Vanity isn't Easy

There was a rather annoying article in one of our local papers the other day: a rather glowing profile on a vanity publisher.

Now, if you don't know what a vanity press is, it's a publisher that will, for a (often sizable) fee turn your manuscript into a printed book.

Such presses can take slightly different forms at this point.. They may (usually for yet another fee) pretend to market your book.

More likely, they'll simply deliver a pallet of books to sit in your garage while you try unsuccessfully to pawn them off on local bookstores, until finally you give them away to every friend and relative on every birthday and Christmas, leaving the bulk of them as a white elephant for your estate to dispose of at the local landfill.

Oh, come on, Steve! Tell us what you really think!

Okay, perhaps my usual level of contempt for self-publishing is a bit pumped up by the article, which was full of myths, distortions, misinformation, unquestioned self-promotion, and generally suffered from a complete lack of basic fact-checking. (For example, it went unchallenged that conventional publishers take ownership of the copyrights on books they buy. You'd think that newspapers would know at least the barest essentials of copyright law, but I guess not.)

But for the purposes of this rant, I'm going to push all the misinformation aside and deal with a couple of things the article (and the vanity publisher) got right.

One fact that the publisher used in support of using their service was that getting a book sold to a conventional publisher is hard.

This is true. It is very, very true. (Speaking as someone who's currently trying to turn a string of well-received media tie-in novels into an original novel career, I can speak to this personally.) It's hard. It takes time. The deck is stacked against you, and a lot of the publishing process exists primarily to keep the flood of dreck out, sometimes keeping good books and writers out in the process.

What's wrong is that this is any reason for an aspiring writer to turn to self-publishing and vanity presses. If it bothers you, and it probably does, I've got two words for you.

Boo.

Hoo.

Like many things worth doing, getting a book published is work. It requires patience, resilience, and determination. And despite all this (and this is what the vanity publishers don't tell you), it beats the alternative.

Okay, early on I told you what self-publishing is, but now I will give you the precise definition of self-publishing: A process by which, through the application of large amounts of money, an unsold manuscript can be transformed into a large quantity of unsold books.

There's the ugly truth of it. If selling your book to a legitimate publisher is too too hard for you, then going to a vanity press won't solve your problem, it will multiply it.

Yes, for only a few (maybe quite a few) thousand dollars you can expand a hundred-fold your opportunities for rejection, abuse, disappointment, and perceived failure! But wait, there's more! We'll throw on a huge distraction from your writing, and a tangible monument to your inadequacy that can squat in your garage, basement, closet or unit at the Mini-Storage for decades to come!

Where's the logic here? Getting a job is hard too. Does that mean that if you can't get a job as a dish-washer, you open a restaurant? If you like to fly, do you start an airline?

Of course not. It's obvious that these enterprises are expensive, time-consuming, risky, and highly prone to total failure, and that to manage one takes a skill-set completely separate from those possessed by most of the people it employs. You start an airline because you want to start an airline, not because you think it's a shortcut to getting some time in the cockpit.

Why then do so many would-be writers think they should start a publishing company? I can't tell you. If you have the skills and desire to be a manager, a salesperson, a marketer, a warehouse manager, a shipper, a bookkeeper, and you'd rather do those things than write, then maybe a writer is not what you want to be. Maybe you should start a business. (I wouldn't recommend publishing though. There are easier ways to make money.)

Writers write. That should be obvious.

Being a writer already is a business anyway, one that will, as you become more successful, take far more time and energy from your writing than you want. If you are a writer who has time to run a second (publishing) business, then it's a good sign that you aren't very successful as a writer (and probably as a publisher too).

It's that simple. That should be the end of it, and we should never speak of this thing again.

Not.

The whole vanity publishing thing is like Dracula. You think you've got it staked real good, and it just keeps popping out of the grave. It doesn't help that every now and then you hear (usually a lot, because it makes a good story) about the exceptions to the rule, the self-published books that went on to great success, that were picked up by major publishers, and in a few cases, even turned into New York Times best-sellers.

I shake my head every time I hear one of these, because they are rare exceptions, because most of them would have sold through conventional means if the author had only been a little smarter about it, and because I know it's the nature of would-be writers to treat any crumb of false-hope like the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Rio.

Just because somebody won 40 million in the Powerball doesn't mean you should invest your life savings in lottery tickets.

Yes, selling is hard.

Buck it up, keep writing, and keep the manuscripts in the mail.

It's easier that way.

(Postscript: Chris just wrote her own blog post covering some different aspects of this same issue. Read her "No Hope Publishing Plan" here.)

The Tale of the Ackerfish

If you haven't heard, the broad field of science fiction and fantasy lost a legendary figure last week: Forrest J. Ackerman, perhaps best known as the editor of "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine, and as one of the world's foremost collectors of science fiction, fantasy and horror memorabilia.

Those things are only a little of what Forrey was, and what he meant to our genres. In his time, he was a writer, editor, literary agent (for many major writers, including L. Ron Hubbard), and translator (bringing the countless Perry Rodan books to the United States). He coined the dreaded term "sci-fi." He's reportedly the first person to wear a costume to a science fiction convention, giving launch to every cosplayer on the planet.

Okay, it starts to become clear why Forrey was to some, as infamous as he was famous. But his importance to the history of the sf/fantasy/horror genres, both in print and film, can't be overstated.

And what made Forrey great wasn't all the professional things he did in the field, really. It was that, through it all, Forrey was a fan. An uber-fan. The god-king-500-pound gorilla-high-wizard-United-Federation-of-Nerdery-atomic-supreme-Dalek of fans.

He did fannish things, only on a scale comparable with the pyramids. Fans have collections of book, or comics, or toys. Forry had the "Ackermansion" a home jammed with a massive collection of books, pulps, posters, and original film props, masks, models and costumes. Fans write fanzines. Forrey (in 1958) started "Famous Monsters of Filmland," a newsstand publication jammed with pictures and writing about genre films (mostly horror and fantasy, but a smattering of science fiction as well).

It was through Famous Monsters of Filmland that Forrey entered my life, as I discovered it hidden in the back of magazine rack of a little drugstore in Geneva, Alabama. I flipped through its pages, wide-eyed at creatures, sights, wonders and horrors, most of which were completely alien to me.

It's impossible for anyone born after the 70s to understand what this magazine meant to a generation. If you want to find out about films, or see them, it's easy. You've got cable, DVDs, the internet, pay-per-view, satellite, a zillion ways to access them.

But Famous Monsters of Filmland came along at a time before the internet. Before DVDs, or VHS, or even Beta. It was before Cable. It was at a time when television often meant a tiny, blurry, black and white picture selected from no more than an handful of channels, and in most areas, far less.

If you missed a movie in the theaters, you missed it, unless it eventually ran on TV, jammed full of commercials and cut to shreds by the censors. And I missed a lot of genre movies as a kid. Pretty much all of them, as a matter of a fact.

I lived in a tiny Alabama town, barely more than a wide spot in the road. I was miles (which might as well have been light-years) from the nearest theaters. On rare occasions I'd go to a movie with my family, or with family friend and sometimes baby-sitter Linda Miller (hi, Linda!), but rarely did I get to see the space-ships and monsters that I craved.

So Famous Monsters of Filmland was a window on a world I only barely knew existed, films I knew mainly through tiny ads in the monthly schedules that the local drive-ins printed and distributed everywhere. From those schedules I had only titles, and maybe a tiny picture of slogan to go with it.

In the pages of FMOF I could see pictures and read about the plots, special effects, and actors. I became obsessed with some of the images I saw there, and waited patiently until the movies that spawned them showed up on TV in some late-night or Saturday-afternoon time-slot. I might have eventually seen those films anyway, but FMOF told me what to look for, which films might be worth fighting my parents to stay up late or missing a sunny Saturday afternoon's playtime to watch TV.

It's certainly not the only thing that fanned my interest in science fiction and fantasy, but it was a major early influence on me.

Ironically, I don't think I bought many actual issues of the magazine. Maybe I preferred to spend my money on the comic spinner rack next to the magazines. Or maybe it was just that my mom considered the magazine to lurid and scary and discouraged me from buying it. I really don't remember. But I'd always pick it up off the rack and flip through it when the druggist wasn't looking. ("This isn't a library!")

My interest in FMOF waned after a few years. We moved to bigger towns where I had better access to theaters, and often more TV channels (some of them those wonderful independent stations that tended to cram their schedules with old movies). I got older, became more independent, and was able to stay up to catch the late-shows where genre films often played. But Famous Monsters of Filmland played a critical role in priming my interest.

I wasn't alone. A whole generation of people like me were also reading the magazine. Some, like me, went on to become writers. Others became makeup artists, prop-builders, costumers, and film directors. Out of its lurid covers and pulpy black-and-white pages came an army of genre creators, who unleashed countless pop-culture wonders and terrors upon the world.

Flash forward thirty years ago. I'm a struggling but published writer of science-fiction, fantasy, and horror, attending conventions to chase editors, make contacts, and learn my craft. My wife Chris and I are at a Westercon in Seattle, where we're approached by our friend, con-runner Richard Wright (who we sadly also lost a few years back). He asks if we'd like to attend the Locus Awards banquet. The convention has had to buy a minimum number of banquet tickets, and there are extras. Would we like a pair for free?

Starving writers don't turn down free food (even rubber chicken), and we gratefully accepted. We also figured we might make some contacts.

We didn't know many people in the field back in those days, and the few people we did know were sitting at already-full tables, so we got a table by ourselves. I'd seen Forrey's picture many times, and I knew he was at the convention, but until that point in time, I hadn't seen him. So I recognized him when he walked in late, accompanied by another old-time fan (whose name now unfortunately escapes me). They looked around for some place to sit, and we asked if they'd like to join us. Maybe to my surprise, they did.

I don't remember a lot of specifics about the banquet, but Forrey was charming, friendly, and talkative. We quite enjoyed their company, and I was a bit dazzled to be sitting across the table from someone who had so influenced my youth.

But one thing I'll never forget about the banquet were the table decorations. For reasons that escape me, the place-settings consisted of some kind of beach/luau kitsch, and at the end, we were encouraged to take anything we wanted as with us. At our table we all laughed about that, as we'd spent a good deal of time making fun of it all. There was certainly nothing there that any of us wanted.

But then, I had an inspiration. I'd not thought to bring a camera, so I couldn't get a picture with Forrey, but there was a way I could get a remembrance. I grabbed a cheap, ceramic fish from the centerpiece, held it out and said, "Forrey, will you sign my fish?"

He stared at it, puzzled, then laughed and took it. We found a ball-point pen somewhere, but it wouldn't write on the glazed part of the fish. Forrey turned it over and signed it on the unglazed bottom.

We've carried that fish around for years, through multiple moves, two states and three cities. It's usually been on display somewhere in our house, an incongruous item amid all the books, comics and sci-fi toys. I drew attention to itself. Visitors would ask why we had that ugly little thing, and I'd always pick it up, turn it over, and tell them the story.

When I learned of Forrey's death, it was in my living-room, sitting on a bookshelf. I knew exactly where to find it. The Ackerfish.

Some day, when we're old and gone, I imagine our our kids will be going through our stuff, and they'll see this ugly little fish, and maybe they'll throw it away without a second thought. But I hope not. It's an artifact. A link with an important bit of history that shouldn't be forgotten.

It's appropriate, somehow, that of Forrey Ackerman, collector, keeper of things, curator of whole genres, I have an object, an artifact to remember him by.

Goodbye, Forrey, and thanks for the fish.

More on book returns

As a follow-up to my recent post on how book-returns may be a necessary evil if you value independent bookstores, here's a great post from an industry-insider on the dark flip-side the equation. Returns are hurting publishers in a big way during the credit crunch, and it's behind a lot of the dire financial news you're hearing about publishing companies at the moment.

Ignoring my arguments about how they benefit indie booksellers, it's otherwise hard not to conclude that the return system is insane. But it isn't likely to go away, or even be substantially modified, any time soon. There are lots of reasons, but here are the big two:

For any one publisher to modify or eliminate the return system would be suicide for that publisher. Buyers, especially the 500-pound gorillas of retail, would simply stop ordering.

But for all, or even several of the publishers to change the terms in lockstep would undoubtedly cause anti-trust laws to kick in.

Loved to Death (or, why book-lovers don't always make great book-sellers)

We'll get to the meat of this post in a minute. First, some background material authors, would-be authors and book-lovers should be aware of...

I've just been reading a fascinating post over on the blog of Andrew Wheeler, a 20-year publishing professional who should know his stuff.

His post is prompted by the outrage several science fiction and fantasy authors about having their recent books "skipped" by chain bookstores. Apparently there was some talk of a boycott, but that seems to have gone nowhere so far. Probably a good thing.

Anyway, that's the start of Wheeler's post, but he goes way beyond that. He explains, in painful-but-necessary detail the realities of the book business. How and why books get ordered (or don't get ordered), and why there are some sound reasons for "skipping." He also talks about the flawed nostalgia that always clouds such discussions of business; the days when books were all good, bookstores were all small and independent, and good authors (was there any other kind?) were carefully sold, nurtured, and rewarded.

And that's where my post begins. Wheeler talks at length about the many shortcomings common to indie bookstores, and why many of them deserved to die. Many are (or were) poorly managed, under-funded, dirty, disorganized, stocked only to suit their owner's peculiar tastes and interests. I can't disagree with much of what he says.. We'll all been in great indie bookstores, but we've been in the clunkers too.

But he doesn't address another kind of doomed bookstore, one I've had the sad experience to observe closely in recent years here in my town: the Store That Loved Books Too Much.

We used to have a great little indie store in the town where I live. It's a beach-resort town, and so I became familiar with the store long before I moved here. In fact, though I lived in a much larger college town with some pretty good (chain and indie) bookstores, I always looked forward to visiting this one. A stop was a necessary part of any trip to the beach, and I rarely walked out without a bag full of books and periodicals.

It wasn't a big store, nor did it have a picturesque location. It was a bland storefront in a strip-mall, located next to a chain grocery store. It wasn't the store. It was what was in the store. Which was (stand by for the big surprise...) books.

Okay, it wasn't just that. It had new books. Every single week. Hot-off-the-presses books, mostly paperbacks, just the thing for a beach read. Most of the paperbacks were displayed face-out on racks along the side walls for easy browsing. Even better, new releases were on the floor below the racks so you couldn't miss them. Sure, this runs contrary to the logic that puts new books at the top, but it worked. The latest thing was there, and easy to find.

They weren't snotty either. They had a rich stock of best-sellers, thrillers, trashy-beach books, and good sections for all the genres, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, romance, western, horror, you-name-it.

Oh sure, that wasn't all the store carried. They had a small but rich assortment of hard-covers and trades, fiction and non-fiction, children's books, an old-fashioned comic-spinner rack (the kind that collectors hate because they crease the comics, but which are great for kids who might actually read a comic for pleasure). a huge magazine section (another good source of beach reading), and a few gifts and cards.

They also had a few of those things that people think of when they think of indie bookstores. They had a nice little rack for local authors that was always well-stocked, and another one for staff picks and recommended reads. They hand-sold books, and were always glad to recommend an author or book in any given genre.

They also had a small blocked off corner for "adult" magazines. I never shopped back there (you believe me, right?), but it was somehow reassuring. I always figured a news-dealer that didn't traffic in material that was offending somebody just wasn't doing its part for the First Amendment, and was probably incomplete in other important areas as well.

Near as I could tell, they did a brisk business. There were always people in the store when I went in there, and the register was always busy. There were even lines sometimes.

What the store had, and I think this was key, was energy. The pulp and newsprint were always fresh, and smelled that way. It was exciting to go into the store on a shipment day, when the new books or periodicals were being unboxed and shelved. Often I'd hover around the magazine racks, waiting to see if the latest issue of one of my favorite magazines was coming out. Every week you'd go to scan the racks for your favorite authors and genres, and never were you disappointed. There was always something new and interesting, even if it wasn't what you went in looking for.

I've never seen anything like it, before or since, in such a small town. I was reminded of some of the big cities I'd lived in, the huge corner newsstands in Los Angeles, the huge Paperback City store in North Hollywood, the seedy-but-has-everything Magazine City in downtown Seattle. Most of these places were dirtier and colder and less refined than our little bookstore, but the buzz was there, and they shared another important characteristic: turnover. Most things moved, one way or another. If they didn't sell, then they were gone.

I'm an author, and I know, I know. If there's one word in the English language we writers hate, it's strip, at least where it's not being applied to an attractive member of the opposite sex (or same, if that's the way you play it).

Stripping, for those of you who don't know, is the process of getting credit on unsold paperbacks and periodicals. The book (or magazine, or comic, but what we complain about are the books) isn't returned. Only the cover is ripped off and returned for credit. The body of the item is (theoretically, that's another story) destroyed. It's a wasteful system, one rooted in history more than business logic, and one that authors just hate. A stripped book is not only unsold, not only returned for credit (and thus taken out of your royalties) it can't be reshipped or resold at any price. It not only isn't sold, it's an anti-sale.

One of the reasons that people like indie bookstores is that, in theory anyway, they don't strip as much. They keep back-lists on the shelves, and give books time to sell. They hand-sell good books that aren't from big-name authors, and aren't fortunate enough to make the Times best-seller list.

Like I said, theory. And at this little bookstore, there was a little truth to it. They shelved back-lists, for top authors and favorites anyway. They kept smaller authors they liked around for a while. But money and space were finite, and things got stripped.

Every. Single. Week.

See, there are places where stripping makes sense: places with high traffic and high volume. Places where people go to look for something new and fun to read. Places like our little store.

It was harsh but true, and while the writer in me would sometimes cringe (especially when it was one of my books), as a reader I loved the place. It was actually a factor in my decision to move to town.

So what happened?

Well, I'm unclear on the details. As I recall, the out-of-town owners sold-out, and it was bought by a well-meaning couple who clearly weren't cut out to run a bookstore. They didn't last long. Just long enough to mess up the stock and chase off a bunch of the staff.

They wanted to sell out, and when that didn't happen, planned to close.

Then a white-knight appeared in the form of a true book-lover. A guy who runs several used bookstores in the area, stores that are still open. There are good stores, and his flagship store is world-class, one of those places a book-lover can wander for hours through the maze-like stacks and never see everything.

But the trouble was, he loved books too much to run a new bookstore. He never stripped anything. The magazine second, already reduced, got smaller still. The adult section disappeared. The wall racks gave way to shelves to make room for the rapidly growing stock of dated (and eventually yellowing) paperbacks. Staff morale was low, and turnover rapid. Various other things were tried, more gifts and cards, games, more comics (but not enough to be a real comic store), music, a bigger kid's section, but nothing seemed to take hold. The foot traffic wasn't there to support it, because people weren't coming back as often.

I found myself going in less and less often. Once a month would catch the new magazines, and there weren't many of those that interested me any more. I stopped looking at the paperbacks. Of course, they were still happy to special order, but without the browsing experience to fuel purchases, I didn't do it often.

It was depressing. Nothing new to browse, and the new releases I'd heard about weren't going to be there. Maybe in the grocery-store next door...

It's sad when the book department at a grocery store starts to look better than a "real" bookstore.

Towards the end, the shelves thinned out as the old stock was presumably sold or stripped, but the money apparently wasn't there to restock. Books were face-out on the shelves, and got further and further apart. Used stock was moved in from other stores to fill the shelves. Even the reduced magazine section was getting thin. Hours were cut back.

There were "business for sale" signs in the windows, but it was hard to imagine what there was to buy. The stock was old and picked over, the traffic gone, the staff decimated, the reputation tarnished beyond repair. The death-spiral was solidly confirmed by then.

A couple weeks ago, while shopping for groceries, I happened to glance over and see the storefront dark and empty. I went over and examined the sign on the door. It had been closed for almost two weeks, and though I shop for groceries next door three or four times a week, I hadn't noticed.

Our little town is full of writers, and near as I can tell, none of them in my circle had noticed either. We all order our books on-line now, or drive to chain stores in the bigger towns in the valley 60 miles away, or go to indie-monster Powell's Books in Portland a couple hours from here.

I was sad, but hardly surprised. Clearly the book-loving-owner was just riding out the lease. He had loved a once-great store to death.

This isn't intended to be critical of the guy who bought the store. He's a neighbor of mine, and a good guy, and he still has those great used stores. It would have died a lot sooner without his intervention, and he tried to make it a success the best way he knew how. God knows how much money he lost in the deal, and I'm certainly not privy to all the many things behind-the-scenes that may have contributed to the store's slow demise.

But it's difficult to see how he could have ever succeeded because of that one blind spot of his. He couldn't strip books, and without that, the store could never again flourish.

Let that be a lesson. Independent book stores aren't magic fairy-lands of literature and enlightenment. They're businesses, and to succeed, they have to be run as such.

Chain book stores didn't kill our nifty little bookshop. We don't have any within 60 miles. Wal-Mart didn't kill it. It's 30 miles to the nearest big-box store. Amazon didn't kill it. Its troubles were apparent long before Amazon was a significant factor.

Management decisions killed it, plain and simple. Decisions that were well-intended, and right minded, and intended to be charitable to authors. Decisions that were still wrong.

The store is gone now, and it isn't coming back, nor is there likely to be anything to replace it. I order on-line, and I look forward to out-of-town trips where I can go to a large book-store and browse (as good as Amazon is in many respects, it has never replicated the book browsing experience).

I miss the magazines more than anything, but magazines are on the decline. Many of the more obscure magazines I used to enjoy have died, and with others, the internet provides more useful and current content. The more popular ones are cheaper to subscribe to, often at a fraction of the newsstand price, and increasingly that's just what I'm doing.

But to be honest, I suspect even this is short-term. Electronic book-readers are getting attractive, and I fully expect most print magazines to go the way of the dodo in only a few years. I recently subscribed to a magazine for three years (they were practically giving it away) and wondered if my need for a print version would run out before the subscription did.

Books are still with us though, for a while anyway, and independent stores have to depend on them to survive. Much as we rail against the return system and stripping, as illogical as it is, if we were somehow to end it today, it's the independent stores, the small stores, that would suffer the most. Chain stores have the size, the volume, the financial resources to soldier on through, but the marginal little stores like ours won't. Let our store serve as an example, and a warning.

Our beloved little store is gone, and it isn't coming back. Nostalgia is all we have left, and that doesn't pay the rent.

But some days, in some ways, stripping books does.

Countdown to Nowhere

(This is a follow-up post to yesterday's "Buzz Off" which concerns astronaut Buzz Aldrin's recent statements that shows like Star Trek led to the decline of support for the space program. If you haven't read it, go there first.)

I've gotten a lot of support and "attaboys" from people who read "Buzz Off," but it turns out I didn't win over everyone. Fact is, I thought this over pretty carefully, and there's a lot of stuff I DIDN'T put in the original post, because I didn't think it was necessary given the basic
facts. More would have just been clutter.

But since the facts weren't as obvious as I supposed, let's look at another major
problem with the Buzz Aldrin theory. I don't think the historical time-line supports it.

At first glance, though, you might think the dates line up well. Star Trek was on TV from September 1966 through September 1969. The collapse of the space program's support is really centered around 1970. (The live TV broadcast from Apollo 13 wasn't covered by any of the major networks live, and it flew in April 1970. Apollo 20 was canceled in January of 1970. Two more Apollo missions were canceled in September of 1970.)

So the dates seem close, but I don't think it holds up to scrutiny.

First of all, remember that Star Trek was a failure in its broadcast run. It was nearly canceled in September of 1968 (while Apollo 8 had the world's attention, and Apollo 11, which drove the country (and the world) into a frenzy was nine months away. In fact, the decision to pull the plug on Star Trek had to have been made just about the time Apollo 11 landed, and the program was at the peak of its popularity and public interest.

Star Trek REALLY didn't take off until it was in syndication and college kids started watching it. I don't have a good date for that, but I suspect we're talking 1971 or 1972, when the smoking gun had long-ago gone off.

But the decisions to pull the trigger on that gun had to be made earlier.

Congressional support had to deteriorate sometime well before the cuts started, and the decision not to cut-in live on Apollo 13 probably resulted from viewership numbers on Apollo 12, which flew in November of 1969.

Of course, Apollo 12 blew out its TV camera shortly after landing, and that probably accounts for a lot of any ratings tumble. You can hardly blame that on Star Trek. (Ironically, almost without exception, Star Trek never showed TV cameras being taken along by its explorers.)

In any case, if Star Trek somehow poisoned the U.S. public on the space program, it did it as a low-rated show with a limited audience. And indications are that, during both first-run and in its re-run "boom" period, the audience for Star Trek largely consisted of people under 21. The voting age was still 21 at this time, and wasn't lowered to 18 until July of 1971. So as far as political influence, it's hard to see how it ever could have had any significant impact at that point in time.

The first evidence that Star Trek fans had political clout didn't come until the first Space Shuttle was renamed ENTERPRISE, following a letter-writing campaign to the Ford White-house by fans. I don't have a date for this, but it happened sometime between when President Ford took office in 1974 and the Enterprise roll-out in 1976. Since construction didn't start until June of 1974, and its original name was "Constitution," and Ford took office in August of '74, it would not likely have been any earlier than that. It's very likely that the reduction in the voting age was a factor here.

Regardless of the date, this hardly supports any lack of support or interest in the real space program by Star Trek fans. Quite the contrary.

On the other hand, NASA's internal grumbling and foot-dragging on the matter is a fine example of how they loved to shoot their public image in the foot. Here was a great opportunity to connect their mission with the public, and rather than exploit it to the fullest, they minimized it as much as possible.

I just don't see any evidence here that Star Trek harmed the space program in any way.

Of course, Aldrin wasn't specific that he was talking about Star Trek, but there just aren't many other on-air TV candidates for killing support of the Space Program.

Lost in Space started (and ended) a year earlier than Star Trek, and had a much bigger audience than Star Trek, but there was no beaming there. There were aliens (often very silly aliens) and interstellar travel (though the science was so weak that I don't recall any kind of faster-than-light drive ever being mentioned). But most of the signature hardware, robots, space-walks, jet packs, surface crawlers, and a very LM-like landing vehicle, were all right off the NASA drawing boards at that time. It was more futuristic and advanced, but in its own way, much more realistic than Trek.

The British series UFO (which featured a modest and fairly believable lunar base) didn't reach U.S. syndication until 1971 and 72. The follow-up Space 1999 with a much bigger Moon base (and some screamingly bad science) didn't show up until 1975.

Other than that, I can't think of anything (other than some Saturday morning cartoons) that qualifies. Feel free to correct me if I've missed something significant.

Meanwhile, all the stuff that Aldrin frets about, teleportation, faster-than-light travel, and so on, had been popular staples of print and comic science fiction since at least the 1930s. Somehow, the U.S. space program got off the ground anyhow (mostly by people who had at
some point read plenty of the stuff.

And we can't ignore movies. Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were rocketing off to alien worlds in theaters as early as 1936 (and on radio starting in 1932). Heck, even Duck Dodgers used a teleporter in his first 1953 cartoon appearance!

None of the offending concepts or devices was invented by Star Trek, or any TV show. It predates broadcast television entirely.

Really, looking at the evidence, if the time-line supports anything at all, it's the idea that cutbacks in the Apollo program (and news coverage of same) may have contributed to the renewed popularity of Star Trek in syndication in the early 70s.

If the real space program wasn't going to give us the stars (or even the Moon again, or Mars) anytime soon, we'd watch Star Trek and dream until it did.

That just makes more sense than the idea that B led to A.

But there's a subtext in the time-line the supports more significant factors.

At least some of the press (and the public's) interest in covering the Apollo program has to be traced to the camera failure on Apollo 12. Apollo 13 might have turned that around, but it never made it to the moon, and was covered for entirely different reasons.

Support for Apollo in congress was weakening by early 1970, when Apollo 20 was canceled. The next two cancellations happened after the near loss of Apollo 13. By then, the risks were obvious, and there's no political stock to be gained in backing a losing horse. Better to end the program a winner.

It was also obvious by then that the press was more interested in covering failures in space than successes. Lose, lose. Not much here you can blame on Star Trek.

Combine this with the growing cynicism about government, and the huge cost of the Vietnam war (which lead directly to the cancellation of the Air Force's manned space program before it even started), and there just wasn't anything to be gained politically by backing NASA. Again, not Star Trek's fault.

The facts aren't there. The logic isn't there. Star Trek didn't do it. No science-fiction TV show did. If anything, Star Trek has been a positive influence on people's interest in space.

So, anybody want to start a write-in campaign to name the first, manned, Orion crew-capsule to reach orbit (no test models this time!), Enterprise?

More writings about the Moon:

Closely related to this topic, I have a couple of previous posts about the Moon and the Apollo program that you should check out:

Buy Me The Moon
Why the Apollo program didn't cost nearly as much as most people think it did, and how we might trade certain -- luxuries -- for a Moon base or a Mars program.

1200 Days On Mars
People say there's no reason to return to the Moon. "Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt." Well, we haven't been there, haven't done that, and we don't even know where the tee-shirts are sold. How we've barely touched the Moon, and how it compares to our current unmanned explorations of Mars.

Buzz Off

Don't you hate it when one of your childhood heroes says something so profoundly wrong and stupid that you just have to call them on it? Unfortunately, it just happened to me.

The hero in question is Apollo 11 moon-walker Buzz Aldrin. Ironically, I ran across this story on the US Sci-Fi Channel's "Sci-Fi Wire" news site. If any of the space sites or major news sources picked it up, I didn't see it. Aldrin was shilling his new National Geographic Channel show, "Unseen Moon," at the annual TV Critics Press Tour.

Anyway, Aldrin went on about how "unrealistic" science fiction television shows caused the public to lose interest in the space program. He doesn't name names, but he keeps mentioning "beaming," which seems like a reference to Star Trek. But he also is quoted as saying something about the shows being on "today," which kinda points a finger towards Stargate Atlantis, the only other current show I can think of that "beams" people.

Or maybe he's confusing reruns with new shows, or is being unclear about the time. Because, the public started losing interest in the space program before half the people working on Atlantis were born.

So I'm going to assume he's talking about Star Trek, since its the best known and most iconic space science fiction show, and its history somewhat parallels that of the space program.

Just so's you know I'm not taking him entirely out of context, here's what he's quoted as saying:

"I blame the fantastic and unbelievable shows about space flight and rocket ships that are on today. All the shows where they beam people around and things like that have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It's not realistic."

and later in the article:

"But, if you start dealing with fantasy and beaming people up and down and traveling seven times the speed of light, you are doing damage. You're not helping. You have young people who have got expectations that are far unrealistic, and you can't possibly live up to the expectations you have created in young people. Why do they get bored with the space program? That's why."


Can't have those young people stretching their imaginations and developing unrealistic expectations, can we? Good grief. Next thing you know, he'll be going on about the sins of dancing and the dangers of "the rock and roll."

Seems to me, Buzz, that if some young people, scientists and engineers, had not developed unrealistic expectations based on the unrealistic works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, there might never have been rockets into space.

Though Verne is credited with being highly predictive of the Apollo program in many respects, he shot his adventurers to the moon with a giant cannon, something even an engineer of the time could have shown was impossible. Verne, in turn, scoffed at Wells, who sent his travelers to the Moon using an "unrealistic" anti-gravity metal. (This debate is not a new one.)

Many later space program participants also cite the Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs as inspiration, which were even more fantastic and romantic. His hero, John Carter, travels to Mars through some kind of ill-defined astral projection, and his Mars is populated with all manner of fantastic creatures and races, including one that happens to have hot (yet egg-laying) females with whom Carter can conveniently interbreed. (Thus, I suppose, clearing the way for Captain Kirk to later bed-hop across the galaxy.)

And of course from there we can go the the Lensmen books of E.E. Doc Smith, or the juvenile novels of Robert Heinlein, for example. Smith's books are as fantastic, in their way, as Burroughs. Heinlein tried to be more realistic, but his books are still full of aliens and rockets flitting from star-to-star.

Yet this sort of stuff has managed to somehow inspire generation after generation of scientists, engineers, pilots, space advocates, and yes, even astronauts. In fact, many of the current crop site Star Trek, and the even-more-fantastic Star Wars, as inspirations.

The fact is, Buzz has it all wrong. Realism isn't the issue. Scientific accuracy isn't the issue. Science fiction is inspiring to those who make real space travel possible, and it's inspiring for entirely different reasons.

Star Trek offered hope that humans could go to the stars, that there might be other life in the universe, and that we would find it, and it would ultimately be good. It also offered the hope that humans could solve enough of our internal struggles to survive and work together to make it possible.

The how of getting there isn't important, it's the hope, the wonder, that we could. Once you've embraced that, you don't look around and say, "well, I can't beam to space, so I'm not going." No, you go and find the next nearest thing you can, the Shuttle, Spaceship One, the new Orion vehicle, and you try and get on it if you can.

And if that isn't good enough, you roll up your sleeves and try to make something better. Not the Enterprise probably. Not a transporter. But better.

Or at least, you hope somebody else does, and you're much more likely to support them if they say they're trying.

No, I'm afraid Buzz has it all wrong.

Not that I can blame him for his frustration, maybe even anger at our lack of progress in space, and the public's seeming apathy towards it. It's just that he's lashing out in the wrong direction.

The reasons for the public's lack of interest are complex, and I don't think there's one single thing to blame. But if fingers are to be pointed, I think you can start with NASA's stunning ability to counter-promote itself. We're not just talking inability to promote here. We're talking an exhaustive 40+ year campaign to dehumanize its astronauts into bland, interchangable drones in the public eye, and to make some of the most exciting voyages of adventure in human history, seem boring.

Buzz has always been one to buck that trend. Unlike some of the Apollo astronauts, he's not been reclusive, or allowed himself to be one of NASAs obedient PR pawns. He's been out there, in the public eye, pushing himself as an individual, and yeah, even licensing his image for toys, models and other trinkets.

Even signing on to host TV shows. Yeah.

And I've always backed him on that, because the astronauts should be rewarded for their courage, celebrated for their place in history, and appreciated as the deep and complex human beings that they are. If that means Buzz Aldrin Action figures, well, that's fine, because I want a Buzz Aldrin action figure, and I want one for my grandkid too. I want to know their stories, the good and bad of them. If they have something to say, I want to listen. And if they make a little cash along the way, more power to them. Who do I make the check out to?

But this time, Buzz is just wrong. He just doesn't know what he's talking about.

We should be thankful for Star Trek and Stargate and Star Wars and all the rest, that kept people thinking about the future, thinking about the stars, thinking about the planets, and not thinking about "if," but only "how, and when?" Because it's only through that spark of hope that we'll get there, however we do it.

And I'll take that spark any way I can get it, thank-you...

(While most responses to this post have been supportive and positive, not everyone was convinced. So I put some of my cast-off arguments into a follow-up post that I hope will put the matter to rest. Check it out.)

A Thumbnail Cover Gallery

Click on the picture for a larger version.

A while back I started collecting recent covers from books in which Chris and I were published and combined them into a single graphic to use as a backdrop for our oft-neglected web-page. I realized today that I hadn't updated it in a long time, so I wasted several hours this afternoon tracking down covers (new ones, and old ones that I hadn't included before), resizing, and editing them in.

This is what I came up with. It still isn't complete. For example, I can think of at least four anthologies that aren't included (with several more coming before the year is out), plus a computer game (yeah, there are already two computer games in the grid that I wrote for), and a non-fiction book. I'll add another row later this year if I think of it.

It's been my experience that if you write and publish enough, you quickly start to forget things that you did, even if they were only a few years ago. Having an "at a glance" cover gallery like this is a bit of an ego booster, and a reminder on the hard days that you have accomplished something.

Borrowing Against the Future

One of the most powerful tools the right has used to pull the wool over America's eyes these last many years has been their ability to define the terms used to discuss key issues like the economy. One of my favorite examples is "tax and spend."

It's been a rallying-cry of conservatives for years, and a knee-jerk tag to attach to anyone of liberal stripe.

But what does it mean?

Almost nothing, actually.

First of all, while liberals do tax and spend, so do conservatives, especially the spend part.

But what's missing from the phrase is the wonderful loop-hole that conservatives so often skate through. If we keep repeating "tax and spend" over and over (and it appears so often in the media, political advertising, and political speeches, that it feels like being stuck in a room-full of parrots all with the same trainer) it trends to frame all our thinking on government spending and taxation. "Tax and Spend" implies that those are the only two options, and that isn't at all the case.

Okay, the spend part of the equation is pretty accurate. Show me a politician who doesn't spend. Left, right, I don't care. Show me one. I'll go wait.

Pretty hard to find, aren't they? Actually, we pretty much hire politicians to spend, much as we hate the idea. They're there to administer our collective will and resources to solve problems too big to solve ourselves, and too important to ignore. conservatives and liberals (and even fiscal conservatives and some other kinds of conservatives) differ greatly on how these things are defined, and that's a legitimate area of debate, which is probably why the political machine has chosen to avoid it.

Taxing, on the other hand, is far from the only option on how to fund that spending. But it's significant in that it's the most direct and honest way of funding the government, and we can't have that, can we?

Governments, on the other hand, can borrow money, or issue bonds, which is just another form of borrowing. Sure, these just defer the eventual payment, and make it more expensive in the long run, but like running up your personal credit-card, it somehow feels like free money, something that a straight-forward tax is never going to be.

Now sure, there are legitimate reasons for governments to borrow and issue bonds, but it's the "candy-coating" factor that I'm talking about. "No money down! No payments for 90 days! What will you do with all the money you save?" Republicans spend (in different amounts, and on different things, but spending is spending) just like Democrats do. What's different is in how they choose to pay (or often not pay) for what they spend, and how carefully they obscure the facts of that payback.

Okay, I'm getting a bit side-tracked here, as I'd actually like to talk about a specific kind of "obscured borrowing," one I consider the sneakiest, most insidious, and most destructive of all. Call it borrowing against infrastructure. Call it borrowing against the future.

How this works is simple. Governments have assets, usually lots of assets. Buildings, land, vehicles, bridges, subways, equipment, computers, weapons, pipes, wires, office supplies, all kinds of things. But few of these assets are of fixed value. Many things depreciate just sitting there. Others wear out or are depleted as they're used. And most require maintenance, otherwise they depreciate faster and wear out faster. Also, in most governments these assets need regular updating, both to keep things current, and to adjust capacity of government services to follow rising (or changing) populations.

There are other kinds of assets as well that are even less obvious. Employees for example. It's hard to think of the stereotypical, under-motivated government worker as an asset, but each one represents a bank of experience, knowledge and training that would have to be replaced right along with the body. Yes, some employees are much more valuable than others, and some are much more expensive to replace. We'll get back to that.

When you run up financial debts, it's pretty obvious. When you issue bonds, its there for everyone to see. And when you raise taxes or fees, everyone screams. But all this other stuff I've mentioned is like an invisible bank account that politicians can dip into without creating much attention.

The easiest way is simply to defer maintenance. Stop fixing school roofs. Stop repairing bridges. Don't change the oil in government vehicles. Don't replace vehicles as they wear out. Don't paint. Don't repair. Don't fix.

Another way is to delay needed upgrades. Sewage plant over-burdened? Why worry? So what if you have to dump raw sewage into the river every time it rains? And if the EPA wants to fine you, well, blame it on the liberals... Fact is, most any such crisis of capacity is usually slow in coming. Almost universally it can be pushed past the next election cycle, and with luck, until term-limits kick in. Then it becomes someone else's problem (hopefully, the other party's).

The massive application of this strategy dates back to the Reagan administration, which just stopped spending money on infrastructure. We're, in many cases, only now seeing the fall-out (no pun intended) from that policy today, with collapsing bridges, crumbling roads, and failing levies. You've got to give some grudging respect. All than invisible borrowing deferred to not only decades after Reagan left office, but until he is several years safe in his grave.

And since our national government tends to change hands periodically, if you can simply stall long enough, any debts you run up will simply get handed off to the other party, who can take the blame if they actually to raise funds to pay off your debts. Yet another implication of "tax and spend" is that the person or party doing the taxing is also the person or party who did the spending, but very often that is not the case.

Reagan ran up the debt, Bush I ran it up more, Clinton paid it down (more than canceling out the Bush I years) and now Bush II has run it up to unprecedented levels.

Speaking of, a more contemporary (and far more contemptible) example of borrowing against the future is to be found in current US war in the middle-east. Of course, the obvious up-front costs of the war are already eye-bleedingly staggering (if there were some sort of Oscar for Government Spending, George W. Bush would certainly deserve the statue), but there are equally staggering hidden cost here.

The war has been grinding our military down to a nub. Equipment is wearing out at a phenomenal rate. Stockpiles of ammunition, equipment, and supplies (a lot of this stuff in turn left-over from the Cold-war era) have been drawn down and not replaced. Sooner or later, all this junk will have to be repaired or replaced, and somebody will have to pay for it.

But to my mind, the really tragic cost, the one that makes me want to spit, is the human one. This war has been run on the backs of National Guard and reserve units who have been deployed again and again and again in a way that nobody, a few decades ago, would have ever imagined happening short of an alien invasion or World War Three. These people, even the most loyal and determined of them, are exhausted. Most of them have to be thinking that, by now, they've more than done their service to their country, and I don't see how you can argue with them.

For many of them, they're going to take the earliest opportunity to get out of the service, and that means losing their experience and training.

Remember when I said a while back that some government employees are more valuable than others? Well, there are few more valuable than the modern military man or woman. The day of the ignorant grunt is over. The typical modern soldier is a highly trained technical expert not easily, quickly, or cheaply replaced. I'm finding good numbers hard to come by, but it seems safe to say that even the most basic infantryman has several hundred thousand dollars invested in them, and on the other extreme, a fighter pilot's costs are likely well north of two million dollars.

There's also the simple fact that combat veterans have an experience and perspective that can't be obtained through training at any cost, and to which a monetary value can't be assigned. The men and women who fight future conflicts and defend our shores need these experienced fighters, and we're pissing them away.

When you drive people out of the service, and we're doing so on an epic scale, you're most certainly borrowing against the future.

Of course, this only considers the people who are able to walk out of service whole and hearty (and bless them, I wish it was every one), but there are many more who come home with shattered bodies and injured minds, or who simply come home in a flag-draped box. To those people (or their survivors) we owe compensation for their sacrifices. To my mind, when you've borrowed against a soldier's life and future, this is (or should be) an immediate pay-back time.

Sadly, we still hear again and again of nightmarishly run-down medical facilities, of injured veterans denied benefits and proper medical treatment, even of the bodies of returning soldiers being treated with disrespect because somebody found a way to cut corners on the processing.

This makes my eyes red. If you're going to do this thing, run out the national debt, raise taxes, do what it takes, but don't try to hide your spending by putting it on the backs of the very people who have fought the war.

I know that "honesty" and "politician" are two words that rarely interact, but I think the Republicans have pushed fiscal deception to an unprecedented level. It's time for a hard, hard correction. I suggest when election time comes in November, that if you want any possibility of fiscal responsibility and accountability, you look for someone with the "tax and spend" label attached to them.

Sure, you may not agree with them on every detail, but it's right there on the table: what to tax, what to spend, and what to spend it on. From there you can negotiate.

The option is be left eternally wondering what the Republicans are borrowing, how they're borrowing it, who they're borrowing it from, and when you are going to have to pay it back.

What is Science Fiction Anyway, and Does it Matter?

Just stumbled on this (to me) very annoying essay that attempts to ever more narrowly define what is "real" science-fiction.

I'm annoyed on multiple levels, starting with the idea that this distinction is somehow important, moving on through how the author seems to think "real" sf is somehow superior, just on principle, to that Tolkien and Harry Potter crap, and continuing on from there.

I do, however, think there's some interesting validity to the author's idea of an scientific “event horizon” that defines whither a science fiction story is technically plausible or not. His idea is that the line between science fiction and fantasy (his term, though I think “science fantasy” is more correct, if a distinction must be made) isn’t a static thing, that a story can be written as science fiction based on the best scientific knowledge of the day, and be turned into science fantasy after the fact as science marches on.

Yet his central premise is that most sf produced today, especially media sf, actually starts out inside his speculative "event horizon," that most of it is scientifically implausible by today’s science (and probably yesterday’s as well) not tomorrow’s.

Okay, actually, I agree with this too. Where I differ is that this is somehow a bad thing. I think it's time to embrace it, fess up to the fact that it’s absurd to think that (as an example) Star Trek is, an any way more than metaphorical, any kind of prediction of the future, and that as long as we enjoy the stories, that's FINE.

First of all, I'm of the opinion that a good story rarely starts out, "An idea walked into a room." That notion has damaged sf as a literary form more than any single thing. Stories are about people, and if an idea enters into it, it is how the people react to that idea which is involving to the reader. The idea may be interesting as well, but a story is not simply a science-fact essay with dialog and a villain. This is important, because if the story is good, the failure of the science (by time or intentional design, at least, not withstanding the author's ignorance) will not significantly diminish it.

Frankly, I think that science fiction's function as a literary crystal ball predicting the future has always been highly over-rated. For starters, "science fiction" is a misnomer. Science fiction CAN'T predict science, except through guess-work, and where sf has attempted to anticipate hard science, it has almost always been wrong. Making up undiscovered subatomic particles is just fantasy with sf trappings. Even speculating about predicted-but-undiscovered particles (such as the Higgs Boson) is questionable, because, even if they exist, most likely anything you say about it will be wrong (and is likely to be proven so within a few years).

Most of what we think of as "science" in science fiction stories is applied engineering and technology, and it IS possible to extrapolate these things, to some limited extent. Jules Vern, for instance, didn't predict the submarine, or even its use in war. But he did extrapolate the submarine into a capable and useful vehicle and consider how it could be used for good (exploration, access to aquatic resources) and evil (terror attacks on shipping). He predicted lunar travel, but even by the science and engineering of his time, his technology was fatally flawed. The story's predictive value is not in that his science or technology were correct, but rather in its (quite correct) assurance that the technology COULD solve the problems involved with enough time and effort.

It’s ironic that Vern then scoffed at H.G. Wells book on lunar travel because he relied on anti-gravity metals and other such implausible devices. Yet neither book holds up to modern science, and the flaws in Vern's work are much more obvious and easier to prove. Yet Vern’s work is also satisfying in part in the his method for reaching the moon, though scientifically flawed, is at least plausible and understandable. Never mind that it would never reach the moon, and even if it did, it’s passengers would be nothing more than jelly due to the incredible acceleration. The method allows even the modern reader to willingly suspend their disbelief.

Classic Star Trek is sometimes given credit for "inventing" the cell phone. Yet all it really predicted was the shape and size of a cell phone, not the technology that makes one work, or the science behind it, or even the functional way in which a cell phone works. Functionally, near as we can tell, a Star Trek communicator was just a WWII walkie-talkie decreased in size, and increased in power. Actually, what it did, how it worked, and what those little dials and buttons did is all rather vague. From a story standpoint, that's actually good, as in being vague, it has dated less than a more scientifically-grounded device would. It served a story purpose, and served it well.

Really, that’s all most early Star Trek technology was, story devices dressed up with flashing lights, buttons, and sound-effects. Look at the elegant, self-descriptive names of those devices: transporter, communicator, shuttlecraft, warp drive, impulse engines, photon-torpedoes, phaser, tricorder. A transporter is less a teleportation device than a method of moving characters rapidly through the story (and without the expensive special-effects necessary to show a spaceship landing). A shuttlecraft isn’t a form of transportation at all, it’s a bottle to stuff a couple-or-three characters into and then crash into a planet for story purposes. A communicator is a delivery device for exposition (and so is a tricorder, for that matter). And so on…

Science Fiction was born in an age when science was expanding into a vast unknown, and when technology was advancing in absolute terms. But while technology moved slowly (by modern standards) in those days, it pushed regularlly into new realms, and seemed able to advance without limits. These days, things are much different. Technology is moving so fast these days than any such speculation is almost certain to be rendered either wrong or obsolete in very short order. And fast as it moves, it does not heave blindly into the darkness.

We live in a world where science bounds us at every turn by provable or demonstrated limits. The speed of light seems much more absolute than it once did, and time-travel far more likely to be an absolute fantasy. The list of unknown scientific things to speculate about grows ever shorter. Even the day in which you could imagine planets at random around known stars is growing to a close. We're mapping distant star systems, with new planets discovered almost every week. There are still gaps in our understanding of physics, but they're relatively small, and their practical implications far less profound than the heady days of the atomic era.

Computers continue to advance, but in such regular and predictable ways that the progress has gone on for decades, regular as a clock, far more predictable as the weather. Yes, we can speculate about artificial intelligence, or robots, but we've been speculating about those things for a very long time without a clear grasp of the technology that might make it possible. Are Asimov's robots no longer valid because of that? Hal 9000? Frankenstein's creature? The Golem?

Really, some of the best and most enduring sf isn't even about technology, it's about society and culture. A good example is, unfortunately, a story I can't name. I think it's a Bradbury story (though it might be Asimov, or someone totally different, I haven't read it in a long time). This is from memory, so forgive me if I get the details wrong, but here's my recollection about the story. It's about a future world where everyone gets from place to place using teleportation doorways, and as a result, culture has evolved to a point where nobody goes outside any more. One day a household's door breaks, and a boy walks to school. He discovers that he LIKES going outside, and even when the teleportation door is fixed, he continues to go outside. His concerned parents, of course, try to break him of this aberration. My memory of the ending is vague, except that the pleasures of going outside won't go away, and the idea spreads...

Looking at this from a scientific standpoint, it's kind of absurd. Science is showing us that certain kinds of "teleportation" may be possible, but the idea that we'll be routinely teleporting people from door-to-door is highly unlikely. The energies involved are incredible, for starters. Quantum uncertainty is another huge issue. But the story is no less valid because of this. In fact, it may have become MORE valid with time. We might turn into these people, even if the technologies responsible aren't teleportation, but some combination telecommuting, the internet, console gaming, robotic cars and general paranoia. In fact, to some extent, we're well along the way to turning into these people. The story still works as a metaphor for that. It doesn't matter if teleportation doors are possible by the most current version of physics or not. It doesn't matter if the story had used magic mirrors instead of teleportation doors.

Or look at Jack Williamson's "With Folded Hands." If you haven't read this story, you should. It's about a man who discoverers a new store in town, one selling household robots. The robots are black, sleek, beautiful, and perfect. They clean house. They run errands. They do chores. They wait on their owners hand and foot. And they are completely incapable of harming humans. They EXIST to protect us from harm. It is their primary function. Never mind where they come from. Never mind how they work. Not really important.

Of course, there's a catch. The robots are TOO perfect. They move in and take away all human want, all human suffering, and in the process, all human freedom. Humans become prisoners of safety, not even allowed a knife to cut their food, least they injure themselves or others. The hero realizes this, tries to thwart them, but it's too late.

As I said, not so important how the robots work or where they come from (space, presumably from some non-existent planet via non-existent FTL). It isn't important how likely real robots are to be human-shaped or not. It isn't important if robots could really take over this way. The story is more valid than ever because it's about the slippery slope of trading freedom from comfort and an illusion of safety. It doesn't matter if the "safety" takes the form of a sleek-black-robot or a border-line fascist government, or helpful fairies that help too much. It's the sort of thing every school kid in American should have been reading post 9-11, every voter should read before choosing their next president. It's a story WITH robots, not a story ABOUT robots. That's an important distinction, and one that's lost on a lot of sf purists.

Sometimes a science-fiction can even be accurately predictive in ways that have nothing to do with the scientific device in the story. In 1971 hard-sf writer Larry Niven published a novella titled “Flash Crowd.” The story is set in a world where teleportation booths make instantaneous travel anywhere in the world possible. The basic premise is that with live television reporting of breaking events, people would naturally jump into a teleportation booth to see things for themselves. The result: instant crowd, instant mob, and potential instant riot.

In fact, “flash crowds” did happen, and they didn’t require teleportation. Live coverage of TV did play a role in some real “flash crowds” but the cell phone turned out to be a far more effective device for creating them. Ask the teen in the news a while back who threw an adult-free party at his house and invited a few friends. Apparently they invited a few friends as well, and they told other friends, and so on, until the police had to be called to break up a near riot of hundreds of teens converging on the home, drawn there by an invisible web of phone calls and text messages.

The point here is that, who cares if teleportation is possible or not, or if real teleportation would ever look or work like Niven’s teleportation booths? That isn’t where the predictive value of the story is at all. It was a “what-if” thought problem that translated to the real world in a completely different form.

If we define science fiction and fantasy as stories built on the premise or "what if?" and If science fiction (valid science fiction) is defined purely as a "what if" story that "could happen" then we're left with a pretty narrow field indeed, an even the stories that pass this litmus test are inevitably headed rapidly into the dust-bin of history, to join the huge pool of "real" science-fiction that's gone before. Whole subgenres, such as alternate history, are excluded from the canon as well. (Yes, you can scientifically justify alternate history through some application of the "many worlds" theory, but few books in the genre even bother. And of those, I rarely see it as more than tissue-thin rationalization; science as window-dressing.)

Really, for science fiction and fantasy I think the important distinction is not "could this happen," but how willing and able the reader is to BELIEVE that it could (or did) happen for the purpose of, and duration of the story: the suspension of disbelief. Fantasy has its roots in myth and legend, in a time when monsters, gods, and magic were, if not believed, then no less incredible than FTL drives or time machines are to most modern readers. Science fiction was born out of time when science and technology had largely replaced those things and in the realm of "fantastic but credible" in the public consciousness. (There was still religion, of course, but speculating about religion has always been and remains to this day, a dangerous pursuit, more likely to enrage than enlighten.)

Mind you, it isn't important to REALLY make the reader believe in the fantastic elements of the story. They can enjoy and be moved by Lord of the Rings without thinking that Middle Earth is historical truth, or that orcs and elves are real. They need only be willing to embrace them in the context of the work. The same is true of science fiction. It really doesn't matter if teleportation doors or warp drives work or not, only that the reader is willing to believe them in the context of the story. If scientific or technological trappings make that easier, then so be it.

In fact, a distinction one could make of fantasy is that the average reader has the comfort of putting down the book and knowing that the fantastic things they're just read are NOT possible. The story mentioned could make the same point with magic mirrors as with teleportation doors, but would it have the same impact if the reader could so casually dismiss it in the end? Perhaps not. But that distance also has its advantages. "The Golden Compass" can write about religion (like I said, dangerous) in a way that might not be possible in a science-fiction book, or even in non-genre fiction. The subject is dangerous, but there's the emotional and societal safety-valve that it "isn't real," making such an examination much more palatable than it would otherwise. This is true of any hot-button topic. A little distance, the different perspective provided by a science fiction or fantasy context, makes it a bit easier to approach objectively. It's a bit of trickery that Jonathan Swift understood well almost 300 years ago, and it's still valid today.

Likewise, there's great value in allowing the reader to believe that a thing could be possible. "From the Earth to the Moon" is important, not because it accurately shows how a trip to the Moon might be made, but because it makes it credible that through industry and determination, such a thing IS possible, even if the details differ. Compare that to Star Trek. We know that space travel, even to distant stars, IS possible. And while I can say with some certainty that our methods of accomplishing this will not resemble the Starship Enterprise, that the explorers aren't likely to have much in common with Kirk and McCoy, and that the aliens will almost certainly not resemble Mr. Spock, that DOESN'T MATTER. We can understand and identify with Star Trek far more easily than we can, for instance, post-human intelligences spending centuries traveling between stars in "spaceships" that resemble silicon cobwebs thousands of miles across.

If Star Trek makes us believe that such voyages, through industry and determination are possible and desirable, then the rest is just window dressing. Details. And though science fiction can't predict how, we will get there someday.

The Darwinism of the Wind

Update to this post: 12/07/07 - See added note at the end of the post for additional information.)
Well, the worst storm in at least 20 years here on the Oregon coast is gone. The power came back on last night, and we have phones again (though with limited service) and internet. It's really nice to be back in the 21st century. Really nice.

Here we got some rain, but the brunt of the damage came from wind. Gusts, depending on who you listen to, were either as high as 125 or 129MPH. I think 125 is the official number. We're the lucky ones. Just north of us they got the rain, often 10-12 inches in just a few hours. You can resist the wind, but when water is determined, there's no stopping it. Those people have been devastated.



I drove around town this morning with camera at hand. I was surprised to see how quickly repairs and clean-up were progressing. A destroyed billboard had already been cleaned up. As you can see in the pictures, the gaping hole in the side of the local Casino was already being patched. Chain-saws, bucket lifts, and service trucks were everywhere.



Another thing that surprised me, given the extreme winds, wash how little real damage I could find. There were plenty of trees down, many ripped up by the roots or snapped off at the base. But very few structures were significantly damaged. There were a few broken windows from flying debris, lots of damaged roofs, and a few freakish things like the damaged wall at the Casino (and in that case I have to wonder if it was already weakened somehow, possibly by water leaking inside the wall).



There was lots of damage to signs, of course. It seemed like half the business signs in town were down or seriously damaged. But for the most part, unless they happened to be in the path of a falling tree (none of the ones I saw were, but I did hear of this happening) there was very little visible structural damage.



In most any other town, winds like these would have flattened the place, but it didn't happen here. The reason, is the Darwinism of the wind. We have storms here every winter. Locals really don't even pay any notice to the wind if it's under 60MPH. Below that, it's more an annoyance (blown-away trash cans, flattened winter flowers in the garden, and a few power outages) than a real threat.

For the most part, things that could be flattened by the wind were long ago flattened. Anything that could be blown away is long gone. The exceptions are, as mentioned, trees and signs, both of which tend to grown and age until the right gust of wind catches them and snaps them off.

Roof's age too, so damage there is inevitable, but usually not serious. By necessity, things are built strong here. My house has been standing up to these winds, three blocks off the beach and on top of a hill, for over fifty years. With luck, it will stand fifty more.



Thing is, when things fail here, they tend to fail catastrophically, especially in a storm as strong as this one. The Casino wall seen in previous pictures is a classic example of that. Somehow the wind got under the outer wall, and peeled that big building like a grape.

A less spectacular example is our big loss to the storm, a storage shed we bought last year. Yes there is (or used to be) a shed in this picture. Mostly what is left is the floor, some of the heavier contents, and a couple corner panels that remain attached. It was one of those pre-fab plastic jobs. It was surprisingly strong. I've never seen it move in our strongest winds before, and I watched it closely to be sure. But it just wasn't ready for triple-digit speeds. About midnight Sunday I saw that one of the side panels had popped out.

Chris and I ran out in a lull and moved the most vulnerable contents inside. But it was too late for the shed itself, as the most powerful part of the storm was still to hit, and with a hole in its side the wind could get under the roof, turning it into a sail. I knew the roof would go, it was only a matter of when. When the big gusts came, one of them lifted the roof off in one piece and deposited it in our front yard. The rest of the shed walls started to rapidly self-disassemble.



We ran out in heavy rain and wind (probably 70-80 gusts instead of 100) to grab the roof and drag it into a sheltered alley between two houses, so it didn't blow into someone's house or car and do more damage. We were lucky it didn't turn into a parasail and take both of us away, but we were successful.

Not happy for us, but looking around at people who lost homes or cars or even roofs, we were pretty lucky. We even managed to salvage all the pieces of the shed. I'll have to examine the parts carefully for damage, but it might even be possible to rebuild it. If we do, I'll be modifying it with all sorts of reinforcing straps and bolts to make it stronger. Worth a try anyway.

Because this is the coast, where only the strong survive.

(Update to this post: 12/07/07 When I took the picture of the Grocery Outlet store seen in the second picture, I thought the damage was only superficial loss of roofing on the facade. Turns out I should have looked through the windows. Water built up on the roof and caused a large part of the store's ceiling to collapse. As I said, when things happen, they tend to be catastrophic. The store has never suffered any noticeable storm damage in all the years I've lived here. Anyway, the store is now closed for major repairs with no word on when it will reopen.)

storm warning

We've just weathered the worst storm we've ever seen here on the Oregon coast. 129mph gusts reported here in our little town. Our house is okay, but our storage shed self-disassembled. Damaged and downed trees all over town. Roads blocked. No power, phones, or internet. I drove 30 miles to a coffee-shop where I could blog this quickly. Here are some pictures of local damage and some downed power lines around the corner from the house. No word when we'll get power or phones yet. The main lines into the city are down, and we don't know for sure even where the breaks are.

Locals Dean Wesley Smith, Kris Rusch, Dan Duval, Jerry Wolfe are all well and accounted for. More later.