m. c. de marco

And there you are. Goodnight, everybody!

(Fade to static and poltergeists)

Well, yeah. As the federal court of appeals panel noted, “Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California.” And that’s not a nice thing to do.

I’ll have more thoughts on this in a bit, when I get caught up on the details. In the meantime, here’s the actual text of the ruling for you to peruse.

Update: Okay, just read the ruling. As I read it, this basically boils down to something I’ve noted before, which is that Prop 8 existed for the sole purpose of taking away from a particular group of people a right they already had (and which, in the case of the state of California, 18,000 couples availed themselves of), and that’s pretty easy to mark as a violation of the Constitution.

The ruling also takes a bat to what passes for the justifications the pro-Prop 8 had for keeping Prop 8 on the books; the court says two things, which are “You guys aren’t actually aware of California law, are you?” and also “If the text of law doesn’t say it, than the law doesn’t do it,” the latter being a response to the idea that Prop 8 was designed to put a pause on same-sex marriage when in fact the text makes it clear that a “pause” was not part of the plan.

Upshot: You can’t withdraw from people a right they already have just because they’re getting their gay cooties all over the institution of marriage. As I said earlier: well, yeah.

I’ll additionally note the judges did a fine job of keeping the ruling as limited as they possibly could, passing up every opportunity to widen the scope of the ruling or make larger constitutional pronouncements. This might disappoint folks who were hoping for a grand gesture that said “same sex marriage for all!” but I think the court recognized that this ruling would almost certainly be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, and wanted to give the SCOTUS as much of a reason as possible not to take the appeal, or if they do take it up, to let it stand. A narrow ruling dealing only with California is better likely to achieve that than a wider ruling. Thus, the focus on California law, dropping in federal law only when necessary and studiously avoiding any larger constitutional implications. I think it’s probably a smart way to go but I also acknowledge it’s not my ability to be married that’s up for discussion here.

In sum, I am (not surprisingly) pleased with this ruling. I hope it sticks.

Susan G. Komen Senior Vice President for Public Policy Karen Handel, the presumed designated sacrificial executive for the Komen folks, on account that outsiders suspected she was behind the plan to stop funding Planned Parenthood (and certainly appears to have pushed for it enthusiastically), has indeed resigned from that foundation, although she seems not particularly inclined to fall on her sword in doing so. Instead she looks to be planning to make as much trouble for Komen folks as she can on her way out the door.

And, well, look. If Ms. Handel was indeed brought in after certain decisions regarding Planned Parenthood were already made, and the Komen folks decided they just needed someone who’d be happy to manage and execute the plan, then it’s perfectly reasonable for Handel to cry foul as she’s shown the exit. And as Handel is declining a severance package (and its likely non-disparagement clause), she’ll be able to rend her garments and beat her chest about how awful the Komen folks were to her to the anti-abortion crowd, which will make them even less inclined to support Komen in the future. So don’t cry for Karen Handel; I think she’ll be just fine in all of this.

But it does once again bring into focus just so spectacularly blunderheaded this whole adventure by Susan G. Komen has been from a policy point of view, and this is something that Ms. Handel, as the VP of Public Policy, should have been on top of for her organization. Leaving out any direct issues of morality or politics (I know, I know, go with me for a minute here), what’s basically happened is that on account of $700,000 worth of grants, the Susan G. Komen Foundation in just one week wrecked a billion-dollar brand identity that took decades to develop. Solely from the point of view of policy and brand strategy, it’s impressive in an entirely horrifying way. While I fully believe the Komen folks have brought this on themselves (“oh, no one will mind if we withdraw our support for Planned Parenthood if we reverse engineer this totally obvious excuse to do so!”), my business mind cringes in sympathy for them.

(There is a gripe in some quarters that the Komen folks should be able not to fund whomever they wish. I agree with this 100%, of course, and have consistently said so. I think where I diverge with the gripers is that I also understand that actions have consequences. Komen was perfectly within its rights not to give funds to Planned Parenthood; the people who complained about it — many of whom had previously donated time and treasure to Komen — were also perfectly within their rights to do so, and to withhold their donations, plan to boycott companies that allied with Komen, and to look for new organizations to support. This is what one would call the free market at work.)

The Komen folks erred in lots of ways, but from a business point of view, where they erred the most is in understanding what their brand stood for and who supported it, and for not developing a messaging strategy regarding their new funding policy that was more than one response deep, just in case that response failed spectacularly, as it did in this case. From a purely business point of view, Karen Handel deserved getting canned not because she supported (or drove) the decision to have Komen drop its support for Planned Parenthood, but because as its Vice President of Public Policy she completely failed to do her job. Komen got its ass handed to it. That Handel didn’t anticipate that better, or help her organization respond to it better, and indeed seems to have exacerbated the situation, is why she should be shown the door. And she has. As often happens when one does a bad job.

I am incredibly sick at the moment, will all the exciting respiratory pyrotechnics that implies, so today I'm going to Think Real Hard about Star Trek, that old SF past-time. It's like playing on your childhood swingset. It's a little small for you now, but it still makes you smile. Like many, I've been slowly rewatching Deep Space Nine ever since it popped up on Netflix. It's been fascinating. On the one hand: Oh 90s! YOU WERE THE BEST! With your adorable WE ARE SO DARK plots that seem like Strawberry Shortcake Goes to Space by today's standards. On the other, in many ways 2012 has already overtaken DS9 as The Future goes, barring, of course, space travel and replicators. Culturally, though, we've zoomed right past the 24th century by the second decade of the 21st. I've been struck particularly by two things missing from the DS9 universe--one unpredictable in the 1993-99 span of the series, and one predictable but unattractive from the creators' standpoint. Nobody uses social media, and nobody wastes time. Cat Valente http://www.antipope.org/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1&id=917

Influences aren’t just things as a writer that you pull from — they can also be things that you push against. And sometimes you do both at once. Saladin Ahmed knows about this; in his widely acclaimed debut Throne of the Crescent Moon (which has garnered starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews) he’s looked at his favorite works both as inspiration and things to rebel against. What are those works, and what are their qualities and flaws, as Ahmed sees them? He’s here to tell you.

SALADIN AHMED:

The Big Idea behind Throne of the Crescent Moon had to do with writing something that was both an homage and a response to the heroic fantasy I grew up reading and watching. I was born in post-race riots Detroit at the beginning of the slow social and economic meltdown of that city. I grew up down the street, in the working-class Arab American enclave of Dearborn, MI. My Dad was a union activist and community organizer who instilled in me pride in my Arab heritage and a strong sense of social justice, but also a deep love for fantasy and science fiction.

Fast forward 30 years, and these things are still a big part of my consciousness. Sometimes, over the years, they’ve bumped up against each other, and Throne of the Crescent Moon is my first attempt to…transcribe the sound of that bumping, if that makes any sense.

But concrete examples are sometimes more useful than such abstraction – voila!

- I love Arya Stark and Tyrion Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire. But I don’t like that royalty and nobles – or royals and nobles in disguise – are almost always the main POV heroes in fantasy. So my characters are mostly lowborn.

- I love the Aiel from The Wheel of Time (and that Rand is one by blood!). But I don’t like that Fantasyland’s pseudo-Arabs are usually depicted in a marginalizing manner. So I put the pseudo-Middle East at the center of my series.

- I love Sturm Brightblade from Dragonlance . But I don’t like that fantasy novels have tended to depict holy warriors/paladins as noble and inspiring when wearing pseudo-European garb but scary when wearing pseudo-Muslim garb.

- I love Star Wars (indulge me, please, by calling it fantasy), but I don’t like the way youth and self-discovery are so often the focus on fantasy plots. So I wrote a 60-something main character who damn well knows who he is – and just wants the world to leave him the hell alone.

- I love Aragorn… But I don’t like the way heroic fantasy celebrates hereditary power so uncritically. So I slapped my heroes in the middle of a plot to usurp a dynasty.

And so on. Throne of the Crescent Moon is, in a sense, a tightrope walk. Might be I’ve fallen a few times, but I hope I’ve taken some entertaining – maybe even thrilling – steps along the way.

—-

Throne of the Crescent Moon: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s blog. Follow him on Twitter.

Just chirping up to say: I'm now in Boston. I'll be doing an event for the MIT SF Society this Friday; and next Saturday the 11th, I'll be doing a reading and signing at Pandemonium Books and Games in Cambridge;... Charlie Stross http://www.antipope.org/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1&id=2

It started with a standard publicist e-mail, letting me know author Nick Harkaway was available for interviews in conjunction with the upcoming release of his new novel Angelmaker.

Is he? I thought? Is he really?

To the Twitters!

Hey, @Harkaway! Got an e-mail from your publicist saying you're available for interviews! I'm gonna set up an interview ALL ABOUT STOATS.

—
John Scalzi (@scalzi) February 06, 2012

1. Do you like stoats? 2. Any compelling stoat stories? 3. If you were a stoat, what sort of stoat would you be? @harkaway

—
John Scalzi (@scalzi) February 06, 2012

@scalzi You know the difference between a polecat and a ferret?

—
Nick Harkaway (@Harkaway) February 06, 2012

@Harkaway Please limit your responses to stoats only, please.

—
John Scalzi (@scalzi) February 06, 2012

@scalzi 1. Yes. They are elegant little killing machines made of cute.

—
Nick Harkaway (@Harkaway) February 06, 2012

@scalzi 2. No. Stoat stories are sprawling narratives dealing loosely with hunting rabbits. They eschew character and plot for religion.

—
Nick Harkaway (@Harkaway) February 06, 2012

.@scalzi An apostoat.

—
Nick Harkaway (@Harkaway) February 06, 2012

I'm totally blogging those, you know, @harkaway.

—
John Scalzi (@scalzi) February 06, 2012

And so I have.

Angelmaker, by the way, out March 20 here in the US. No guarantees as to any content regarding stoats. But you never know.

The Nebula Awards nomination period is rapidly coming to a close (it ends on February 15) and there’s about five weeks left to nominate works for the Hugo Awards (including the Campbell Award). As I am involved in both awards this year — I’m the president of SFWA and the toastmaster of Chicon 7, this year’s Worldcon — I want to encourage everyone who is eligible to nominate for either of these awards to do so. One way to do that is to ask folks to suggest potential nominees. Last month I gave space to writers/artists/editors to suggest the works they did that are eligible; today I’d like to open it up to science fiction and fantasy readers and fans.

Why here? Because up to 50,000 people read the site a day, and many of them are Nebula and/Hugo nominators, and some of them would really appreciate some suggestions. This is a good place to make such recommendations.

Before we begin, a couple of quick rules:

1. Please make sure that what you’re suggesting, work or person, is actually eligible for awards consideration this year. Generally speaking that means the work was published (or otherwise produced) in the last calendar year (i.e., 2011). If you’re not sure what you’re suggesting is eligible, please check. Otherwise you’re wasting your time and the time of everyone reading the thread for recommendations.

Also, it’s helpful if, when making a suggestion, you identify the category the work would be eligible for; so if you were going to suggest a novel, writing “Best Novel: [name of work, author of work]” up front would be awesome. This is especially useful in short fiction categories, where there are short stories, novelettes and novellas.

2. If the work you’re suggesting is (legally) readable online, feel free to provide a link, but note that too many links in one post (usually three or more) might send your post into the moderation queue, from whence I will have to free it in order for it to show up. If this happens, don’t panic, I’ll be going through the moderation queue frequently today to let posts out.

3. Only suggest the work of others. Self-suggestions will be deleted from the thread. If you want to suggest something you created, use the creators thread instead.

4. Don’t suggest my work, please. I’ve already posted here about what of mine is eligible; this thread is for everything else.

5. The comment thread is only for making recommendations, not for commentary on the suggestions others are making or anything else. Extraneous, not-on-topic posts will be snipped out of the thread.

So, readers and fans: This year, for the Hugos, Nebulas and other science fiction and fantasy related awards, what (and who) would you suggest other people keep in mind when they fill out their nomination ballots? Please tell us in the comments!

They are:

1. Patrick Nielsen Hayden is not only a Hugo-winning editor over at Tor, and my editor, but he’s also a damn fine guitarist, and plays in a rootsy rock band known as Whisperado. That assemblage of musical ne’er-do-wells have just released their first full-length album, I’m Not the Road. If you wished, you could purchase it, in physical form at CD Baby, or in non-corporeal form either at CD Baby or iTunes.

Here, have a listen to their song, “Over You”:

If you’d like to hear more, PNH has put up more samples on his own site.

2. Brian Francis Slattery is not only a writer of complex and interesting science fiction, but is also a damn fine musician, which I know first hand because he and a group of his friend provided musical accompaniment for me, Lev Grossman, Cat Valente and Scott Westerfeld at our group reading at the New York Public Library last year; he and his friends did me in 7/8 time, or as I like to call it, “Sting’s favorite time signature.” Slattery and the band (now known as the “Slick Six Five”) also have a new release out, Pictures From a Liberation, with lyrics derived from Slattery’s novel Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America. The album’s up for a listen and download over at Bandcamp, and it’ll be one of the more adventurous musical listens you’ll have today.

3. Joe Rybicki is not only one of my former editors, but also a damn fine guitarist (sensing a theme here, are you) who puts out music under the nom de rawk of Johnny High Ground. But before that, he was in a punk band called “Whatever…”, and you may imagine I get a kick out of that. Fans of that band (and those who just enjoy old school punkishness) will be glad to know Whatever…’s discography is now available on Bandcamp. It’s just like moshing, in digital form.

There, you’re all music’d up and ready to face your Monday. Go get ‘em, tiger.

I mentioned a few days ago that I’d received my ARCs of Redshirts and that all of them were claimed except one, and that I would do something cool with it as a giveaway. Actually, it wasn’t 100% accurate. It’s not me who is doing something cool with it, it’s Pat Rothfuss. He’s giving going to give it away (signed!) as part of his Worldbuilders fundraiser.

What is Pat Rothfuss’ Worldbuilders fundraiser? It’s his annual and rather spectacular way of getting folks to kick into Heifer International, the charity that helps people in third world countries improve their lives through the power of livestock. Or as Pat puts it, “They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.” The deal is that for every $10 you donate to Worldbuilders, you have a chance to win prizes. Donate $10, one chance. $100, ten chances. The math is pretty simple, actually.

So far this year Pat and the folks contributing to Worldbuilders have raised an incredible $250,000 for the cause… but there’s always more to raise. Thus the contribution of Redshirts. I’ve been a big fan of Worldbuilders since it’s started and it’s a honor to put my work into its service.

Mind you, it’s not just Redshirts that’s up for grabs. There’s literally hundreds of books, DVD, graphic novels and other goodies to be given away, including stuff from Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Bear, Ernie Cline, Kate Elliot, Peter S. Beagle, and of course Pat himself, much of it signed and/or rare. Plus I have a few more things in there as well, including signed copies of Fuzzy Nation. This is all tip of the iceberg stuff; for the whole loadout go to that Worldbuilders link above.

Here’s the thing: The Worldbuilders fundraiser is only through February 7, so if you want in on the action, make your move. It’s well worth it, both for the premium stuff available and, you know, to help folks better their lives.

If you’ve not already clicked through to donate (and why have you not?), I’ll mention that I gave Pat an early sneak at Redshirts. He talks about it a little here on his blog and gives it a full review (without spoilers) on Goodreads. I encourage you to click through and see what he thinks and why in the end he threatens me (in the nicest possible way, of course!) with an axe handle. Oh, Pat. I love you too. Don’t make me set Krissy on you.

Photo by Infrogmation, via WikiNews

Question from the gallery:

How much do you think it will matter that Mitt Romney is a Mormon? And does it matter in your own thinking about him?

Since I think at this point it’s all but certain Romney will be the GOP nominee, I’m not sure it’s mattered greatly in a negative sense. I’m pretty sure in a couple of cases it will work to his advantage; for example, tonight, in the Nevada caucuses, as Nevada is the state with the 7th largest population of LDS folk (4th biggest per capita), LDS folk tend to skew Republican/conservative, and in the 2008 Nevada caucuses, LDS folks who voted GOP went 90% for Romney and were 25% of the caucus voters. So, yes, in Nevada? Not a problem.

Is it a problem with the GOP elsewhere? Possibly, although I don’t have the stats at my fingertips. I will say it’s possible it may have been more of a problem if Romney had been in a more competitive field of candidates, but he got lucky in his GOP opponents this time around. With apologies to Santorum and Paul supporters, at this point it’s between Romney and Gingrich. While you can’t count Gingrich out unless you stake his heart, chop off his head, fill his mouth with garlic and bury him at a crossroad, I think most GOP voters realize at this point that the vampire treatment is exactly what Obama would do to Gingrich in the general election. There’s also the very real possibility that in going down, Gingrich would take all of the modern GOP with him, on the thinking that as he was the one who birthed it, he might as well kill it off, too. Romney, whatever his other flaws or advantages, at least won’t immolate his entire party if he loses the election.

At the end of the day, Romney has consistently been the GOP frontrunner in this election cycle. Gingrich spikes up past him now and then, but that’s just it: He spikes. Then people remember Gingrich is Gingrich (Romney spending millions in attack ads helps) and then it’s back to status quo. I know of grumbles of Romney’s LDS affiliation among some evangelical GOP voters, but it seems like it’s been just that: grumbles. There’s also this: When it comes right down to it, do these evangelical GOP voters dislike the idea of an LDS member in the White House more than they dislike Obama? I’m gonna go with a “no” here.

Regarding the general election, I think Romney’s major problem is not his religious belief but everything else about him, starting with the fact he’s socially clueless about how obnoxious he is about his wealth, and (conversely) how much the electorate is becoming sensitized to the fact he’s a clueless rich dude. I’m not going to suggest his LDS affiliation won’t matter to some voters; it will. I just don’t think it’s going to land in the top five concerns that most voters have about him.

Does Romney being a member of the LDS church concern me personally? No. Readers here will recall that of all the GOP candidates this cycle, the one I liked best (and even sent money to) was Jon Huntsman, who is also a member of the LDS church. So my recent track record on this particular aspect of a candidate’s profile is at the very least neutral.

In a larger sense, on a purely personal and anecdotal level, my overall feelings about LDS church members defaults to vaguely positive. This is mostly because I know a fair number of LDS folks, and the ones I know personally tend to be good people whose company I enjoy. I allow that this may have less to do with their church affiliation and more to do with the fact I like good people and don’t tally church affiliation of any sort as an automatic negative. Good people you like are hard to find and you should cherish them without the use of a checklist. Be that as it may, that’s my initial default, so it doesn’t hurt Romney any.

Regarding the LDS Church as an entity, there’s a lot about its political and social positions I dislike and disagree with, and I think its theological underpinnings are a heaping stack of nonsense. This puts it on a par with a number of churches, including the Catholic church, a whole pile of protestant churches (particularly evangelical churches), and pretty a fair number of non-Christian religions (and/or their various sects) to boot. I certainly could not be an LDS church member now; if I were born into it I’m pretty sure I’d be apostate. But again, that’d be true regardless of church. Luckily for me, aside from a baptism I didn’t have a vote on and wasn’t followed up on in any event, I’ve never had a church affiliation. I don’t have to be apostate; I can just be not religious.

I don’t automatically hold official church positions against church members, regardless of religion. I assume individual church members have brains and agency and may or may not agree philosophically with every single proclamation that comes out of their particular hierarchy. People who assume that Romney will take orders from Salt Lake City are on par with the voters of 1960 who assumed that Kennedy would take orders from Rome. I have no intention of voting for Romney in the general election. But when I don’t vote for him, his being a member of the LDS church won’t be a part of it.

Would I ever vote for a member of the LDS church for public office? Sure, if their political positions were aligned with mine for the office they were seeking. Romney’s don’t, which is why he won’t get my vote in November.

As I noted over on Twitter, this just-released press release from the Susan G. Komen foundation looks like a blink. Feel free to comment on what you believe are the motivations and consequences in the comments. Be polite to each other or I’ll whack you with the Mallet of Loving Correction.

Also, I’m continuing my fundraiser in any event. Just to be sure.

Edit: A take on the apology from the women at Jezebel.

That’s when the rising sun melts the frost on the ground except for where the frost was covered by a shadow. And then the frost takes on the shape of the shadow. It’s like having a shadow in negative. Until it melts. Just one of those cool things you get to see every once in a while. Thought I’d share.

For some time now, I've been a little bit worried about a few of the decisions Nomi and I make when it comes to raising Muffin and Squeaker. For example, given their age they can be very stubborn at times and throw tantrums if they don't get their way. This can lead to us "giving in" when it just seems easier and minor. If Squeaker wants to sit on my lap during dinner, is that a battle I really need to fight? It's far more important to make sure that the kids brush their teeth before going to bed, isn't it? Shouldn't I focus my energy there, rather than on requiring them to wear pajamas in bed instead of the day's clothing if they really want to?

In our latest The Brookline Parent column at Brookline Patch, I explore a few of the decisions we've made (or are in the process of making), and ask if our Bad Parenting really is so bad.

If you go read the column, you'll find out at least one secret that's liable to get us in trouble in the future.

Or you could click the link to Bad Parenting to see a picture of Muffin and Squeaker on my iPad...and eating cookies for dinner.

I think every writer has a genre or subgenre that they admire, but find baffling. Like a snake charmer watching a trapeze artist. Yeah, yeah, the snakes are poisonous, but you've been handling them for years. But that flip? Those... Cat Valente http://www.antipope.org/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1&id=917

Over on his blog, Jamie Todd Rubin noted that he had read a novella yesterday that he subsequently added to his Nebula ballot. He said, "I'd easily put it in the top ten novellas that I ever read."

That novella: "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" by Ken Liu.

Since I take Jamie's recommendations strongly, I followed his link to Ken Liu's stories and read the story. Jamie had said nothing more about the story, and so I went in with no expectations save the one that this was going to be a good story.

I'm with Jamie. It's one of the most powerful stories I've ever read. I don't think it would give too much away to say that as I read it, I found myself comparing it to my own "Kaddish for the Last Survivor" and feeling that it was so much better. If "Kaddish" was a story of mine you found of interest because of its themes and overall subject matter, you should read Liu's story.

You Los Angelenos should be aware that I will lurk among you this April, as I am going to be a participant in the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. What shall I do there? Festivate, of course! On the subject of books! Also, I know they’re planning a panel for me to be on. With other people of my kind. I can’t go into details now. Suffice to say that if the panel goes off as we intend, you will squee with delight. Even those of you who have promised yourself that you will never squee. You will squee. It’s not like I’m making a demand. It will be that you have no choice but to squee. It’ll be well nigh physiological.

I may have said too much.

In any event: Los Angeles. April 21 – 22. Festival of Books. Me. Potential Squeetasticness.

We’re all caught up now.

Well, I hope you folks have had your coffee this morning, because author Rod Rees is about to get deep on you all, on the subject of the nature of reality. He’s doing so in the context of The Demi-Monde: Winter, the first in a series of books in which the real world mixes and merges with another world entirely… and neither world appears particularly safe, or sane. So, you ready? Good. Here you go.

ROD REES:

The examination of the duality of life is the bedrock of all fiction: the battle of the sexes, the war between good and evil, the struggle between the weak and the strong and so on and so on. We take the yin and yang of life for granted … but what if ying and yang merged … what if we had to cope with a world of a uniform yin, where there was no conflict, no competition and no privacy? It’s a situation that may be closer to reality than we think, because there’s a new kid on the block intent on overturning this long-cherished dichotomy of life, and that kid’s the Internet.

Thanks to the Internet, factual reality (if that isn’t tautology I don’t know what is) and fictional reality (a wonderful contradiction in terms) are merging. BI (Before Internet) the imaginary was distinct and readily distinguishable from the real. AI (After Internet) this separation has begun to blur. For instance some individuals operating on the web take the names and personae of celebrities (living and dead), so that it is almost impossible for the veracity of a real celebrity’s cyber doodlings to be accepted or even established. And as even the most spaced-out wacko has the same ability to spout his or her nonsense on the web as do “normal” people, everything on the internet has to be taken with several grains of salt, because everything has a veneer of cyber-credulity. Consider Wiki, the most used reference resource in the world. Wiki has become so adulterated by mischievous editing that every time you use it you have to question whether what you are reading has been infected by twaddle.

The result is that as time has passed – as the Internet has becoming increasingly all-pervasive – fantasy has begun to merge with reality. On the Internet reality and surreality, fact and fiction, rumour and truth have to co-exist, but they can’t do this without contaminating each other. The result is sort of nu-reality – a faux-reality – which is simultaneously truth and lies. There was a nice phrase in a recent article in the Sunday Times by Camille Paglia about Lady Gaga (“What’s Sex Got to do with It?”) which said “In the sprawling anarchy of the web, the borderline between fact and fiction has melted away.”

Now, the idea of reality and make-believe becoming malleable and interchangeable isn’t new (Orwell explored this to great effect in “1984”), but what is different today is that it is so easy to do. The real world and the cyber-world are becoming increasingly intertwined, creating a Gordian Knot of competing realities, which are often impossible to disentangle. And that is what intrigued me as a writer.

Of course before I started merging realities I had to set them up. The dualities running through the Demi-Monde books are easy to identify. For a start there’s the Real World (our world of 2018 but with a twist and a slice of lemon) juxtaposed with the Demi-Monde (a virtual dystopia inhabited by 30 million Dupes – digital simulacra of living people). Next there’s the religious/political systems rife in the Demi-Monde which are bizarro representations of their Real World counterparts: Fascism/UnFunDaMentalism, Hedonism/ImPuritanism, Feminism/HerEticalism and so on. And then, of course, there’s the apposition of the über-psychopaths from history (Heydrich, Robespierre, Shaka Zulu et al) who rule the Demi-Monde and the more sane members of the resistance.

But setting these up is “World Building 101”: the interesting thing for me as a writer was coming up with a mechanism where they begin to merge and overlap and then exploring the consequences when they do. The plot device to achieve this came by accident. The disease afflicting a lot of writers intent on world building is the horror known as Too-Much-Exposition-itis: info-dumping so much “stuff” on the reader that the pace of the book is destroyed (and the patience of the reader along with it). In a desperate attempt to avoid this contagion I invented PINC – a Personal Implanted nano-Computer – which allows the character so equipped to automatically download information from ABBA – the quantum computer running the Demi-Monde – directly to their brain. At a stroke (sorry!) the character knew things, and I didn’t have to describe at long and boring length how they knew things.

Originally I envisaged PINC as a sort of super-Radio Frequency Identification Device, but as I was writing the story the implications of PINC became ever more interesting. So as the books progress PINC grows both in importance and in capability, and I find myself increasingly fascinated by what the implications would be if humanity was equipped with a PINC.

A PINC’d world would be one where all of humanity has instant access to the sum total of human knowledge (ABBA’s a very powerful computer!) which would, in turn, make de Chardin’s noösphere – the merging of minds – a reality. So what, I asked myself, would be the ramifications of the world adopting a political and social system based on PINC – which one of my characters calls InfoCialism – within which all the citizens of a State enjoy collective ownership of all information gathered and held by that State. As I see it the principal one would be that the traditional concept of privacy would be rendered obsolete. Everyone would know everything about everybody.

Duality would be replaced by unanimity. Individuality would be conflated into the universal consciousness.

As one of my characters in the final book of the series The Demi-Monde: Fall says:

“To face down the daemons that lurk amongst us we must allow others to see our Real Self and to do this we must embrace individuation, the process by which the individual is integrated with the consciousness of the whole. Humanity has reached its Omega Point when it must slough off the habits and the inclinations of yesteryear. From henceforth homo sapiens – knowing man – must become homo sophia – wise man – and our relationships based on understanding and not on secrecy … on openness and not privacy … on mutual support and not violence.”

That, ultimately, is the idea I set out to explore in the Demi-Monde.

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The Demi-Monde: Winter: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Read an excerpt. Watch him read from the book. Visit the author’s blog.

 

 

 

Many of you have heard that the Susan G. Komen Foundation (the folks who do all that pink-related branding regarding breast cancer) is withdrawing its financial support from Planned Parenthood, which in the past did breast cancer screening and education for lots of poor women with funds offered by the Foundation. The Komen folks swear their choice to do this is not politically motivated, to which my response is yeah, right. Keep trying that line and see where it gets you.

Regardless of the motivations, what it means is that poor women, and women with poor access to women’s health care, are getting screwed again for reasons that have nothing to do with them. I know, I know, these women should have thought about reasonable access to health care pertaining to their own gender before they decided to go ahead and be poor. It’s their own fault, isn’t it. The poor. So stupid. And in this case women to boot. So they count even less. And if they have to rely on health services from an organization that also offers legal health services some people oppose, well, then they deserve what they get even more, don’t they.

The Komen folks are perfectly within their rights not to fund Planned Parenthood’s initiatives for breast cancer screening and education, even if they’re not honest enough to come right out and say it’s part of an overall right-wing agenda against Planned Parenthood. But I don’t think it’s right that poor women get caught in the crossfire. They don’t deserve to die just because they can’t afford to catch their cancer early.

Just a few minutes ago I pinged Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press and asked if it would be possible to track the sales of my eBooks in the next week in order to donate my share of those sales to Planned Parenthood, specifically for its breast cancer initiatives. He said it was, in the United States at least, and that SubPress would donate its share as well.

So, between today and February 8, 2012, every time you buy a Subterranean Press eBook written by me here in the United States, the proceeds are going to Planned Parenthood. I will direct that the donation go specifically toward their breast cancer screening and educational activities, to help replace the funding lost from the Susan G. Komen Foundation. What ebooks does this cover? Here’s a list on Kindle; here’s another on the Nook. eBooks sold in other formats for other readers here in the US will be covered, too.

Is this a political statement? As much as the Susan G. Komen’s decision not to fund Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening and education programs is. If you want to argue that wasn’t a political move at all, then neither is this. If you think otherwise, then you may think likewise about this. Either way, if this helps someone who couldn’t otherwise get access to breast cancer screening and education save her own life, I figure at least one person will come out ahead. And that works for me.

Update, 2/2, 11:12 am: In a little under 24 hours, from Amazon alone, we’ve raised $1681.79. Thanks, folks!

Update, 2/3, 10:13 am: Now we’re at about $2,700. Nice.

Update, 2/3, 11:45: The Susan G. Komen Foundation blinks. However, this fundraiser will continue as planned. Call it paranoia.

This is what February 1 looks like outside my bedroom window just a couple of minutes ago.

As a compare and contrast, here’s what it looked like a year ago today:

Note that the patchy-looking parts of the lawn in last year’s picture are actually patches of ice that were thick enough to step on without cracking. It’s currently 50 degrees outside, which is more than double what it was the same time last year. I can walk outside without shoes and not worry about losing a toe (or slipping and falling on my ass). It’s a little weird.

Yes, I know, insert snark about climate change here. It’s actually not the warmest it’s ever been around here on a February 1st; it was 14 degrees warmer than today on February 1, 1989. Although I don’t doubt the earth is warming (AND THAT HUMANS HAVE A HAND IN IT, PEOPLE), I do chalk this up to relatively normal weather variation.

I should be delighted about this, and the fact we’ve had relatively few snow days here — yay! For once winter doesn’t suck! — but to be honest with you it makes me a little nervous. This is my 11th February here in Ohio; to have it this far out of whack from the usual makes me twitchy and suspicious that summer is going to be hellacious. We will see, I suppose. In the meantime, I’m going to try to appreciate my snow-and-ice-free February 1. Without undue paranoia.