Last Month (March)

01 April 2001
Seven o'Clock News

Today in the news:

Surgeon General Declares Baseball a Public Health Hazard   The Surgeon General today declared that baseball is a serious public health hazard, and requested that the Department of Justice take immediate action to enjoin the upcoming season.
   "It's more than just the inappropriate promotion of chewing tobacco, anabolic steroids, and reconstructive joint surgery," he said. "Even the serious psychological ailments associated with the game, such as severe monomania, antisocial behavior, and the inability to sleep well in the same bed for more than three consecutive nights, are relatively minor. The most serious public health threat posed by baseball is its discouragement of physical fitness. Although he has now reformed, Fernando Valenzuela and his physique—during his days as a Dodger, before becoming a five-time Chicago Marathon champion—are an obvious, but far from the only, example."
   General Ashcroft had no comment, as he was still finishing his fantasy baseball roster.

Perry Ellis Admits Fashion Industry "Is Built on Fools and Vanity"   Perry Ellis, one of the leading American fashion designers before his demise, channeled by Ralph Kramden of Miami Beach, said that "Fashion design is absolutely worthless. It's intended only to make clothes less durable, less adaptable, and more expensive. The industry is built on fools and vanity. And three-martini lunches."
   Kramden explained that he had begun channeling Ellis shortly after he spilled a bowl of goulash on a cheap tie. When he took the tie to be cleaned, the cleaners told him that there was nothing wrong with it at all—it was just a Perry Ellis tie. The tag had also changed from Ketch to Perry Ellis, while the material had changed from 100% polyester to 100% silk. Since then, Kramden has been employed as a consultant to three major clothing designers. He says that the most disturbing thing was the heavy purfume everyone wears. "My buddy Ed used to smell like a sewer, but this is ridiculous!"
   Kramden said that Ellis also complained about the cruelty of modern fashion toward many creatures. "Do you have any idea just how many polyesters must be skinned alive to make a single pair of doubleknit pants?" Ellis asked. "Polyesters are only about three inches long, and skinning them after they're dead greatly affects the pelt's dye-holding ability. That's why I've always emphasized vegetable fibers in my designs."…
   When contacted for comment, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, and Tommy Hilfiger all refused comment. Shortly afterword, this reporter received several offers of designer concrete overshoes.

In Other News:

• Australopithicene Fossil Nominated for Bench   Falwell Endorses, Says "He'll Certainly Support Natural Law"—ACLU Claims "Same as Current Judges"
• Tobacco Institute Concedes Liability   "We Just Can't Stand the Lying Anymore"—Starr Refuses Comment
• AMA Endorses Blacks, Hispanics, Women in Medical Schools
• FTC Sues Bertelsmann   Cites Antitrust Concerns
• Stock Market Crashes   Leading Figures Cite "Accounting Irregularities"
• Final Four Flunk Out   Of Twenty Starters, Only Six Meet Regular Admissions Standards
• Tina Brown Joins Princeton Faculty   Swaps Literature Chair With Joyce Carol Oates

If you're actually offended by any of this… look at the date, you dolt.

06 April 2001
Grumpy Trails

This is the last journal entry you'll see on Crosswinds. The entire site is moving. After a couple minor technical glitches get ironed out, you'll see me on my very own leased subdomain:

http://savage.authorslawyer.com/journal.shtml

(But it's not active quite yet, so don't even try clicking on it. You'll be redirected when it's time.)

No more popups; no more banners; no more ads of any kind; and pages that actually load all the way. Crosswinds was a relatively good host until it added some really poorly debugged ads to its system. I would have felt a lot less irritated about the ads if they did not also prevent my site from displaying properly…

In any event, my best fictionwriting time of the year is coming up next weekend. That's right, boys and girls: it's tax time! Just a couple of notes for writers:

• Writers should use Schedule C to report self-employment income. (If you're an incorporated writer, your own tax adviser will handle this for you. And if you don't have one and you're incorporated, you're making W and Dan Quayle look like MacArthur Grant candidates.)
• You should have a separate Schedule C for each distinct line of business. Editing is probably not distinct from writing, since they're both publishing industry jobs. However, if you also do freelance graphic design, that is a distinct line of business. The usual trigger is the need to keep not just separate books, but actually separate bank accounts—whether just to keep things straight or, if you're like me, by law.
• Make sure that you report your business category correctly! The category list is in the instructions for Schedule C. A couple of additional notes:
  *  Self-publishers may not use category 511000 (publishing industries), but instead are supposed to use category 711510 (independent artists, writers, and performers). But…
  *  That is not a category you want to use. Due to historical abuses in those areas, the IRS is more skeptical of deductions and more likely to audit (how much more varies from year to year and region to region.) Instead, if your "writing business" also includes substantial coordinate work, use that. For example, if you also teach writing at a local community college, and are paid for that teaching on a contract (not employment) basis, you could use category 611000 (educational services), particularly if a good part of your writing is nonfiction. Most other options are in the "Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services" division on page C-8 of the instructions.
• Don't forget that Schedule SE! That's right—you will owe the equivalent of Social Security tax: a cool 15.3% off the top (minus a couple of small deductions) if you have self-employment income over $400. Later on, you'll also pay actual income tax on top of this.
• So, you're upset at your tax bill for your part-time writing? Don't have the cash to pay on April 15th? Although the IRS prefers otherwise, you don't actually have to send the money on April 15th (failing to do so will accumulate penalties and interest); the IRS will bill you. If you do get billed, pay promptly. And, to make sure it doesn't happen next year, pay estimated taxes every quarter. As a rule of thumb, writers who expect to net less than $10,000 in a year from their writing and who will not, at the same time, end up above the 15% tax bracket should pay about 22% of their writing earnings as estimated taxes. This will act just like withholding from a a paycheck. Use Form 1040ES; make sure you get the one for 2001.

So get cracking on those returns! You can get an automatic four-month extension using Form 4868—but you must pay an estimate of what you think you'll owe to avoid penalties and interest.

15 April 2001
If You Can Read This, You're Just Close Enough

Just a quick note while I'm working on everyone else's taxes (I can't do mine yet, as I'm missing some data).

Since you're reading this, you've found your way to my spiffy new address. Although I've made every effort to debug this site, I'm sure that I've missed things. There may be dead links, bad graphic designations, whatever. No matter how good one's lint programs are, there's no substitute for eyeballing everything. With over 120 HTML files on this site, even a 99% accuracy rate will result in at least one error. Please do email me if you find HTML errors, and let me know what platform and browser you were using (and if you had graphics turned off).

<SARCASM>If, however, you think you've found an error in substance, keep it to yourself. I don't need the pitiful opinions of laypersons on anything. I'm a litigator, dammit, and I never make mistakes. Sometimes the judges get things wrong, but they're not my mistakes.</SARCASM>

16 April 2001
Fan Mail

Jaws has a rather strange assortment of correspondents. I knew that I never should have let him out on the 'net without cyberfilters…

Actually, I trust Jaws. Really. I can be reasonably sure that he'll never shoot up a high school, and will never be arrested in a park wearing only an old trenchcoat and a ratty pair of sneakers (primarily because he doesn't wear shoes at all). He didn't need to join a fraternity in college to drink like a fish, either. That's not to say that he never causes any awkward moments…
 

No, Senator, I do not know where Muffy might be. I'm sure Jaws and your daughter are just caught in traffic out at the mall… Yes, I'll have Muffy call when they get back. <pause> I'm sure they're safe and there's a good explanation. <click> I told that cartilaginous miscreant there'd be trouble if he took a Preppy out for dinner!	What big eyes you have, Jaws! The better to leer at you with, my dear. What big teeth you have, Jaws! The better to… eat you with, my dear. Jaws? Why are you swimming in circles around me? Jaws? JAWS? Sometimes a snack is just a snack. And sometimes, it's not. This time, it might be just your dirty mind. Well, that's an interesting idea of an "appetizer." I can hardly wait for the main course!

Like I said, I trust Jaws. I can predict exactly what he's going to do. It's the other fools on the 'net I don't trust. And who shouldn't trust Jaws.

20 April 2001
Miscellany

I have only one thing to say about one of my fellow NAWers:

Yowza!

If she keeps that up, the miscreants she's arresting won't be paying any attention at all to her gun.

A few other thoughts, if they rise to that level:

• After reviewing the so-called Children's Online Protection Act, I've realized that every ISP in the country is inherently in violation of the act if it keeps any server-activity log at all. Why? The Act prohibits collecting any personal and/or identifying information on children without parental permission. Server logs collect exact machine identification for every web-page request, email message, newsgroup message or retrieval, etc. With moderate effort, this information can be used to derive quite a bit of personal information. So every kid out there surfing is leaving behind personal information under the definitions in the Act.
• I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that so-called "POD publishers" are, as a rule, nothing more than vanity presses. That specifically includes iUniverse, iPublish, XLibris, and all of the others. Usually, though, the traditional vanity presses' contracts aren't quite as onerous as those being pushed by the POD scamsters. There are a few—very few—exceptions, such as Wildside Press. These exceptions have one thing in common: the POD technology is used only at the back end, and they otherwise operate exactly like a "normal" commercial publisher (albeit often with better contract terms).
• The FTC and Department of Justice are, again, asleep at the switch during a publishing merger. Reed-Elsevier, the Anglo-Dutch media conglomerate, is attempting to buy Harcourt Brace. That sounds somewhat innocuous, except when one looks at the scientific/academic journals segment. The acquisition would give the new business well over 50% of the market (measured by volume or sales) in that segment, and appears to the be only reason for the merger (as the trade-books segment of Harcourt is, at best, marginally profitable, even by traditional publishing industry standards). The normal solution is to force divestiture of just the offending segment. That, however, is not acceptable in this case, because Reed-Elsevier proposes to spin off the academic journals to an even worse monopolist: Thomson Publishing (the owner of West Group, the law-book and reporter monopolist with better than 70% of the market). Given the past dealings between Thomson and Reed-Elsevier, I infer collusion here.
     Why does this matter to speculative fiction writers? Because many of the most prestigious authors at Harper Collins bailed out for Harcourt after the contract cancellation scandal in the mid-90s; authors like Ursula Le Guin. And given Reed-Elsevier's treatment of authors in its other (current) divisions, I suspect that another exodus is in the offing. There's nothing wrong with authors moving to new publishers on an individual basis because the new publisher had a more attractive offer. It's rather disturbing, though, to observe another mass exodus.

22 April 2001
Lies My Mother Told Me

Yes, in fact, I did have a mother. There have been many times I wished I did not, as it would have made (for example) adolescence much more tolerable.

I'm probably going to make some enemies today (like I never do that, eh?). One of the lies one's mother often tells one is "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." This intellectually dishonest bullshit has a common, but serious, impact on something that it should not: fiction reviews.

With the amount of dreck out there, even the most selective reviewer is going to run across material that he or she hates. A competent reviewer—and, sad to say, there are all too few of those, although I'd like to think myself one—can even explain why. The major problem is that all too often, reviewers refuse to do so.^†

The reason that I'm on this topic today is the incipient revival of Tangent Online. At this stage, I will not give a link, as the site is not yet really active. It does have some of the rather inept reviews from calendar year 2000 posted, but nothing since.

There. I've said it.

On the whole, the reviews at Tangent have been less than useful ever since it went on line. Too often, the reviews are by "genre apologists" (and you may wish to recall my disgust for the term "genre" in the first place) whose reviews reflect a disgusting and unjustified rationale that a science fiction or fantasy story is to be forgiven flaws that would consign a mystery, or commercial romance, or "mainstream" story of equal value to the furnace. It's all well and good to enjoy speculative fiction more than one enjoys other types. But a reviewer has a responsibility to set that aside and gaze at a story in the cold light of reason. That the reviewers have consistently failed to condemn some of the poor works—even those that they admit they didn't enjoy, and that on further examination are oft revealed as of unprofessional (and occasionally unpublishable) quality—completely undermines the credibility of both the reviewers in question and the site/publication as a whole.

One must remember that the only TV news programs that are always, exclusively, relentlessly "good news" come from one of two sources. Americans will be most familiar with the dogmatically religious variety; those elsewhere will more likely consider the military uniforms on the anchormen. I hope that no perceptive reviewer of speculative fiction wants a close comparison with either type of program. (Nonperceptive reviewers can just go to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.)

I care less that the reviewers agree with me than that they have the courage to trash that which they despise. All of the fiction sources reviewed at Tangent Online publish a disturbing proportion of absolute clunkers, even in the opinions of the "good news" reviewers. Or, at least, I infer such opinions when they refer to "stronger" and "weaker" stories consistently, issue after issue, publication after publication.

«««««««« notes »»»»»»»»»

^†   Yes, the editor often bears some responsibility here. Contrary to the assertions of the Secret Society of Editors (I used to be a member, so I know the secret handshake and daggerthrust), editors often do put pressure on reviewers to give favorable reviews. But that's only part of the story—and it only works once for freelancers. The second time, the freelancer should either walk away or find a more subtle method of expressing displeasure.

27 April 2001
Parimutuel

It's that time of year again. Tomorrow, in Los Angeles, the Nebulas will be awarded, and the results of SFWA officer elections will be announced.

And so, place your bets, folks. Here are mine. Of course, I'm hedging; I've listed both what I want to win, and what I think will win. (For obvious reasons, I'm not saying diddly about the election of officers, except that there's a clear choice to either move forward or backward. If the organization moves backward, I'll have to release the rabbit vultures.)
 

Category	My Preference	Probable Winner
Novel	Greg Bear, Darwin's Radio Rather too risky for the membership at large.	Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign There's a good reason that nobody writes comedies of manners like Jane Austen used to: We've learned a lot about the way prose fiction works since the early 19th century.
Novella	Jonathan Lethem, James Patrick Kelly, & John Kessel, "Ninety Percent of Everything" Satire without selfrighteousness is always welcome.	Mike Resnick, "The Hunting of the Snark" Just not my first choice.
Novelette	Gardner Dozois, "A Knight of Ghost and Shadows" I expect a remarkably close race here. My preference is very narrow…	Gardner Dozois, "A Knight of Ghost and Shadows" …as I expect the actual voting to be.
Short Story	Jeffrey Ford, "The Fantasy Writer's Assistant" Very, very tough choice compared to the Swanwick; the others don't belong on the same ballot.	Michael Swanwick, "Scherzo With Tyrannosaur" Past performance tells here. I do not expect a very close vote.
Script	David Howard and Robert Gordon, Galaxy Quest My actual preference is for "no award," as this is an intellectually dishonest category. One cannot separate the "script" (and which revision, one might well ask) from the remainder of the film with any degree of consistency. It's easy to spot a bad script; it's much more difficult to distinguish a good one from an excellent one, because an excellent script takes into consideration many nonscript factors that are completely irrelevant to prose, such as the capability and identity of the actors, the director, etc.	David Howard and Robert Gordon, Galaxy Quest This is a gut call. I expect a close three-way race with the Stephen King apologists—I found the movie vasty overrated, and the dialog lifeless—and either Kevin Smith's Dogma, an enjoyable but lightweight comedy, or Charlie Kaufman's Being John Malkovich, which is at best surrealism or absurdism, not speculative fiction.

We'll just have to see, won't we? Seeya Monday.

30 April 2001
Being a Hero

Congratulations to the winners and unwinners announced at the Nebula Awards Banquet Saturday. They were:
   Greg Bear, Darwin's Radio [novel]
   Linda Nagata, "Godesses" [novella]
   Walter Jon Williams, "Daddy's World" [novelette]
   Terry Bisson, "macs" [short story]
   David Howard and Robert Gordon, Galaxy Quest [script]
   Norman Spinrad, SFWA President

In one sense, SFWA's membership was gutsier than I expected, by awarding the Best Novel Nebula to Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio. In another, it was highly predictable, awarding the Best Script Nebula to Galaxy Quest (note: the realities of how scripts are actually produced makes ascribing authorship at best a black art). Thus, I hit .400. That should be enough for a multimillion-dollar contract, eh?

I'm not sure what to make of the election for President. Mr. Spinrad is inheriting a mess, both in political and substantive terms. (I hope he gives up on the AFL–CIO nonsense soon, though.) And he's doing so without a clear mandate: a margin of 18 votes out of almost 500. On the other hand, he's the first "name" author in some time who has recognized that the organization needs that kind of credibility as President and thrown his beret in the ring, and the membership actually cared enough to vote. (I'll have some thoughts on membership before long, too. They will not necessarily be popular.) I hope that the combination of these factors will lead him to listen before tilting at windmills; it would be a nice change for SFWA to at least tilt at the right windmills, unlike the last few years.

<SARCASM>At least this time the President can't fire Sharon Lee for daring to disagree with him: she's an elected officer now.</SARCASM>

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