Category: Uncategorized

Trump season 6 has officially jumped the shark.

I’m calling it now: Trump season 6 has officially jumped the shark.

The show has been nothing if not a little over the top, but it’s been building steadily enough that even when it strains credulity, there ends up being a good reason for it. Until now, that is.

I’ll admit, when the global pandemic dropped at the beginning of season 4 right in the middle of the first impeachment, it made me wonder if the show had jumped the shark at that time. But the pandemic turned out to be a major turning point that redefined the whole show. It was also necessary to get him out of the White House in the beginning of season 5.

Now that was a bold move, to make him “lose” the election. But it was also quite brilliant, as it was necessary to show that even after he was nominally removed from power, Trump is still the center of gravity for the whole political system. Without him, the Democrats have absolutely nothing, as most of the country hates their policies as well as their hypocritical racism. Only by uniting the base against a common enemy do they have any hope of making it.

Also, it’s been really fascinating the way the writers have turned Biden into a mirror of Trump. Everything that Trump’s enemies have accused him of doing, Biden has actually done. Remember “Grab them by the pussy” from the first season? Yeah, Biden has actually done that. Also, stumbling on the stairs to Air Force One? I’d actually forgotten about that one, since it seemed like just a throwaway moment in season 2. The writers must have had tremendous foresight to set all that up way back then. It’s one of the reasons why this show ranks right up there with Breaking Bad and The Man in the High Castle.

Now, the show almost jumped the shark with the Ukraine-Russia war at the beginning of season 6. But that was actually foreshadowed back in seasons 3 and 4, with the first impeachment proceedings. Also, the very first episode of season 1 alluded to the simmering situation that Obama had left in Crimea and the Donbas after the Maidan protests. It was subtle, but it was there. Besides, with all of the talk about how Trump would start WWIII if he were elected, it was necessary for the writers to get Biden into a hot proxy war with Russia, which may yet prove to be the start of the next world war. Besides, they toned it down a bit by turning it into a WWI-style meatgrinder, rather than immediately jumping to a trans-Atlantic nuclear exchange.

But Biden’s latest speech was just way too over the top. I mean, I know the show’s been setting things up for a civil war sometime in the next few seasons, but the optics of that speech were just way too on point. I could almost hear one of the soldiers off-screen asking “Hans, are we the baddies?” Dark Biden, my ass.

Still, I guess I’ll still keep watching the show, if for no other reason than to find out how the Ukraine war ends. At least that subplot is still interesting, though at the rate things are going, the Chinese invasion of Taiwan will be as ridiculous as the last season of Game of Thrones. So will the civil war, apparently. At this point, they’ve just been drawing it out for way too long.

What about you? Are you still enjoying the show, or do you agree with me that season 6 has really jumped the shark?

Three common tropes that I hate (and what I’d like to see more of instead)

So I’ve been reading a lot of books in the last few months, which means that I’ve been DNFing a lot of books too, and I’ve noticed some recurring patterns in the books that I’ve DNFed. A lot of these are tropes that I’ve either gotten sick of seeing, or that tend to make for a much weaker book. Or both.

I thought it might be interesting to point a few of them out, but I don’t want this post to be totally negative, so I’ll counteract that by also sharing some positive tropes that I’d like to see more of instead. If you guys enjoy this post, maybe I’ll do something like it again in a couple of months.

The Only True Love is LGBTQ Love

I see this one all the time in SF&F these days. Basically, if there are two characters who are romantically involved with each other, or if there is a romantic subplot to the story (not the main plot: sci-fi romance is a separate thing, for purposes of this trope), then that romantic relationship has to be gay, trans, or queer in some way. Or polyamorous, I suppose (does poly fall under the “+” in “LGBTQ+”? Maybe it’s the “P” in “LMNOP.”)

From what I gather, this trope began when LGBTQ activists pointed out that their particular kinks and orientations were “under-represented” in SF&F. Publishers, editors, and authors responded by filling their stories with more LGBTQ relationships, in order to avoid getting singled out as not being sufficiently LGBTQ-friendly. It’s the same principle as the zombie apocalypse: you don’t actually have to be the fastest runner, you just have to run faster than the guy behind you. Of course, since the SF&F field is so thoroughly dominated by leftists, pretty soon every story had an LGBTQ romance in it, to the point where straight romantic sub-plots are now actually kind of rare, at least in the books that are winning all the awards. Which is how you know the “under-representation” angle was a lie from the beginning.

It’s gotten to the point where if any character at all announces themselves as LGBTQ in the first few chapters of a novel, or the first few paragraphs of a short story, I immediately DNF. Call me homophobic; I don’t really care. These stories are so predictable that I can often pick out both which characters are going to be LGBTQ and which ones will end up together, within a page or two of them stepping into the story.

Of course, the main reason I don’t like these stories is because I’m not LGBTQ myself, and personally find straight romantic subplots to be much more interesting and satisfying. But there is another reason, and it has to do with the way that all of these stories aren’t just about entertaining readers, but about promoting LGBTQ pride.

This is going to get me a lot of hate, but it’s true so I’m going to say it anyway: the only thing that unites the LGBTQ movement together is the normalization of sexual perversity.

Think about it for a moment: what do each of the letters in LGBTQ really have to do with each other? Most gays would be happy to live in a world without women, and most lesbians would be happy to live in a world without men. Both of them view bisexuals with veiled suspicion and sometimes outright hostility, as if they’re somehow traitors to the wider homosexual cause. Transgenders affirm their identity by playing into as many stereotypes of masculinity and femininity as they can, which puts them directly at odds with masculine women and feminine men. And queers adopt all sorts of positions that contradict—or even negate—every other letter in the pantheon.

The LGBTQ movement is so full of internal contradictions that the only way it can hold together is to unite against a common enemy, and the only enemies that they all have in common are the people who affirm that there is a moral dimension to human sexuality, and that some forms of sexual expression are immoral. Even the modern notion that all consensual sex is fine goes too far for these people, because it excludes pedophilia, since children are not capable of giving their consent. And does anyone really doubt that one of the LGBTQ movement’s ultimate goals is to normalize pedophilia? When it’s not uncommon to see children under 12 at pride parades, drag shows, and drag queen story hour at the local library, sometimes as the very stars of the show?

I’ll say it again: the only thing that unites the LGBTQ movement is the normalization of sexual perversity. As soon as the leaders of the movement draw a line in the sand and say “this is not okay, this goes too far,” the movement will turn on itself and the revolution will eat its own. Thus, every new form of sexual perversion must be one-upped by something even more perverse. That is why we are literally butchering and chemically castrating children now.

(As a side note, it’s worth pointing out that being gay does not automatically make you part of the LGBTQ movement. My brother in law is openly gay, but he’s also a practicing Latter-day Saint who rejects all of this stuff. His faith is directly at odds with the LGBTQ movement, and he has chosen to keep his faith.)

So now, whenever I read a book with two (or more) characters in an LGBTQ relationship, I can’t help but feel that I’m reading “message” fiction, where the message is ultimately to normalize some other aspect of sexual perversion. Sorry (not sorry), but no thanks.

Instead: More pro-family, pro-natalist, life affirming fiction

So what do I want see instead? More stories with strong, healthy families. Stories about motherhood and fatherhood, that affirm the importance of both parents in raising children. Pro-natalist stories where having children is seen as a good thing, not as destroying the environment or burdening the world with more mouths to feed. In other words, stories that affirm and celebrate the intrinsic value of life—every life.

The one thing that all LGBTQ relationships have in common is that they cannot naturally produce children. Because of this, stories that follow the “all true love is LGBTQ love” tend to be about found families, rather than natural families. Parents are often absent or abusive in these stories, and children are either adopted or non-existant. A significant number of these stories also tend toward the macabre, since affirming the intrinsic value of life ultimately invalidates many of these LGBTQ relationships.

But that’s not why I want more pro-family, pro-natalist, life affirming stories. It isn’t about bashing LGBTQ, but about presenting a vision that stands apart from the LGBTQ movement, and doesn’t kowtow to the activists’ demands. It can even have room for some LGBTQ characters and relationships. Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames is a good example of that, where one of the side characters is monogamously gay, and the protagonist is very much a family man. Another life affirming book I really enjoyed was To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini.

All Christians are Evil or Stupid

This is one you probably don’t notice if you aren’t Christian yourself, but I see it all the time, as do most other Christian readers that I know. If a character in a book or a story is some sort of Christian, then invariably they will turn out to be a villain, or so stupid that they’re less of a help and more of an obstacle to the protagonist. Or an eccentric curiosity.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in the 80s and 90s, there were lots of science fiction novels where the good guys were Christians. But these days, if the Christian character turns out to be a good guy, the author is either indie or a pariah to the rest of the SF&F field, like Larry Correia, John C. Wright, or Orson Scott Card.

Activists like to point out that if a majority of books tend to portray a particular race, gender, or sexuality in a negative light, it’s a sign that the field itself is racist/sexist/etc. They aren’t wrong. Now apply that to how mainstream science fiction and fantasy tends to portray Christians, and you begin to see the problem. There is a ton of anti-Christian bigotry in the culture right now, and it shows when you read most of these books.

Instead: More badass Mormons

So what do I want to see instead? More stories with badass Mormons. I’m only partially joking. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of course I would love to see more books with members of my faith doing awesome and inspiring things, but I’d be happy to see other kinds of Christians too.

Even books with generic Christians as good guys would be nice, but it would be better if something unique about their faith is central to the story. For that, you need to go deeper than a generic approach, so it would be better to make the character a member of a particular church or creed. And even though we Christians have our own theological differences, and sometimes argue quiet passionately over them, I wouldn’t at all mind to read stories with more Catholic main characters, or Evangelical, or even a well-written Jehovah’s Witness.

But personally, I want to see more badass Latter-day Saints.

An Innocently Profane and Vulgar Childhood

This one isn’t quite as prevalent as the other two, at least in the books I’ve read recently. However, it is definitely a common trope, especially in more recent books. Basically, it’s when something profane or vulgar invades a character’s childhood, but that isn’t portrayed as bad or even significant. For example, when there’s a child on the page and the people around them are swearing, or maybe even the children themselves. Or as a child, a character is exposed to something sexual, but it’s not a big deal.

In most of these books, it doesn’t seem like the author is doing it intentionally. But as Jonathan Haidt points out, liberals tend not to value things like purity and innocence as much as conservatives, or even really at all. Since the SF&F field is so thoroughly dominated by leftists, I think they often tend to violate the innocence of childhood without realizing that they’re doing it.

But in some books, it seems like the author is doing it intentionally to make a point: either that innocence itself is an illusion, or that children do better when they aren’t sheltered from the harsh realities of the world (they don’t). Or often, the author just thinks it’s funny to juxtapose childhood innocence with the profane (it isn’t—at least, not to me).

Instead: More noblebright

This isn’t generally a trope that you see in noblebright fiction. Not that noblebright doesn’t wrestle with questions of profanity, vulgarity, and evil, but it does tend to respect the boundaries of childhood innocence. And even after the characters lose their innocence, they still tend to become purified by the events of the story. There is a difference between being innocent and being pure, and a lot of really excellent noblebright stories explore the finer nuances of that difference.

Noblebright isn’t very popular right now, but I hope that will change in the coming years. There are some very good reasons to think that it will. Of course, noblebright can be done poorly, and stories that don’t put their characters into any real peril tend to be boring and unengaging. But it is possible to put children in peril without violating their innocence, or rejecting the concept of innocence to begin with. That is what I want to see.

Quick Update Post

It’s been a while since I posted to this blog. I had planned to keep a regular twice-a-week posting schedule, then went a little more than that for about a month before falling out of the routine.

We just got back home from a family road trip, where we drove out to Omaha and back again, making the Mormon pioneer trek in both directions. It was our first time going on a road trip with the baby, and we had a really fantastic time! Saw Chimney Rock, Independence Rock, Martin’s Cove, Sixth Crossing, Fort Bridger…and then we decided to go straight home, instead of finishing the trek with a tour of Salt Lake City. But that’s only a quick day trip for us, so we’ll probably do that soon.

It was a really awesome road trip, and definitely a good thing to get away and actually vacate for a while. But now that we’re back, I need to pick up some of the balls I’ve dropped and get back into the saddle. Writing is a high priority: I haven’t written hardly anything in the past week. Another big priority is publishing. I was supposed to put out a new short story single last weekend, but decided to put it off until we got back home. So that’s something I’m going to do right away.

I also want to get back into blogging. While on vacation, I DNFed a dozen books, most of them recent Hugo, Nebula, Dragon, and Goodreads Choice nominees. I have a lot of thoughts. Also, the 2022 Dragon Award nominees are out, and I’ve got to be honest, it looks kind of schizophrenic—which is exactly what you would expect to see with rival political tribes battling for control of fandom. But that’s been the case for the Dragons ever since the award’s inception. Again, I have thoughts.

Point is, I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on, but I hope to get back into a good blogging routine before the end of the month. That’s the plan, and it’s not a lack of content that’s the problem: more just a question of routine. Expect to see more here soon.

Do trans people exist?

There’s this video clip currently making the rounds where Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) confronts a crazy-eyed law professor from Berkely and gets called out for, among other things, saying that trans people “don’t exist.” It’s a highly partisan exchange that I’m sure will be used by both sides to rally the base, but it also gets at the fundamental incoherence of the modern LGBTQ+ movement, which I find absolutely fascinating.

First of all, it’s worth examining the accusation that Hawley doesn’t think that trans people “exist.” What exactly does that accusation mean? It can actually mean one (or both) of two things:

  1. The category of “trans” is not (or should not be) a legitimate identity for legal and societal purposes.
  2. People who identify as “trans” should be un-personed and deprived of all their basic human rights.

It’s extremely disingenuous of the professor to conflate those things, because it is entirely possible to believe the former without believing the latter: that is, to believe that “trans” as a category is illegitimate while also acknowledging that people who identify as “trans” are still people and deserving of basic human rights. Also, it’s disingenuous of her to argue that denying “trans” as a category causes people who identify as “trans” to commit suicide, as the suicide rate for transgender people is the same after they transition as it is before they transition. But I digress.

The thing that makes this interesting, at least to me, is that if you follow the professor’s logic to its conclusion, it actually undermines the fundamental premise of the gay rights movement: that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals didn’t choose to be gay, but in fact were “born this way.” Allow me to explain.

At first, the argument was “I didn’t choose to be gay, I was born this way.” Thus the concept of sexual identity was born, with categories for heterosexual, homosexual (gay/lesbian), and bisexual.

Then, the argument was “I’m a man/woman who was born in a woman’s/man’s body.” In other words, that gender and sex are separate things, and it is possible to identify with a gender that is different than your sex. Thus, the concept of gender identity was born, and with it the category of transgender.

At this point, it’s important to point out that the “born this way” argument still held sway. The idea wasn’t that trans people choose to change gender, but that they were, in fact, born in the wrong body. Thus the distinction between sex and gender.

But once the trans category was added to the movement, transforming it into LGBT, that created a major epistemological problem for its members: how do you know which category you belong to? That is, how do you know whether you’re actually a gay man, or really a woman in a man’s body? You can’t be both. You were either born one way, or you were born the other. So which one is it, and how do you know?

This is where the movement began to fall apart, because there is no objective way to tell the difference between gay/lesbian and trans. It’s entirely subjective. And once we allowed that, suddenly we got a bunch of people saying things like:

“What if I feel like a man today, and a woman tomorrow?”

“What if I don’t feel like a man OR a woman?”

“What if I feel like I’m actually a cat, or a wolf?”

“What if I feel like I’m a totally different gender/sexual category that none of y’all have imagined yet?”

And suddenly, just like that, the “born this way” argument was completely undermined, because if gender and sexuality are subjective, then it can be whatever you want it to be. Which is how we got personal bios like this one:

Serah Eley is a software developer and former podcaster who once produced a weekly science fiction podcast called Escape Pod. It’s since gone on to become somewhat successful. She strangely mispronounced her name as Steve Eley at the time; she’s since realized that life is much more fun as a woman, and came out as transgender last year. Serah lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two wives, Alison and Cat.

So if there were ever any betting pools on what happened to Steve: changed sex, joined a committed lesbian love triangle is the dark horse winner. She is, obviously, still Having Fun.

So gender is something you can change on a whim because it’s “more fun”? That doesn’t sound at all like Serah was “born this way.” It sounds a lot more like “reality is whatever I want it to be.”

But if sexuality and gender are all subjective, the entire premise that the movement was originally built upon—that LGBT people are “born this way”—is completely false, and the “born this way” argument is outdated at best, and at worst was a Trojan Horse for the LGBTQ+ agenda from the very beginning.

Either way, by the standards of this Berkeley professor, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals “don’t exist.”

Just like man and woman “don’t exist.”

Just like objective reality doesn’t “exist.”

Because biological sex, “born this way” arguments, and objective reality itself are all fundamentally transphobic.

That’s where you get if you follow the LGBTQ+ logic to its ultimate conclusion. The fundamental premises on which the movement is based are totally incoherent and self-contradictory. It’s remarkable, really, because the language the movement uses is not all that different from the Orwellian doublespeak of 1984.

But hey, I’ve also been reliably informed that reason and logic are all just constructs of white supremacy, so obviously that means that professor crazy-eyes is right and there’s nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.

Reading Resolution Update: June

My 2022 reading resolution: Read or DNF every novel that has won a Hugo or a Nebula award, and acquire all the good ones.

This is the last one of these resolution updates that I’m going to post here on this blog. I’ve only got three books left now: Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold (1989 Nebula), A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1993 Hugo), and Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (1993 Hugo and Nebula). Since I already own all of those, I’ll probably finish reading them by the end of July, and the only other books I need to acquire to finish the resolution are Way Station by Clifford D. Simak (1964 Hugo), Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (2007 Hugo), and Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin (2009 Nebula).

I will, however, do an in-depth study of the final results and post them here. There should be some interesting trends, and hopefully my own reading preferences will provide some useful insights, though really those preferences say more about me than they do about these books. Reading tastes are very subjective, so I’m sure there are a lot of good and brilliant people who love some of these books that I’ve passed on, and vice versa. But maybe sharing my own reading preferences will help others to develop their own, and if that helps to encourage more reading, that would be great.

One of the major insights that I’ve already discovered is that the best predictor that I will not like a book is if it won a Nebula without winning a Hugo. In a post last month, I speculated as to why that may be. I’ve already expanded my Hugo/Nebula award spreadsheet to include all of the nominated books as well, but I’ve blacked out the Nebula nominated books and will probably skip most of them. After all, if there’s something about the Nebula books that rubs me the wrong way, maybe I can get more use from that award by using it as a “do not read” list rather than a recommended reading list.

I’m also branching out to the Dragons and Goodreads Choice award-winning books, starting with the most recent ones and working my way back. The really neat thing about Goodreads Choice is that they post how many votes each top-20 book got in each category, and how many votes were cast in each category overall, so it’s very easy to quantify and rank each book. For example, in the science fiction category, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir won first place in 2021 with 92,831 votes out of 281,584, or a 32.97% plurality. That is the largest plurality that any book has ever won in that category, so either Project Hail Mary is a damned good book, or all the other books really sucked—and I tend to think it’s the former, which is why I’m reading it now.

The Dragons are very different, but I haven’t read enough of them to notice any trends or form any opinions. However, there are some indications that the Dragons are the anti-Hugos/Nebulas, and to some lesser extent the anti-Goodreads Choice Awards, which seem to swing more toward the Hugo/Nebula crowd, even if most of the Hugo and Nebula nominated books only typically get between 5% and <1% of the vote. To gather more data, I’ve decided not to skip any of the Hugo/Nebula books that placed in the Goodreads Choice Award, especially since 2015 when the Sad Puppies schism really shook things up in the science fiction book world. So it will be interesting to see which of these books I think are worth reading and owning, and which ones I think aren’t.

So in short, now that I’ve (just about) read all of the Hugo and Nebula winning books, I’m going to move on to the Hugo (but not Nebula) nominated books, the Dragons, and the Goodreads Choice winners and nominees. But I’m not going to set a deadline, or hold myself to reading all of them. Rather, I’m just going to take it as a starting point, and instead set a goal of 100 pages per day, reading whatever strikes my fancy.

Books that I read and plan to or have already acquired

  • Hyperion by Dan Simmons (1990 Hugo)

Books that I did not finish

  • Startide Rising by David Brin (1984 Hugo and Nebula)
  • The Uplift War by David Brin (1988 Hugo)
  • To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (1999 Hugo)
  • A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge (2000 Hugo)
  • Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear (2001 Nebula)
  • Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke (2005 Hugo)
  • A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark (2022 Nebula)

Searching for a routine

Just a quick update post. My parents came over to visit last week, and we’ve all come down with a mild cold, so our family routine has been more or less up-ended. That’s just the nature of routines, though: they work until they’re inevitably disrupted, at which point you need to reassess and adapt to the new circumstances.

In our case, the big thing we need to adapt to is our two year-old daughter. Currently, I watch her in the morning and my wife watches her in the evening (we both work from home). Which works out pretty nice, especially since she’s just started taking one long nap (usually in the morning) instead of two shorter ones.

I’ll have to talk with Mrs. Vasicek about how we want to adjust our schedules because of that. But before we do that, I suppose I should break down the elements of what I need to accomplish, and figure out how best to do those:

Writing

My daily writing goal is to hit at least 1k new words, and 2.5k words on what I call the daily index. Basically, new words count 1x and words revised or other words (such as what I’m writing now for this blog) count .5x. So I could hit the daily index by writing 2.5k new words in my WIP, or 1k new words and 3k words revised.

It’s a fairly modest goal, but I’ve found it quite challenging to hit it consistently. For that reason, I allow myself one admin day (for doing all the mindless work and/or refilling the creative well) per week, but I really do need to hit those daily writing goals more regularly. And I’ve found through sad experience that the longer I put off doing the writing, the harder it gets to actually do.

So what I really need is to start writing first thing in the morning. If I can get 500 words in before breakfast, that would be fantastic. But the trouble with that is that I’m the one watching the baby while Mrs. Vasicek makes breakfast, and the baby is always—always—super hangry when she wakes up. I know we’re supposed to minimize screen time, but I usually put on something for her to watch to keep her happy. But that’s usually either piano music or Tabernacle Choir, so I suppose I could write on my other monitor while the video plays on the other one. And sometimes I get lucky and the baby wanders off to the kitchen to get a piece of whatever Mommy is cooking. So I could probably fit in some writing that way.

The other obvious time to fit in some writing time is during her nap. I usually need at least a little time to decompress first (putting the baby down can be an ordeal) but if I set a timer, that would probably help keep the down-time from taking up all of naptime. Also, it would probably help if I read a book instead of browsing the internet. Reading is much better for decompressing than vegging out on the latest clickbait trash.

If I can hit 500 words before breakfast and another 500 words during naptime, it should be much easier to hit word count later. The first couple hundred words are always the hardest. After hitting 1k words, it’s surprisingly easy to write another thousand. So getting those words in early is the key.

Publishing

In my experience, there are four kinds of publishing tasks, forming a 2×2 grid:

Takes very little brainspaceTakes a lot of brainspace
Tend to enjoy
Tend to procrastinate

Tasks that require a lot of brainspace are things like writing a blog post, or writing a book description, or responding to fan mail. Tasks that take very little brainspace are things like crunching numbers, typesetting a print book, or submitting books for promotions.

The procrastination angle is a bit more personal. I imagine the kinds of things I tend to procrastinate are very different from the things that other people procrastinate. But the big danger here is that the tasks I actually enjoy will become the excuse for procrastinating something else—like writing. For that reason, I try to limit myself to only 1 hour of publishing tasks per day.

But when is the best time to fit in that hour? If I do it first thing to get it out of the way, there’s a very good chance I’ll just keep working through the timer and end up having an admin day. On the other hand, if I put it off to the end of the day, then writing tends to fill up that space instead—which isn’t terrible, but these publishing tasks do need to get done sometime.

What I probably need to do is set a time in the middle of the day, maybe around 3pm when we start intermittent fasting. That should be late enough not to turn the day into an admin day, but early enough that I still have time and energy. Besides, for me writing isn’t usually a continuous thing: instead, it tends to happen in creative bursts with a little bit of necessary downtime in between. So setting 3pm as the publishing tasks time shouldn’t interrupt my writing time too badly—and if I happen to be in the flow, I’ll just push on to the next stopping point and do publishing tasks then.

I have a pretty good accountability system in place to maximize the productivity of that hour, so I’m not concerned about needing more time or dropping the ball on the important-but-not-urgent tasks. However, I will procrastinate some of those important-but-not-urgent tasks if I’m not mindful enough. So this is probably the best way to handle all that:

Takes very little brainspaceTakes a lot of brainspace
Tend to enjoyLeave for the next admin day.Pay closer attention to the time.
Tend to procrastinateStart first, then listen to podcasts.Plan it out ahead.

Of course, this will change depending on how urgent/important the task is. The mindless enjoyable tasks tend to be neither urgent nor important, but that isn’t always the case. And by “start first, then listen to podcasts,” what I mean is to start it off with a good amount of focus, then switch on a podcast in the background after I’ve hit my stride.

Reading

Reading is something that I enjoy, but it isn’t a mindless activity, so if I’m not careful I’ll end up filling my free time with useless things like playing a phone game. So reading time needs to be scheduled.

My wife and I have found that reading before bed tends to work really well, so long as we don’t put off going to bed. The key to that is to turn off the computer before getting the baby down, which means accomplishing all of my work (including personal stuff) before about 7pm. Also, on the nights when it’s my turn to do the dishes, it helps to do those sometime during the afternoon, to keep the rest of the evening free.

We also do a fair amount of reading in the early morning (theoretically, we wake up at 5am, though we haven’t been as good about that lately), but when the baby gets up, it’s usually time to start the morning routine, so it isn’t good to rely on that time.

I could probably also fit in some reading time while watching the baby. The key here is to cut back on podcasts, which probably would be a lot healthier, considering how many political podcasts I listen to. Also, as I mentioned above, reading would be a great way to decompress after putting the baby down for a nap.

So that’s pretty much what I have in mind: start off each day with writing time, carefully schedule and limit publishing time, and be more deliberate about reading time. Hopefully that works.

Christians: The Most Marginalized and Underrepresented Minority in SF&F (By Design)

So I’m reading The Expanse, and I recently finished the third book in the series, Abaddon’s Gate. Really great book! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lots of action, lots of adventure, and a very optimistic ending, which is not something you see a lot of in science fiction and fantasy these days.

However, there was one small thing that bugged me about one of the major viewpoint characters: Anna, the Christian pastor. To be fair, they played her religious devotion straight, and didn’t just make her a hypocrite or the bad guy—which is another thing we don’t see a lot of in SF&F these days (more on that later). But they also made her a lesbian, and to be honest, yeah, that bugged me.

Why did that bug me? Because most conservative Christians (and most Muslims, by the way) believe that homosexuality is a sin. Not that being attracted to the opposite sex is inherently sinful, but that acting out on those sexual desires is. Of course, there are plenty of liberal churches that do not believe this, but their theology is in conflict with all of mainstream Christian teaching from the time of Christ himself. So by making Anna a lesbian, the authors were basically saying “yeah, she’s a Christian, but she’s not that kind of Christian.”

Not that I blame the authors for doing that. I totally get that they were writing for a mainstream SF&F audience and wanted to be able to bring up theological topics in the story without turning off any non-religious or LGBT readers. By making the religious character a lesbian, they signalled that the character was “safe,” even if she was a Christian.

But it got me to thinking: when was the last time that a mainstream, bestselling book, movie, or series had a devoutly religious Christian main character who 1) is not a villain or anti-hero, 2) is not a hypocrite, and 3) is not LGBT? Kind of like the Bechdel test, except for Christians.

Firefly comes to mind, though that was twenty years ago. Monster Hunter International has a devoutly religious side character—does he get his own book? I haven’t read far enough in the series yet to know. Looking at my bookshelf, I can see A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Speed of Dark, Hyperion, and Folk of the Fringe, but all of those books are old now. The most recent award-winning example I can think of is Eric James Stone’s novelette “That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made” (2010).

I’m having a very hard time thinking of anything published in the last ten years that passes the test. Even with authors like Larry Correia and John C. Wright, those guys have faced tremendous pushback from the left. It really does seem like there is an effort, at least from some quarters to erase good, faithful, conservative Christian characters from SF&F, and to ostracize or marginalize any authors who dare to buck that trend.

It reminds me of a family history podcast from NPR that I checked out once, only to find that the very first episode was about someone finding that two of their ancestors were gay. Laying aside the rather obvious (and hilarious) biological problems with that—adopted family is still family, after all—the implication here was that by making family history LGBT, NPR was making it “safe,” probably for their liberal listeners who have come to associate family history with the Latter-day Saints.

At the same time, we’ve heard a lot in recent years about how important it is to include underrepresented groups in fiction—to make sure that every reader can find characters who “look like them,” or “love like them.” And yet, none of the people championing this cause seem to care whether I can read about characters who “look like me” when it comes to religion. In fact, it seems that the people screaming the loudest about how we need “more diverse books” and more “own voices” are also the loudest in trying to erase and marginalize Christians like me.

So was it really ever about “representation” or “diversity” at all, or was all of that lip service about tolerance and diversity just a Trojan horse from the very beginning? Because here’s the thing: if I as an author don’t include any LGBT, BIPOC, or LMNOP characters in my books, I’ll get slammed by the woke activists for not having enough representation in my books… but if I do include any “marginalized” characters, then I’ll be accused of cultural appropriation. Unless, of course, my book promotes the woke activists’ agenda visavis things like climate change, ESG, gay pride, etc.

“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” said Lavrentiy Beria, one of the most psychopathically evil agents of the Soviet Union. That is exactly the same principle that the woke movement operates on, and unfortunately, that movement has come to dominate the SF&F field (just look at what they did to Mercedes Lackey). So really, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that they don’t apply the same principles of tolerance, diversity, and equal representation to conservative Christians—which are rapidly becoming the most marginalized and underrepresented minority in science fiction and fantasy.

So what is the solution? Honestly, it may just be to smile and turn the other cheek. If we give these people enough rope, they will hang themselves with it. Get woke, go broke. Granted, there are reasons to be worried about ESG, Big Tech, and Amazon’s dominance, but it is still possible to build a resilient author career where you aren’t beholden to all that. The more of us accomplish that, the less power these woke crazies will have over us.

Lash out in kind, bend the knee, or smile and turn the other cheek… definitely the third option is best. It’s what Christians have been doing since the time of the Savior Himself, and is the unique genius of the religion that has allowed it to thrive in the face of so much persecution. But it’s important to keep in mind that turning the other cheek is not the same as bending the knee.

Good Morning Planets

I’ve been following Astronomy Picture of the Day longer than any other blog—since 2006, in fact. Usually, the pictures are okay but not all that memorable. This one, however, is amazing. Planets one through six of our solar system, all captured in one amazing shot. Very well done.

By the way, if you’re looking for something astronomy related that will blow your mind:

Print vs. Ebook vs. Audiobook: When To Own

In last week’s post, I tried to make a comprehensive list of all the pros and cons associated with the various book formats. The purpose of that exercise was to figure out when to acquire a book in print, in audio, in ebook form, or some combination of all three. It’s long been my goal to build a magnificent personal library, and with the upsides (and downsides) of each format in mind, I think I’ve developed some personal guidance toward that end.

For the purpose of this exercise, I think it’s best to consider first what the platonic ideal would be, if money or availability were no object. So assuming that every book is available in every format, at a price that I can afford, this is what I would do.

If a book is worth owning, it’s worth owning in print.

For all the advantages of digital format, print is still better in enough ways that if I’m going to own a book, I want to own it in print. This really comes down to the rule of thumb that if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it. Also, the fact that print books are immutable, more private, and so much easier to share.

However, my calculation would be different if I hadn’t married and settled down. Back when I was a global nomad, ebooks were so much better than print, and even when I was a student my print books were more of a liability than anything. I moved so much in my college years that for most of the time, my books just sat in cardboard boxes under my bed. When I left on my internship, I ended up giving most of them away.

But now that I’ve settled down, print books are definitely the way to go. As for hardbacks vs. trade paperbacks vs. mass-market paperbacks, or used vs. new, I still have to figure that out. Personally, I prefer MMP to the other print formats, but that’s mainly because it’s what I grew up with and because I don’t really care if it gets banged up. For the purpose of building a personal library, the calculus is probably quite different.

If a book is worth rereading, it’s best to have a digital copy too.

There are a lot of reasons to own a book even if you’re probably not going to reread it—for example, if you want to share it with your friends, or display it prominently on your shelf. But if money were no object, I would want to own at least one digital format of every book I plan to reread. That way, if something happens to the print copy, I have another one to fall back on.

More than that, though, I think it would be interesting to change up the reading experience by rereading it in another format. Does a book hold up in audio as much as it does in print? How about ebook? Maybe it would be fun to see which passages other people have highlighted and shared the most.

Also, if I’m planning to reread a book at the same time as my wife or my friends are reading it, it would be great to have a digital copy so that they can borrow the print one. Or maybe they get the digital copy, and I keep the print one.

For all these reasons, multiple formats seems like the way to go, provided that money is no object. But then, the question becomes whether to get the ebook, the audiobook or both? To figure that out, here are the questions I need to ask:

Do I want to find and share my favorite passages?

One of the biggest advantages of ebooks that make that format unique is that the text of an ebook is searchable. That is no small thing for the kind of books that I want to go back through and pick out certain passages. Print books are better for flipping through, but they aren’t text-searchable in the way that ebooks are.

Another unique advantage of ebooks is that you can share passages that stick out to you, or see what passages other people have highlighted and shared. So if it’s the kind of book that I want to go back and think about, or reread certain passages in greater depth, the best digital format for that is probably ebook.

Do I want to read it quickly, without too much depth?

The biggest advantage of audiobooks is that your eyeballs can be elsewhere while you read. So with audiobooks, you can fit more reading time into the interstitial parts of your day, like commuting or doing chores, but it comes at a tradeoff because you’re not going to be concentrating all that much.

However, that probably won’t be as much of a problem on a reread, since you’re already familiar with the story. But it will be a different reading experience, one where your attention is not as concentrated. For that reason, I lean more toward owning a book in audiobook if it’s the kind of think I want to reread for enjoyment, not for depth.

But I can’t buy it all!

Okay, so all of this is great if money is no object, but few if any of us live in that world. I certainly don’t, and some of these formats—especially the audiobooks—can get to be quite expensive. So, what’s the best thing to do?

Since I tend to be more of a spreadsheet guy, my solution is to make a list of all the books I want to own, in each format. Some of these books will end up on various wishlists, and will probably come my way as gifts. For others, I just need to keep an eye out for good deals—it’s surprising how many excellent books come through the local thrift stores, some of them in rare or signed copies.

But the key here is patience. If you’re time-rich and money-poor, learn how to wait and keep an eye out for good deals. Books tend to come and go, just like so many other things in life.

So that’s how I plan to acquire books going forward. What about you? What’s your personal guidance on when to own a book?