Las Vegas Idiots

     I'm seeing the same news you are.  "Crazy-scary idiots are crazy scary" is all I've got; some kind of race-war ass-hattery with usual ending: would be racist warriors safely and appropriately dead after, dammit, killing innocent people.  If these clowns didn't kill anyone other than themselves, they'd be risible; as it is, they're the societal equivalent of terminal foot-fungus and I include in that description anyone of any hue who is ginnin' up for a race war.  Knock that crap out, we've got children on this planet and all you're doing is scaring them and making messes in the corners.

     Comments will be savagely moderated.  You don't like it?  Hie your racist ass elsewhere.  The rest of us have grown-up stuff to do.

     UPDATE: And now we find that they're Indiana idiots.  From Lafayette. Oh, swell.  At least they're dead.

Wiki-Wander Wonderjahr

     So, I'm looking up SF writer Tom Reamy, for some reason (possibly to verify my suspicion that San Diego Lightfoot Sue is a documentary -- I blame the Alice Sheldon [James Tiptree, Jr.] biography I started reading Sunday), and I find myself distracted into the "Whatever Happened to Last Dangerous Visions?" department.

     Nobody knows, or no one other than Harlan Ellision.  Chris Priest wrote the definitive investigative report a long time ago and still-- no book.  You could ask Ellison but that's probably not the best of ideas.

     On the other hand, it was a reminder to look up books by Octavia Butler and (a bit tangentially) Hayford Pierce.  And will someone please tell me why the collection of his delightful Chap Foey Rider stories is so very out of print?

Canned Corned Beef Hash, Sometime In The Early 20th Century - 8 June 2014, RIP.

     Well, they've done it, slimed-up the last decent brands of canned hash, "Mary Kitchen" Corned Beef and Roast Beef Hash.  So I've had my last can of the stuff and from here on out, I'll have to make it myself if I want any.   You can shortcut with deli corned beef, just have 'em slice it thick, but it's not near as quick or easy, for all it is probably lower in Bad Things I Shouldn't Eat. I haven't had great luck with the various frozen and canned potatoes, but I hadn't been motivated to make a really serious try until now, either.

     It was a good long run and I shouldn't gripe, but it's just one more bit of a steadily-poorer world, even here in the fattest part of the fat of the land.  Rome was a long time falling, too, and at any given point, it was real hard to see the decline.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

     Spent Saturday afternoon helping my baby brother clear out/rearrange the garden shed and garage at my Mom's (former) house, part of preparation to "stage" it for showing by the realtor.

     It's a strange-feeling thing to be doing.  Oh, it's not uncommon -- a lot of people have to do just what we're doing as their parents age.  But it's a thing you do once, clearing away clutter and debris that includes the things you grew up with, sudden memories from a scrap of paper, a decorative flower pot, a beat-up "handyman" vise.  We worked pensively, trying to evaluate what could be thrown away, what mustn't be, what wasn't going to be needed again with Mom's gardening days over (most of that can go to my big sister, but she's out for most of the summer with a fractured pelvis from a car wreck).

     I recovered some big things, a couple of them long forgotten.  The bulk of a Collins 212A audio console (1947 vintage), I had not forgotten, but it's a two-person lift and awkward even at that; it's in the back of my car, where I'm going to have to disassemble it for storage and, maybe someday, rebuilding.  But I didn't even remember the big box of late 1970s electronics magazine in not-so-good shape and another of mid-1980s SF magazines (Analog, Amazing, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Galileo, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, maybe even a Galaxy or two). All forgotten, or all but; ditto my 6" metal slide rule (a present from a former boss), a glass full of pens (several Rapidographs), a box of pinfeed paper (trash) with a ream of canary newsprint second sheet on top (either trash or treasure -- it was dirt-cheap and you used it for first drafts and carbons when writing using a typewriter. I have been unable to find it for sale in recent years), a couple of radio handbooks and a submission draft (two errors or less per page!  Oh, you kids barely know...)  of a story I wrote about the same time I was reading those SF mags, "Barn-Burner," a middling-lousy title for a middling Sturgeon-esque trifle.  I may try recycling that -- I remember that kid; she had some good ideas.  (I still miss the typewriter that was typed on, a pre-Selectric letter-series IBM electric, easily one of the best first-draft tools I have ever used: you flipped the switch and it was quivering to go, a warm, thrumming hum muting outside sounds...  It weighed at least ten times as much as a laptop and used about a hundred Watts and is perhaps more golden in memory than it was in reality.)

     We swept and rearranged, threw away and discussed, "Hey, remember...?  Oh, gee, that thing's still around?"  There was a lot of Brownian motion but by the end, the shed was neatly arranged with plenty of open space, and so was most of the garage.

     One comes home from an experience like that pensive, with a fully-loaded car, pregnant with memories like an old maid about to birth a dusty mummy.  It's a look through the wrong end of a telescope and it's a long, long way down.

     I'm past the halfway point in my life unless I live to be 112.  Not a bad plan, if medical science keeps up; but they seem to be a little too busy inventing dick pills and anti-depression medicines that don't turn most users into homicidal maniacs ("if used as directed"), so I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope.

     Is it all downhill from here, or does the roller coaster have a few peaks left?  Either way, it looks like a frightfully abrupt stop at the end.  It's a little late to admit I'm scared.  But I am.

--

     In other news, I finished the Heinlein biography (I cried; I still remember buying my second copy of Locus, ever, to read that Clifford Simak* and RAH were both gone.  Never bought another) and started on the Alice Sheldon one -- you may know her better as Racoona Sheldon or James Tiptree, Jr.  Gone, all gone, dammit.
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* If you have never read Way Station, you've missed an excellent novel, one of the classics of the genre.  The Goblin Reservation is another fine book, and SF despite the title.  Simak's approach to his characters and worlds was unlike anyone else's, his protagonists more resolute and enduring than conventionally heroic.  His work holds up well even now and generally "reads" well ahead of its time -- the two I cited are from 1963 and 1968 respectively and IMO, SF didn't really catch up with them in style, tone and attitude until the mid to late 1970s.

We Won't Shut Up

     Which means sometimes we drive one another nertz.

It's Not Just Me

     People really do drive like idiots.  All of us.  Even me.

Win A Trip To Space

     I don't know if it's round-trip or not, but who cares?  The top-level Hackaday Prize is an all expenses paid trip to space!

     It's no quiz show, Roy Malcom, nor will Clifford Russell need to keep buying soap and writing slogans: to win this one, you need to be a Number One Alpha Geek -- and you've gotta invent the future.

     Offer does not apply in Italy, Quebec, or in a number of grotty little autocratic and/or theocratic states.  I have no idea how the first two made the list; they might want to look into that.

     (While I'm linking to books we read as youngsters, remember the Winston Science Fiction Series?  Good stuff -- and that cover art!)

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialog With His Century, Volume 2

     The long-awaited second half of William H. Patterson's Heinlein biography has been published and I'm well into it.  There are a few deeply jarring science bobbles early on -- Patterson seems to have gotten the notion that V-2 rockets were fueled with liquid oxygen and hydrogen peroxide[1], for example -- but it is a lucid, readable and, where it concerns his subject, well-researched narrative.

     Anyone who has been following the long, dark tea-time of SF's tempest between (mostly smalltime) Social Justice Warriors on sone side and Larry "Walter B. Gibson reborn"[2] Correia (with midlist accompaniment) on the other will find much that is familiar in the book's coverage of critical and editorial reactions to Heinlein's "Starship Troopers," right down to the determined misreading of the text.

     Big book fulla fascinating dish, well-supported, well-written despite the occasional technical lapse.  Recommended -- buy your copy via Tam's link and help pay for high-speed internet here at Roseholme Cottage, mmm-kay?

     N.B.: I have corrected a silly typo in the post title.  My first name is just one letter longer than RAH's -- and I type it rather than his (and my fathers) practically as a reflex.

     Update: William H. Patterson passed away 22 April of this year.  He was 62.   He is much-missed.
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1. What? These are both oxidizers.  Like air.  V-2 engines burn alcohol (75% ethanol, 25% water -- 150 proof, like rum only without the flavor) and LOX.  They do pump 'em with a steam turbine driven by catalytic reaction of hydrogen peroxide, but it's not driving the rocket any more than the battery propels a '53 Chevy. Patterson is very comfortable explaining the complexities of who said what to whom, when but I'm willing to bet he never changed spark plugs in his car.

 2. You could maybe look him up.  Let's just say Gibson probably kept  his neighborhood typewriter repairman very happy.

Idiots With Firearms, Part Whatever

     I know -- let's have a gunfight at a gas station at 1:00 a.m. when one guy brushes against another!  Both of the young gentlemen are in hospital, along with the girlfriend of one of them.

     Still waiting to hear if both of them were "just getting their life turned around" or if one was instead, "just minding his own business."  Crying grandmothers have also not yet been located but it's only a matter of time.

     And meanwhile, the spate of shootes among the criminally-inclined continues in Indianapolis.  IMPD is finally starting to make vague noises about some realtionship with "drugs."  The last time we had a similar rate of shootings concentrated in the "Thirty-whath and what?" neighborhoods, one drug gang was moving in on another.  My goodness, you don't suppose...?

Merchant Princes, Revisited: Really, Mr. Stross? Really?

          Some while back, I mentioned I was on Book Four of the six-book "Merchant Princes" series by Charles Stross.  An interesting concept, well-executed; but along about the point where I set them down to  write my review, things started to get a little silly.

     Well, either silly or what I'd assumed to be our familiar Earth was not (and this does appear to be the case based on other evidence in the text): you see, when one of the prime villains showed up, he turned out to be Dick Cheney.

     And not just any Dick Cheney, either; the short- and/or ill-tempered political opportunist and operative of our world had been replaced by a deeply eeeevil chap who lacked only a waxed mustache to twirl.  Yes, the ham-handed shotgunner who briefly endeared himself by violating the spirit of Senate Rule 19* when he suggested Senator Leahy might want to enjoy an intimate moment all alone, that guy.  In the books, he's not the old pol who went from "most powerful Vice President in history" to retirement in 2008 but a spider more ruthless than Moriarty. If a sparrow falls, he felled it.

     The character is readily recognizable as the Mother Jones/European press version of Cheney, embodying practically everything that worries them about U.S. politicians, especially Republicans.  In hindsight, it reads so over the top that it become part and parcel of Stross's setting, one of three alternative worlds, this one very like our own and yet almost risibly different.

     If you are easily riled at caricatures of politicians, you may want to avoid this series.  If you'd like a look through eyes on the far side of the water, you may find the series offers it as a sort of unintended bonus.  And if you always suspected the man was up to no good, you'll probably find Art more convincing than life.
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* The Senate at that time not officially Senating, the grade-school-type rule barring "harsh language" wasn't in effect.  (And it may not apply to anyone but actual Senators even then.  Does that mean they can have their staff swear for them?  Probably not.) A pity they have it, really; if Senators could indulge in some really vile invective while on the clock, they might spend more time doing that, less time checking for a loose fiver or billion in the public purse, and find themselves having to get a move on to accomplish their Constitutional duties in the remaining time -- but I dream.

Nope, Nothing

     Worked past midnight last night, drove home with almost no gas in the car, could not get to sleep and now here I am, making ready to head back in.

     Sometimes that's all there is, nothing left over.

Some Thoughts On Writing Science Fiction

     Yesterday or maybe the day before, I pulled down one of the Pournelle-edited* themed anthologies, in this case Volume Two of Imperial Stars, Republic And Empire.  These collections generally offer good solid entertainment, a mix of well-written short fiction, poetry (I can take it or leave it; generally, I leave it) and essays.  About the only new material is the introduction and lead-ins -- which suits me, as it means classics from John W. Campbell and H. Beam Piper are included, as well as work from writers both well-known and unknown that have previously been published only in magazines.

     Essays by Campbell -- "Constitution for Utopia" -- and Gregory Benford -- "Reactionary Utopias" -- caught my attention.  The Campbell piece is used as a stage-setter for Eric Frank Russell's Minor Ingredient [2] and with good reason, as both are concerned with the selection and education of potential leaders.  The Benford essay is another kettle [3] of fish, addressing primarily LeGuin's The Dispossessed and with a suspicious eye, then moving on to briefly dismiss other "women's utopias" from Johanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr. (dutifully though incorrectly unmasked as "Racoona Sheldon," another of Alice B. Sheldon's pseudonyms) and others.  While he is likely correct as to the impracticality of the proposed societies -- Anarres and Whileaway would probably have experienced greater internal conflict -- and his labeling of them as "reactionary" is not unjustified, he contrasts them with societies he "...suspects...prove rather more enlightened than some recent chic versions," citing Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon and Niven and Pournelle's Oath of Fealty as examples.  This is remarkably disingenuous from a fellow who, pages earlier, defines "reactionary" utopias as those that "...recall the past, often in its worst aspects," and then overlooks the 17th-Century underpinnings of the Heinlein work and the deliberately-evoked feudal overtones in the Pournelle yarn.

     Benford makes a number of excellent points, including what he labels as "five dominant reactionary characteristics" and I would call Big Damn Holes In Worldbuilding You Have To Write Around: Lack of diversity, static in time, nostalgic and technophobic, presence of an authority figure, and social regulation though guilt.  --Though that last is actually half of the most common and low-level regulation of normal human behavior: guilt and/or shame, for all they are ill-regarded, are the primary influences keeping your neighbor from beheading you with a shovel when you go a-lawnmowing at oh-dark-thirty of a Sunday morning.  Any one or maybe two of the others can be used as a key element in worldbuilding but you've got to 'splain it somehow.  Conversely, over- or unconscious reliance on any of 'em will do one's work no good.

     My fiction includes a kind of non-utopian utopia, the societies and worlds of the "Far Edge," which has darned few laws other than a harshly-enforced limit on the size of governments.  At the heart of it is something of a monoculture, the culture of the flitting trading ships; the shadowy "central government" drawn primary from among them refuses to govern and is, in effect, a conspiracy or secret society:

      One of the problems with the shadowy "Federation of Concerned Spacemen" non-government is that it has no official existence and few if any of the assemblies and appurtenances of a government. Being something of a conspiracy of ship-captains and the semi-official representatives of town-meetings, wealthy only as the participants will contribute — a staggering wealth in goods and materials by Earthly standards — it can't or won't do the normal government behaviors. The FCS is nowhere mentioned in the text of the 1989 Agreement; the closest thing to it is the amnesty granted all Project Hoplite spacefarers ("and descendents, associates and immigrants") save a small group of named conspirators. Rumor has it ratification on their side of the line was a raggedly uneven affair of ad campaigns, direct voting and a running debate among ship-owners and captains that nearly became open violence. There aren't any FCS embassies and there's no way for any outsider (or, I suspect, most Edgers) to speak directly to the FCS as a body — assuming it even has meetings. There appears to be no single body in charge, at least not in the way the rest of us think; there's just a broad set of generally-agreed-on principles, with ad-hoc enforcement, funded on the spot. What they have are private message boards (the electronic variety), PR reps, extension agents, a scattering of attorneys (at least in NATO-controlled space) and, if all else fails, hired Mil/Space troops. It's unsettling.

     The Federation of Concerned Spacemen started out as a conspiracy and it still runs like one.

     Thus I find myself concerned with the problems of utopias.

     On another level, I find myself concerned with something else: Benford appears unaccountably hostile to LeGuin and other female utopianists; on first glance, this would appear to be political, but he then quotes Samuel R. Delany in support of his analysis and Delany is no less a leftist than LeGuin.  That leaves two possibilities, a rather childish boys-vs.-girls dynamic or personal animosity.

     I have little to say about the first; like politics, it is what it is and either you accept that not all the other rats in the maze are just like you or you don't and you're either okay with that or you're not.  As for the last, it leads me to one conclusion: other writers are to be avoided. If contact can be limited to the craft of writing and the difficulty of obtaining promised monies from publishers, fine, but otherwise, dodge 'em.   There is nothing to be gained from knowing them outside of what they have written, and too much to lose.

     --And after a certain point, stop reading SF seriously if that's what you write; it's too easy to get pulled into a pigeonhole, too easy to fill your head with old familiar tropes, moldy chestnuts best left as rubbish.

    "Reactionary Utopias" is an interesting essay, certainly thought-provoking, and yet I think it is mistitled.  It's got a certain grade-school playground odor faintly lingering.

     This is the world we've got -- it's no utopia, nor are any of us saints.
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1. With John F. Carr

2. One could ask for no better example of the contrast between Russell-the-writer and Russell-the-man than this story, and it should serve as a reminder to not go too far in ascribing to writers the virtues espoused in their texts.  Writing reflects the author in a funhouse mirror -- if even that.

3. You know how to drive a self-educated and mildly dyslexic person nuts?  Have two spell-checkers, one of which doubts the existence of "another" and the other looks askance at "kettle."  As well as, by the gods, "askance."  Keep it up, machines, keep it up; I own a perfectly good sledge hammer and it doesn't give me any backchat.