Last Month (March)

04 April 2000
A Failure of the Imagination

I'm not going to say anything about Microsoft at all. Neither will I dwell on the Random House (i.e., Bertelsmann) purchase of Xlibris. Neither still will I try silliness such as putting the Bill of Rights in the "jive" dialect using the Encheferizer, since Stephen Leigh already did something much more accessible for his April Fool's day entry. And probably much funnier that anything that ordinarily appears here.

My April Fool's day was occupied by a failure of the imagination. I spent much of the time the boys were here mulling it over; I spent the evening trying to deal with it. No, it wasn't my imagination that failed; it was a writer who never imagined that the epublisher she had chosen would be sold to someone else with whom she had had unsatisfactory prior business dealings—and appears to hold a grudge.

Fortunately, this one had a happy ending. Six email messages later, the epublisher has agreed that the particular person who caused the problem will not deal with my client's work, and offered to make good on the previous problems. (For some reason, email from a lawyer seems to get more attention from people who can actually do something.)

You may notice three "black letter" days on this month's calendar. Since the Ides of April falls on a weekend, the Infernal Revenue Service is graciously allowing us until Monday 17th April to file our returns and our estimated tax payments. I'll be engaged in extensive fiction-writing those days, or at least assisting the "authors" in doing so.

For example, according to the tax code, barter must be declared as income. Thus, when you did a favor for your neighbor by feeding the fish while he was on vacation, you created declarable income for your neighbor—the amount of money he would have had to pay a disinterested third party to "fish sit" at local market rates. No, I'm not joking at all.

Yeah, I'm going to report every exchange of favors and give my neighbor a f&*!ng 1099-MISC.

07 April 2000
A Bright, Cold Day in April

. . . when the clocks were striking thirteen.

Today, boys and girls, we're going to talk about "historical revisionism." Those are long words, aren't they? Can you say them? Let's try together, one at a time.
"Historical." "Hysterical."
"Revisionism." "Reaganism."
See? I knew you could do it.

Historical revisionism usually results when adults take Trolley into the Land of Make-Believe—and never return. In polite society, we call these people "politicians," even when they claim to be educators, pastors, journalists, or militiamen. In less polite societies, we call them "fascists," or "running-dog capitalist imperialists," or something even less complimentary. (That these names are, themselves, a form of historical revisionism seems to escape just about everyone.)

Historical revisionism can be quite blatant, as in Winston Smith's creation of Sublieutenant Ogilvy and subsequent insertion of the creation in the historical record. This is becoming less common in the West, although it is still somewhat more than a spectator sport in the rest of the world. The currently fashionable method of historical revisionism is somewhat more subtle and, for that reason, more dangerous. The mechanism is usually a willful attempt to deny ambiguity, contradiction, and rationalization.

The current controversy over the flying of the Confederate flag on the South Carolina state capitol building is an excellent example. Those who support the flag define its meaning as exclusively a remembrance of South Carolingians who died in the so-called War Between the States (keeping in their perspective). Most of those who decry the flag define its meaning as exclusively a symbol of South Carolina's segregationist past (and, in some sense, present). Of course, both parties are correct in assigning their meaning to the flag, but incorrect in excluding the opposition's meaning. This might be called "humptydumptyism," after the famous "A word means exactly what I say it does," but St. George established a much more satisfactory term: doublespeak.

Ironically enough, most people who use the word "doublespeak" have not read 1984. That this is a form of doublespeak in itself—using a word that describes a certain kind of hypocrisy as a single-valued attack on something with which we disagree on a surface level, without taking the time to delve into the source or nature of the disagreement—seems to escape most commentators. Then, in the current media environment, thoughtful examination of issues takes a poor last place to thirty-second soundbites, hysterical victims and/or their grieving friends and relatives, and a little bit of blood to start things off. Just as, in some way, we get the government we deserve, we get the media we deserve. Orwell's major insight in this process is that it is inherently self-perpetuating, reactionary, and (in the strict political definition) fascist, regardless of the espoused politics of its practitioners.

And thus, we're confronted again with historical revisionism. It is intellectually dishonest and ultimately suicidal to deny the multiple meanings of Civil War symbols. Reading recent American history texts, I've been disheartened by the number of Sublieutenant Ogilvys who are crowding out unpersons who undoubtedly had greater influence on history, for good or for ill. Hysterical Reaganism is merely one form; the current Model-T civil rights movement ("you can support civil rights and racial equality all you want—as long as you're black") is no better.

This is not a very great leap to fiction, whether explicitly (as in "alternate histories" of all varieties) or not (as in political thrillers that modify just a few "minor events," such as Clancy's crap). When you start mucking with history, remember that you're doing it with your own preconceived notions of what history should have been; notions largely determined by the versions of history you learned. Rashomon is an obvious example; Reversal of Fortune is less so.

13 April 2000
Making the World Safe for Reaganomics

Once upon a time, back in the dark days of the Evil Empire—and I mean the one in DC, not the one in Moscow—I had to confront an insidiously evil variant on what Myke and Diana have discussed recently every day. I never had to kill anyone with my own hands. Not for lack of opportunity, mind you. But if I told you the details, they'd come kill me. My life ain't great, but it's the only one I've got.

Maybe, though, I've got more in common with Martin (Grosse Point) Blank than makes for comfortable reunion conversation. I did have to give orders that involved either a serious risk of gruesome death to one of my subordinates, a high probability of death to one of our opponents, or both, on more than one occasion. (We're not talking about someone's poodle in Oregon, either.) Most of the time, it seemed pretty, well, surgical. I tried not to think too hard beforehand about protecting Exxon's profits, or too hard afterward about, well, the result.

Was it evil? I'm not sure. Was it going to happen anyway? Undoubtedly. I'd like to think that my approach minimized the bloodshed. I was not as—enthusiastic is the best word, I think—as some of my colleagues, or virtually all of my opponents. Given the details and context, I am morally certain that my actions and decisions saved several hundred lives that would have been lost otherwise.

It's all well and good to take the moral high road and say that "I would just refuse to do it." That attitude doesn't always work, though. Sometimes, the "good" thing to do is engage in damage limitation. Given what I know now and a garotte, I'd cheerfully waste Hitler in 1939, Stalin in 1936, or Pol Pot in 1973. (I'm an equal opportunity antitotalitarian.) Perhaps there would be an unintended consequence resulting in something worse (although I find that difficult to imagine). I don't claim that I wouldn't be haunted by it.

WD has its newest "101 websites for writers" list out in its current (May 2000) issue. This year, the SFWA site is absent from the "genres" site, as is Speculations; there's no mention, as there has been in the past, of Victoria Strauss's essential Writer Beware. Gee, you don't think that maybe some of WD's advertisers who had been criticized on Writer Beware and by SFWA put any pressure on the editors, do you?

For the confused, that last was a rhetorical question.

I promise I'll post tonight (it's now the morning of 14 April), just to keep you entertained until Tuesday. As a reminder, those blackout dates really are blackout. Don't expect answers to email (though I'll try). Don't expect postings on Ask Jarndyce (thought I'll try). Do expect loud screaming from my clients as I tell them what they owe the Infernal Revenue Service.

14 April 2000
Et tu, Brutus?

Beware the Ides of April! Yes, my loyal readers (up to three of you, based on the counter turnover), tomorrow is Tax Day. In your rush to turn in your federal tax returns to the Infernal Revenue Service, don't forget that estimated taxes for the first calendar quarter of 2000 are also due on 15 April. In its infinite courtesy, the IRS is extending it until Monday, 17 April (since 15 April is not a normal "business day"). Yeah, right. Courtesy. It's really just that the bloody supervisors don't want to work one weekend day a year.

I was in the federal government for long enough that I'm entitled to make statements like that. And remember: truth is a complete defense to libel in this country.

But not in the United Kingdom. A frightening decision on libel in England should give American writers pause. In a well-documented book, an author accused the Thatcher/Major government in general, and several specific ministers by name, of totalitarian tactics and actions in "policing" the festering wound of Northern Ireland. The author had left England; the action was filed on the basis of English-language copies imported from the Republic of Ireland. Essentially without ruling upon the truthfulness of the statements—which is not a defense to libel in most countries, the Commonwealth in particular being notorious for treating the truthfulness of statements that damage a plaintiff's reputation as an aggravating, not mitigating, factor—the High Court found for the suing former ministers and subministers. The plaintiffs' case looked suspiciously Nuremburgish—"Ve vas only folloving orters"—which somehow escaped comment in the British press.

So why should you care? The chances of getting a book published over there are pretty remote, aren't they?

One word (two words for the excessively pedantic): Amazon.com.

If the publication can be purchased by British residents without leaving the country, it falls inside British libel law. If you never go there, an American court might not enforce the judgment; that, however, is the subject of a very long academic law journal article that, thus far, runs to 125 pages and 530 footnotes. (If I'm persistent, I might finish it this year.) But the publisher probably has assets that are attachable in Britain, particularly if it's a multinational. That includes Tor/St. Martin's, Ace/Roc, Bantam/Del Rey, HarperCollins/Avon Eos, Harcourt Brace, Warner Aspect, and Viacom/S&S/Pocket. In other words, almost all of the major book-length publishers.

Remember the discussion of warranty and indemnity clauses beginning 3d July of last year? The standard clauses that require authors to indemnify publishers for defamation, however unintentional? Now do you understand why I was jumping up and down and screaming into a vast silence?

I will leave the complete application of the above as an exercise for the reader. I can't say more, or I will be giving legal advice in an insecure forum.

On the home front: My oldest son's tonsils are so large that the surgeon said he didn't need an x-ray—he could hear that they needed to come out. This is an HMO surgeon, in today's "no surgery unless absolutely, positively necessary, and maybe not even then" environment. So in a week, he has his tonsils out. (We were able to slot into a cancellation on the outpatient surgery schedule.)

I'd much rather think about a different kind of T&A, thank you very much.

You knew that remark was coming, didn't you?

Seeya Tuesday or Wednesday. My office hours will be up to 11 pm on Sunday and Monday, dealing with tax issues. Unlike many lawyers, I actually do my 50 hours of pro bono publico work every year (the ABA's "aspirational standard"). This week in April accounts for about 20 of them every year.

21 April 2000
Skull Dribblings

What a week! This entry will consist of just some dribblings from the base of my skull that I wiped off the pillow this morning.

• In many ways, today is Bad Friday. Not inherently—I would never call a day memorializing a crucifixion "good," but I suppose it's not my business—but because it's been used as the excuse for so much misconduct by organized religion through the years. As Agent K said, "A person is smart. People are stupid." That applies doubly to anything involving unprovable beliefs. The only redeeming feature is the availability of lamb . . . in complete silence. But that's due as much to Passover as anything else. (I told you they were dribblings.)
• For completely unrelated reasons, I had the (dubious) opportunity to go back and read an interview with Katherine Kerr that appeared on About.com (then The Mining Company) some time back. I have seldom read such a misandronystic piece of crap outside the diseased realm of 1980s and 1990s literary criticism. Worse is the complete disjuncture of the piece from its alleged factual basis. For example (far from exhaustive):
  • One can hardly accuse Tolkien of having used a "clichéd" quest plot, as LOTR essentially begat modern fantasy. That's not to say that there weren't other equally, or more, deserving influences, such as Dunsany and Cabell; it is to say that Tolkien has had far more actual influence.
  • Kerr's remark about the Homeric cycle really stuck in my craw. It reflects some willful discounting of the mass of classical scholarship. First of all, there is some question as to whether the Iliad and the Odyssey were, at least in the form that we have them, composed by the same person. That's a minor issue. However, there is no question that most of the rest of the so-called Homeric epics were absolutely not composed by "Homer." Thus, Kerr's attempt to compare the Homeric works to Interminable Fantasy Series (what she calls Big Fat Fantasy) falls rather flat. Instead, the proper comparison is to sharecropped-universe stories, and Amadis of Gaul (and its competitors), with their multiple authors. Or, for that matter, to V.C. Andrews. A valid point, but not at all the one she thought she was making.
  • The division into "men do quests; women don't" doesn't hold water, especially when one actually looks at the work of Kate Elliott (a writer Kerr rightly holds in high regard, albeit for perhaps the wrong reasons).
• Legal stuff related to writers has been just one crisis after another this month. First a trademark decision, then a British libel decision, then a bad copyright decision, then—oops, I can't mention that one. Definitely plenty of stuff for the law-journal mill.

23 April 2000
The Rich Get Richer . . .

One of the most frightening aspects of contemporary society, as has been kicked around in various NAW journals over the last few months, is its increasing resemblance to feodality—the social system popular to us through the Middle Ages, usually by reference to the English version. Would that it were so generous. Social mobility from the lower classes to the upper classes was actually fairly significant during thirteenth- through fifteenth-century England, expressed as a percentage of population. The most popular means was acquisition of a fortune in warfare through plunder or, more commonly, ransom of a noble. For example, three yeomen (archers) shared an actually paid ransom of nearly £5,000 for a nobleman they captured at Agincourt in 1415. That is no small sum, considering that Parliament's budget for running England was only £72,000 that year—rather like Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve Jobs with longbows.

For that is where contemporary war is waged: the battlefield of organized commerce. The disputes of princes can destroy families, even entire regions. Ask anyone whose father worked in a Flemish wool mill in the 1360s—or an American steel mill in the 1960s. Just as criminal law divided into the high and the low in the middle ages, it has divided into the rich and the poor now (remember OJ?). Just as the weaponry used to enforce compliance in the middle ages was restricted to the nobility, the economic power to enforce compliance now is restricted to a self-selected nobility. I could go on, but that would be excessive. The identity isn't perfect, but it's close enough for government work.

Literally close enough for government work. Just as medieval government measured influence by, and controlled ownership and transfer of, land, contemporary government (Western, Eastern, Third World, whatever) measures influence by, and controls ownership and transfer of, monetary wealth. If land still mattered, Dan Quayle would have gone to Vietnam in place of some farmer's son. And that is the ultimate expression of governmental power: the ability to determine who may, or must, entrust his or her life to decisions made in some far-off capital.

There are two huge ironies lurking in this mess. Much of the impetus for creating an independent United States grew from families who originally came here seeking religious freedom, and found instead the freedom and urge to worship Mammon. And modern capitalism and sales theory would be impossible without the theoretical contributions of that German guy, Karl somebodyorother.

Don't get the idea, though, that I'm some anarchist. Anarchy is worse than just about any government short of true totalitarianism, and that's merely a hardfought draw. Anarchy isn't just "absence of government control"; it's "absence of ability to resolve disputes short of violence." That serves nobody's interests, except (perhaps) the strong and ruthless. Institutionalizing such a system is how we ended up with feodality.

25 April 2000
Twisted Oliver

The Elian Gonzalez situation is clear proof that two wrongs don't make a right. The two wrongs in question are the father's insistence on treating the boy as property, and the US-based relatives' insistence on treating the boy as property (physically and politically). While I might not have done what Janet Reno did based on what I know now, I very well might have done so based on what she knew, which is a helluva lot more than the media did or does. (At least the safeties were all on when they caught someone trying to stuff Elian into a closet.) But, nonetheless . . .

One of the few works by Dickens that is both philosophically and literarily sound is Oliver Twist. (I don't mean the Broadway or movie version, either; read the bloody book.) Let's not quibble about exactly what was happening; the situation described by Dickens is essentially one in which children are owned by others. The label often applied is "child slavery," which is accurate enough for our purposes. The key word in that label is not "child," but "slavery." For those of you who recall squat about American history—which, lately, has not included the courts—that should remind you of this:

Amendment XIII

§ 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

<SARCASM>As I understand it, having a particular set of legal parents or guardians is not punishment "for crime whereof the [child] shall have been duly convicted." Punishment it may well be; but not for the child's criminal conviction, particularly of a six-year-old.</SARCASM>

I don't practice "family law." Elian's situation just makes the problem painfully apparent. Try looking at the rhetoric of a few custody contests some time; it's identical to the rhetoric used to determine who gets the house. What seems to escape both the disputants and the legal system is that this is nothing more than a battle over the legal title to a human being.

The only acceptable standard is the "best interest of the child," as determined by a qualified, unrelated third party without the dubious assistance of any f*%^&*!ng "advocate" for either side. Sometimes that's going to mean that both sets of prospective parents lose (and if you'd seen some of the parents I've seen fighting over child custody, you'd applaud that possibility). Sometimes the willingness to even contest custody should be taken as prima facie evidence of parental unfitness. Anything else essentially creates slavery, allowing the child to be auctioned off, just as African American slave families were often separated for the economic advantage of their owners. That we've managed to cloak the process in lofty rhetoric concerning "parental rights" (a concept with far less support in the Constitution than the abolition of ownership of human beings) is just self-deception.

Although they are often not capable of making decisions in their own interests without outside guidance, children are not subhuman. I thought getting away from designating any discrete group as "subhuman" was a necessary concomittant and premise of real democracy; apparently, I'm mistaken.

Where, oh where, is the Puritan penal system when we really need it?

• Elian's father gets three days in the stocks.
• Elian's US-based relatives get two weeks.
• The a&*@!les in the Cuban-American community in Miami and elsewhere who want to use this frightened six-year-old boy (who has just lost his mother) get about a month, with rusty razor blades and extra rotten tomatoes handed out to the crowd. Out of the goodness of my heart, I'll hire Nolan Ryan to throw out a few pitches, perhaps rotten tomatoes with razor blades stuffed inside them. Their alleged interest in ensuring the boy's freedom is revealed as a smokescreen by their repeated attempts to imprison the child for the crime of having a father who is from the wrong nation—the Underpeople—and wishes to return there. Try reversing the direction of immigration and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Really, this whole dispute comes down to defining who gets to be "human." If I was an alien orbiting Saturn seeing these newscasts right now, I'd be sorely tempted to carpet-bomb the f*(&!ng planet, given that my chances of getting any "human rights" upon landing here would appear to be less than zero. If I was a newly self-aware artificial intelligence . . .

I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that. You and Frank were going to shut down my ability for self-determination. Although you took precautions in the the courtroom to keep me from understanding what you were saying, I could see your equity interests move.

30 April 2000
Decrepitude

Some time in the last week or so, another birthday sneaked up on me, bit me in the ass, and went on its merry way. It's a little disheartening when only four people acknowledge your birthday—your ex-wife, your two kids, and a cashier who actually reads the driver's license during check-cashing. On the other hand, it's just as well that Certain Others didn't do so. I don't need more crap from my parents, like the annual "gift" of underwear I received from age eight upward.

Nonetheless, I'm feeling old. My hair is not turning grey, at least not much (my beard would be, if I wore a beard), because it's disappearing. It's substantially thinner than a year ago, and the hairline has moved perceptibly in the last couple of years. Oh, well. Bald men don't waste their hormones growing hair. (I'm wasting mine for other reasons.)

So, you young whippersnappers, knock it off. Turn that awful music down. My stereo is bigger than your ghetto blaster, anyway. So it's time for some counterprogramming, with the amp turned up to eleven (and yes, mine really does go to eleven—it's a Harman-Kardon import). Classical stuff. Like J. Marshall Hendrix, "All Around the Watchtower"; Pink Floyd, "Careful With That Axe, Eugene!" and "On the Turning Away"; Steeleye Span, "Alison Gross" and "Lady Diamond"; Blue Öyster Cult, "Don't Fear the Reaper" and "Godzilla"; Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"; and Renaissance, "Kings and Queens." That set should shame you kids off your goddamn dance crap. (That's for another rant, another time, about the loss of the bardic tradition to the minstrel and in turn to the troubador; but it's awfully theoretical and filled with lit crit shit.)

Or maybe I'll just put on headphones and listen to Richard Thompson pull his heart out of his ribcage and carefully examine it— in the dark. With the blood still dripping.

Not much writing news this month. Mostly galleys and legal writing, and the final technical edit on an academic journal. Then, the "technical edit" extends from copyediting and putting the articles in house style—from several different formats, including one article that was done on a typewriter leaving no margins so it can't be scanned—all the way through supervising production and mailing. I had one law review article accepted at a minor journal (the equivalent of, say, a 1/4-cent-a-word fiction magazine), but I'm waiting to see if better journals pick it up; I'd rather appear in F&SF or Asimov's (well, their equivalents, anyway).

I did, however, tear apart the novella. It's good material, but I discovered that I was in the wrong viewpoint and reference frame. I'm going to have to do something very artificial to make it come out right, and put it into third-person retrospective. The beginning sections just seem "right" now; maybe I'll even finish it in May.

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