Month: June 2018

A slightly modified version of one of my very first posts over on my old blogger site.

I write mostly Science Fiction and Fantasy, although these days more fantasy than science fiction.  So why these genres in particular?

I started as an inveterate reader of SF.  That all got its start back when I was first reading.  In first Grade the reading material was boring.  Boring.  Boring.  Boring.  One half of the class was reading about this stupid “Dick” and his stupid sister “Jane” (my mother had taught me to read at home and I was reading the Childcraft encyclopedias for entertainment).  The other half of the room was reading an equally insipid book about “Tom”.

Sometime about this time I was introduced to a picture book about a trip to the moon that appeared to be based on von Braun’s old Colliers series. [I have since found that the book was “You Will Go to the Moon” by Mae and Ira Freeman, Ed.] That got me started.  About the same time I remember watching coverage of several Apollo missions on TV.

A couple years later we moved and I changed schools and in the classroom library had a bunch of the “Tom Swift, Jr.” books.  This was the first Science Fiction I read that I knew as Science Fiction.  And from that point in the school and public library I started looking for Science Fiction.

The next year I got introduced to others, including Heinlein.  The first ever Heinlein book I read was Rocket Ship Galileo.  I began looking for anything with his name attached to it from that point which led to my finding my all time favorite book–still is to this day–“Have Space Suit Will Travel“.

All of this stuff ignited in me a burning desire to go into space.  I wanted to go into orbit, walk on the moon, see the moons of Mars pass overhead from the Martian deserts.  And the way to get there was to become an astronaut.  But in Fifth grade I started noticing a difficulty seeing the chalkboards at school.  This got worse and worse until in 7th grade I finally got glasses.  Given the standards of the time, where only military (or ex military) test pilots could become astronauts and that to be a military pilot (let alone a test pilot) one had to have perfect vision, that put paid to that idea.

And so Science Fiction filled the hole of the dream that could never come true.  I could never go, but I could at least read about it.  From that point on SF totally dominated my reading.  Some years later I started branching out a bit and developing more “rounded” tastes but it remains SF that I come back to when I read for fun.

So when I started writing, I started writing SF since that’s just the way my mind worked by that point.

My introduction to fantasy was a bit different.  A friend of mine handed me a book and said “Here, read this.” He was so serious about it that I didn’t dare refuse.  The book was “The Hobbit”.  Soon, I had read The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.  And, a few years later, I came across a book marketed as “for people who have finished The Lord of the Rings and are looking for something else to read.” Yes, “The Sword of Shanarra” was really marketed that way.  And while Mr. Brooks seems to get a lot of hate in certain segments of fantasy fandom, he’s probably laughing about that all the way to the bank as he turns out best seller after best seller after best seller.  In any case, Mr. Brooks’ books showed me that there was more Fantasy out there and so I added that to my reading.

One of the things I liked about both SF and the Fantasy I was reading is that the characters generally mattered.  What they did had an influence on the world far beyond what a high school student from a poor family like me could ever realistically hope to achieve.  This was much what drew me to superhero comics and some of the other things I was reading.  This was so different from the “literature” I was being assigned as reading in school that it was a whole other world. (I have, of course, since learned that it’s quite possible to write about people who matter, who make a difference, without going into fantasy and SF, but by that time my tastes had largely settled).

By this point, even when I have a story idea that could be told without science fiction or fantasy themes I tend to write it that way simply because that’s the way the stories come out.  I enjoy Shakespeare (The Tempest is my favorite).  I’ve read London and appreciated it.  I’ve found the mysteries of Lawrence Block entertaining.  But I keep coming back to Science Fiction and Fantasy.

In romance, first loves are often ephemeral, but in this case the first love has been the deepest and the most lasting.

So it’s not really a case of “why write science fiction and fantasy?” for me, but rather “why write anything else?”

This is a blast from the past from my old, old, old blog over on Livejournal (that’s two blogging engines ago).

I’ve run into people who use “participation awards” as a criticism of modern society.  And to a certain extent, they have a point.  If one does not reward excellence and accomplishment and reward instead simply showing up.  Well, you get a lot of showing up and not a lot of excellence and accomplishment.

That said, I do not oppose “participation” awards, per se, provided excellence is additionally rewarded.  In many cases, simply showing up is an accomplishment.

Frankly, there is a value in recognizing, “you came, you participated, you did the task.” Let me give you an example (okay, the example is an excuse to brag on my daughter, but still…). My daughter was out to every softball game (except one where I thought it was rained out but it apparently cleared up enough later that they could play–but that one’s on me, not her). She played through minor injuries (getting hit in tender places with pitched balls). She earned her award. (How many kids never even tried?)

Would have been nice if her team could have gone on to win the league championship, but they washed out in the first round (luck of the draw–got put up against a very strong team with a pitcher who puts the “fast” in fast pitch). Even so, I would have given her another award if I could: her first at bat she got hit in the foot with a pitched ball. That may not sound like much but she had to be helped off the field. Still, when her turn in the rotation came up, she hobbled up ready to go. (Coach and I both said “no!” and sent her back to the bench.)

Incidentally, she was still hurting the next morning and I took her to see the doctor. Good thing, too. Turns out that hit was almost a “perfect storm” type thing. “Just to be safe” the doctor had her foot x-rayed. Well, the ball hit a tendon causing the end to partially detaching it from the bone. She’s in a “walking boot” to give it a chance to heal. [Healed fine.  Since then she went to swimming, then more recently to ballet. ed.]

The ball did that to her and she had been game to go back out there and try. They didn’t give her any awards for that. She’ll have to settle for daddy’s praise . . . and a “participation award.” And somebody else went on to get the championship award.  More power to them.  They played good softball.

But all the people who stayed home never even got that.

So, yes, reward participation.  But don’t stop there.  Those who go beyond simply participating to achieve excellence and accomplishment deserve their own recognition.

This is a group made up of people who used to be in Evanescence.  As you might imagine, their sound is very reminiscent of Evanescent.  Very good group.  I look forward to hearing more from them. (Please, please, let them still be together.)

The latest round started with a restaurant throwing out the President’s Press Secretary because of who she worked for.  Okay, there prerogative.  I believe in freedom of association, including the right not to associate with people you don’t want to.  And since I actually mean it, that means I agree that it also applies to people I disagree with.  Bad business move maybe, but their prerogative.

However, then comes that idiot Maxine Waters (but who’s the more stupid?  The idiot in office, or the idiots who keep putting her there?) using this case as some rallying cry, to wit:

“If you think we’re rallying now you ain’t seen nothing yet,” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif, told supporters at a rally in Los Angeles over the weekend. “If you see anybody from that (Trump) Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” A video of her remarks was posted on Twitter on Sunday.
NPR

Then, of course, there’s protests against actually enforcing our immigration laws.  We have Peter Fonda:

Wanna stop this f—ing monster? Really wanna stop this giant asshole?” Fonda asked. “90 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE STREETS ON THE SAME WEEKEND! THESE REPUBLICAN ASSHOLES ARE ALL IN ON IT! THE CHIEF ASSHOLE IS HAPPY WE ARE ALL VERY UPSET. WE HAVE TO GET EVEN MORE ANGRY WITH THESE REPUBLICANS.”

“WE SHOULD HACK THIS SYSTEM, GET THE ADDRESSES OF THE ICE AGENTS CBP AGENTS AND SURROUND THEIR HOMES IN PROTEST. WE SHOULD FIND OUT WHAT SCHOOLS THEIR CHILDREN GO TO AND SURROUND THE SCHOOLS IN PROTEST. THESE AGENTS ARE DOING THIS CUZ THEY WANT TO DO IT. THEY LIKE DOING THIS. F—,” he added in a second tweet.

A third tweet from the actor, posted several minutes later, called for activists to target President Trump‘s youngest son, Barron Trump, who attends a school in nearby Montgomery County, Md., claiming (apparently for effect) that activists should “rip” him from the first lady’s arms and put in “in a cage with pedophiles.”

“WE SHOULD RIP BARRON TRUMP FROM HIS MOTHER’S ARMS AND PUT HIM IN A CAGE WITH PEDOPHILES AND SEE IF MOTHER WILL WILL STAND UP AGAINST THE GIANT ASSHOLE SHE IS MARRIED TO. 90 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE STREETS ON THE SAME WEEKEND IN THE COUNTRY. F—,” he tweeted.

He deleted the second and third of those tweets but the Internet is Forever.  Like they used to say about Vegas:  What happens on the Internet, stays on the Internet.

We have protesters not just targeting government offices or even places of business, but gathering outside people’s homes.

Protesters gathered outside of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s home in Alexandria early Friday morning.

Demonstrators gathered to express their anger with Nielsen and the role they claim she plays in family separations.

Several people stood along the sidewalk near her home with some holding signs. One demonstrator held a sign with Nielsen’s face on it featuring the words “child snatcher.”

Fox 11 News, Green Bay, WI

If the home was of a black family and the protestors were wearing sheets, would that change your opinion of it?

The problem is, these people have convinced themselves they are “on the side of history”.  They are in good company with that.  Lenin thought he was on the side of history.  Stalin did too.  So did Mussolini and Hitler.  And let us not forget Mao.  All, or at least their ardent followers, thought they were “on the side of history.”

The problem with not only thinking history has a side but that you are on it is that it justifies anything.   When your cause is inevitable and you are supremely secure in your rightness, anything you do in that cause is right.

Some of the worst atrocities in history have been committed by people believing they were “on the side of history.”  Look at that list of names again.

In a post a few days ago, I described how I thought a future civil war would start.  There would be no equivalent to “Lexington” or “Fort Sumter” but it would rather simply start as an increase of politically motivated violence without any distinct starting event.  It would only be in retrospect that we’d look back and see that we are in a civil war and had been for some time.

It’s looking very much like we’re in the early stages of that right now.  Mostly, it’s just talk, but it’s the kind of talk people use to work themselves up to acting on it.  And so the appropriate response to this speech is more speech, speech in opposition.

Because if this keeps on it’s going to get ugly and there will be no winner except death.

One of the first questions about writing is “why write?”  There are many reasons to write, of course.  You have to write that thesis if you want that degree.  That piece of equipment needs a manual so people will know how to use it so someone is given the task of creating one if they want to be paid.  And those texts, emails, and, yes, blog posts won’t write themselves.

Here, however, I’m going to focus on fiction writing.  Why take the time and effort to sit down (or pace up and down the hall, or however one does it) and craft a story?

So what are the reasons for writing?  Fame? (Twenty years writing fiction with a handful of professional sales so far and I’m still pretty much unknown.  There are easier ways to fame.) Fortune? (The most I, personally, have made in a year from writing is about $1000.) Attracting members of the appropriate sex? (Have I got some disappointing news for you….)  You get a few, a very few, who are successful by those metrics, sure, but mostly you get folk who labor away for a little bit of extra pocket money (or a modest living if they’re lucky) or the occasional fan letter. (Science fiction and Fantasy have an advantage over many writing genres in that there are frequent conventions where fans of their style of writing get together and authors and fans can meet each other.)

So why do it?  It’s a lot of work for very little of the typical rewards.

One thing to remember is that the storyteller is as old as humanity itself.  Telling–and with the invention of writing, writing them–is just something people do.  Even traits that are ubiquitous across the human species are expressed more strongly in some than in others.  Some have a stronger drive to tell stories in much the same way that some people have a stronger competitive drive.

In the end, I think that you aren’t a writer because you write.  You write because you are a writer.  Making money, winning fame, making friends and influencing people are often rationalization more than reasons, a justification for the mental and emotional effort that goes into writing.

That said, writing, storytelling, isn’t the only drive and, as drives go, it’s fairly far down on the totem pole.  Yes, I have a drive to write, to put stories down for other people to read, but I also have a drive to eat, to live in reasonably comfortable surroundings, to procreate (and the things that go with that), and so forth and if writing gets in the way of that, so much the worse for writing.  Other people might have the drive more strongly and are willing to live a hermit’s life in a drafty attic somewhere while scribbling away the story they have to get out of their system only, once finished, to have it replaced with another story that they simply have to get out of their system.

And so, while I think to a great extent writing and storytelling is what you are more than what you do that it’s not also a craft and a skill to be learned.  There’s a big difference between a group of friends telling “no fooling, there I was…” stories at the local watering hole and someone writing a novel that sells hundreds of thousands of copies. Some of that difference is just plain luck.  Some of it is inborn talent.  And some of it–I’d like to say most of it although that luck aspect can loom pretty large, the one where you hit with the right story at the right time in front of the right people–is learned craft.

Are you a writer?  How can you tell?  The answer is simple:

If you’re a writer, then you write.

In preparation for LibertyCon, I had to do some work on the Explorer.  It’s a seven hour drive to Chattanooga from Indianapolis and in the middle of it would be a bad time for something to break down.  Earlier this month I did the oil change and checked coolant and other fluid levels.  Today I did some desperately needed work on the brakes.

Just before the Eclipse this past August I replaced the front rotors and pads.  I didn’t even bother seeing about having the rotors turned–the amount of wear and rust on the rotors suggested they weren’t a good candidate for that.  But more than that, with some shopping around I found that it’s frankly, cheaper to get new rotors than it is to have a machine shop turn them.

Since the front brakes do the lion’s share of the work in stopping the car, I was able to put off doing the rear brakes for a while.    I decided, however, that we had reached the point where it was no longer viable to wait.  I did some shopping again and bought a kit with both rear brake pads and new rotors.  They arrived a few days ago and today I got the rear end of the Explorer up on jackstands (if you’re ever going to work under a car use jackstands–the ribcage or skull that doesn’t get crushed if the jack fails will thank you).  I get the wheels off easy peasy (Helps if you loosen the lugnuts before you jack up the car).

First problem.  You know that cliche about never being able to find the 10 mm socket?  Well guess what?  The bolts that hold the calipers are 10 mm.  And what can’t I find?  Neither a 10 mm socket nor a 10 mm combination wrench.  I have to use an adjustable crescent wrench.  I hate using the adjustable crescent wrench.  Too easy to have it not quite snug enough and round off the bolt head.  However, loosening about half a turn each with the wrench gets it loose enough to spin the bolts out by hand.  From that point a little bit of prying gets the caliper free.

Next comes the rotor.  A few taps with the mallet “breaks” it loose and so I start to pull it off.  It moves a few millimeters and won’t come off any more.

So, problem number two.  Rust on the inner drum of the rotor has created a “lip” which catches on the shoes for the emergency brake.  To get it off requires a combination of a lot of pounding, prying, and application of muscle.

Eventually the rotor comes off.  I spray down the new rotor with brake cleaner then slip it on over the studs figuring given the years of wear and how tight the e-brake shoes were the probably won’t quite fit over the  shoes and I’ll have to look up how to loosen them but to my surprise it slides right on.

I start to put the new pads into the caliper and… problem number three.  I forgot to compress the piston back into the cylinder before removing the old pads.  So I put the old pads back on place as a spacer and cranked it down with a c-clamp.  After that, installation went smoothly.  The hardest part is getting the caliper aligned with the mounting holes so the bolts go in smoothly.  Then back to that damn adjustable crescent wrench to tighten the bolts down and on to the other side.

The other (driver’s) side proved to be a bit easier.  The odd part was that the rotor was significantly thinner than the one on the passenger side.  In any case, it came off easier.  This time I remembered to compress the piston back into place before removing the old pads.

After that it’s a matter of putting the wheels back on, getting the car off the jackstands and onto its wheels, and a short test drive to make sure everything was working smoothly.

Oh, and a nice long shower because all that working on the car and crawling on the ground had me quite filthy.

All was well and it cost me a small fraction of what a shop would have charged.

I just need to replace my missing 10 mm socket and combination wrenches.

Recent revelations show widespread corruption in the FBI.  This underscores the problems that I wrote about in a blog post a couple of years ago:

The Washington Post recently had an article about a State drug chemist (responsible for various drug tests) was not only a user of the drugs but had been falsifying drug test results which were instrumental in many peoples convictions and incarceration.

The article asks the question about whether the cases for which she provided evidence should be thrown out.

This shouldn’t even be a question.

Libertycon in Chattanooga, TN, this year is from June 29 to July 1. This year it will be held at the Chattanooga Mariot Downton.  I will be arriving sometime in the afternoon or evening of the 28th and leaving the afternoon of the 1st.  I look forward to seeing my fans there (all three of you).

Here’s my schedule.

Many years ago, in an online discussion, the late Dr. Jerry Pournelle said that the purpose of the military presence in Europe was to get the Warsaw pact leaders (which, in truth meant the Soviet Union leaders) to look across the field at the forces arrayed against them, to look at their own forces, at their maps, then again at the forces on the other side and say “not today.”

That also describes the purpose of an armed citizenry.

Some people are dismissive of the idea of an armed citizenry as a weapon against tyranny because “the government has drones, and tanks, and bombers, and nukes, and… You rednecks and your assault rifles can’t possibly stand against that.”

The problem is, as we learned in Vietnam, and seem to keep having to relearn in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, all that military hardware and technology is great when it comes to defeating armies in set-piece battles, even battles of maneuver.  It’s far less useful against an insurgency.  When you have insurgents hiding among the civilian population you need boots on the ground able to go door to door and sort out the insurgents from the civilians.  You need those civilians, at least a significant portion of them, to be willing to point out the actual insurgents to you (and not just use you to take down someone they don’t like, who may or may not be an actual insurgent–“Insurgents?  Yes, my business rival provides support to the rebels.  If you shut him down it will cripple the rebels.”)

What are you going to do with that heavy weaponry?  Roll tanks through Boise because someone’s holding secret meetings plotting the overthrow of the government?  Make an Arclight strike (carpet bombing) against Des Moines because there are weapons caches somewhere in the city? Nuke Indianapolis because insurgents are hiding among the population?

Those kinds of things can’t be solved with the heavy hardware, or not easily (and I’ll get to that in a minute).  They require boots on the ground, investigations and intel, and generally a cooperative population.  The “hearts and minds” component of counter-insurgency operations.  I would recommend Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife by General Peter J. Shoomaker for how that worked, or failed to work, in they Malaya and Vietnam. (I will note that I believe General Shoomaker gives insufficient weight to Vietnam being both an insurgency and a “conventional” war being fought in parallel and many of the things he dismissed as being “the wrong approach” were correct for the conventional part of the war.  The problem wasn’t that things appropriate to conventional war were advocated.  The problem was that solutions appropriate to an insurgency were not.  This is a case where we needed to embrace the power of “and”.)

While you can possibly beat even an insurgency with the “heavy hardware” it usually involves a price that most Western nations simply are unwilling to pay.  It requires utter callousness to collateral damage and positively rejoicing in poor “international opinion”.  It requires viciousness on a level that makes the Mongol hordes look like nice guys.  And in the end, you still have to send troops in on the ground.

Try that on your own people without years, possibly decades, of careful preparation, building a military force that’s both amoral and personally loyal to you.  That means getting rid of all the people who hold to ideals like honor, loyalty, and defending the nation rather than the ruler at its head–and, of course, all those people you’ve gotten rid of, presuming you haven’t tipped your hand with Stalinesque purges and show trials–with all their training and experince will now be in the civilian sector and arrayed against you.

No, the vast power of military hardware would be of little use in an actual insurgency.  And if you get to the point you can use it?  You’ve got a military that will actually obey orders to wage Total War on the American people?

That battle tank?  Where is its fuel coming from?  How is it getting from it’s start as an infusion in rocks deep underground through wells, refineries, pipes, trucks, and storage tanks until if finally ends up in the tank itself?  How many men does it take to guard every step of the way because anything you leave unguarded is an opportunity for insurgents to interrupt the supply–blow up a pipeline, ambush tank trucks, demolish a railroad bridge, and on and on.

Now apply it not just to the tank, but to everything else that goes into the care and feeding of a modern military force.

And those guards?  Spread out.  Distributed.  Vulnerable to being picked off.  So you need more men.  But where are you going to get them except from the American people you’ve just declared total war on?  Much of that and your guards are as likely to be saboteurs as not.

Now, this is not to say that the insurgents would have it all their own way.  A sufficiently ruthless government, with a sufficiently loyal Praetorian Guard of a military, could end up killing enough to cow enough of the rest to “win” such a war.  And it’s possible with a sufficiently complicit media that such a government might even keep general support away from the insurgents despite bombing your own cities.

But even if you win, the likelihood is that all you’ll rule is a burnt-out ruin, ripe for some foreign power to come in and pluck it away from you.

And if the insurgents win, the same thing applies–they only win a burned-out ruin, ripe for some foreign power to come in and establish their own overlordship.  (This, incidentally, is why I so strongly argue against armed rebellion against the abuses to the Constitution that are daily occurrences now:  even if successful, it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best.  Armed rebellion really is an absolute last-ditch recourse.)

That’s with an armed citizenry, a large pool of armed people who could be insurgents, even if most of them are not.  Eliminate that, and it becomes much easier.  If all the insurgents can do is throw rocks at you, it’s much easier to cow them.  Even if they’ve got improvised weapons, the issue is dramatically simplified for the would be tyrant.

So, the purpose of an armed citizenry is less to win a conflict against the United States military.  It’s to make the would-be tyrants in power look at the citizenry, look at the forces they have, look at the vulnerability of their supply lines where everything is “enemy territory”–and if they don’t understand or believe the situation themselves, those would have to carry out orders to establish their tyrannical rule will–and size up the chances and what they’d likely “win” even if successful…

…and say “Not today.”

From a WIP I’m getting ready to release.

Study in Black and Red

Leslie slid the key into the lock of his apartment door.  Karen, his girlfriend, not content to wait until they were within, tickled the back of his neck.

Leslie pushed the door open and turned.  Karen melted into his arms and tilted her face up for Leslie’s kiss.

“It’s been a long day,” Leslie said as he broke the kiss. “Make yourself comfortable while I grab a quick shower.”

“Don’t take too long.”

While the apartment was in one of the less affluent districts of town, it did have plenty of hot water.  A few minutes later Leslie stepped out of the shower and wrapped a robe around himself.

A cloud of vapor billowed out of the bathroom when he opened the door.  He did not see Karen but did see the open door to his studio.

Despite the warmth of the humid air, he felt a shiver run up his spine.

“Not again.”

He crossed the hallway to the studio, his feet leaving wet footprints on the fake wood floor.  In the studio he saw Karen looking up at a painting, a big twenty-four by thirty-six piece.  Acrylic on canvas.

“Leslie, this is your best one yet,” Karen stood admiring the painting. “If a bit dark.”

The painting showed Philadelphia burning.  Thick black smoke blotted out the sky.  Tiny people ran, clearly screaming, in the streets beneath buildings engulfed in flame.

His work.  His painting.  Any inspection would show that.  From his signature in the lower right corner to the style.  Right down to the brush strokes.

The only problem was Leslie did not know where the painting had come from.  It had not been there when he had left for his date with Karen.  More than a dozen times he had found paintings in his studio, his paintings, but with no memory of having painted them.  He thought he had been sleep-painting or having some kind of fugue state.  But this one?  He had not even been home and here the painting was, a painting showing a terrible scene of fire and death.  But a painting that was clearly his work.

Where had it come from?