THE OPPOSITE OF BREATHING

(This is a modest rewrite of the Afterword to a new, quickly written novel. Some spoilers ahead.)

THE OPPOSITE OF BREATHING has a relatively simple beginning.

I'm a fiction writer before I am a blogger, and appreciating the taste of Adrenalin, I often focus on timely political issues or long-term conundrums. You know, those topical subjects that jerk up the blood pressure, letting me write angry, semi-rational letters to the editor.

Unfortunately I don’t wake up angry, and I don’t relish pushing myself into that state.

Playing with stories. That’s what I enjoy.

I’ve been actively stockpiling unwritten blogs about my usual obsessions. Greenland is melting. Our leadership and economics are corrupt. Pakistan is a nuclear warehouse that will eventually misplace its keys. The human brain is not large enough or wise enough to conquer this century’s enormous challenges. Of course Trump plays a role in my musings, but he hasn’t been as generous with the gloom as you might assume. 9/11 and Iraq and the meltdown of ‘07 and the endless rush to burn oil and coal. Those troubles predate one inept salesman’s sudden rise to a status of relatively modest power.

One of my recent stories tapped into this nightmarish fun. Published by Gordon van Gelder in WELCOME TO DYSTOPIA, “Suffocation” offered a pathway to a much larger work. Maybe a new novel. But I didn’t know how much effort that would entail, or when it would happen, or if I'd prove strong enough to march through to the end.

THE OPPOSITE OF BREATHING began in a single day. I found myself writing a scene or two, one sexless voice talking to an undefined prisoner about the grim past as well as the unknowable future. And with that, all of my plans for future columns were forgotten.

An episodic mode seemed right. Another little chapter written every day, with the goal of a short novel to be published as a purely Kindle work.

Needing a title, I considered reusing “Suffocation.” But that single word felt too scant and too obvious. And too easily lost in a word search on Amazon. No, I decided to give the reader a bit of a puzzle. “The opposite of breathing is … oh, yeah! I understand now.”

With a suitable name and opening chapters on file, I let J give a fantastic grim and occasionally dark-funny account about rough justice and intricate schemes.

“Suffocation” and THE OPPOSITE OF BREATHING share one SF notion: Our CO2-enriched atmosphere impacts our cognitive skills, and not for the better.

Other chapters were already vivid inside me. J buying a stranger’s shirt, and J lecturing to the well-educated, unabashedly racist uncle, and the image of nuclear winter and cooking human limbs in a well-built fireplace. Those are three blogs that I’ll never write, all devised while enduring uncomfortable family functions. And the mules in the mountains? Born from an article read years ago -- a deliciously researched essay on the nature of uranium and its vibrant daughters. (“How to Get a Nuclear Bomb” from THE ATLANTIC, Dec 1 2006.)

But much of what happens in BREATHING, particularly in the later chapters, stood apart from my first intentions and various plans. The clever narrator was in charge. I was just another reader, and this transgender predator was manipulating the world and me, striving for a solution that I didn’t appreciate until the final couple weeks.

The transgender nature … I’m uneasy about this element.

I don’t doubt that J is a legitimate invention. Indeed, J, the purely fictional character, seems well-suited for our time. And I’m not going to worry about my protagonist reflecting badly on the LGBTQ community. There is no reflection if very few people purchase this book, which is one of the powers of obscurity. And frankly, even if millions were to read THE OPPOSITE OF BREATHING, I can think of no group or cause more plainly deserving of an effective Angel of Death.

No, my discomfort centers on two areas.

First, there’s the urge to clearly define categories here, and I don’t want that to happen. If you read it, you will notice that I never describe my narrator, not in strict terms. What I assume is that J was born male, with the skeleton and muscles of a football linebacker. And likewise, I can envision some kind of mixed-race parentage leaving her blessed with beauty and shoulder-length black hair. But is there a J who actually exists anywhere in our world? Someone with this peculiar set of skills and fearlessness? I doubt it. And while she might occupy one point in the continuum of the single human gender, it’s important to remember that this character, this invention, is someone who can and will gladly take whatever form is necessary to serve the mission.

In other words, don’t get carried away about J’s dress or sexual capacities. Since both can be changed at will.

And my second discomfort?

The unavoidable problem that I am the author. An old white heterosexual. And what the fuck does R know about this subject?

I confess. I’m not an expert in these intriguing matters and never will be.

But lacking expertise isn’t the same as lacking experience. For example, I have a niece who used to be a nephew -- an event that has caused ugly wounds inside the extended family. And my daughter has several friends who aren’t happy with their legal gender -- a situation that seems perfectly natural to her.

At this point, let me offer a passing notion:

In dire times like these, with all the hatred and fear, one way to help the world would be to compel every adult to sit down at a desk, Chromebook at the ready, and write stories about someone like J. Someone who has no great investment in any specific gender. Put yourself in the other person’s skin for 40,000 words, and I guarantee, your perspective will change.

This has been an enlightening exercise for me.

In the end, this book was written quickly, several chapters to the day, and there wasn’t much pain to the process. The plot fell together for me. There weren’t any stumbling blocks over twists or characters, and each draft got to build directly on every version that came before.

Forty years of writing, and I trusted my instincts to find elegant routes to a satisfactory conclusion.

Though others, being others, might decide otherwise.

The Pace Quickens

Last year, for a host of reasons, I began chucking my old stories up on Kindle.

Among my goals:

To make old/impossible-to-find stories available again
The obsessive need to massage sentences and clarify ideas
To stand on the brink of a thirty-year career, assessing accomplishments and failures
And the potential influx of cash (the eternal optimism of the writer)


What was supposed to be a steady, deeply responsible pace soon turned into a life-consuming industrial operation involve a fat percentage of my neurons and an increasingly stiff pointing finger. Sixty-nine stories were offered for sale. Which would be a perfectly fine life's output for many authors. But that's only a little more than one-fifth of my total output, and there's several million words still waiting to know the universe as a mobi file.

With the beginning of 2019, I fell into a once-every-Saturday routine. My priorities included better known titles and items that I felt needed a second or third chance. Also, there was advice given by those old gods, Whim and Caprice. But 52 stories every year leads to intriguing troubles. If I wrote and sold just 10 stories every year -- an average output for me -- then 2019 would put me only 42 ahead in this undertaking. And undertaking is a useful world. I'm more than sixty years-old. Fine and fit, but two people who I know well have been in significant accidents in the last year. My wife, who got smacked by a Red Cross Bloodmobile. (And survived, yes.) And an old running buddy who got smacked by a tree limb during a snow storm. (And survived, with a new hip.) Anyway, I got panicky and decided to move faster with my publishing. Once a day and for several weeks, and that's why there was a big surge on Reed's Author Page.

And now, another pause has taken hold.

I have a new plan. My original priority was to put up my Great Ship stories along with a few classics/favorites. I did them as individuals because:

It was easier to handle single titles
I was borrowing the iTunes model of monetizing individual songs
My prices weren't excessively high. .99 cents for a short, 1.99 for a novelette, and 2.99 for each of my novellas -- which are often my strongest works

But now I've reached the point where many of the best standalone titles are already available. With a few exceptions, we're getting deep in the long grass. Some of what remains are adequate professional efforts, and many are very brief. There are also some strong beasts that passed unnoticed when first published, often because they were in obscure markets or focused on difficult themes.

Now what I've decided -- but not accomplished yet -- is to put out volumes with a dozen stories each. For a bit more money, maybe 3.99 US dollars. And then we'll see if that kind of offering leads to increased sales from the individual titles.

At least this is my general thinking in mid-April 2019.

I have some streets to cross before I make up my mind.

Who to blame? Facebook!

We live in the Age of Facebook, and might well die together because that platform's strengths as well as its numerous weaknesses leave us vulnerable to every sort of blunder.

For years now, most of the older souls around me have been posting and checking posts daily. I have read and read again that 70 percent of us get the bulk of our news from that rapacious, easily manipulated social media platform. Is that an accurate figure? I doubt it, if only because not every American belongs to Mark Z's empire of code and compulsion. (I've never signed up, though I understand that my data has been harvested from every member's postings, and such.) Yet I have seen enough nonsense from both sides of the political terrain to shiver in terror. Today's ignorance about issues and reality? That always existed, yes, but it was dampened down during the Age of Cronkite. During the Age of Lucid Republicans. During the Age of the Clear Soviet Threat.

Over the weekend, I rewatched THE SOCIAL NETWORK. And I have two takeaways.

One: As so often happens in film, children are played by actors who are a few years older than their namesakes. Jesse Eisenberg was 26 or 27 when he pretended to be Mark Zuckerberg. Who was just a sophomore in college. I'm not going to argue that 26 year-old men are sages dripping wisdom, but there is maturity there that you just don't expect to find in a 19 year-old kid. And the 19 year-old is a kid, regardless of his IQ or the Harvard backdrop. This is not to say that the fictional Mark doesn't act like an impulsive boy. But imagine every scene with a different actor. A younger, less graceful child who might one day grow up to be Jesse Eisenberg. But isn't there yet.

And Two: I do like the movie, reservations aside. And this second watching gave me a small revelation. Suppose Mark Zuckerberg doesn't care that much about money. It's his cleverness that matters, and the reach of his cleverness.

Let's take that as the truth.

A businessman who doesn't recognize the value of his billions presents his own kind of danger. Because he will be surrounded by powers that do love money, who see it in the world and will find a multitude of ways to catch it in their nets, and very few of those powers are going to give a rat's ass about any company's moral bearings.

Observations from a Star Trek sometimes-fan

There was a day when the Reed household paid extortion fees to Time-Warner cable. But our new Samsung television -- a 40 inch monster -- supplied hi-def video only while watching blu-rays. Save for one or two local channels, which came in bright and strong. Yet still not quite hi-def, since you could see the algorithms making the grass simple, and every fast motion became a blur.

Now this was a perfectly normal situation, the cable guys claimed. Hi-def everywhere needed the best equipment, and we had to pay for the best. And oh, that included a new cable line strung underneath the backyard. So I said, "Gosh, we'll sure talk this over," and then my wife cancelled the service completely. (We have DSL, not cable, for the Internet.) After that, I put up the first of a series of antennae that now, after a ridiculously long learning curve, feeds 29 crisp channels into the same machine. But that TV clings to the wall in the basement bedroom, since that's the shorter run from the antenna inside the garage. Questions about signal strength and splitters means that the newer 55 inch behemoth doesn't get a reliable signal. It did for a long while, but something has degraded since then. Raccoons. That's what I'm blaming. Raccoons in our crawlspaces, causing raccoon troubles.

My point is that our entertainment center is Internet/digital-file/DVD only. Which is quite spectacular most evenings. But there was some talk about watching the Superbowl from the couch, not from the bed. So because I was going to do this eventually, I punched a few numbers into the new Chromebox, and 10 seconds later, we were able to watch our local CBS feed. As well as THE GOOD FIGHT. And because I was professionally curious, I immersed myself in STAR TREK DISCOVERY. From the first episode, one after the next.

Writing this, I'm two or three episodes behind the latest. Plus I need to see all those tiny episodes that I have been told are quite interesting.

In general, I'm happy with the product. I'm not NEXT GENERATION minus-Wesley happy. And I certainly can imagine strategies for improvement. The blunt obvious can't-leave-my-brain-alone trouble is the "science" of the show. It feels like the outgrowth ... no, I won't say hallucinogenic mushrooms. Too easy, too wrong. Trippy fungus would make for a dreamier, avant-garde work, and that might prove fascinating in its own right. No, DISCOVERY feels as if it sprouts from a couple semesters of college biology and a few Nova specials about space. I just don't believe that anyone connected to the show is in control of this universe. Meetings are held, writers spitball, suits from CBS give their opinions, and the next thing you know, you can neutralize the Klingon Empire with a gizmo. With a card trick. And that is sloppy and dumb, wounding me clear to my rational core.

And yet. DISCOVERY has this talent for ending episodes with plot flourishes that make me wish that I had written them.

Argue about the merits of a certain villain, but that one revelation late in the first season ... well, I found myself giggling with murderous delight.

Of course I know almost nothing about the show itself. Except that its gestation sounds as troubled as a Klingon and human mating on Vega. Or in Vegas. People were hired, were fired. Two producers died in transporter failures, or so I hear.

I have a nephew who tells me that much of the first season was stolen from a "flash game" from more than a decade ago. And stolen means scene for scene, in some cases. He claims that a lawsuit is underway, and while I'm usually on the side of poor little fan boys, I have to wonder about the legal underpinnings. (I just watched the second season of THE GOOD FIGHT, after all. The Law is good.) These little twerps used someone else's universe, and that universe took back what always belonged to it. In the same manner, if fans of mine stole the Great Ship and did something intriguing, and if I decided to employ their work in my own efforts, who would be injured? I don't just give away my property. They took it and did interesting work. Oh, and here's a gift card for Blockbuster. In thanks.

I'll have more to offer later. Particularly about the acting, which is the strongest feature of this series. I'll do that after this season ends, perhaps. But at this point, I'll argue that this STAR TREK is nine-and-a-half times better than the shabby J.J. Abrams movie-reboot efforts. Each of which had a talent for taking one inspired notion, then hitting it with an ax and burying the corpse in a shallow grave beside someone's old cable line.

Bran is coming

Two quick notes on the subject of death.

I've seen the new tease for Game of Thrones. Three Stark children go into the tombs together and confront their own mortality. But I seem to recall a fourth kid who is still alive. Bran. He's a Stark and he should be with him. And he is. That's Bran marching down the hallway behind them. As the Night King, judging by the telltale signs.

Also, I just republished one of my favorite stories. "Murder Born," on Kindle. The novella is about a near-future world where executing murderers brings their victims back to life. And the tragedies that come when you can't be certain who killed who, and why.

"The background is bright unfocused green. Sunshine pours from overhead, from God. The subject wears a nun’s habit, the white coif clean and bright against the pretty African face. Her sober, downcast expression conveys what might be deep spirituality, or it might be shyness brought on by the camera, but it could well be one of those innocent looks that mean nothing. Whatever the truth, the watchful eye is obliged to follow her gaze. The nun is shoeless. Bare black feet stand on red dirt. Several machetes and one stubby ax are scattered across the jungle floor -- tired old tools with nicked edges and rope-covered handles. But the blades have been cleaned until they glow, not a fleck of rust or dust or blood anywhere on their murderous bodies. And the left foot is up on its toes, trying not to be cut for what would be the first time."

Abandoning the Doctor

For me, Doctor Who began as a chance occurrence. Working out on an elliptical machine, at the YMCA, I'd search the cable channels for something to watch. Since I normally avoided television in the day, this was a minor adventure, and luck had it that BBC America was available. The reboot of Doctor Who was showing, and this wasn't the guy with the scarf. No, I was watching David Tennant and Freema Agyeman, their odd adventures punctuated with moments of genuine SF wonder.

Jump forward a little bit in time. I found the show streaming on Netflix. At least I think it was Netflix. And I decided to show my favorite episode to my daughter, who was still a single-digit age. We streamed it on my computer, a gigantic Dell Inspiron with what might be the worst screen ever designed by human beings. We sat together on the sofa, the machine in my lap, and if both of us could make out the picture, then neither of us saw it clearly. But that's how we enjoyed "Blink" together, and for years after that, we were hooked.

My daughter lost the faith first. David Tennant and the early Matt Smith were fine, but she was becoming impatient. Parts of some episodes were enjoyable, but everything else was too silly, or dull. Or worst of all, predictable. I never got a clear explanation. But I kept investing in the new seasons, including Peter Capaldi. Including "Heaven Sent," which is one of my favorite SF film dramas. Ever. Just a wonder of a thought problem carried to its logical, massive end.

At this point, I want to say that I have zero troubles with Jody Whittaker. I loved her work in Broadchurch, particularly in the first season. And the actor more than meets my ideas of the Doctor when it comes to energy and inhabiting the center of the screen. But the storytelling has been a letdown. I've seen exactly four episodes, and they feel like promising second drafts produced by young writers. "Rosa" was fine. Was the best. But I would have felt like tweaking events or remaking the story ... I don't know, make it smaller maybe. For instance, a couple of the Companions could have been separated from the Doctor, and finding themselves lost in the Deep South, they would have witnessed and perhaps helped a woman essential to everything else that has happened and has not happened in these Disunited States.

One big problem with the new season: For me, the science isn't clumsy, clunky fun anymore. It's just lousy. The series requires millions of dollars, but nobody seems to be looking at the minimal standards of logic. For instance, in "The Ghost Machine," we have acetylene gas used as a gimmick. Lighter than air. That's what some writer must have learned from Wikipedia. And so it floats above our heroes, and they set it afire with a cigar that has been carried throughout the hour for no other purpose. Boom. Enemies dead. Though I suspect that anyone with experience in welding or explosives would find that scene ridiculous. Our cigar-wielding heroes should have been incinerated in the flash.

Speaking of convenient plot ploys: The New Year's story has an oven carried about in a clumsy cardboard box. Why? I convinced my daughter to watch the story with me, and turning to her, I predicted, "That oven is going to save the world." Sure enough, that's what the clumsy box did.

Certain people would say, "Oh, but it's just a story and you have to suspend your disbelief."

And I would scream at them, "That's why we have the president that we have today. Everybody from the top to the bottom keeps suspending their disbelief, ignoring the obvious, and if we survive this next week and the next two years ... "

Well, that's another bunch of posts.

My point is that I'm pretty much done buying Doctor Who. If the next season shows up free somewhere, I'll try it. Maybe. But if I want to ride the Tardis, I'll watch "Blink" again.

Oumuamua and "Decency"

Light sails.

My first Hugo nominated story was focused on light sails. (Pun halfway intended.)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CV3WHVV

And now, a quarter of a century later, genuine science has supplied a smaller scale, protagonist free, and far more believable scenario than the grand, world-shaking events that I dreamed up.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/how-oumuamua-mystery-shook-search-space-aliens-ncna950991

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/6-strange-facts-about-the-interstellar-visitor-oumuamua/

If I was setting the odds, I'd give Oumuamua a one-in-five chance of being artificial. But that number, clinical as it pretends to be, has been twisted by my own biases towards alien contact, as well as a fondness for one-in-five guesses. (A 20 percent chance? Well, you're not predicting that it can actually come true. And if it doesn't happen, nobody should chide you for being wrong either.)

But imagine that Oumuamua is alien.

A 60 meter light sail, disk shaped and tumbling, and ancient, and dead.

Its very presence is amazing. That's because we shouldn't be able to see it. Because space is huge. Hollywood and most everyone else envisions space as being a big, big ocean. That's why space battles in movies look like ships at sea, with fighters thrown in for speed. But the reality is that every distance is enormous, and light is stubbornly slow. Make estimates about life in the cosmos and the rise of alien intelligence, and you don't expect to look at the sky and see this kind of object so quickly. But that's what happened. A new telescope opened its eye and almost immediately spotted an object of these dimensions -- a question mark that passed within 15 million miles of the earth, that approached the sun closer than Mercury does. That implies that if we keep watching, bringing newer telescopes into play, we will soon be seeing a host of objects like Oumuamua.

So is that what will happen?

Ten years from now, will we have named dozens or hundreds of oddities, each of which is silently passing inside the orbit of Neptune?

That sort of alien detritus implies that many ancient objects will have hit the earth, and I would think that even at these fantastic velocities, there would be physical remnants of odd materials, high-technology fossils waiting in ocean sediments and in the limestone blocks inside your garden wall.

And of course if that's proven true, then the next great question is:

Where did all of these aliens go?

The central question for humanity. Now, and always.

Remembering the Dog

I don't know who took this photograph. Maybe I did, maybe it was my wife. Though it could have been earlier in the timeline, and Leslie wasn't my wife yet.

There's information in this image. That face is supremely alive and invested in its world. No other dog that I have known has ever been so aware of her surroundings. The brick wall is free of ivy because Roxie decided to gnaw the weedy vine off at the ground. That 4-foot fence and gate weren't obstacles. That's why the heavy-duty chain is attached to a don't-shit-with-me pinch collar. Yes, that sounds horrible, but we live a short city block from a busy 4-lane road, and not only could Roxie have been killed or maimed, she could have precipitated a crash that would have hurt innocent people. And even those Medieval devices weren't perfectly reliable. Pinch collars broke every year or two. And that giant chain eventually wore out at the swivel. Roxie liked to pull and test and pull and test. A thousand shades of stubborn. That was my dog.

I wrote one story about my dog. "Roxie" was published in ASIMOV'S not long after she died.

I just reprinted "Roxie" as a Kindle book.

A Woman's Best Friend

I was recently interviewed by Doug Gordon at Wisconsin Public Radio. The subject? My retrofitting of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

Mary leaves her library on a cold winter night to find a strange man in the snow. George is lost. George is searching for his lost life. But how that misplaced man came to this place, and what this place is ... well, that story takes an entirely different set of turns ...

My 2008 story, slightly edited and with an afterword, is now available on Kindle Books.

https://www.wpr.org/its-wonderful-life-morphs-its-wonderful-lives

The Great Ship (Greatship) saga

I've proven myself to be a relentlessly uneven blogger. Occasional efforts, long holidays, and no reason for anyone to keep track of my postings.

I'm hoping this changes today.

Most of my year has been spent editing my old and not-so-old work. At this point, 67 Robert Reed stories are available on Kindle, and I plan to offer a fresh classic every week. The inventory includes the Great Ship stories -- minus the recently published "Kingfisher." I've also published a Kindle Unlimited novel. THE DRAGONS OF MARROW is set just after the actions in my trilogy from PrimeBooks, THE MEMORY OF SKY.

Here is the master list, as of 12/20/2018. An approximate chronology is being followed. I have made changes as I work, and as I learn more about my never-ending universe.

As always, thank you for your interest, and your reading eyes.

GREATSHIP STORIES

Alone

Hoop-of-Benzene

Mere

The Remoras

The Residue of Fire

Aeon’s Child

Rococo

River of the Queen

Night of Time

Parables of Infinity

Noumenon

The Caldera of Good Fortune

Precious Mental

Katabasis

The Speed of Belief

Camouflage

The Man With the Golden Balloon

Sarcophagus

The Cryptic Age

Marrow Redux

Eater-of-bone

Hatch

Good Mountain

Kingfisher

THE MEMORY OF SKY

THE DRAGONS OF MARROW

The Targaryen Infestation

There are spoilers on the Internet.  I hear rumors.  But I've avoided them, and what you get here are a few quick writerly thoughts on the eve of GOT's second episode:

Euron needs a gift for the Queen, and more importantly, he needs credentials as a potent dramatic device.  My first instinct was that he would nab Tyrion, but that would be hard to work and premature for the story arc, and no sensible animal would take on the three dragons this early in the season.  No, he's off to Dorne to be cruel to women, bringing back those guilty of killing Cersei's daughter.

Likewise, if Jaime could conquer the high castle with Crazy Mom and Spectrum-Disorder Boy, then two of their enemies are killed.  Less salary, fewer characters.  Always good when your money machine is nearing its last days.

Little Arya looked awfully sweet, eating rabbit and shopping for good manly faces.  (But I wish they had a little more budget to show the full transformation of a body when the face goes on, and off.  Walter F. was much bigger than her, and she doesn't dress in old-man hands either.) 

I have no good idea how to bring Bran and his ultimate knowledge into the story line.  The boy can go everywhere and everywhen, which makes him into the ultimate Google Photos app.  A ten minute monologue could pretty much put everyone in their place.  So yeah, I think he's intriguing, but a far more dangerous weapon than dragons for the writers to deploy.

The Targaryen of the North meets the Targaryen with dragons.  A thousand years of waiting for that moment may be surprised by the outcome.  Which won't be love, I suspect.

Cersei talks of a thousand-year dynasty for her and her brother.  I think we should take her at her word.  She has a very competent physician on staff who can animate poisoned, mostly dead warriors.  Why not make the twins immortal?  Because that would be the final push that would make Jaime kill her?

Who are Targaryen's themselves, I suspect.

The Ice King has to become more compelling than a blizzard with spears.  He needs a voice and a culture and the purest of agendas.  If he is to become a suitable nemesis for the final season.

Daenerys won't win, but that's why we spent so much time at Slaver's Bay.  That's where she should rule out her lifetime.

Jon won't win.  He's too good/weak to be the king, and he doesn't have the hunger, and besides, he's fighting the more important war in the north.  If he survives, he'll live out his days doing infrastructure work on the Wall.

The Hound kills the Ice King.

Jamie sits on the throne.

No, Tyrion.

No, Tyrion is at Dragon Bay.  Littlefinger sits on the revamped throne.  Although he should be on Arya's list.  Which, by the way, Bran's time-tripping could point that girl at a lot of worthy targets.

So who rules?

Sansa.

Unless of course the unthinkable happens.  An election with a Prime Minister named Lord Varys.

How to write the next civil war

www.wsj.com/articles/divided-america-standsthen-and-now-1498851654

Our household subscribes to the Wall Street Journal.  That's because my wife is a lifelong journalist and works in Communications, and if those aren't reasons enough, I enjoy reading newsprint at the breakfast table.  The NY Times and Washington Post live on my phone.  But the Journal not only has a distinct point of view, there's also the rich selection of articles on subjects that I didn't know I wanted to know about, until I turn the next page.

The above article is an interview with Allen Guelzo, director of the Civil War Era Studies Program at Gettysburg College.  Our nation today is divided.  That much is a given.  But the 1850s and 60s were worse, and according to at least one historian, we aren't on the brink of civil war.  Read it if you can get past the barricades.  And keep in mind that I found the historian's professorial calm to be reassuring.

But you aren't a genuine SF writer unless you can see the wrong inside a learned, well-reasoned argument.

There is a regional quality to today's pain, but no, it's not nearly as distinct as it was in 1860.  Trump and the Right have their neighborhoods and districts, and in some cases, full control of certain states.  For instance, Nebraska is decidedly Republican, save for parts of Omaha and Lincoln.  But it's difficult to imagine organized armies forming at any mutually agreed-upon border, wearing uniforms punched out--I assume--by Vietnamese garment makers.  No, the civil war that I'd write about is much more chaotic and silly, arbitrary and hard to control.

The succession of most of our slave states triggered the first civil war, and just as important, Lincoln's determination to stop this bullshit.

What would be a comparable ignition event for the 21st century?  If I was writing the novel, my guiding guess would involve the Federal Government being "captured" by the other side.  Left or Right, that choke hold would inflame passions and cause those on the outside to organize and arm themselves.  (If they don't have munition caches already.)

Actually, this sounds rather like the last ten years, doesn't it?

In that atmosphere, the next war might start with small sparks.

In the 1850s, congressmen battled with congressmen on the chamber floors.  That was something read about in newspapers, I assume.  But not seen by the nation.  What if we saw live feeds where Ted Cruz and Chuck Schumer traded body blows?  Think of the noise on Facebook.  Imagine a million family gatherings where the same caustic feelings were happy to bloom.

That story might be served best as bleak and small-scale black comedy.

Or the spark and subsequent firestorm might be enormous.  The Left is eager for the 2018 mid-terms.  But what if their opponents cooked the books, retaining control over every branch of government?  Even better, what if our ties with Putin became official and obvious?  There's a notion worth a full scenario.  The United States leaves NATO and signs a mutual-protection pact with Russia.  Ludicrous to imagine, sure.  But jump back twenty years and look at today.  What about our world doesn't look deeply peculiar?

So that's how the nation finally splits.  Cities against the farms.  The coasts against the interior.  Not armies marching, no.  But terrorists and malware and shutting down power plants and water, and chaos, and nobody holding any genuine authority.

Novels never write themselves.  A fact that has slowed down my production by a factor of a thousand.

But history does write itself, every moment, and let's hope our futures don't flow the easy route into anarchy.

Face Bleeding

My wife and I were eating breakfast this morning when Leslie found herself caught in a quagmire.  Called Facebook.

The liberal vanguard of my family was raging about the latest Presidential controversy.  (This doesn't have to be a date-specific post, since mayhem seems to be a daily occurrence.  But in this case, I'm talking about "face-bleeding.")  The conversation's hope of hopes was that this would be the final insult that would lead to impeachment, or something.  Which would be a great victory for their tribe and maybe the nation too.  Or at least I assume that was the heart of the messages.  Leslie was trying to ignore the beeping phone, and I was reading the Times on my phone.

You know, people really do love their stories.  Which is why we get ourselves into so much trouble, and more importantly, why we can never quite get out of our messes.  Trump is a villain to many, yes, and an embarrassment to the nation, and a threat to the future of humanity.  No doubt about any of that in my mind.  But he's a villain with millions who believe his story.  And he's also obvious and ineffectual and surprisingly weak-willed.  Meanwhile impeachment will be a very slow business.  When this chapter ends--and I hope it can end without catastrophic suffering--someone else will conquer the Oval Office.  Pence?  An ideologue who might not survive the Russian intrigues or having dinner with women other than his wife.  Paul Ryan?  No man woman or computer software with a boner for Ayn Rand should be allowed near the highest office.  After that?  Orrin Hatch, I believe.  Which says something.  I mean, when in my life have I ever imagined that President Orrin Hatch would be good news?

My advice is not to waste much hope for an early end to President Trump's clumsy reign.  In part because I am a writer, and there will be more chapters, and there's no end to the shit that can happen.  There are legions of people and well-funded causes that still stand behind the man.  But more to the point, they never stop telling the same few stories to themselves.  Maybe they're standing a few steps farther back now, sure.  But still, their outrage is like cruise missile attacks.  This is wrong, he shouldn't have done that.  The man is learning as he goes, and so on.

There's another Trump somewhere, shrewder and far more capable.

And standing against him?  A political party that cannot seem to make three good decisions in a row.  That spends millions getting beaten in the wrong campaigns, and that still, despite evidence of a growing mandate, can't find the voice or vigor to support far more progressive ideals.

The next Trump will be very much like our Trump:  The elected leader of the Confederate States of America.  But there isn't going to be an old-style civil war.  If violence erupts, it won't be pretty like it was in the 1860s.  No uniforms.  No neat borders.  No Battle Hymn of the Republic.  The military leaders on both sides will not have gone to school together, and there won't be an ending written in the noble language of treaties and exhaustion.

No, our next civil war will belong to Facebook, chaotic and full of beeps while you're trying to eat your Raisin Bran.

Giving up SFWA

June is when I traditionally renew my membership in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.  But this year, for the first time in approximately three decades, I plan to pass.

SFWA is older than the vast majority of its members, and for good reason.  For a certain kind of author, the venerable organization has accomplished quite a lot.  I'll even say that each newly-minted professional should pony up the dough, feeling proud about his or her inclusion in the club.  But for three years only.  Of maybe seven years.  No investment should turn into an annuity for the organization receiving your money.  After the initial honeymoon, the author needs to look hard at  benefits and costs, and if the gains are inadequate, then those funds should be shipped somewhere else.  To your website, to a new Chromebook.  To the rice and beans that you'll need over the next couple weeks.

I'm not using SFWA.  And sure, that underscores my limits as a professional.  I don't nominate works or vote on the Nebula ballot.  I'm miserable at networking, and I certainly don't haunt the websites associated with SFWA.  From conversations with colleagues, I imagine that there's quite a lot of chatter going on day and night.  Writers are battling over politics and the value of recent works, they make or lose friends with a single posting, and if some of these people spent as much fuel on their own work, they would have quite a bit more work.  But I don't involve myself with any of that, because I don't see any way to win at this game.

The SFWA suite at conventions.  That's the most tactile benefit accrued from my membership.  For years, there was no better place to meet other writers for the first time, and hear rumors, and culture the image that I belonged to a small organization that had some power inside a small corner of the shrinking publishing universe.  But the last several conventions have proved less than satisfying.  Some of the friends aren't coming to WorldCons anymore, shouting at strangers is less fun than it used to be, and not being involved with the on-line scene puts me at a deep disadvantage.  But mostly there's the problem that I don't have plans to attend any future conventions.  Which kind of makes the free pop and chips to be less of enticement than it used to be.

Good old days.  For me, the glory time in SFWA was in the late '80s, early '90s.  News came in the form of small cheap and charming booklets filled with minutes from meetings and letters from disgruntled writers.  Harry Harrison was a fountain of angry noise, constantly complaining about how we were idiots to work for so little and we were ruining the business.  There were always a few angry letters, and that's what I adored.  Drama.  The taste of discord.  Which is the last thing that the Internet can supply.  A taste.

SFWA can help with publisher troubles.  But I don't have many publishers, certainly none that my agent isn't suited to handle.

SFWA manages to fill its offices, but those ballots are barely more interesting than the Nebula ballots.  One candidate for every post, and maybe the wild card that nobody wants.  Which is understandable, since being an officer sounds thankless and occasionally grim.

The Nebula is a major award.  Ideally, the best works should be found and every voter should read everything nominated and vote only for the finest reasons.  But we don't and don't and don't.

Years ago, I was called by a fellow writer who wanted my vote.  It was a pretty ballsy act, I thought at the time.  And ever since.  I don't remember which way I went with my vote.  But the poor fellow didn't win, and I heard that he was furious after the award ceremony, complaining about all the butt-kissing that didn't pay off in the end.

Friends vote for friends, and that means everything in a club with a few hundred avid voters.

If I was Emperor of SFWA, I'd start a 5-year moratorium on the Nebula.  Nominate nothing, vote on nothing.  Then relaunch the trophy by judging the works still available five years after their first publication.  That gives the world time to assess, and what seemed valuable and wise in the past may have vanished altogether.  Or it's genius has only grown.

But even if this is a good idea, it won't happen.  If any President makes such a creatively radical proposal, he or she will be the first SFWA president to be cooked and served in the suite at the next WorldCon, alongside the chips and dip and little green florets of broccoli.

And maybe that's the best reason to give up on SFWA.

It's not half as creative as it believes itself to be.

Giving Up LOCUS

Until very recently, I paid 10 dollars each month for my own locker at the local YMCA.  Which I assume isn't very much money for a full-sized locker in a typical downtown health club.  But I also had a second locker that comes free with membership.  It's big enough for shoes and toiletries and the long basket holding my smaller treasures, and because my Y happens to be the oldest, smallest, and least important child in our local family of Ys, there's a considerable shortage of members.  A lot of the old guys are missing.  Which means an abundance of empty lockers labeled "Day Lockers."  Respectable volumes of cheap, lockable metal that can be had for nothing, and why am I paying 10 dollars a month?

Well, I gave up that fat-cat indulgence.  For now, the windfall is being spent giving the family commercial-free Hulu and CBS All Access.  Although once SURVIVOR is done, the CBS service may vanish.  At least for the summer.  At least until Star Trek arrives.  Which is another 10 bucks that has to be added to the family's monthly budget.

My growing need for frugality:  Here is a topic for quite a few blogs.  But I promise that I won't keeping talking about stashing my spare underwear and socks.

***

LOCUS MAGAZINE is considered a linchpin of SF and Fantasy.  And I've let my subscription lapse twice.  The first time came when I was a frustrated young writer.  I'm sure that I was partly motivated by saving money.  But what I remember best is the monthly frustrations, how this semi-pro journal would come to me, its only purpose to remind me about all the great book deals out there, and the young faces who were doing better at the job than I presently was.

Eventually I returned to the magazine, and I remained loyal for decades.  During that span, one of my stories won a Hugo, others were nominated for the usual major awards, and some little prizes too.  LOCUS reviewed my novels, and my stories were reviewed, and I can't complain about any critical opinions that disappointed me.  This is the game.  The critic reads too much and too quickly, and then he or she is paid for what they think, and I have zero right to take exception to anything.  Or for that matter, claim too much pride in anyone else's praise.

I was interviewed once in LOCUS.  Charlie Brown hit me at the end of a long convention, and I felt like shit and nervous, and I don't think either of us had much fun.  But my main takeaway is what the late Jim Turner told me afterwards.   When my interview was published, my photo was framed and set on the wall of another author, a woman with a reputation.  "The way they treated you on the cover," he said.  Or words to that effect.  "You should yell at them until their ears bleed."  Or something like that.  This was years ago, and Jim wasn't long for the world.

In brief, this is my relationship with the PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY of my small field.

I've let my subscription lapse again.  Money is part of the story.  But this time around, it felt more as if the yearly fee was short of value.  An annuity given to former associates who were never all that involved with me.  The typical issue would mean reading a few of the general news articles.  From those, I gathered that the industry seems unhealthy, and I don't just mean in terms of sales and numbers of readers.  Publishing houses are few, and they act scared.  Booksellers are few, and only one of them is successful.  (I'm looking at you, Seattle.)  I would feel more invested in this magazine if there was an editorial component to the writing.  But I don't recall seeing those articles.  LOCUS has never had the resources for real in-depth reporting.  It is a home for press releases, and for long, long lists of books that I never intend to read, and there's chatty news about editors who I will never meet, and foreign news that might be important to me, but how can I tell what matters?  And since we're living in a science fiction world, the big breaking stories can be found on the LOCUS website and around the Internet.  Why bother with another 20th century magazine?

I gave up LOCUS a little more than two years ago.  They did have one window to win me back.  When the Hugo controversy was at its height, I could have bitten on a source that had a strong-minded, entertainingly offensive editorial tone.  You know, a voice that would say, "This Puppy group is so fucked up that we should burn science fiction and start the fuck over again with a new name and a freshly scrubbed aspect."  I want a controversial voice that would do anything to win a much larger audience.  Because there was a brief moment when the larger world gave a shit about the Hugo.  Suddenly people who didn't care about the best novelette or short-form dramatic work were asking me about the award and the general business of SF writing.  LOCUS could have turned itself into that large smart voice that the New York Times and Huffington would regard as first on the list to call whenever any controversy broke.  If I was in charge, I would have given it a shot.  And when I failed, which is almost certain, I would have retired, handing the keys to whoever was standing closest.

I don't even glance at the LOCUS website daily.  When I do, my first task is to see who has died.  My second job is to look for the next interesting controversy.  I used to read the website's short-fiction reviews, and I'll admit that's because there have been nice things said about my stories.  But they don't have any resident critic anymore, and I certainly wouldn't want the job.  Eating thousands of stories a year, and from every publication and would-be website...that's a tough trail to walk...

When I do glance at the website, I see that science fiction and fantasy and horror are extremely good at the production and polishing of awards.

This is what my old business has come to.  People giving each other trophies.

So yeah, I stopped taking LOCUS.  And I've mostly stopped reading reviews of anyone's work, particularly my own.  Those two actions have freed up time in my day, and maybe that's the central reason behind most of my decisions at this point.

Time is short.

I've got work that needs to be done.

Hand to the Heart

As a rule, and I mean as a tough, never-compromise-your-principles rule, I avoid placing my hand to my heart during the National Anthem.  Nor do I sing along or cast loving eyes at the rippling flag.

If people give me guff, I ignore them.

Or tell them that I'm Canadian.

But if someone persists, asking where this policy comes from, I'm prepared to explain that all of it is hollow posturing.  Paying your taxes and fervent respect the Bill of Rights.  Those are duties more important to the nation and its people than any quasi-religious event.  Which won't satisfy many in the audience, I know.

"But Bob, can't you put your feet in both boots?  Pro-BofR and pro-jingoism?"

Actually no, I don't think these are compatible faiths.  A feeling that comes in part from the obvious disgust of others.  While I act as if I'm dissing the stars and stripes, many of those in the hand-to-the-heart crowd are watching me, hoping to see my head explode.

Last year, for the first and probably only time in my life, I went to a NFL game.  Jingoism on steroids.  Servicemen and women were honored, because this is what you do when not enough citizens question the wisdom behind dangerous missions, or even the premise that soldiers stationed in foreign lands actually make Kansas safer.  Good Americans are supposed to bring out flags and beer and crisp uniforms and more beer, and to some degree, they feel happy because they aren't going into battle.  Because hopefully their kids won't have to either.  Although sure, a few of them have fought in a war, or they have lost a daughter or son.  But if that's the case, I doubt that a single fly-over by fighter jets puts any mind at ease.

And shall I mention the irony of a game that looks like ritualized war serving up an easy, deeply conditioned symbolism?

These last few months have helped my mood.  American actions and inactions are only increasing my commitment about keeping my hand away from my heart.  Watching my home take sides, and in particular, being reminded daily that different regions have very different politics, I find myself turning anxious in ways I never thought possible.  The remnants of the Old Confederacy were instrumental in electing the President and many of the Republicans in Washington.  Kansas City sits very close to the Rebellion from two centuries ago  And it doesn't very little imagination to picture America dividing in two unequal parts, then happily marching against one another.

And yes, each side with stars blazing on the flag.

Poor Korea

I'll begin with several admissions:  I am not Korean.  And I am not in a position to coax either Korea to move in any particular direction.  My father was a veteran of the Japanese-American War, and that experience was so fulfilling that he spent the Korean War cleaning latrines in North Carolina.  Or at least that's the story fed to me as a boy.  But as I say, I have no significant ties to the peninsula, or for that matter, to Japan.  I've read histories and I think Inchon was lucky hubris and the Chinese didn't so much catch us by surprise as they came across the Yalu when we had our eyes firmly closed.

North Korea is facing an onslaught of a super-industrialized nation.  But tough people know that civilization is frail, and nukes are knives ready to be used against weak necks.  An illustration:  One sharp proposal that I read some years ago--I don't recall where--had the North Koreans launching a big rocket.  The payload would be a dirty nuke that would have only one goal.  Make space.  Then it detonates a few hundred miles above the Earth, and the debris and radiation spread, doing their worst.  Low-orbit satellites are rarely hardened against this kind of abuse.  Entire networks of satellites would fail, and humans on the space station would have to come home, and we'd loose GPS and communications.  Sure, yes, North Korea would be struck hard as a consequence.  Our man in charge is a man of action, and he gets particularly pissed when anyone perceives him as weak.  But it's sobering to realize that one bomb can cost trillions of dollars.

But what if I was in charge of Crazed Korea?  Here's my  strategy.  Purely mine, I think.  (Writers are never sure what they've stolen from others.  Or we are sure, and we choose not to mention the crimes.)  Missiles are problematic weapons.  A couple dozen nukes, and possibly only a few are small enough to be carried over the ocean.  No, what North Korea needs to do is dig holes.  Ambitious holes, but not outrageously deep.  They should tunnel into the south slopes of little mountains near the DMZ.  Pick mountains with strong bones.  Give the tunnels angles, like a cannon barrel, and then pack them with nukes and the usual foul wastes that come with reactors working overtime.  And then like every evil character in a Bond movie, they need to monologue.  Explain to the world that if they are attacked, they will detonate.  If the wind is from the north, South Korea will be poisoned for centuries, ceasing to exist.  And if the wind isn't from the south?  Well, what's the worst that can happen?  A few million of my own people killed, and Seoul still left contaminated by the next shift in the weather.

Oh, and if that isn't bad enough.  How about a suicide submarine off the coast of Japan, crewed by patriots, carrying a hydrogen-infused warhead and enough cobalt to sterilize a fat portion of Honshu?

See?  Simple crude and spectacularly destructive tactics are easy, and of course I don't want this to happen.  No, what I want is for every human with a spark of imagination to realize that a few kilos of uranium, used with flair, can define the next twenty years of life on this little world.

Which could be the last twenty years, sure.

Canned Goods

A good day spent writing means surprising myself.  Random shit happens inside the plot line, characters outsmart the author, or best of all, I discover that final scene that makes the entire audience, myself included, declare, "Well of course that's what has to happen."

In contrast, the bad days are canned and routine, full of words, yes, but in the long haul, deservedly forgotten.  But even with those limitations, I might do that kind of work willingly.  If there was a lot of money involved.  If I didn't have to do it for years at a time.  Which wouldn't happen, because after three weeks, I would grow bored.  I'd probably work on my own stuff on weekends and lunch hours.  Except that words are like miles for the runner.  Only so many of each can be managed in any given span.  Four months of extraordinary pay, and I'd still turn disagreeable.  Unwanted twists would be grafted into the plots, characters would reveal bizarre tendencies, and if that rebellion didn't manage to get me fired, then a crippling depression would take hold.  Probably by the seven-month mark.  Which is when I would quit.  I hope.  Otherwise something more grim would happen, followed by a brief eulogy by my former co-workers during at the next morning's production meeting.

I have never met a professional fiction writer who isn't a passionate consumer of media.  Books and stories, sure.  But also television series and movies, and that underrated source of dramatic tension, news stories in their myriad forms.

Fair or not, what I expect from the outside world is much like what I expect from my own work.  I want surprises.  I deserve tensions.  And more than most audiences and even quite a few SF writers, I expect the narrative to make some kind of sense.

I stopped watching The Walking Dead.  I stopped last year, just before the famous bat arrived.  I'm far from the only lost convert, judging by the plunging ratings, but my complaints are rather different from most people.  Yes, I'm tired of the shambling pace and the do-we-fight-or-not tone.  But those aren't the killers for me.  I'm tired of Carl growing tall and masculine inside the very limited time frame.  (A far more believable and compelling story is to make every year cover a year, pacing the story to the boy's maturation inside a new world that he will possess.)  I admit that I have no relationship with the original source material for The Dead.  What I know is the series.  And within that framework, I can see a host of production issues, not limited to budgets and sets and the dictates of a corporation where important meetings have only one point:  "Kill our profits and we'll bash in your brains."

No, the worst sins in this show is the clumsy stupidity exhibited by characters who are far more simple than genuine people of very average means.  Really, at this point in the apocalypse, why would any two people stand on a hilltop, in the open, debating important principles of life?  The audience knows that enemies and their rifles are lurking.  And any soldier from any war has learned the same lesson, or she's dead.  To my mind, the only way to carry on a conversation is to find cover and sit down back-to-back.  Whispers and watchfulness.  That's how you keep the walkers and the humans from getting the jump on you.

Here's another big failure.  Farming.  Late in a previous season, a lady who's written to be smart draws a fanciful map of her lands being turned to wheat and other crops.  By "written to be smart," I mean that she knows exactly as much about farming as the writers who made her waste her final moments of life.  The kind of farming that can feed hundreds and makes life easy is going to require thousands of acres.  Fertilizers need to be applied or lived without.  The same for pesticides.   And this farmstead needs impossible walls that can't be breached by walkers or by humans.  No, if I was in charge of rebuilding agriculture, we'd do it like the Native Americans on the high plains.  Plant tough crops and move on.  Then come back again at harvest time.  A large sloppy technique, and your wheat would get raided.  But potatoes are hard to find, and on a substantial scale, those white gems would help feed hundreds.

The list of complaints continues, and plainly I watched too many seasons before quitting.

For instance, where can I buy a car that can sit for years and start with a turn of the key?  And how can any abandoned car still have air in its tires?  And for that matter, why hasn't the gasoline evaporated down to varnish inside the unused fuel lines?

Why in hell are the cities still standing?  Abandoned buildings practically want to burn; Atlanta and Washington DC should have turned to pillars of smoke and heavy falls of ash.  And the countryside wouldn't be spared.  Living and dead mouths have eaten every deer and presumably most of the mice.  That's why the underbrush would grow up thick, waiting for the next lightning strike and the resulting wildfire.

And now back to the daily business about avoiding starvation:  Insects should be on the regular diet.  Cicadas are a time of wealth.  And think of every funeral from this series.  Having life experience when it comes to digging holes, I know there's treasure in the ground, and the mourners aren't going to hesitate grabbing up the night crawlers, then sucking them down like pasta.

Finally, why doesn't anyone ask the obvious questions about this impossible disease?  Not that there's any virus or bacterium that can turns corpses into slow forces of nature.  I'm not saying that an origin should be found, or that the ultimate cure needs to be perfected.  I'm just proposing that smart people who dream about three acres of wheat might be more likely to spend time and risk death trying to make sense of a world-ending plague.

For some of these problems, there is an answer.  It's my writer's answer, assuming that I was hired to help find a suitable end for the shuffling the Dead.  We know everybody is infected.  We know because Rick learned that from a CDC doctor and then didn't mention it to anybody for a very long time.  Because he's a sensitive leader, I suppose, and he didn't want his people getting depressed.  Or for whatever other reason there is.  But what if it isn't just that Rick is infected, and Carol is infected, and one-eyed Carl too?  What if everybody who appears alive is not.  Our characters are already a little bit of a zombie, stupid and primal and at a loss to find answers.  Which has a historical precedent, as if happens.  A 19th century British venture, the Franklin expedition to the map the Northwest Passage, was lost.  And by lost, I mean that everyone died, and some died doing very curious nonsense.  For instance, after their ships were locked into ice, when they had no choice but to walk, they dragged a piano with them.  And why?  One factor was that this state-of-the-art mission that carried canned food, and the cans were improperly soldered.  As a result, everyone was suffering from lead poisoning.  Which is rather like a universe of full of walkers and foolish people who haven't quite turned yet.

Now that would be a very tragic turn inside a story that otherwise makes zero sense.

And sure, I'm fired.  But with my last paycheck, I hope.

I Have Stopped Reading Dilbert

blog.dilbert.com/post/159264981001/the-syrian-gas-attack-persuasion

I stopped reading Dilbert just after New Years.

My reasons lack a political angle.  I was aware that Scott Adams wrote and spoke in ways that offended large portions of the civilized world.  His particular crimes didn't stick with me.  Call me uninformed or lazy, or maybe I'm subconsciously part of his camp.  A comic strip read while eating cereal was not a rousing celebration of one man's beliefs, and it certainly didn't help Mr. Adam's bank account.  I got to laugh.  Sometimes.  I rather liked Wally.  And Dilbert himself was a good illustration of the "engineer's mind" applied in the setting where the engineer does his best work.  You know, inside simple systems, with four panels and minimal drawings and the circumstances under the tight control of one man making tidy lines.

Engineers can be brilliant, no doubt about that.  But it's a genius that thrives in the narrowest of circumstances.  Some big brains are very good at assembling tidy stacks of principles.  If-this-is-true, then-this-follows, and that-means-such-and-such.  That's why bridges rarely collapse.  There are rules, and every engineer can apply those rules, and the great ones can do it with creativity.  And sometimes, yes, there's real beauty in the structures.  Though I suspect most of that is the result of the mathematics buried inside the arches, plus the lovely red that comes when the iron rusts.

My wife sent me the above link this morning.  I finally read the blog a few minutes ago.  Am I surprised that the author is alt-right?  Not much.  And on a different topic:  Do I believe there's any truth in what he's claiming?  No.  Using nerve gas in a battlefield is complicated.  Using it on civilians leaves evidence beyond the useful bodies.  This is a small neighborhood littered with warring, deeply paranoid powers.  Russians and Turks, Israel and the US.  If I'm in charge of this elaborate operation, my first second and fourth concern is that everybody believes the false story, not the real one.  (My third concern is that I don't kill myself by mistake.  Sarin is famously amoral.)  But if I'm Assad, one gas bomb gives me distinct benefits.  First of all, I'm not killing my own people.  These are vulnerable sacks of meat that my sworn enemies cannot protect.  On this war's scale, the attack is little more than a well-placed barrel bomb.  It is a message of intent.  I killed more than a thousand people back in 2013, and the last President didn't attack me.  I want to scare two million refugees into Turkey and points north.  Meanwhile, the new President has been making sweet noise about me and my fight against terrorists.  Who look a lot like the people who are foaming at the mouth, I might add.

So no, I don't buy any self-serving notion that pretends to be theory.

Is Scott Adams stupid?

Probably not.

But the engineer's mind has limits.  To him and his species, there is a knowable logic to the universe.  There are rules to learn, and the engineer doesn't just master these rules, but he also learns that he's very good at this specific kind of thought.  Belief will eventually become just as strong as any good bridge.  To the engineer, only idiots and the weak-willed let themselves break under the weight of too much information.

Trump is not an engineer.  Not even close.

But Steve Bannon might be.  Since he doesn't draw a comic strip, I don't know much about him.  But I wouldn't doubt that he's a very bright fellow who holds a few key faiths, and each of those faiths felt so true when he acquired them.

And what about me and Dilbert?

I stopped reading the comic when 2017 began.  I quit reading the last five strips that I remotely cared about, and for no reason except that nothing seemed to change in any of their stories, and the laughs were getting scarce and stale, and it is amazing to realize that your day is made better when you stop doing one little thing that isn't paying dividends.

I'm not an engineer.

My mind, for better or worse, wants to change.

I'll tell you what good writing is

Good writing is unusual.  Even among professionals, there are very few complex stories populated with three-dimensional characters.  Of course a lot of fine careers depend on cliches.  Mansions and motion picture studios have been built because the authors had simplistic notions about human behavior and moral consequences.  Yes, that is a snob's attitude.  But my particular attitude is a little more nuanced than that.  You see, I don't believe that our species will ever be truly good writers.  And that includes me.  We also aren't gifted when it comes to thinking about imaginary numbers or making plans for future generations.  But we like to congratulate ourselves for being natural story tellers.  That's because each of us inhabits a personal and rather epic life.  This is a trick of the mind, and maybe it isn't just a human trick.  Maybe hawks and fence lizards think the same way.  But the life-as-story narrative does allow each of us to walk through random crap and odd coincidences...you know, everything that happened in life today...and it gives all of us a sense of structure.  Maybe we even find purpose, if that's what we need.  It's the skill that gives us the confidence to imagine our enemies cowering and taste our certain victories.  Even though most battles don't go as predicted, and few of our triumphs play out in ways we would never envision.

Humans are not stellar writers.  But we have a dangerous gift for strong first paragraphs, and sometimes a powerful chapter or two.  Which gets us into so much trouble.

"Our government is corrupt.  We need an outsider who's going to break the wheel.  Mathematics and kindness can be ignored, and the world will turn back to a better age when men were noble and women pure."

This is the story that got us where we are today.

Emotional claws.  They will trap every person.  Particularly those who believe they are too smart or too skeptical to be fooled.

The trouble with story, real story, is that it has no end.  That's what we can't appreciate.  And include me in that ignorance, please.  Real life has too many plots and billions of characters, and each of us is frantic and sloppy and tiny, trying to steer this world where we can only wish it would go.

If I was in charge of education?  I would give up trying to teach calculus to the masses.  Statistics is the better use of neurons.  People who understand odds don't waste their nights in Vegas or deny global warming.  And we must must must be kind to those in need, if only so we don't trigger the kinds of wildfires that make history so bloody and wicked and sorry.  And finally, I would mandate the writing of fiction, but only to the point where people would discover their utter weakness in this critical subject.

Hammer out a good sentence, and another, and ten more.

Finish your first chapter, if you can, building a handful of authentic humans out of old words and ancient hope.

But no author lives long enough, much less can find the necessary wisdom to give those new people the capacity to cast their own shadows.

This is what I'm saying.

Every person is a mystery, and every mystery is painted thin across the endless universe.