Last Month (July)

01 August 2000
Once Upon a Time …

there was a white castle called Camelot, built on former swampland just north of the River Faire. King John's broad and open table attracted the best and strongest young knights to serve on behalf of the kingdom. Crown Prince Lyndon even kept his mouth shut on occasion.

But something was rotten in Camelot.

King John was very popular with the peasantry. He was popular with the young knights, too. But he had a problem. He couldn't get his army arranged to focus on the thirty-year-old war with Camelot's neighbors Poverty and Racism, because the older knights—many of them in the Crown Prince's faction—simply wouldn't cooperate.

But something was rotten in Camelot.

Then King John was killed by an archer while off on an unnecessary trip to resolve a dispute between two provincial barons. Crown Prince Lyndon ascended to the throne, and actually implemented many of the policies King John had been unable to get the older knights to accept. He prosecuted the wars on Poverty and Racism; unfortunately, he got involved in other wars. Two-front wars are bad enough; he was eventually fighting on six fronts, and lost five of them (one remained a stalemate).

But something was rotten in Camelot.

Lyndon was followed by kings who were either very smart, but ineffective; or very effective, but stupid. Richard III, Gerald, James III, Ronald Palpitine (who crowned himself Emperor, and nearly turned Camelot into an Evil Empire), George II, and Billyjeff (who thought of Camelot as a White Castle). At this writing, Crown Prince Albert is having a great deal of difficulty with the baronial faction, which is putting forth George II's son as the proper successor.

But something was rotten in Camelot.

For, beginning with King John, a new variety of insect had infested Camelot. Some maintain that they were merely gnats; others believe that they were termites on steroids. Even James III's administration was infested; although the castle itself was fairly safe, Lord Griffin ensured that virtually everywhere else was infested. These insects, whatever they were, brought an end to Richard III's reign. (Why he is known as "Richard III" when he was the first of that name to reign in Camelot is a matter best left to historians and literary critics.)

And something was truly rotten in Camelot.

Billyjeff did call in effective exterminators, and kept the insect population under control, even in the swamp surrounding Camelot. Even the Starr Chamber was unable to find insect nests, although it did find a number of curiously unlaundered garments. But Billyjeff's Royal Constabulary introduced velociraptors into the kingdom. Lady High Constable Janet's minions claimed that these vicious beasts were really quite selective in their victims, and carried off only disruptive elements. Lady Janet herself, however, remained strangely, and uncharacteristically, silent concerning these beasts. Nobody could get close enough to the velociraptors to see how "selective" they really were. Meanwhile, the Royal Eunuch's wizards continued breeding more and different beasts, often using a very large stonelike block half a dozen leagues northeast of Camelot itself. Even the wizards, though, admitted (over a tankard or so of mead) that everyone could only trust the beasts' dispositions, as even wizards couldn't completely control them.

I only wish the preceding was fiction. I will ignore the irony that a cyberperson is writing these words. The so-called election this fall makes me yearn for a Hugo ballot, on which I can vote "No Award."

03 August 2000
Arnold Six-Pack

Yep. At my age, I've got six-pack abs, without exercising, without using any of those fancy toning devices that one sees at 3AM on cable TV. Well, at least if I get to define "six-pack abs" (it's about muscle definition, right?): I look like I've had a few too many six-packs sitting on the couch flipping the remote control. (It's actually not that bad—side effect of a health condition, not total corpulence.)

Another shoe has dropped from Tasini: the Ryan v. UnCover class-action lawsuit has settled. (Mr. Tasini, this just demonstrates why you should have made Tasini itself a class action. You [insert off-color insult here]. <RhetoricalQuestion> Or, perhaps, did you have a hidden agenda? </RhetoricalQuestion>).

If you believe there's even a ghost of a chance that an article you published was used by UnCover, visit the website linked in the paragraph above. You've only got a couple more months; you'll need to file a proof of claim form, and it might take a couple of days to get the data demanded. It's not an excessively difficult process, but neither is it as easy as withdrawing money from an ATM. While you're there, if you understand much about class actions—and that doesn't even include most lawyers—you may want to look at the actual settlement documents. But don't goggle your eyes too much at the plaintiffs' attorney's fees; they're not out of line, considering everything else they'll have to do, the difficulties in prosecuting a matter like this, the probable expenses they've already incurred, and the result they achieved for the classes.

Now, if the Supremes will just quickly and summarily deny certiorari in Tasini itself, we can watch the NWU squirm as it tries to formulate a meaningful remedy. And then watch pissed-off authors who could have gotten some relief in a class action while they gnash their teeth after being told, "I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do. It's outside the statute of limitations."

06 August 2000
Groupies
Public Unmasking: 26 days

On 01 September 2000, I will no longer be able to maintain the pretense of anonymity. This website will continue, as John Savage has taken on a life of his own. Which, when I was developing him in the 1980s for "work," was the intent. (Psychologists in the crowd are directed to throw away DSM-IV and ignore the description of "multiple personality disorder." Those who don't will get an offer they can't refuse: Guido "The Shark" Scalese, my "loan officer" personality, will offer to demonstrate batting technique on their kneecaps.) (Which reminds me:

Q. What do you get when you cross a lawyer with the Godfather?
A. An offer you can't understand.)

At WorldCon, I'll be moderating a panel. Further details to come, but I do get to rub elbows with (and limit the speaking time of!) some Big Names in the biz.

So, do I get groupies, or tomatoes?

The end-of-July review will be squished in in mid-August along with Dumpster Diving. The kids have been driving me nuts over the last few weeks, and the back spasms recurred (well, for good reason; at least they only lasted two days this time). Some of my other work has gotten in the way. And then there's summer exhaustion; that's why you're not supposed to drink the water, or allow mosquitoes to bite you, or leave an open sore or wound, in [data masked—nation somewhere south of Rome and the Caspian Sea]. At least one of those happened to me over a decade ago, and I'm still paying for it. No sniping about "move," either; other climates have other problems.

That's all for now. I actually have to go write something—one of my publishers wants an outline for a book that two previous authors have given up on. Just for fun, look at the project.

09 August 2000
Superstition
Public Unmasking: 23 days

One of the advantages of working at home is that one need not confine traditional weekend activities to weekends. I just spent the afternoon (it's too hot and cruddy in the house) performing two reels of the Caucasian-American Rain Dance: mowing the lawn and barbecuing. It seems to have worked, as there are nasty thunderheads piling up about thirty klicks to the west and moving this way. I'm just glad I didn't wash the car, too; that would have been asking for a tornado.

Of course, another advantage of working at home is the ability to do business while still in one's pajamas, well after noon. Without embarrassment. (No, I don't have fluffy pink slippers, but I might as well.)

The major disadvantage is that you never really leave the office, particularly when your business lurches from (client) crisis to (client) crisis. It makes for interesting times. It's also quite frustrating when trying to get the kids to bed, and a call comes in over the loudspeaker (I have half-duplex call screening set up without paying for it; that soldering iron does come in handy …). Especially if the client is frantic, or we've been playing phone tag. Double especially if it's a new client. Or should that be double espresso?

Another disadvantage is the tendency to concentrate on what you want to do instead of what you can get paid to do. A conscious effort to avoid that is what's delaying my fiction-writing more than anything else. If I'm offered contracts for other books that mean 40,000 words paying the same as a second or third novel, in areas in which I have substantial expertise (and thus a minimal research burden), can you guess which writing gets priority? And then there's the "publish or perish" end of things for my academic side, which further takes away from fiction. We won't get into the nonsense of a litigation practice. Trust me. You don't want to know if you don't already know, and you're cringing along with me if you do.

And despite all of the preceding, I had one of those "epiphany sessions" last night during which an unplanned 4,500-word short story came out as a coherent draft in just over two hours. Whether I believe it's still coherent after it has sat the requisite four days is, of course, another issue. And I broke the bloody keyboard doing it: the bracket keys of that keyboard are stuck together, which really does matter to a lawyer.

11 August 2000
Arrogance
Public Unmasking: 21 days

Before we get to the rotten meat:

A rather bizarre turn of events on Win Ben Stein's Money on 10th August. During the second round, one question asked who the title character of J.K. Rowling's best-selling children's fantasies is. Ben didn't know. Then, during the final round, another question asked who wrote A Wrinkle in Time. Again, Ben didn't know. From which I can conclude that Ben Stein had no childhood and knows no children. (Given those sneakers, it's highly doubtful that he has any of his own.)

I am now Officially Pissed Off™ at some of the arrogant assholes who make up the In Crowd of Fandom™. On SFFNet News, in the WorldCon topic, there's a thread going on ideas for improving the Hugo Award and its process. I innocently suggested that a $40 Supporting Membership is too much to expect for those who want only to participate in the Hugo process, particularly since the one common complaint I've seen concerning the Hugos for the last two decades is that "not enough people send in nominations." My further innocent suggestion—making the (as it turns out) completely invalid assumption that the topic implied a willingness to consider alternatives to the status quo ante—was that there should be a limited Nominating class of membership for, say, $10, with no conversion privilege, for the benefit of those who care, but cannot travel to conventions. I gave unspecified medical conditions as an example of why someone might be unable or unwilling to invest $40, particularly when the site in question is absolutely out of the question.

Since the assholes in question have shot themselves in the foot all by themselves, I won't name names. Suffice it to say that the response was basically "If you don't attend the Convention, you have no right to give a flying fornication about the Hugo process, because it's our ball and we'll take it with us when we run whining home." Following this, a number of the Establishment Assholes™ proceeded to further jump up and down, essentially claiming that anyone who cares at all should be more than willing to throw $40 into the pot. Other individuals gently pointed out that actually voting costs even more, given the short deadlines, since it often requires purchase of hardbacks to read (at least for those few voters who don't just vote for their friends and against their Close Personal Enemies). Again, this was shouted down. The whole argument makes me long for the calm, issue-based serenity of Chicago politics. (That these Establishment Assholes™ virtually block-vote for Doc-Smith-like "spaceships and sorcery," but claim to despise Star Wars, is further food for thought.)

That's bad enough. I will now proceed to quote two of the arrogant responses in part (full responses available on the newsgroup, so that you can ensure that these are not unfairly out of context):

Voting for the Hugo is not a universal human right, it's something you buy.
The Hugo award is PART OF WORLDCON, not a separate entity. If you don't like conventions and don't want to associate with them, it's NOT YOUR AWARD.

In this case, yes. The Worldcon exists for two purposes (per its constitution and 50+ years' practice): To attend/enjoy the convention. To select the Hugo winners. You're arguement [sic] is really not that nebulous others are being shafted but that ALL THE MEMBERS OF THE WORLDCON AND THE WORLDCON ITSELF is a bad thing. [….]
There is all too much "eliteism" [sic] and similar problems with the worldcon and those who, more or less, control it, but what you're suggesting is not one of those problems. [….]
And you're asking FANS to do professional level marketing decisions when all they want to do is go to a con and give out a set of awards.

I leave spotting the hypocrisy inherent in these statements (even without reference to the open call for suggestions that opened the topic) as an exercise for the student.

But it won't be an exercise for me. I've read the WSFS constitution, and it doesn't say what the second of those two posters says it says. I'm not already an insider, so my opinion clearly doesn't count (again, despite the topic heading). It would have been enough to say "I don't think anything is broken, and I don't agree with your suggestion." Which is all well and good; but the Americans With Disabilities Act is going to come back at bite the WSFS in the ass pretty soon if it doesn't shape up its act. Hint: Name another nonjuried major award in the arts that requires the physical presence of an individual, or at least planned physical presence of an individual, to vote for said award, with no other qualification to vote. I'll wait, but I'm not holding my breath.

I suffer enough arrogant assholes in the legal world and the publishing world. I won't pay for the dubious privilege of doing so elsewhere, particularly concerning something that I'm supposed to enjoy.

13 August 2000
Savaging the Corpses
Public Unmasking: 19 days

I'm posting the last Savage Review before WorldCon in Dumpster Diving. That makes a total of 57 substantive reviews (includes Dumpster Diving, but excludes the Basic Bookshelf and Author Retrospectives) in the last 30 months, out of approximately 225 books read during the same period (admittedly, only about half speculative fiction).

So, just how savage have I been? (The following table omits unused ratings.)

Rating
Outstanding (5)	2 (  3.5%)	••
Excellent (4½) Award candidate	4 (  7.0%)	••••
Excellent (4)	13 (22.8%)	•••••••••••••
Good (3)	21 (36.8%)	•••••••••••••••••••••
Mediocre (2)	7 (12.3%)	•••••••
Almost mediocre (1½)	1 (  1.8%)	•
Bad (1)	6 (10.5%)	••••••
Really bad (½)	1 (  1.8%)	•
Ugly (0)	2 (  3.5%)	••

Weighted mean = 2.89 (just below good)
Population standard deviation = 1.63
Absolute deviation = 1.36

This is rather distressing. My objective when I pick up a book is to find something useful. Being somewhat an optimist in this respect, I set the bar at "top 20%". After crunching the numbers, the mean book is at about 75%tile. Of course, this is dragged down by the asymmetric median (below "bad"); excluding those three reviews changes the weighted mean to 3.04, or about 81%tile. I suppose I should be happy that 35% of my review selections exceeded the Sturgeon's Law criterion ("90% of everything is crap"), which is significantly different at the 99.5% confidence level.

But these musings feel rather like Robin Williams's first class lecture in Dead Poets Society, trying to categorize literature like J. Evans Pritchard, PhD. So we'll just leave off here, noting that shooting for the top 20% is shooting too low according to Sturgeon's Law.

19 August 2000
WorldCon Plans
Public Unmasking: 13 days

I'm about to attend my first WorldCon. It's going to be somewhat amusing to see the World Science Fiction Society in action. I suspect that its reputation as a fractious organization commited to internal politics for fun and profit is significantly overblown, at least in comparison to three organizations of which I am a former member:

1. The Modern Language Association is quite possibly the most bigoted, irrational organization of professionals on the face of the planet, even exceeding the UN Security Council. As a straight white male, I was shouted down for asking a clarifying question on something I didn't understand—thrice—in sessions on gender issues. The organization judges books by their covers, too: If a book has a spaceship or dragon anywhere on the cover, it's obviously worthless. Et cetera.
2. The Air Force Association. Nothing more need be said than that I was one of the 7% of active-duty Air Force officers who were neither registered as nor considered themselves aligned with the Republican party. I'm a steadfast left-wing independent.
3. The American Bar Association is dominated by the people I used to trash every day in practice: big-firm lawyers and big-stakes litigators. Despite its lip service and pseudodemocratic structure, it reminds one more of the Teamsters of the 1960s than of a professional organization.

But, in any event, look for the legal-issues sessions; you'll find me on two of the panels, moderating (ulp!) one of them. I haven't moderated for a non-captive audience bigger than the average graduate seminar (10-12 students) before. I've spoken before much larger captive audiences; I've moderated for small captive audiences. Maybe I'll just start off with a few lawyer jokes. (Remember, there are only three lawyer jokes; the rest are true stories.)

Even though I haven't been to a WorldCon before, I've been to big gatherings; in the very same hotels, in fact. The ABA convention was in Chicago in 1995, and I had a good time both listening and sniping. I hated the Hyatt's dining facilities, though. Hint: If you're much of a breakfast eater, walk a couple of blocks east into the heart of the Loop's business section, where you'll find lots of small diners that serve breakfast in less than 150 minutes (time waiting for seating plus time waiting for the order).

I've also been to a number of 'cons before, starting with GenCon III. For those of you with long memories, that's almost a quarter century ago. Of course, that sort of thing was highly discouraged while I was in the "black" part of the military, from which I only extricated myself 18 months ago. (If I had been on active duty the entire time, I'd be retiring next year.) Cons have, no doubt, changed; WindyCon last year was a big change. There were a lot fewer elves and a lot more vampires, for one thing; I liked the skimpily clad female elves. Speaking of vampires, I wonder if Dorothy Rothschild will bring one back from Romania as a souvenir…

You'll notice that I've carefully evaded saying anything whatsoever about the last week. A couple health issues, a couple family issues, a couple dayjob crises. The usual.

20 August 2000
Hugo Ballot
Public Unmasking: 12 days

I did promise. Or threaten. Or whatever. Here's how I voted on the Hugo ballot:

Novel (over 40,000 words)

1. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
2. Greg Bear, Darwin's Radio
3. Vernor Vinge, A Darkness in the Sky

This was a difficult vote. The astute will notice that Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is missing. This is not for literary reasons, but simply because I cannot comment in public upon it due to my previous employer's lifelong restrictions—the subject matter is prohibited. All three novels on my ballot are, IMNSHO, worthy of the award, but 1999 was overall a rather weak year. As an aside, the category definition needs significant revision; 40,000 words is too short to be considered an adult novel, and YA material published at that length is more properly a novella anyway.

Novella (17,500-40,000 words)

1. Connie Willis, "The Winds of Marble Arch"
2. Kage Baker, "Son Observe the Time"
3. No Award

Connie Willis owns this category for a reason! With due respect to the other candidates, by comparison to previous winners the stories (while not bad by any means) do not belong on a ballot for "best of the year"—not when considering some of the stories omitted.

Novellette (7,500-17,500 words)

1. Ian R. MacLeod, "The Chop Girl"
2. Eleanor Arnason, "Stellar Harvest"
3. James Patrick Kelly, "10¹⁶ to 1"
4. No Award

All three of these stories are very fine, and I just voted my personal taste. The remaining candidates, although better than run-of-the-mill, do not belong in this group.

Short Story (up to 7,500 words)

1. Michael Swanwick, "Ancient Engines"
2. Nick DiChario, "Sarajevo"
3. No Award

This category points out the need for a nominating jury to add candidates, similar to the way the World Fantasy Awards work. These two stories are good; one of the other candidates does not belong on any ballot for best of the year, regardless of taste, and the others are merely above average. More disturbingly, the four best pieces of the year have gone missing. One or two I could put down to taste, given the realities of any nominating process, but this is unreal.

Related Book

1. Cathy and Arnie Fenner, eds., Spectrum 6: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art
2. No Award

See the comments for short story, with the added irritation that one of the candidates is clearly the result of pure politicking for an award.

Dramatic Presentation

1. Galaxy Quest
2. The Iron Giant
3. Being John Malkovich
4. No Award

Galaxy Quest is a much more interesting work of fiction than perhaps many fen perceive. Being John Malkovich is, indeed, a fine movie—but it's only borderline speculative fiction, being far too similar (to my mind) to traditional fiction. As to the other two candidates: this is supposed to be an award for the production, not "neat idea."

Professional Editor

1. Gordon Van Gelder
2. Gardner Dozois
3. Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Mr. Van Gelder's continued professional attitude, and the breadth of his taste, get him a slight nod over the almost-certain winner (Mr. Dozois). The Starlight anthologies are a big factor in Mr. Nielsen Hayden's favor; the recent deterioration of long fiction at Tor isn't his fault, but should be watched closely.

Professional Artist

1. Bob Eggleton
2. Michael Whelan

I will not go into an exegesis here; this is my taste, and nothing more.

Semiprozine

1. Speculations
2. Interzone
3. Locus

Interzone is, as far as I'm concerned, a prozine, not a semiprozine. This is pure parochialism. This category should be no contest, but not in the direction that it is. Congratulations to Mr. Brown for his 477th consecutive Hugo for Locus.

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

1. Kristine Smith
2. Thomas Harlan
3. No Award

Mr. Harlan is going to win this one, if only due to the block-voting of the alternate history crowd. Smith is a better writer. The short-fiction-only nominees have not shown sufficient maturity in their fiction as of the close of the award period, although one of them (in a more-recent publication) is definitely growing.

No comments as to Fan Publication, Fan Writer, or Fan Artist

Go ahead. Revile me for my selections. I expect to get perhaps two out of these eight categories "right." Actually, I think that the voters will get only two out of eight "right," but that's why I voted the way I did. I'm just sick of the politics that go into the nomination process (see 11 August 2000); although every major award has them, I believe that the Hugo Awards have forfeited the right to call themselves "Best"—only "Most Popular With Hardcore Fen," largely because the nominating process is so badly flawed.

24 August 2000
If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say …
Public Unmasking: 8 days

let's hear it! (The Washington DC version of a lie your mother told you.) So, why are so many of my reviews less than favorable?

Actually, as the little chart above shows, not enough are, because I don't judge a book by its cover, or the accompanying marketing materials, or the author's reputation. There are books by even my favorite authors that I find weak, such as LeGuin's City of Illusions, Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Burgess's Earthly Powers, Pynchon's Mason and Dixon … that's enough for now. While I eagerly await the next novel by Le Guin, or Card, or Powers, I don't prejudge it.

One of the other lies your mother told you is that you should tell a little white lie to avoid hurting your friends' feelings. (I'm not claiming that Ursula Le Guin is my friend, but her books sure as hell are.) But is this really what you'd want? What if the truth, or at least an honest opinion, would keep you from making the same "mistake" a second time? This is not the same thing as trashing an individual, as opposed to a work. The author and the work are not the same thing, except as one sheds light upon the other. Sometimes an author's biography helps explain something particularly bad about one or more of his works; for example, considering Ezra Pound's virulent antisemitism helps explain some of the foggier passages in his later poetry. Conversely, sometimes an author's works help explain something particularly distasteful about the author; the sloppy factchecking of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was mostly written by Alex Haley, helps explain some of the literary thievery lurking in Roots. But in neither case does an abject failure in literature mean that the author is an abject failure as a human being.

The general tenor of book reviews in this country is favorable. Reviewers make efforts to avoid complete trashing; even Michiko Kakutani's notoriously poisonous reviews for the New York Times usually find some small, possibly insignificant redeeming factor. The difficulty comes not in the explanations of what the book is "about" or "means," but in the evaluation. At the risk of making a powerful enemy, let me just point out that the evaluations that purportedly close the reviews of at least one Locus regular are about as meaningful as a used car salesman's recommendations. They are all very much the same, with only a very few exceptions. When that contributor's reviews do reach a clearcut conclusion (good, bad, or indifferent), it is often difficult or impossible to predict that conclusion based upon what preceded it in the review! Finally, the "New and Noteworthy" list simply does not correlate to those conclusions. And, despite these criticisms, Locus, and the reviewer(s) I have in mind, are not the worst culprits. Certain online review sites are far, far worse.

This is not limited to speculative fiction, by any means. Or fiction at all. In the absence of a clear reviewer agenda, it's extraordinarily difficult to predict from, say, a review in the New York Times Sunday book section whether a given book—fiction or otherwise—will end up on either the Summer Reading List or the Best of the Year list. It is also difficult to understand year-to-year trends. In other words, the reviews are too often just more marketing copy. And that's before we get into the gutless, spineless nonsense in Booklist, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and the other broad-based reviews.

Conversely, it's quite easy to go the New York Review of Books route and write long essays that touch marginally upon the book(s) allegedly under review and really just involve the reviewer showing off his/her erudition and cleverness.

And how does this morass of criticisms itself make any sense? Initially, I suggest that SFWA scrap the Nebula nomination system, and that the World Science Fiction Society scrap the Hugo nomination system. Going to a completely unaccountable jury is really no better; witness the controversy this past year over the Whitbread Prize in England. So, at least at the nomination stage, split the ballot. Have a jury (1) prepare and circulate a short list for at-large voters to consider—perhaps ten or so in each category; (2) the jury follows up by secret ballot with three nominations per category, and the membership follows up by secret ballot (not restricted to the shortlist) with three nominations per category; (3) the awards committee deconflicts the two lists and announces from three to six finalists, without noting how a given work ends up on the final ballot. The juries can be divided by category to keep the burden manageable (and must, of course, not reveal the jury result until after the award has been made).

But even a system like this one—which is far from ideal, and certainly could stand improvement, although I believe it's a helluva lot better than the status quo—still depends upon decent reviewing to bring works to the attention of voters (jury or at-large). That is what we do not have at this time. Messrs. Hartwell, Clute, and Wolfe, and Ms. Miller (to name the four most prominent reviewers of clear intellectual honesty, although I disagree with their conclusions relatively frequently), cannot do the whole job themselves.

So, in the end, this is a call for reviewers to act more like coaches, or teammates, with the authors, instead of fawning fans isolated in the stands. It's not the reviewer's responsibility to show the author how to fix something; it is the reviewer's place to point out flaws and provide specific praise. At this time, we do not have that responsibility. It is, however, a reviewer's responsibility to loudly point out the emperor's lack of clothing.

To be continued …

25 August 2000
Personal Responsibility
Public Unmasking: 7 days

In a long and thoughtful entry, John Sullivan invokes the easy meaning of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." It's not an invalid meaning; just the easy one. For his purposes, it's the most immediately relevant meaning. (Note: I'm not going to repeat what he said; go read it!)

I think the real point of the story—and you should go read it, too—is much more subtle than "we're all guilty," although that's a perfectly valid reading. Le Guin isn't talking about personal responsibility so much as definitions, just as Plato did. Plato's Republic wasn't about creating a perfect society ("eutopia"); it was about defining "justice" via a Gedankenexperiment. This does not make Plato's musings on a perfect society any less cogent, merely less central.

So what, then, is central to "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"? The false dichotomy between "individual" and "society" seems to be at the root of this. A society that does not respect its individual members is doomed, meaningless, oppressive. Individuals who do not respect society are doomed, meaningless, isolated. As one Karhidic poem put it:

Light is the left hand of darkness
And darkness is the right hand of light

This strengthens, not undermines, John's moral outrage.

28 August 2000
WorldCon
Public Unmasking: 4 days

Later today (it's 0200, and I probably won't get to sleep tonight due to aftermath of a migraine), I'm leaving for WorldCon on the train. This journal will not stop, per se, during the convention; instead, posting will be sporadic (I will not use a public terminal for anything requiring a password). I will not be receiving email at the Juno account.

My panelist schedule:

• Friday, 1430-1545: Literary Scams
  (writing track)
• Friday, 1830-1930: Cybling Chat—Literary Scams and Piracy
  (untracked)
• Saturday, 1000-1115: Copyright on the Internet
  (art track)
• Saturday, 1730-1845: Taking SF Seriously—Major Authors
  (academic track)
• Sunday, 1000-1115: Technology Takes Over—The Dystopian Vision
  (academic track)
• Thursday-Monday: Significant partying
  (off the beaten track, and probably off the wagon)

The assiduous can figure out my identity from that listing. Go ahead; like the header says, it's going to be public knowledge Friday afternoon anyway. I look forward to meeting any of you who are not carrying after the panels. Especially if you're an attractive young lady (I like looking, even without touching …). [insert wolf laugh here]

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