Schadenfreude!

Schadenfreude!
Oh, the Schadenfreude!
Gatekeeping
Is what WorldCon employed!
Larry saw
The Hugos were all devoid
   Of any but
      Token picks.
      And it sticks
      Politics
      In the mix.

Schadenfreude!
So much Schadenfreude!
Puppies picked
Good books that we
All enjoyed...
But No-Award
Was given, just to avoid
   Our nasty con-
      Tagion!
      So we moved on.
      We’ve all gone
      To DragonCon.

Schadenfreude!
Darling, Schadenfreude!
That WorldCon is
So damn paranoid!
Del Arroz
Considered a Polaroid...
   But they were too
      Scared if Jon
      Put camera on
      Goings-on
      At their con...

Schadenfreude!
Oh, the Schadenfreude!
All the times
WorldCon has annoyed!
Signaling
Their virtue was unalloyed!
   But anyway,
      Here’s the twist:
      A panelist
      That they missed
      “E” feels dissed!

Schadenfreude!
Darling, Schadenfreude!
Hugo nom’s
They’re admitting no one enjoyed!
Now the swarm
Has their own con destroyed!
   Watch them as they
      All drop out!
      And scream and shout!
      No more clout!
      What a rout!

(Fade out)
Schadenfreude!
Oh, the Schadenfreude!
Schadenfreude!
Darling, Schadenfreude!

Is the cake SCOTUS baked narrow—or deep?

Everyone’s saying today’s Supreme Court ruling  is a “narrow ruling”. It was 7-2 but they mean narrow in impact, tailored to the circumstances in Colorado’s egregious treatment of this baker.

But as I read it (not being a lawyer) they’re pretty clearly saying that if the state tells a Christian baker he has to bake a pro-same sex marriage cake for a customer, then that state must also tell a pro-same sex marriage baker he has to bake an anti-same-sex-marriage cake for a customer. That sounds significant to me.

It makes me want to go find a foofoo bakery and order an anti-same-sex-marriage cake, just to see what they do; and report them to authorities if they refuse. Hopefully folks are thinking the same thing in all fifty states.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_new_d1of.pdf

One of these day Ginsberg will leave the Court, and the next ruling on an issue like this is likely to give clearer direction.

Crystal, Brass, and Copper by Matthew X. Gomez

I'm reading Storyhack #2 during sessions on the exercise bike these days and enjoying everything in it so far. This magazine is a great asset to the PulpRev movement.

Not all of it is SFF but today's story, "Crystal, Brass, and Copper", by Matthew X. Gomez, is a fantasy in a magical Caliphate setting. Bahar and her brother are sneak-thieves who imprudently decide one night to rob a powerful wizard, who turns out to be better prepared than they expected; soon she's in the hands of an alchemist like a steampunk mad scientist, and must find a way to keep herself and her brother safe from powerful enemies.

Besides being a gripping short story, CB and C would be a good chapter one in a short novel about these characters.

Little joke

Reading: Prospero Regained, by L Jagi Lamplighter; The Ship of Ishtar, by A. Merritt; Behind That Curtain, by Earl Derr Biggers.

Writing: “Social Skills” (working title), a short story that will probably come to 8000 words. Submitted a story for the Superversive Press Planetary: Luna anthology, still waiting to hear... it seems they were blessed with loads of submissions.

Christopher Lansdown (author of THE DEAN DIED OVER WINTER BREAK, good book and love that title) tweeted something about determinists that got me thinking about this old joke. Or maybe it’s a new joke that already sounds old, not sure...

A Calvinist, a Baptist, a High Church Anglican, an Episcopalian, and a Catholic walk into a bar. The bartender says, “What’ll it be?”

The Calvinist says “God only knows.” The Baptist says “Give me a minute, the choice is irrevocable.” The High Church Anglican points at the Catholic and says “I’ll have whatever he’s having. But not because he’s having it, mind.” The Episcopalian points at the Catholic and says “I’ll have the opposite of what he’s having.” The Catholic says, “I’ll have the usual, Scott. How’s your sciatica today?”

Banned from Facebook!

On Monday it turned out I couldn't log in to my Facebook account anymore. I tried resetting the password, but to confirm my identity it said it would send a code to my phone, and it never did. I tried a few times with no success. Since a lot of people are being banned nowadays, I wonder if my account might have suffered the same fate? It gives me a warm, proud feeling to imagine that I was banned for trespassing against FB content-based censorship, so I'm going to go with that assumption.

That leaves the question of why I'd get banned, especially now. About the last thing I posted on FB was a link to this story, "The Thirtieth Amendment", a bit of science fiction flash fiction I dashed off lately. It's topical in that I make the gun-control proponent a young numbskull, though the real concept of the story isn't tied to the gun issue in particular. As I see it, it's more about the way strident politics is splitting our society into partisan factions that would rather separate than come to a compromise, and the likely result of allowing the most intolerant elements to leave and set up their own separate "safe space". 

It ain't Shakespeare, but would such a story get me banned? Maybe. One thing that makes the Left so prickly, I believe, is their belief that they are "on the side of History": in other words, they take it for granted that the future belongs to them by rights. This is why so many on the Left have descended into gibbering madness at the election of Donald Trump, as so many did also at the election of George W. Bush. They can't stand the thought that their way of looking at things might lose.

And this in turn is why writing and reading science fiction that presents our vision of the future is so key: because the Left has been cranking out theirs for decades, and has taken enough control of publishers and networks and studios that the future where the Left has already won, where there are no more conservatives, no more libertarians, no more religious believers of any sort, but especially no Christians or Jews, or at least none whose religion is the most important part of their life: this becomes the standard way for many people to think about the future.

I don't mean that we should be writing "our own propaganda", that actively argues for our beliefs. I mean, unless we feel like doing that. But mainly, I mean that we should write stories where the future contains people who believe as we do, where religion is not presented as a ridiculous or despicable thing. As a dry little joke I once tweeted, "Oh, I remember this episode of Law and Order: it's the one where the fundamentalist Christians turn out to be the bad guys." I could multiply examples of the Leftward bias in SFF, but it hardly seems necessary... I remember, for instance, reading a story in one of the science fiction magazines set in a dystopian future where enemies of the state were taken off in police vans that the author called "ashcrofts", after a Republican then serving as attorney general. It was a completely gratuitous, unfair and unnecessary slam. Similar zingers, always aimed rightward, are what turned me off mainstream SFF for twenty years.

Simply writing stories that give religion, or businessmen, or patriots, or veterans, or conservatives, or Republicans a fair shake is mischievous enough to shake up the Left's monopoly. 

And if they're set in the future--and if it turns out that conservative ideas have become the norm in the future--that's icing on the cake. Good stories with such backdrops are what I want to do as a writer.

I haven't tried getting back into Facebook. But it has given me an idea for a cartoon that I don't have the talent to draw. Perhaps someone else would care to. It goes like this:

First panel: Two guards in uniforms with the Facebook "f" on them are hustling a frightened-looking fellow forward, roughly holding an arm each, coming through an institutional corridor. There is a poster on the wall captioned "BIG ZUCKER IS WATCHING YOU", with Zuckerberg's face staring out. Word balloons: "That's enough out of you!" "It's off to Facebook Jail with you!" "B-but, guys, can't we talk about this?"

Second panel: They throw him through a barred door. "We don't have to explain anything to the likes of you!"

Third panel: They walk off laughing, the prisoner holding the bars, looking after them. Main word balloon: "W-wait! Wait! At least tell me--" Very small word balloon, from off to the right behind the bars, a musical note. A thought balloon with a question mark to the prisoner.

Fourth panel: The viewpoint pans far back to the right inside the "cell", and we see that it is not a cell at all: the "prisoner" is standing in an outside courtyard, open to the sidewalk and the street, where people are walking dogs, children are playing, etc. The prisoner is dumbfounded, his hands still on the bars of the door locked before him, which we now see leads to the inside of a prison.

Fifth panel: the viewpoint pans still further back and upward, and we see that the prison is a building shaped like a Facebook "f", and the "prisoner" is now running toward the street along the right crossbar.

Sixth panel: Back inside the jail, the two guards are intimidating another frightened person, who was just putting something up on a bulletin board, maybe with a heading like "New Facts About Benghazi!" Word balloons: "Hey, you! Yes, you! You better take that down if you know what's good for you!" "Yeah! You don't want to wind up in Facebook Jail like that other guy!" 

Nine Books

Minutes ago, Cedar Sanderson posted an interesting challenge on MeWe. (What, aren’t you on MeWe yet? Has the steady drip of revelations of malfeasance by the Twitter and Facebook people still not gotten to you? Well, please add me as a contact when you get around to joining.)

The challenge is simply: list the classic books you think people should read, and its occasion was a list at themanual.com which a commenter pointed out was “mostly crap”. I checked it out anyway, and found some of the proposals pretty odd. The listmaker was wise to save his suggestion of Joyce’s Ulysses till last, because I probably would have given up on him as soon as I saw it.

It so happens that I’ve finally begun the huge task of unpacking and organizing my books this past week, so I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about literature lately. So here is a quickie list of seven books I think people who like reading fantasy and science fiction should read. Perhaps I’ll try to reread them all in the coming year: I haven’t been doing nearly enough rereading lately, and these are all old friends.

The Charwoman’s Shadow, by Lord Dunsany.
Winter’s Tales, by Isak Dinesen.
That Hideous Strength, by C. S. Lewis.
Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad.
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr.
The Worm Ouroboros, by E. R. Eddison.
The Odyssey, Homer.
The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton.
The Castle, by Franz Kafka.

If you have suggestions of your own, please chime in. I always like to get comments.

The Thirtieth Amendment

Someone (was it on one of the Superversive Press roundtables?) suggested that they do an anthology someday named MISTAKES WERE MADE. Even though as far as I know no one has definitely started work on it, this story I just wrote might fit in it.

I actually wrote it after a Tweet I put out last week sometime, describing the general idea at a high level. Jonathan Swift said of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS that once you think of the idea of big men and little men, the story practically wrote itself; this one has the same quality of following rather immediately from the basic concept.

Enjoy!

"The Thirtieth Amendment"

Larry Kellerman gritted his teeth as he listened to the youth sitting in his office. “I just feel like, if there were no guns, like, then everyone would be safe and stuff, you know?” the kid—his name was Nevish, Liam Nevish—said.

“I understand the idea,” the official said patiently. It was a pleasant office, decorated with dark-finished wood furnishings, and a lovely picture window looking over the park. The oil paintings were attractive portraits of famous people, representational art having come back into vogue even in government buildings in the last couple decades. Over his desk, he knew, was a motto of the Thirtieth Amendment in gold letters. Everything was designed to relax, but Kellerman always felt on edge with a client: largely, he thought, because the clients themselves seemed too calm about their purpose in coming for transference.

He drew in breath. “Well then, Mr. Nevish, you can certainly choose any alternity you prefer, and there are many that were founded with the intention of eliminating guns, some where that was the chief motivating principle, others where it was included in a menu of other policy choices. Actually, before we waste any time, let’s make sure of one thing: you are twenty-one, correct?”

“Yeah, I’m 21. Last fall.”

Damn, thought Kellerman. “Very good,” he said aloud. “And you wish to leave our time line, Alternity Zero, for another that was colonized by persons intending to eliminate guns, either entirely or from the citizenry, is that your idea?”

“Umm. Wait a minute, when you say ‘colonized’, does that mean the people already in the other worldline might have guns? How does that work?”

Great heavenly days. “No. There are no people native to any of the worldlines that we have designated for utopian alternity experiments, Mr. Nevish. The parameters our team sets up when we initialize a portal define a worldline that branched from Alternity Zero at a point twenty to thirty million years in the past, and in which human life never evolved. Nor any other intelligent life, nor any life elsewhere in the Solar System…we’ve taken care to avoid any complications, aside from those the colonists take with them. The founders of each alternity are literally colonizing a world of their own, presumably according to the principles they spell out in their charter.”

“Okay, but the way you keep using words like ‘presumably’ and ‘intended’, it sounds like you’re hedging. There’s no catch to this, right? I mean, you guarantee that there won’t be any guns in the alternity I choose?”

“No, Mr. Nevish,” Kellerman said firmly. “There can be no guarantee of what you will find on the other side of the portal. We have no information about the utopian alternities, other than what we knew of the original worldline query that designated it, and the stated intentions of the colonists who have gone there already. The transference is strictly one-way, sir: this is why we keep emphasizing that you should think carefully about your decision before you step through.”

“Oh, I’ve thought carefully, and all that. I mean, a world just like this one, but with no guns, has to be better, right? I mean, that guy in Missouri who shot those three people last week, I just couldn’t believe the vids. I kept thinking, if only he didn’t have a gun!”

Kellerman nodded sympathetically. “Yes, that was certainly horrific. Of course, statistically, the trend in gun violence has been downward—“

“But what if you’re one of those three people?” the young one shot back, with an air of making a conclusive point.

“Yes, then the statistics would hardly be comforting for you,” agreed the official. “However, you might still wish to take some time to study the alternatives available to you. As I say, there are a number of utopian experiments putting various levels of restrictions on guns, so you can also make a selection of other social parameters you prefer. The degree and kind of social safety net provided, versus the level and distribution of taxation required to pay for it, for example; or the toleration or lack of it for various recreational substances, forms of energy, religious practices, et cetera. I could give you some literature for you to study for a few days before you make your final selection.”

But Nevish was shaking his head. “No, I want to get this done today. I just want a place as much like Alternity Zero as possible, but without guns. Isn’t there one like that somewhere? I mean, they’ve founded hundreds and hundreds of these by now, right?”

Kellerman’s heart sank. “Yes, there are over a thousand alternities registered to various groups of utopian founders, to which more than one hundred fifty million people have emigrated. But surely, even on gun policy, you’ll want to give some thought to the exact plan that you prefer? Do you want a place where even the police have no guns? What would you want the government response to be if someone mischievously builds a gun of his own in a metal shop in his basement, or 3D prints a hundred of them and tries to take over the whole place? What if—“

“Okay, the police can have guns, no one else is allowed to. What have you got like that?”

Kellerman turned reluctantly to his keyboard and tapped keys for a few moments. Damn that lunatic in Missouri, anyway. “Well, Alternity 784 would seem to fill the requirements. Would you like specifications?”

“It’s just like here, but there aren’t any guns, right?”

Kellerman made one last try to get through to the boy. “Mr. Nevish. The people who founded Alternity 784 said that they wanted to set up a utopian community in which only the government would have guns. Their project was officially granted a worldline when one hundred thousand individuals agreed to this charter and presented themselves for transference. Robots and provisions were sent through adequate to create the physical infrastructure of the proposed society. Since that time, everyone who has transferred to Alternity 784 has stated the intention to live in such a world and signed an agreement to abide by this charter. Note, however, that their signature is purely a pro forma agreement, carrying no penalty of perjury nor possibility of the slightest repercussions: either for changing their mind later, or for straight-out dishonesty up front, because we will have no way of knowing what they do after their transference.” He put his hands on his desk and leaned forward for emphasis. “That’s all we know, Mr. Nevish.”

Nevish frowned, as if trying to look like he was thinking hard. Perhaps he believed he was thinking hard. At last he said, “Look, Mr. Kellerman, you’ve been doing this a long time, right?”

“Yes,” said Kellerman. “Ever since the program began, right after the Thirtieth Amendment was passed. Nearly forty years, now.”

“Well, the people you’ve sent through—aren’t they mostly just people like me?”

Kellerman looked sadly into the young man’s eyes, and said, “Yes, that would be a fair statement. I think nearly all of them, perhaps every last one, was someone very much like you.”

The boy sat back and nodded his head. “Then print out the forms. I’m ready to sign.”



After the paperwork was completed and young Nevish had gone on to the transference portal for Alternity 784, Kellerman stopped by the office of his supervisor, Jeffrey Waters. “Got a minute?” he asked, with a long face.

“Sure, Larry.” Waters sat back. “You look like you just served another client.”

His office was shaped much like Kellerman’s. The decorations were different, but there was the same gold motto of the Thirtieth Amendment on the wall behind his head. Kellerman sat down and looked bleakly up at it.

Congress shall make no law impeding any person from living under the government of his preference.

“Serving another client,” said Kellerman. “I just can’t think of it that way.”

“Larry, you know we have to do this. Not just by law, but by necessity.”

“Sure, once the alternity portals were invented, it’s inevitable that people would group into like-minded enclaves—“

“Not just the alternity portals, Larry. Even before then, as soon as it became possible to associate electronically with people who thought the same as you, and disassociate from people who thought differently, the centrifugal tendencies of the new age were set up. Think of the chaos before the Second Constitutional Convention, and then the even worse chaos in the fifteen years before the Third. The alternity portal system is the only thing that has finally saved us, and it’s really not so bad, is it?”

“But Jeff, this kid—and there have been others, all over the country, just this week, since that nutcase in Missouri. He has no clue what he’s getting into, just randomly reacting.”

“Well, Larry, that’s his right, isn’t it? Who knows, maybe his alternity will turn out great for him. And meanwhile, as the utopia-seeking tendency boils out of our own worldline, things here where the bulk of humanity lives get pretty good indeed, and each year we have fewer clients requesting transference.”

“True, true,” sighed Kellerman. “And after all, as I tried to point out to him, three homicides, in the entire nation, over the past two years, is really not that bad.”

“Not bad at all. And the figure I’m even happier about: no new alternities set up for four years straight now.” He stretched. “Why don’t you knock off early today, Larry? Beautiful afternoon.”

“Thanks, Jeff, think I will.”



Liam Nevish looked down the portal to Alternity 784. It was a corridor that receded from a large, high-ceilinged area, one of several dozen in this lobby. He found it hard to rest eyes upon, as it flickered and flashed in an irritating way. His escort, having accompanied him to the very foot of the portal, seemed to have no such problem gazing in. Probably long custom had desensitized him to it.

“Last chance to change your mind,” he said with a grin.

“No, thanks,” said Nevish. “So I just walk in?”

“Yep. Good luck.”

“Okay,” he said, feeling a bit nervous. “Here I go.” The escort nodded and turned to go back.

Nevish started into the flickering haze. As he walked, the part close to him stayed normal, and the zone of turbulence always seemed about five feet ahead of him. He looked back and saw that the same was true behind him. Swallowing, he continued into the portal. After a few more steps, he found it seemed to be pulling him forward, as if he were walking down an increasingly sloped hill.

At last he felt a rushing suction and almost lost his balance, then at once found himself standing on perfectly firm ground. He looked around at his new worldline, and his jaw slowly dropped open.

“Oh, no,” he whispered. “Oh, nooooooo!”