

The bottom-line question might well be: Can a species that’s been hard-wired over a million years to be short-term, personally/familially-oriented, and anecdotal cope with problems that require long-term planning and wide-spread consensus?

Believing in something does not make it true. Disbelieving in something does not mean that it cannot exist. Admittedly, on the quantum level, the act of observing often changes or fixes what is, but so far, at least, the question is not whether a particle or wave or photon exists, but in what form and exactly where.

The problem in human behavior is that belief has consequences, often deadly ones. I cannot imagine that a Supreme Being, should one exist, could possibly care whether the correct prophet happened to be the son or the nephew, or whatever, of the old prophet. Nor do I think that it is at all rational that rigid belief in one set of rituals about a God will give one worshipper eternal favor while rigid belief in another set of rituals about that same God will damn a different worshipper eternally. And I have great difficulty in thinking that any deity will grant one eternal and blissful life for slaughtering those who believe differently, particularly those who have done nothing to offend one except not to share the same beliefs.

All that said, in human affairs, it doesn’t matter much whether I or others have difficulty understanding why people would care about such differences passionately enough to kill to attempt to force their beliefs on those who would choose to believe differently — or not to believe in a deity at all. The fact is that, both now and throughout history, millions upon millions of people have been killed over beliefs, not just religious beliefs, but political beliefs, cultural beliefs, and even economic beliefs.

Yet there is no true proof behind these beliefs, especially religious beliefs. Oh, there are books, and testimonies, and prophets, and visions, and unexplained phenomena, but true proof, in the scientific sense, is missing. Even for some well-accepted political beliefs, solid verifiable proof of their efficacy is scant or lacking altogether.

Science, at least in theory, is supposed to test propositions and to verify them. We apply such methodology to every physical aspect of life in modern society, yet there is no comparable test for “belief.” All one has to do is to say, “I believe.”

And so, despite astronomical, atomic, chemical, and geologic evidence that the universe is close to 15 billion years old, there are those who choose to believe that it was created far more recently than that. Despite a long fossil record documenting evolution, creationists cite lapses and faults in the fossil chronology, yet dismiss the counter-argument that there is no physical record at all suggesting “instant” divine creation. Nor is there any true physical evidence suggesting an afterlife.

So… what’s the problem with belief? Everyone has some belief or another.

Beliefs have consequences, and not just the obvious ones. Take the widely held belief in some form of an afterlife, a belief held by close to seventy percent of all Americans and eighty percent of Americans over 50, according to recent surveys. What does that mean? One of the greatest dangers of this commonly held belief is that it allows cruelty in the name of all manner of rationales. After all, if there is a supreme deity, if there is an afterlife, well… all those folks who got slaughtered have another chance to repent and redeem themselves. It’s not like it’s forever.

But… what if it is? What if one life is all anyone gets? There’s lots of belief about eternal life, but there’s no proof, not scientific proof. We want all sorts of tests about whether our food is safe to eat, whether our cars are safe to drive, whether our water is pure, whether our air is clean. Yet, we believe in an afterlife without a single shred of scientific proof. Are there two standards in life? Those for the physical world, where everything must be proven and proven again, where lawsuits abound over the tiniest discrepancies… and those for beliefs, where, regardless of the consequences, we accept something totally unproven?

Is that because we can’t face, and don’t want to face, the truly toxic aspect of belief in an afterlife — that it allows us all sorts of justifications for cruelty, for oppression, for suppression? If the life we have now is the only one we will ever have, and if we accept that, could we live with all that we have done to others?

Then, too, the truly terrifying possibility is that we could, and that the results would be worse, far worse. Does that mean that belief in unproven deities is preferable to the alternative? If so, what does that say about us as a species?

Like many authors, I do read at least some of the posts and commentaries about my work, not so much for ego-surfing, because one nasty comment wounds more than a score of positive ones heal, but to see what some of the reactions [if any] to what I wrote are. After many years, there are certain patterns which have become obvious.

First, a number of readers believe that whatever my protagonists say and do is what I believe. So do I believe in pre-emptive action [as do Jimjoy Wright, Nathaniel Firstborne Whaler, and Gerswin], in semi-preemptive action [ala Lerris, Lorn, Trystin, or Van Albert], or reaction in massive force [Ecktor deJanes, Anna, or Secca]?

Because different protagonists react in different fashions, I find that this occasionally engenders one of two reactions from readers. The first reaction is that I am being inconsistent. The second reaction, which is far more common, is when the reader fixates on a particular type of hero or behavior and ignores all the others. For example, many readers believe that I only write coming of age stories about young heroes, But even in the Recluce Saga, of the fourteen books published [or about to be published], exactly half deal with “coming-of-age.” None of the Spellsong Cycle novels use that approach, and only one of the Corean Chronicles is really a coming-of-age tale. Almost none of my science fiction novels deal with “coming of age” themes. By these figures, less than twenty percent of my work is true “coming of age” work.

Then there is the charge that I write the “same” book, over and over. To this charge, I plead “partly guilty,” in that there are common sub-themes in every book I write: the hero or heroine learns something and accomplishes something and there’s some form of romantic interest. I’m not terribly interested in writing books where the protagonist learns nothing and/or accomplishes nothing. In practice, a protagonist either learns or doesn’t learn, accomplishes something or doesn’t. Now, in the James Bond books, and in many of the endless series with the same cast of characters, a great deal of action takes place, but when it’s all over, what exactly has happened? Isn’t the norm that one set of disposable characters has been killed or jailed, or been made love to and discarded, only to be replaced by another set for the next episode? Has the real structure of the world or the political system changed — or has the scenery just been replaced, so to speak, and made ready for another series of adrenaline-filled [or lust-filled or whatever-filled] adventures?

Nor am I interested in writing nihilistic or “black” fiction. Years ago, in my closest approach to the dark side, I did write one classical tragedy in three volumes, and sales of the third volume plummeted. Interestingly enough, now that The Forever Hero has been reprinted in a single fat trade paperback, it has continued to sell modestly… but reader reaction has been more than a little mixed. Even so, I seldom write books with unabashedly “everything is well” endings. Most of what I write has what I’d call “bittersweet” endings, those where the protagonists achieve their goals, but end up paying more, if not far more, than they dreamed possible. I’ve also discovered that, because I often don’t make that explicit, a number of readers don’t always catch the darkness veiled within the ending.

In a larger sense, however, ALL writers write the same books over and over. As Heinlein pointed out over 35 years ago, there are only a handful of plots, presented in many guises, but limited in “formula,” if you will, to those basic plots.

Oh… and then there’s the reader reaction to the food. More than a few times, there have been questions and comments about why my books have so many scenes where the characters eat. With those comments and questions have come observations about the food, ranging from why it’s so simple in some books to why it’s so elaborate in others. Why the meal scenes? Because, especially in low-tech societies, meals are about the only opportunity for conversations and decisions involving more than two people. As for the fare served, I try to make it appropriate to the time and culture, as well as to the economic status of those at the table.

Finally, as exemplified by the reaction of some few readers to my comments and amplifications on why most readers don’t like or aren’t interested in F&SF, there are always those who believe that, by what I have written, I am attacking their most cherished beliefs, and that because I am, I’m clearly an idiot. By this standard, I suspect all of us are idiots to someone, and writers more so because writers who continue to be published have to say something, and something will always offend someone. My personal belief is that a writer who offends no one usually has little to offer.

Most professional writers do offend someone, and in that sense, you as readers can judge authors not only by their supporters and friends, but also by those who dislike them , although I would also suggest, based on experience, that most readers who dislike an author cannot be impartial in evaluating their dislike. Why? Because most writers published by major publishing houses produce an acceptable technical product [even if editors must proof and correct it in some cases], when someone claims they dislike a writer because his work is “badly written,” “excessively verbose,” “so spare you can’t follow the action,” “filled with cliches,” and the like, all too often this sort of criticism veils a deeper dislike within the reader, and one based more upon conflicting values than upon the writer’s technical deficiencies. Now, I am far from claiming that we as writers do not make technical mistakes or that we do not occasionally manifest such deficiencies, but any writer who has glaring technical deficiencies, as cited by some readers, will not get book after book published. In the end, most criticism reflects as much, if not more, about the critic as about the author.

A recent article/commentary in Discover suggested that science fiction, if not dead, was certainly dying, and one of the symbols the author used was the implication that the prevalence of middle-aged [and older] writers at the Nebula/SFWA awards suggested a lack of new ideas and creativity. Needless to say, as a moderately established writer who is certainly no longer young, I find such an “analysis” not only irritating, but fallacious, on two counts.

First, age, per se, is no indicator of creative ability in science fiction or any other literary form, and it never has been, contrary to Bruno Maddox’s apparent assumptions. If one looks at the record of the past, Robert Heinlein was 52 the year Starship Troopers was published and 54 when Stranger in a Strange Land came out. At 31, Roger Zelazny wasn’t exactly a callow youth when Lord of Light was published. Arthur C. Clarke was in his early thirties when his first novel [Against the Fall of Night] was published as serial. William Gibson was 36 when Neuromancer was published. Even today, the “hot new” SF writers, such as Jo Walton, Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross, Ken MacLeod, and China Mieville, while not old by any stretch, are in their late thirties or early forties.

Second, those talented and even younger writers who have not yet been recognized widely are often at the stage of having stories and first and second novels published. They are not generally not exactly the most prosperous of individuals, or they have demanding “day jobs” and tend not to attend in as great a proportion the more expensive and distant conventions and conferences. Nonetheless, they exist, even if most weren’t at the Nebula awards.

Science fiction may not always get it right, but the writers are still in there pitching, with far more ideas than Mr. Maddox, who seems to equate experience and flowery Hawaiian shirts with a lack of creativity and inspiration.

The New Yorker recently reported on Simon & Schuster’s efforts with MediaPredict to develop what would amount to the “collective judgment of readers to evaluate books proposals” by reading selections presented on a website. The reason why any bottom-line oriented publisher would attempt to discover a better way of determining what books will be commercially successful is obvious to anyone familiar with the publishing industry — something like seven out of every ten books published lose money. Needless to say, more than a few people responded with comments suggesting this “American Idol” approach would doom the publishing industry to institutionalized mediocrity.

As those of you who have read more than a few of my books know, I believe that, with a few well-cited exceptions, extremely popular works of art in any field tend not to be excellent, and many of the few that are both popular and excellent tend to be those from earlier historical periods that have been propagandized by well-established cultural and social institutions. This is the way it is and has always been… and it may well continue. In the publishing industry charges and countercharges have flown back and forth for years, on subjects such as editorial elitism, genre segregation, reviewer bias, critical prejudice against commercially successful authors… and on and on.

For all that, the publishing industry has managed a remarkable diversity in publication, and in the F&SF field, small and niche publishers have broadened that diversity, as have more recent internet publishers.

What bothers me more about the MediaPredict approach is that it substitutes the judgment of one small group — those who enjoy reading off electronic displays and have time to read online — for that of another smaller group — editors and agents. Since my work has been far more popular with readers than with editors and agents — with the notable exception of one long-time editor — I certainly have always questioned the collective judgment of editors and agents. Any competent editor or agent can certainly tell what kind of novels are selling. On the other hand, it takes a truly outstanding editor to determine what kind of book that isn’t currently being published will sell, and there are very few editors who can make an accurate judgment like that on a consistent basis.

But will the MediaPredict approach make any better judgment on the commercial potential of a book? I doubt it… and here’s why.

Both online readers and editors are largely self-selected groups, if self-selected for different reasons, and this reflects the larger problem I see with the MediaPredict approach. The self-selection criteria for being an online reader effectively eliminate large groups of individuals from the selection process. Even some twenty years into the wide-scale personal computing/cellphone/PDA age, the majority of novel readers doesn’t read and doesn’t want to read books off a screen… any kind of screen. It takes a certain mindset to enjoy doing this, and I suspect that mindset is different from non-screen-readers. MediaPredict might do quite well at determining what kind of books appeal to that audience, but that audience is currently a minority of readers– especially outside the F&SF and possibly the thriller fields.

Editors, for all their short-comings, and they do have many, are held responsible over time for the success of their selections, and editors who tend to have too many commercial failures generally have short careers. There’s not even that check over the MediaPredict approach, nor has anyone asked one other critical question: Do the “screen-readers” predict accurately not only who likes the books being previewed, but whether they represent actual buyers? In short, will those on-screen preferences translate accurately into bottom-line profits? Because, in the end, that’s how the industry measures success.

The other day, my wife attempted to book a hotel room online, a relatively simple task even for those of us who had to learn computers at an advanced age, say, over thirty when we first encountered what then passed for personal computation. Everything went fine until she attempted to enter our home address.

Her reservation was rejected because our actual street name did not match the one in U.S. Postal Service database. The Postal Service address eliminates the word “south” and runs together the last two words. We did manage to figure it out and get the reservation, but, frankly, this sort of hassle could foreshadow a far greater problem.

After the momentary hassle was resolved, I looked at my driver’s license. It shows the correct street address, and not the one that the Postal Service database says is “correct.” Then I went outside and looked at the street sign. The name on the sign matches my driver’s license and the legal description on our property tax. But… the government database gives the wrong address.

Does that mean at sometime in the future, if we have more security crackdowns at airports, I — or my wife or some other unfortunate soul whose address does not match — will be dragged aside because the database used by the government is flawed, and because computers aren’t smart enough to figure out that a phrase like “West Ridge” might be the same as “Westridge?”

So long as the mail gets here, I don’t much care whether it’s addressed to the equivalent of West Ridge or Westridge, but I do care when the wrong terms get put in a computer that may well affect my personal freedom because the correct address is flagged as being “wrong” in a federal database. As we all know, computers aren’t that “smart.” If it doesn’t match, it doesn’t match. Now… all one has to do is to combine a literal-minded security official with a faulty database before the difficulties begin. We’ve already had the spectacle of a five-year-old [as I recall] boy being denied passage on an airliner because his name matched that of a suspicious person.

Years ago, I thought the story [whose name and author I’ve forgotten] that had an innocent man being executed because a computer glitch turned a citation for overdue library books into a murder conviction was amusing… and far-fetched. Now… I’m beginning to worry that such a possibility is neither. What concerns me even more is that I haven’t seen much written about such cases as an indication of a systemic problem, rather than isolated instances that will just go away or be the problem of a few individuals. But what if I — or you — happen to be those individuals?

Just how are we going to prove that the database is wrong — especially in time to catch the flight or avoid detention as a suspicious individual?

A recent scientific article reported the results of a study of the conversational patterns of men and women. The results? That men and women actually utter almost the same number of words daily. The topics talked about did differ by gender — men talked more about tools, gadgets, and sports, women more about people — but the difference in the volume of conversation indicated that, on average, women talked only about three percent more on a daily basis. More interesting was the fact that the “extreme” talkers were male.

What I found most interesting about the study was its genesis. One of the researchers kept coming across references to a “fact” that women talked three times as much as men did, but he could never find any research or statistics to support that contention. I can’t help but wonder how many more such facts are embedded in our culture… especially in the science fiction and fantasy subculture.

Science fiction, in very general terms, is supposed to be based on what is theoretically possible in the sciences, and over the years I’ve heard more than a few authors talk, both sotto voce and loud and boisterously, about how they wrote “hard science fiction,” solid stuff, based on science. And to give them their due, most of them did. But with a tradition of such “hard” SF going back over seventy years, why is it that SF writers have had such a poor record of predicting the future?

The first reason, I submit, is that many of the “facts” accepted by writers don’t stay facts. They were theories or assumptions based on science that was either already outdated or which soon became outdated, yet was still widely accepted. For example, Tom Goodwin’s “classic” story [“The Cold Equations”] basically suggested that there was absolutely no flexibility in oxygen supplies in a spacecraft, largely, I believe, because he did not anticipate oxygen recycling and the like, or the kind of human engineering and ingenuity that allowed Apollo 13 to make a miraculous return to earth. The other problem with “The Cold Equations” is that Goodwin combined the “laxity” of long-accepted technology with the totally tight margins of experimental and pioneering craft. The only prevention for intrusion into a spacecraft about to launch was a sign? For a culture sending a ship across interstellar space? Yet, so far as I can tell, few if any writers or critics ever noted this at the time.

Also, like the “conversation” fact uprooted by this recent study, there are other cultural facts and myths, so deeply part of our society [as well as different “facts” deeply rooted in other cultures] that we seldom question them. There is the “fact” that the ace pilot is tall, lean, and rangy. In fact, usually the pilots best able to take high gee forces are shorter and less rangy.

A second reason is that technology — or magic, if we’re considering fantasy — is only one of many factors. Costs and economic viability usually trump technology. That’s the principal reason why there’s no follow-on aircraft to the Concorde. And why we don’t all have those personal helicopters predicted at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Yet still, all too many SF authors don’t consider the economics of their cultures or futures.

So… if you really want to write something that’s accurate, consider those “facts” you have tucked away very carefully… and don’t forget about the cost of implementing that nifty technology.

Although there have only been a comparative handful of comments here about my earlier statements on “true believers,” I’ve discovered that the negative comments elsewhere abound. I’ve been accused of being everything from a “big dope” to insensitive and not understanding just how enlightened and far-seeing and intelligent Christian, Mormon, Muslim, atheist, etc., F&SF readers are everywhere. I don’t dispute their enlightenment and intelligence. I never have.

Virtually every one of those individuals who has contested what I wrote has begun by explaining their individual background to illustrate how what I said does not apply to them. Once again, I agree… wholeheartedly. It doesn’t. As noted in my previous post, I never said that what I wrote applied to every single individual. In fact, I took pains to point out that it didn’t.

One of the better qualities of human beings is that we like to identify with others; that is one of the reasons why society is in fact possible. Unfortunately, this favorable quality has a downside, and that downside is that we also tend to assume that everyone is like us. In general, we like to belong, whether in rooting for a sports team or attending F&SF conventions. HOWEVER… readers are a minority in USA society today, and fantasy and science fiction readers more so than that. F&SF readers are not like “everyone else,” although they do share certain traits and beliefs, to a greater or lesser degree, with other readers of speculative fiction.

First, let’s take a quick look at “everyone else.” A recent article in The New Yorker noted that polls taken since 1945 consistently show that:

More than 50% of all American cannot name a single branch of our government or name their own Congressman.

More than 2/3 do not know the issue behind Roe v. Wade or the role of the FDA.

More than three quarters do not know the length of a Senate term.

More than 40% cannot name either of their senators.

In addition, a report issued by the U.S. Department of Education in 2005 noted that 69% of all college graduates lacked sufficient literacy to read and fully understand a standard newspaper editorial. Moreover, 59% of all advanced degree recipients in 2005 also lacked that ability. Obviously, this deficiency does not apply to those reading this blog, but then, and it’s no secret that readers of science fiction and fantasy tend to be more intelligent than the general population. But is everyone else like F&SF readers?

Roughly 16% of all Americans have an IQ below 85, and that means close to 50 million Americans who cannot effectively read or understand the content of most science fiction and fantasy. Likewise, roughly 16% of all Americans have IQs above 115, and the majority of serious readers fall within this group. Now… if the proportion of fiction titles published in the F&SF genres compared to all fiction is roughly proportional to the reading population [and while that is an assumption, it isn’t exactly unreasonable, except that it may overstate the number of readers, because I’ve observed that most F&SF readers are voracious in their reading] there are potentially 3-6 million “regular” F&SF readers in the USA.

So… please don’t tell me that you’re typical, or that “everyone else” is like you. Or that I am bigoted and close-minded because I’m suggesting that there are millions of people who don’t and can’t think like you do, because, like it or not, you are not like most people.

Just recently I received several comments which accused me of tying the word heterosexual to “close-minded” and equating those with a Christian or Islamic belief structure with being small-minded… or something to that effect… with the clear implication that I’m neither heterosexual nor of a Christian background… or fond of either. Because there are at least a few people who are reading what they want to read, rather than what I wrote, here are the apparently offending phrases:

…there are tens of millions of people who cannot conceive of, let alone accept, any sort of domestic arrangement besides a two-partner paternalistic, heterosexual union sanctioned by a religious body. There are possibly more than a hundred million who have no understanding of any theological system except those derived from European Christianity. Effectively, the vast majority of individuals from such backgrounds are self-alienated from science fiction and to a lesser degree from fantasy.

First, please note that I did not say that any and all heterosexuals were close-minded; I said that the majority of those who could not conceive of and accept a wider view of marriage were — despite the fact that history and culture have consistently demonstrated far more arrangements than the heterosexual model. Second, given that the United States has roughly three hundred million people, tens of millions do not represent a majority, although the polls I’ve seen indicate that people who reject all forms of marriage except the western heterosexual model indicate well over a hundred million in the USA. Third, I’d like to point out that I did not say that all of the individuals from such backgrounds were self-alienated; I said that a majority were. In that, the numbers don’t lie, because, compared to any segment of the population, F&SF readers comprise a very small percentage. Therefore, my point about the majority of individuals from such backgrounds being self-alienated from the field stands.

In addition, the facts should be fairly well-known that I am devoutly heterosexual, as my wife and former wives and numerous offspring would certainly attest, and come from strong Episcopalian background, which is certainly a branch of western Christianity, at least the last time I checked.

Now… why did I bring up this seemingly trivial set of complaints?

In the complaints, my words were not attacked — I was, and I was attacked for something that I didn’t even write, but for what people thought I wrote, because they either did not read carefully or could not. I’m a writer, and, if you as readers don’t like what I write, then you have the option of not reading my books and telling others why. That’s fair.

You can also misread what I wrote and tell others. That also happens, more than I or any other writer would like, but it’s part of being an author.

What bothers me about all of this is simple. I’m an author. I love words and strive to use them clearly and effectively, and so does every other author I know. Usually we succeed. Sometimes, we don’t, but not for lack of trying.

Is it really too much to ask someone to read what we wrote, rather than what they thought we wrote?

But then, I have to admit, when the Pope starts suggesting that Catholicism is the only”true” Christianity, we’ve got far bigger problems than someone misunderstanding what I wrote… yet I can’t help but feel that they’re all tied together, perhaps because of the hundreds of “true believers” I’ve met over my lifetime, I’ve found very few who were able to consider anything that conflicted with their beliefs impartially and thoughtfully, regardless of their level of intelligence. They just couldn’t, if you will, read what was written, but only what they thought was written.

Last week Fred Saberhagen died. I can’t claim to have been a close friend, since Fred and I talked less than a dozen times over as many years, but he was always thoughtful, kind, and insightful, what anyone would have called, and many have, “a class act.”

In thinking about Fred, however, I realized there is an important aspect of Fred’s writing that’s been mentioned in passing, but not really emphasized to the degree it merits. In more than a few areas of fiction, he was there first. All too often, the true innovators in writing get overlooked by those who do it later with greater fanfare, more brashness, and less talent and class, and, for this reason, I’d like to point out how much of a quiet pioneer Fred was.

Fred conceived of and began his “Berserker” books some twenty years before the Terminator was even a gleam in James Cameron’s eyes, and “popular culture” tends to credit the Terminator as the first violently anti-human cybernetic intelligence. But… Fred was there first.

Fred’s use of Vlad Dracula — historically depicted as one of the great semi-mythic villains — as an intelligent and sympathetic hero not only predates all the other vampire books, but does so with wit and charm, and, to my way of thinking, his books are not only better written, but far more thoughtful. Just a few years later, I wrote The Fires of Paratime, in which I made the Norse mythic villain Loki the hero. While I had not yet read Old Friend of the Family or The Dracula Tape, it didn’t matter. Fred was there first.

Underlying his “Swords” books and Empire of the East is the premise that atomic warfare would change the very principles of the world on which we live — in a way an overlooked use of a metaphor that has come to pass. In this, and in his use of technology, myth, and modern techno-metaphor… Fred was there first.

The other day, a more recent reader [new to what I write in the last five years, and also, I suspect, of a younger persuasion] of my work emailed me with a suggestion. His view was that my science fiction covers were far too “dated.” The artwork looked like “that eighties stuff” with all the sharp lines and airbrushing. He argued that my SF would sell much better if my science fiction covers looked more like the recent Corean Chronicles covers by Raymond Swanland, because “Swanland is more organic…”

The reader went on to say that my science fiction is anything but conventional or dated, but that the covers on the books proclaim that it is. I certainly like the Swanland covers, but I like a number of my other covers, by other artists, and the John Picacio cover for Ghosts of Columbia helped John win an award or two, I understand. I like that cover a great deal.

But… the point raised by my reader is intriguing. Certainly, research into reader buying habits shows that, especially for an unknown or little known author, the cover is one of the largest reasons for picking up and buying a book. One study determined that something like 27% of sales result from the impression the cover makes on would-be readers.

Yet, for an established author, how much of a difference do covers make? Or do they only make a difference in sales to new readers? The covers on the Recluce books have always been painted by Darrell Sweet, who is a superb colorist, while the Corean Chronicles covers painted by Swanland show more dynamic action. Certainly, sales of the Corean Chronicles appear to have increased somewhat with the Swanland covers, but would a switch to more edgy action covers increase the sales of my SF books… or would they end up disappointing readers who would then expect the sort of non-stop action such covers would imply? Would they turn away older readers who would think that the change in covers reflected a change in content? And while my science fiction certainly has action, it’s definitely not non-stop, because my characters are as real as I can make them, and in real life, nothing is non-stop.

Of course, as the writer, I get very little say on the cover, outside of suggestions for scenes, and what technical input I do provide is usually on the accuracy of the illustration — and yes, the art director and editor do actually consider such factors.

Still, the question remains… would organic yet edgier covers for my science fiction better reflect to readers what I write?

One of the biggest unaddressed issues in science fiction and fantasy is the fact that, whether we want to admit it or not, we as human beings are really not very rational. At best, we’re selectively rational… otherwise known as using rational arguments to support what we already decided to do or to oppose what we don’t want to do. Just as we’ve finally mastered enough technology to get to the point where we can move off the planet so that all the human eggs, so to speak, are not in the same basket, we effectively slow down and turn away from space travel. Just when we’re almost to the point of being able to prevent disastrous asteroidal impacts, we scale back on sky scans and enabling technology.

Yet… should we really be surprised at such irrationality?

If we as human beings are so smart, why do we fret and worry about our jobs, our social status, our earnings, and so many similar circumstances… and then drive while drunk or using cell phones… or while drowsy or distracted… without fastening the seat-belts?

Put another way, motor vehicle deaths every year are nine times greater than all job-related deaths, and for those of us not involved in farming, forestry, and heavy construction, automobile accidents cause fifty times more deaths than anything in our occupations. In fact, the only large-scale work field with a high death rate from the occupation is agriculture/forestry, and even in recent years, there were almost twice as many deaths in farming and forestry accidents as combat deaths in Iraq.

Another example, albeit in a different context, was revealed by two sets of statistics revealed by the state of Utah. Utah boasts the highest high school graduation rates [something like 92%], the lowest per pupil expenditure on primary and secondary education, and one of the highest rates of failure by high school graduates on national competency exams — over 25% of graduating Utah high school seniors cannot pass basic competency levels in reading, mathematics, or general skills, i.e., they can’t understand a newspaper editorial, balance a checkbook, or read and understand a map. Now, these numbers don’t seem contradictory to me. If you don’t spend much money on education, have a high rate of teacher turnover, and lenient grading standards, then exactly what should a rational person expect when the students are assessed more objectively?

Years ago, a health researcher told me [and I’m taking it on face value] that one of the reasons that early tests on the effects of tobacco smoke on rats didn’t reveal elevated rates of cancer was that the rats piled straw and anything else they could find against the smoke inlets in their cages. Even if this story is exaggerated, millions of human beings, supposedly far more rational than rats, and now with the scientific knowledge of exactly how tobacco impacts the human body, choose to smoke and continue smoking. Is this exactly rational?

The United States possesses one of the most prosperous and open economies in the world, and there are millions of jobs that U.S. citizens don’t want to do, and there aren’t even enough Americans to do them. So… we should be amazed that we have 12 million illegal immigrants? One can say, of course, that the immigrants are behaving rationally in trying to improve their lot in life, but is the other side of that equation that prosperity enables irrationality?

Maybe… just maybe, that’s why great civilizations fall… because great prosperity removes, for a time, the constraints of rationality. But then, does it make a great SF novel? Nah… After all, doesn’t great human technology in the hard SF tradition solve all the problems?

Earlier today, Mathew Cheney [whom I’ve known on and off since he was in something like fifth grade, and since he’s over 30, that might tell you that we’ve both been in this field for a while] wrote a piece in his Mumpsimus blog reacting to Jason Sanford’s article in The New York Review of Science Fiction. To stir the pot a bit more, I’m going to say that I think, in a sense, they’re both right in some fashions and totally missing the point in viewing the larger “literary” picture.

As I understand it, Jason makes the point that F&SF “don’t get no respect” from the so-called literary establishment, and not only no respect, but not even any acknowledgment. Matt makes the point that in real terms, there’s no such thing as a monolithic or even an oligopolistic literary establishment or an agreed-upon literary canon. Matt goes on to point out that, even if The New York Times attempted to impose such a canon, its reviews effectively amount to less than a thimble full of liquid in an ocean of ink.

Over the past almost fifteen years, I’ve lived in a slightly alien culture — Utah — where the prevailing faith dominates the local media, the local events, the laws, and even the scheduling of athletic events. Yet, Utah has a state constitution which prohibits strongly any religious interference in government on any level, and while the LDS Church occasionally makes pronouncements, essentially it doesn’t have to interfere, because the cultural indoctrination is more than sufficient for its purposes.

In a similar sense, since its very beginning, science fiction has had to battle a similar cultural indoctrination, one that I’ve become aware of on a very personal level as a writer. Over the years, I’ve had a number of highly intelligent people attempt to read my books… and fail. One of them was my own father, who was not only a brilliant attorney, but an accomplished pianist and sometime composer. The only book of mine he actually understood and liked was The Green Progression, which was a very near-future political/legal/regulatory thriller. For all of his intelligence, his wanting to read and enjoy what I had written, his stylistic mastery of the English language, and his wide reading of historical and contemporary fiction, he had one problem — he was so deeply grounded in the here-and-now that he could not accept worlds or futures based on anything that he did not know to be “real” and true.

In that sense, he was a member of that large group of people from which Sanford would claim the “literary establishment” arises, an establishment which Matt denies exists. The plain fact is that this group of people, many of them highly intelligent, does exist, but not as an organized group or conspiracy. No, most of them are not reviewers and literary critics, but some of them are. The problem isn’t that of a “literary” establishment, but the fact that any culture is composed almost universally of individuals whose thought processes and preconceptions are tethered to the present reality in which they live. That present reality is the basis of their preconceptions. Some can speculate slightly beyond the here and now. An even smaller number is comfortable in reading farther beyond the “now.” But… the farther one goes from the comfortable here and now, the fewer individuals there are who will make that leap, and even fewer who are comfortable with it. Even in the theoretically more open society of the United States, there are tens of millions of people who cannot conceive of, let alone accept, any sort of domestic arrangement besides a two-partner paternalistic, heterosexual union sanctioned by a religious body. There are possibly more than a hundred million who have no understanding of any theological system except those derived from European Christianity. Effectively, the vast majority of individuals from such backgrounds are self-alienated from science fiction and to a lesser degree from fantasy.

Fantasy gets around some of that barrier for many people by claiming, right from the outset, that nothing is real in fantasy and never can be… or that fantasy is based on folk-tales and the like and is merely cultural fancy. The fact that fantasy sells far more titles than does science fiction supports, I believe, my conjecture that alternative cultures, worlds, that postulate possible other realities are far too uncomfortable for most people. Even so, the current best-selling Harry Potter books, I recently read, annually total only some 10 million copies a year in English-speaking markets of some 400 million people.

There is no conspiracy or determined effort by a literary establishment to attack science fiction and/or fantasy, but individual attacks have occurred and will continue to occur. Because scholars, critics, critiquers, reviewers are all drawn from the literate population of a culture at large, the majority of whom are uncomfortable with alternatives and futures beyond the here and now, most of those scholars and reviewers will simply be unable and/or unwilling to comprehend alternatives beyond their comfort zone. Rather than admit such discomfort, they will ignore or denigrate that which they do not understand.

At times, this discomfort is so great that it blossoms into outright prejudice, where talented F&SF writers cannot teach at certain institutions or where critics blindly lambaste all fantasy and science fiction. This prejudice does not arise from a tight literary clique, as Sanford would apparently have one believe, but, contrary to what Matt has implied in his blog, from a large segment in society firmly and irrevocably socialized against science fiction and fantasy, and indeed against anything outside their “this-is-real-and-acceptable” mindset. Unfortunately, the majority of critics and reviewers tend to fall into this category, not because they are a literary clique or because they are “out to get” science fiction and fantasy, but because of a socialization they either cannot or will not transcend.

The “bad” news is that little we as writers can do will change adult minds already closed. The “good” news is that, in our society, we can still write and reach those who are open to re-socialization and an understanding that the universe is far wider and wondrous than those who will not can possibly imagine.

Over the years in SF, various writers have postulated assorted “doomsday” environmental scenarios, where the entire planet gets too hot, or water turns to the equivalent of clear jello, or the northern hemisphere becomes encased in solid ice in an improbably short period of time. Yet, in a way, these are “simple” catastrophes, and I say simple because they are of such magnitude that we poor humans can do nothing.

What about catastrophes with which we could deal… and won’t?

For example, it appeared for a time as though there were two schools of thought on greenhouse gas effects, those who believed in global warming and that it was caused or greatly exacerbated by human activity and those who denied any such warming was taking place. Recently, it appears as though the majority of what one might call “informed” opinion, i.e., those with data and some understanding of it, has changed into those who believe in global warming as created by human activities and those who believe in global warming as caused by “natural” effects.

Too many of those in the second group, at least from what I can see, don’t seem to understand that the situation is no less critical for being “natural” [if indeed it is]. But such warming, whether anthropogenic or “natural,” will still lead to ocean levels far higher than they are now. Picture a United States with much of Florida underwater, New Orleans submerged, parts of Houston, New York, San Diego, and other coastal cities under water.

Current estimates for the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina run at over $100 billion, and the majority of that centered on the city of New Orleans and the surrounding area. Something like a 30 foot rise in sea-levels would create a loss of property and equipment thousands of times that amount. How about a $10 TRILLION loss?

And that well might be conservative.

There’s been a great controversy raised by the current administration about the need to reform Social Security because of the possible cost burden required to maintain current benefit levels. Yet rising sea levels pose an even greater threat to the next generation than mere financial burdens — but the financial losses involved would be huge, as noted above. Curiously, I’ve seen no real attempts at a hard dollar assessment just of the losses of productive lands, cities, and like that would be caused by rising sea levels. While one might justify building dikes around New York City, it’s clearly neither possible nor practical to build dikes along the entire U.S. coast.

And what of the political firestorm that would be created by “writing off” real estate and investment in low-lying areas? Yet, if global warming is “natural,” it could well fall under the “acts of God” clause in most insurance and indemnity policies… and that’s certainly where casualty insurers would want it.

With such a massive loss possible, it’s no wonder that no one really wants to address it… and that politicians and policy-makers chose either to ignore the possibilities or to wait until “better data” are available. In the meantime, more and more homes, buildings, and other societal assets are being created in areas ever more vulnerable to losses through rising waters, storms, and violent weather.

But, of course, if all that warming is just a “natural” effect, we really don’t have to worry, do we? And our children and grandchildren will be just fine, won’t they?

And besides, it’s not really a world-destroying environmental danger of the kind we writers postulate, is it? Just a minor rise in temperature and sea-levels, that’s all.

The other day I was proofing a copy-edited manuscript of my forthcoming short story collection [Viewpoints Critical, Tor, March 2008], and I came across a line in the introduction that pointed out that much of what I write has unsettling implications… if the reader thinks about it. This observation followed my reading the introduction that David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer offered to my story “Ghost Mission,” which appears in their annual anthology [Year’s Best Fantasy 7, Tachyon Press] and in which they claim that I’m a romantic.

Yet… if my fantasy and science fiction have unsettling implications, why is it so seldom noticed? So much so that respected editors term me a romantic?

As a side note, I was once asked in which of the worlds I’ve created I’d like to live, and I didn’t even have to think about it. “None of them,” was my immediate answer. I’ll leave it to all of you to consider why my answer was both immediate and vehement — for a moment — but it wasn’t because any of those worlds were quiet and “boring.”

Part of the reason why I’m not considered even a borderline “horror” writer is because I seldom throw the horrifying aspects of the worlds about which I write into my readers’ faces… or figuratively rub your faces in the gore. But… if one thinks about the implications…

Would it really be comfy-cozy to live in a world where the ghost of your teen-aged son or daughter who died in an accident or a lingering illness remained for years to remind you visually and physically that, somehow, perhaps you could have done better?

Would you like the idea of living in a world, like that of Recluce, where every substantial increase in technology resulted in an increase in chaos and societal disruption… somewhere in the world? [Or do we live in a similar world already?]

What about a world such as Liedwahr where the greatest power is wielded by those who have musical abilities most of us can never hope to match? [But is that so different from intellectual capabilities in a high-tech world?]

Or a world such as Corus where abusing the environment will ensure absolutely that a few generations hence every intelligent creature will perish?

Or a future high-tech world such as depicted in Archform:Beauty or Flash, where all of the technological and political/legal protections we have enacted make it virtually impossible to be truly ethical — or to protect your family — without breaking the law?

But…of course… none of these are considered horrifying in comparison to novels that spill entrails everywhere and where evil is conveniently personified in devils or evil politicians or business types out to dominate whatever world is being described. Or where massive fleets of spacecraft [patently impossible both technologically and economically] vie to see whether the good guys and gals or the baddies control the universe.

Then…it just might be that most readers prefer simple and obvious horror and that the less obvious and more real horror hits too close to home.

I recently read an article in The New York Times with a title something like “DNA Sequencing, Two Billion Bits of Me, Me, Me!” That suggested more than just research into what makes a human being.

We live on a small planet holding over six billion human beings, and that planet is located in a universe that, so far as we can determine, holds something like fifty billion galaxies, each with between fifty and a hundred billion stars and their solar systems. Yet each of us wants to believe that we are not only unique, but special, and we want to affirm in some way that we are not so insignificant as the numbers above might indicate. For that reason, we as humans have continually sought ways to prove our worth, both to ourselves and to the world at large.

Religion has certainly been one of those ways, as has a striving for some form of world-changing accomplishment. But when one comes right down to it, there’s only room for a handful of world-changers such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon, or geniuses such as Einstein, Newton, Mozart, Edison, and Fermi, or even fortune-building entrepreneurs such as J.P Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, or Bill Gates. But heretofore anyone could theoretically believe in a god and a faith that promised some form of immortality. Except now… even religion is under attack.

I have no doubts that religion will remain as a bulwark against personal universal insignificance for billions of humans, but for those for whom the billions upon billions of stars in the sky suggest that religion will not provide any security against personal oblivion and meaninglessness, I suggest that genetic engineering is the new faith. Just think, there’s the possibility of endless clones of one’s self, or more modestly, the possibility of ensuring that one’s best traits are passed on to offspring — not only one’s own, but to others desirous of having children with special traits and brilliance, for do we not all have such brilliance?

Even now, services are offering clones of favorite pets and, in the process, giving their owners a sense of power over a cruel universe. How long will it be before we can pass “ourselves” on to an identical clone and thus not have to rely on an uncertain deity for continued existence?

But then, isn’t that just another kind of faith? And faith is religion in another guise, isn’t it?

Over Memorial Day weekend, I went to CONduit, the science fiction and fantasy convention held in Salt Lake City, and the convention that qualifies as my “local” convention, because it’s the closest — if anything some 260 miles away is ever exactly local. One of the panels I was on dealt with the topic of “foreshadowing” in fiction, the idea that an author needs to set up events occurring farther along in a book so that the reader doesn’t get to that later event and throw the book across the room — or worse — vow never to read another of the author’s books.

Another panel was on political commentary in science fiction and fantasy, and one of the points brought up was that authors should generally refrain from pontification and empty rhetoric and that we should use the events and actions in the story to demonstrate and illustrate how political acts influence society and people and what those effects will be. As an author, I very much agree with that point, and although I must confess to an occasional lapse, generally perpetrated by my alter-ego Exton Land, I do make a deliberate and conscious effort to show my readers what will happen as a result of political decisions and acts.

But…as I was driving home, I began to think about the confluence of those panels — and there is more than enough time to think on a 260 mile drive through the sparsely populated mid-section of Utah. It struck me that those of us who are authors are being held to a far higher standard by our readers and the public than our politicians are. Politicians can mislead their constituents day after day, year after year, by promising a happy ending through higher federal benefits, greater environmental protection, lower taxes, or laws that conform to the religious beliefs of their constituents… if not all of the above. What’s more, over ninety percent of them get re-elected.

If I, or any other author, tried to foist that kind of a happy ending on my readers, especially if I did so following 300 pages of the kind of obfuscation and misdirection practiced by the vast majority of politicians, after one book I would have almost no readers left. And again, I must confess to past errors, because for all too many years I was one of those political staffers who created speeches, letters, policy papers, and speeches all designed to suggest a political happy ending through blind faith in a given politician.

As an author, I don’t have that luxury. I have to produce an honest ending, and if I don’t, I won’t be able to make a living from writing fiction because my readers expect that degree of professionalism from me. Neither will most of the other authors I know. Yet we’re authors, just people who try to sell stories for entertainment.

We haven’t been elected to make or change laws that have national and world-wide consequences. People pay far less for our books and stories than they do in the taxes that support government and their elected politicians. But as authors,we’re still held accountable for what we produce and do.

So why don’t people expect and demand the same degree of professionalism from their elected representatives?