Thoughts and Reflections – Page 8 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Do we even exist?

I subscribe to just about every science fiction and fantasy podcast, both the pro-zines and the semipro-zines, and on Saturdays I listen to all of the episodes from the last week while making waffles or doing chores. Since there’s usually about a dozen stories to listen to, and I rarely have the time to get through them all, I’m not shy about skipping a story when it becomes too boring, or too graphic, or too preachy, or if the sound quality is too poor.

Today, while listening to episode #36A of Uncanny Magazine, one of the editors started it off with this:

Well, Lynn, summer’s nearly done… it went into a, um, sad chasm of hopelessness and pandemic. Yay! I hope everyone out there is doing okay and holding on best they can, um, you know, there’s, it seems to be pretty much daily bad news or troubling news, but, you know, we are still fighting back, you know, make sure that you are registered to vote and you can go vote if you can in America and hopefully some things will improve once we change this regime into actual reasonable humans, so…

At this point, I rolled my eyes and skipped the episode. It really is insufferable when these crunchy progressive types bring their politics into everything that they try to create.

But it got me thinking: I don’t always hate it when people bring their politics into their fiction. In fact, I listened to an episode of Clarkesworld soon after this one that had some very alarmist undertones about climate change, but I listened to the end and thought it was a very good story. And I don’t think the editor who went off about the election was trying to gaslight his audience, or being at all insincere. So what was it about the episode of Uncanny that really turned me off?

(It’s an especially relevant question, because I recognize completely that I have a tendency to be that guy. I don’t always try to inject my politics into everything, but it does tend to come on strongly when I do, which is one of the reason why I’ve turned this blog into a place to discuss politics: so that I can get it out in a place where the people who want to read it can find it, and keep it out of my other reader-facing activities, so that the people who don’t want to read this stuff don’t have to.)

After thinking about it some more, I realized that the thing that got to me was how the comment from this editor deliberately failed to acknowledge that people like me exist. Both of my parents are Democrats. I voted for Obama in 2008. By the end of his second term, I vowed never to vote for another Democrat again. In 2016, I voted third party because I didn’t think Trump was fit to be president. But since then, I’ve come to realize that I misjudged the man, and that his enemies in politics and the news media are so batshit fucking insane that they are going to burn this country to the ground unless Trump wins in a landslide in November (and even then, I’m not so sure they won’t burn it all down anyway).

I recognize that there are good and reasonable people who disagree with me, but here’s the thing… I recognize that there are good and reasonable people who disagree with me. Does this editor? Apparently not.

And here’s another thing: even if Trump is the second coming of Hitler, there were good and reasonable people in Weimar Germany who were deceived by the Nazi propaganda machine into believing that Hitler was their only hope. The people at the time who recognized this, like Bonhoeffer and Sebastian Haffner, didn’t just dismiss their fellow countrymen. On the contrary: they were not afraid to make a deep and honest inquiry to understand exactly how Hitler and the Nazis came to power. Have these crunchy progressive types made such a deep and honest inquiry? The vast majority have not.

But it’s not just people like me that these Trump-deranged people aren’t willing to acknowledge. They often fail to acknowledge reality itself. How often have you heard them say “mostly peaceful protests?” How often have you heard them claim that Antifa doesn’t exist? Or here’s a good one that I’ve recently started to hear: there is no such thing as cancel culture, and no one can point to a single person who has been successfully canceled. I suppose the book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is just a figment of my imagination—that, or Jon Ronson is a white supremacist. Probably both.

And that’s when I realized that it isn’t the politics that turns me off. It’s the gaslighting.

I’m actually just fine with listening to people whose politics differ from my own, so long as they acknowledge the good and reasonable people like me who disagree with them. That’s why I have no problem listening to Tim Pool, or Joe Rogan, or Eric Weinstein. I’m hungry for it, even, because I recognize that so many of my other news sources skew so far to the right.

The conventional wisdom says that you shouldn’t ever discuss politics if you want to have a writing career. But I don’t think that’s precise enough. Rather, I think that you should never do anything to alienate your audience. That may mean avoiding politics, if that’s not what they’ve come for, but science fiction is the genre of ideas, including political ideas. We never would have had 1984 or Animal Farm if George Orwell had kept to the conventional wisdom about not discussing politics.

I’m sure that there are readers out there who are so disgusted with my politics that they’ll never buy any of my books after discovering this blog. But are they my audience? Probably not. Then again, there are other readers who probably disagree very strongly with my politics—readers like me and Uncanny Magazine—who are still willing to read my books, so long as I don’t alienate them by pretending they don’t exist.

On the other hand, I’m sure I have other readers like me who are sick and tired of all the gaslighting from the left, and are hungry for stories that push back against the reality-denying political narratives that currently dominate the field. They may be able to tolerate fiction that doesn’t take a side either way, but what they’re really hungry for are stories that tell them “no, you’re not the crazy one.”

At the very least, we want stories that acknowledge that we exist.

Marxism is the new Black

The 21st century disciples of Karl Marx have a problem: all of Marx’s theories have been debunked, and all of his predictions have failed.

The workers of the world never rose up.

Capitalism never gave way to communism.

The class wars ended because extreme poverty ceased to be a global issue.

The labor theory of value was slain by the free market.

Materialism, not religion, proved to be the opiate of the masses.

So what’s a Marxist gotta do?

In the 00s and 10s, the Marxists made a subtle but insidious change to their ideology. They created a bunch of victim groups, and invented a thing called “intersectionality” to determine who was the greatest victim based on how many victim groups they could claim. Anyone who ranked too low on the victimhood scale was deemed “priviledged” and an “oppressor.” In this way, the Marxists created a new opressor class, and transposed their whole ideology onto the framework of identity politics.

Their greatest success came on the issue of race. The Democratic Party—the party of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan—had, through government handouts and welfare programs, created a dependent black underclass. In 100 years, these policies had done what 250 years of slavery could not: destroy the black family. With their families thus shattered, their communities fell apart, and the members of this black underclass found themselves trapped in a multi-generational cycle of poverty and violence.

Marxist ideology depends on envy and resentment in order to survive. That’s why it found such fertile ground in this dependent black underclass. But there was a problem: race relations in the United States were getting better, racism was on the decline, and through hard work and self-reliance (both of which are anathema to Marxism) an increasing number of black Americans were escaping the Democrat plantations. In fact, things had gotten so good that the United States had just elected their first black president.

So the Marxists spun a new narrative, calculated to foster as much envy and resentment as possible. They told the black underclass that all of their problems are due to racism, that all white people are racist against them, and that no matter what they do, they will never be able to get ahead—because racism. They sowed fear and dischord between blacks and the police, proclaiming falsely that the police were killing blacks in disproportionately large numbers. And when blacks who had climbed out of the underclass rose up to challenge this new narrative, the Marxists derided them as “Uncle Toms” or “not black enough.”

At the same time, the Marxists told white Americans that they were all guilty of “privilege” and “systemic racism.” They turned white supremacy into a boogeyman that was under every bed. They used hate speech to silence free speech, and replaced real justice with social justice. They forced us to hire them as diversity directors, and used Maoist struggle sessions to force us to confess our “white fragility.” Those who dared to challenge the intersectional narrative were fired from their jobs, removed from the internet and social media, and otherwise driven into the wilderness. The ensuing fear of cancel culture kept everyone else in line.

Which brings us to the Coronapocalypse.

Marxists work on a four-step playbook to subvert the societies that they want to control. The first step is demoralization, and it takes about a generation. The second step is destabilization, and it takes about 10-15 years. However, the third and fourth steps—crisis and normalization—happen very quickly.

If there’s one good thing about this global pandemic, it’s that the ideological masks are coming off even as the n95 and face masks are coming on. Whether or not the virus itself was engineered, the Marxists certainly aren’t letting this crisis go to waste. They see an opportunity to get everything they want, and they are doing all they can to seize it, setting our cities on fire and leaving hundreds of dead black Americans in their wake.

At this point, I can only see one way to defeat the Marxists, and that is for black America to rise up and reject this new narrative. It has to be the blacks, because it is their story that has been hijacked by the toxic Marxist ideology, and they need to take it back. No one else can do it for them. In the 20th century, the rallying cry was “we shall overcome;” in the 21st century, it needs to be “we already overcame.” Otherwise, I think we may see the fall of the republic and the end of the American experiment, which is exactly what the Marxists want.

It would make me profoundly sad if the American story turned out to be a tragedy, but such could very well be the case. If the American Revolution was the beginning, then the seeds for America’s collapse were sown in the patriots’ failure to reject slavery. The first civil war was the end of the beginning, Woodrow Wilson was the beginning of the end, and if black America fails to stand up for the republic, the tragedy will come full circle and the Marxists will win.

But what makes this so insidious is that the new Marxism is far more racist than anything else this country has ever seen. Under segregation and Jim Crow, blacks still had a place in society. They were treated as second class citizens, but they still had a place. Even under slavery, blacks were generally praised for being loyal and hard-working. But within the intersectional narrative, there is no place for “whiteness.” If “people of color” are the new proletariat, then whites are the new capitalists and need to be purged for the crime of being white.

That is why, in true Orwellian fashion, they had to change the dictionary definition of “racism.” The most racist people in American history are now in the streets chanting “black lives matter!” and attacking—sometimes even killing—those who dare to say that all lives matter. And when you try to point out that all black lives matter, they reject that as well, because at the end of the day, it isn’t about black lives at all. It’s about ideology.

War is peace.

Freedom is slavery.

Ignorance is strength.

Marxism is the new black.

What have we learned from the BLM riots?

The driving forces of Antifa, the BLM movement itself, and most of the violence on the ground are far-left Marxists who seek to bring a Bolshevik-style revolution to the United States. Having failed to start a class war in the most prosperous country in the world, they are now substituting race for class in their Marxist ideological framework and are seeking to divide the country along racial lines.
A majority of Americans are being exploited as useful idiots by these Marxist revolutionaries. We can see this from the popularity of the BLM movement and the fact that most of the public discourse revolves around racism, both real and perceived. These riots are not actually about racism; rather, they are exploiting the issue of racism to achieve their radical revolutionary ends.
The Democratic Party establishment still believes that they can control the far-left radicals within their party, and use them to achieve their political ends. They see political violence as a dial to be turned up and down, rather than a switch to be turned on and off.
The driving imperative of the Democratic Party establishment is the removal of President Trump, through any and all possible means. It is not an accident that all of the violence is happening in Democrat-controlled areas. They have demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice the lives and property of the people they represent to achieve their political ends, and we must assume that they would destroy the United States itself rather than allow Trump to remain in power.
The mainstream legacy news media, including CNN, MSBNC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and NPR are nothing less than the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party establishment. We must assume that they are engaged in a massive psychological operation against the American people, and pay just as much attention to the news they refuse to cover as the way they cover the news.
The big tech companies of Silicon Valley have aligned themselves with the radical left wing of the Democratic Party, and are actively pushing the agenda of the Marxist revolutionaries. We must assume that no digital space controlled by big tech is safe for those who oppose this Marxist agenda, especially on social media.
At this point, the primary target of the Marxist revolutionaries is our history. The movement to tear down statues has nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with erasing our American history and heritage. We must assume that this will be followed up aggressively in the digital space by the Silicon Valley tech companies, as we are already witnessing the digital equivalent of book burning.
If we assume that the Marxist revolutionaries are operating according to the four-step subversion process described by Yuri Bezmenov, we have completed the demoralization and destabilization phases and have entered the crisis phase. This means that the violence will likely get worse between now and the November elections.
At this point, the primary battlegrounds in this uprising are the Democrat-controlled parts of the country. If you live in a blue state or city, now is the time for you to implement your bug-out plan.
As the revolution spreads across the country, violence will spread into purple and red areas as well. If you live in a red state or city, you should be prepared for a lengthy bug-in scenario.
The Millenial generation is lost. Once the demoralization and destabilization phases of subversion are complete, the only way to reverse it is to raise up the next generation outside of the subversive influence. Marxist ideology has infected every aspect of American society, and will take several decades to remove.
For this reason, it is absolutely imperative to preserve our history with physical documents and artifacts that cannot be digitally erased. If we lose our history, we lose our country.
Violence and chaos only plays into the Marxists’ hands. The only way to defeat them is through non-violence. We must push back against all of the forces seeking to divide us by uniting as Americans, regardless of color or race.
E Pluribus Unum. United we stand, divided we fall.

Do Black Lives Actually Matter?

Ever since the brutal death of George Floyd at the hands of the police, the Black Lives Matter movement has seen a dramatic resurgence, both on social media and on the American street. The movement’s titular message declares that America needs to place more value on the lives of its black citizens and no longer treat them as cheap or expendable.

On its face, the message is a good one. And the rejoinder “yes, but all lives matter” is not the correct response, because it implies that the challenges black Americans face are no different than the challenges that all Americans face. That is not true. Many of our nation’s black communities are in a state of crisis, with rampant crime, chronic poverty, and other systemic problems.

Do I believe that black lives matter? Yes, I certainly do. I also understand the need to emphasize that black lives matter, and applaud it.

But do black lives actually matter to the movement itself?

What about black police and law enforcement officers? They put their lives on the line every day to serve and protect their communities. Do their lives matter too?

What about black victims of black crime? In the last two weeks since the protests and riots began, the murder rate in cities like Chicago has skyrocketed. Because of the Ferguson Effect, more blacks are being murdered, not less. Do their lives matter too?

What about the tens of thousands of black lives that are aborted every year? The abortion rate among blacks is disproportionately high. In Manhattan, more black babies are aborted than born. Do those black lives matter?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that the majority of supporters of Black Lives Matter genuinely have the best interests of black Americans at heart. But when you look at what the movement actually stands for, there are some glaring inconsistencies. For example, Black Lives Matter officially endorses the disruption of the traditional nuclear family. Yet according to black activists like Candace Owens and Larry Elder, the root cause of many of the problems in the black community is black fatherlessness:

If black fatherlessness is the root cause of so many of the problems in the black community, why does Black Lives Matter want to destroy the family?

If black-on-black crime is far too high, why does Black Lives Matter want to abolish the police?

If black babies are aborted at a disproportionately high rate, why is Black Lives Matter funneling donations to the party that advocates for abortion on demand up to (and even after) the point of birth?

Because black lives don’t actually matter to these people.

At best, Black Lives Matter is exploiting the issue of race to promote a far-left political agenda. At worst, it is a revolutionary Marxist front-group. Is it any wonder that they want to abolish the police? Why else would the movement be spreading internationally?

The message that black lives matter is a good one, and a lot of well-meaning people support it. Unfortunately, Black Lives Matter doesn’t believe their own message. They are manipulating us like useful idiots to achieve, through violence, their radical political ends.

And if they succeed, black Americans will be harmed the most.

Speaking Out Again

Hello there.

It’s been a very long time since I posted on this blog. I wonder if anyone is still following it. About a year ago, I pivoted from the blog to my newsletter, and while that’s going well, this blog has been mostly neglected.

And it would have continued that way, if not for recent events. I’m talking, of course, about the ~~peaceful protests~~ ~~race riots~~ ~~Marxist insurrection~~ ~~domestic color revolution~~ whatever the hell is happening in the United States right now. But the thing that really pushed me to action was Kris Rusch’s latest business post: Speaking Out.

Until that post, Kris was one of the people I admired most in the publishing industry. I’ve followed her business blog since 2010, and she was one of the most influential people in convincing me to take the plunge and self-publish. It’s been one of the best decisions of my life, not just from a career perspective, but from a personal perspective as well.

In her latest post, however, I feel that Kris went over the cliff with the rest of our fractured country. Here are the parts that got to me:

The letter [Jeff Bezos] posted on his Instagram page from some racist named “Dave” (last name redacted) told Bezos he would lose customers if he continued supporting Black Lives Matter. The letter is breathtaking in its racism…
…the people who bother me the most are the folks who, for economic or political reasons, can ignore the racism and hatred that spews daily from the White House…
I draw the line at hatred, racism, and bigotry in all its forms. I can’t respect a bigot. I don’t want to be near a racist…
If this post makes you feel the urge to write me a screed or tell me that I should tolerate the bigots for the sake of unity, please do me a favor and just leave.

What is a “racist”? What is a “bigot”? To the left-wing ideologues who control the cultural narrative right now, it’s anyone who dares to oppose their radical agenda. The mayor of Minneapolis is “racist” because he won’t abolish the police, in the midst of the most violent and destructive riots that city has ever seen. White people who refuse to literally kneel before people of color and denounce their white privilege in communist-style struggle sessions are now considered “bigots.” Anyone who dares to utter any sort of criticism or counter-argument to the narrative of Black Lives Matter is fired, canceled, humiliated, doxxed, and destroyed.

Does Kris not see this? When you are so ideologically possessed that a “bigot” is anyone who refuses to (literally) kowtow to your ideology, a tolerant and diverse society becomes impossible? When speech is violence and violence is speech, violence will be used to silence speech. Those who are kind to the cruel inevitably become cruel to the kind.

I tried to post a comment on her blog, explaining that some of these “bigots” who have unfollowed her or withdrawn their Patreon support aren’t doing it because they want to “silence” her, but because they feel she doesn’t recognize that they have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with her, and aren’t the bigots she thinks they are. Yes, Kris, it’s important to speak out, but it’s also important to listen.

What happened next was all too predictable. On a blog post about the importance of speaking up, Kris silenced me. The only comments that she has allowed are the ones that fawn over her and tell her she’s right. Typical.

I can endure a lot of bullshit, but two things I absolutely cannot abide: gaslighting and hypocrisy. So ultimately, it was this episode with Kris, a person I used to admire and respect, that spurred me into action.

This blog is going to become a lot more active in the coming weeks and months. The newsletter will still be my main vehicle for reaching out to readers and cultivating fans, but the blog will be a place to share my more controversial thoughts and opinions. That said, I intend to be very deliberate and conscientious about what I post here, and avoid shitposting, spewing outrage, or going off on political rants.

My working assumption is that the chaos engulfing our country will continue to escalate through the 20’s, and that things will get much, much worse before they get better. We may see an American holocaust. We may see American gulags. We are already experiencing the digital ghettoization of libertarian and conservative voices—or, more accurately, voices that refuse to conform to the cultural and ideological narrative of the progressive left.

That said, I am still optimistic about the future. I believe that after the chaos and violence plays itself out, we will return to the core values that make us Americans. The Republic will survive. Liberty will prevail. Enough of us will refuse to go over the cliff with everyone else that we will, when all of this is over, restore our country.

When that happens, the only people with any moral authority will be the ones who refused to bend the knee—the ones who had the courage to speak out at the risk of losing their careers, their livelihoods, and in some cases even their lives. People like Jordan Peterson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Carl “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin, and others who stand in the face of cancel culture to call out the lies—the gaslighting and hypocrisy—and serve the truth.

This is my mission statement for my writing career:

To serve the truth and empower my readers to be better people for reading my books.

I cannot remain silent and accomplish this mission. The forces that push us to bend the knee are the ones that compel us to speak out, because we must speak out if we refuse to go over the cliff with the rest of humanity.

I recognize that this is essentially the same argument that Kris was making. And on this point, I think she’s right. Where she goes off is in calling anyone a bigot who falls outside of her narrow echo chamber. I despise echo chambers and don’t intend to fall into any of them.

So I’m going to set some rules.

First, I’m going to assume that anyone who engages with this content is a reasonable person who has come in good faith, no matter their views. No matter how vociferously you disagree with me, I will always strive to see the best in you, and to be generous with the benefit of the doubt.

Second, I’m going to assume that most of my fans and readers are going to disagree, on some level, with the more controversial things that I post here. Some of them will agree and voice support, but others will roll their eyes and click away. I’m not going to fall into the trap of thinking that all good people see the world the way that I do, because that way lies madness.

Third, and most importantly, I’m going to bet that if I keep the first two assumptions on the forefront of my mind with everything that I post here, my readers and fans will stay with me even when I share an opinion with which they vociferously disagree. In today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere, that’s a very dangerous assumption to make, but I don’t think my readers are the kind of people who would jump off the cliff with the rest of humanity.

I think there’s still a majority in this country who see the insanity for what it is, but don’t know what to do about it. That’s the person I’m writing this blog for: the one who’s wondering if they’re the only sane one in a world gone mad. Until just a couple of years ago, that was who I was. But now, I believe that even with all the craziness right now, there are a lot more people like us than we realize.

So yeah, the blog is back, and it’s going to get spicy. I may lose a few readers because of it, though hopefully not too many as I keep to the three rules that I listed above.

And if you have any thoughts or reactions, I’m interested to hear from you! Like I said at the start of this post, I have no idea if anyone still follows this blog, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough. The newsletter will remain my main focus, but I’ll post to this blog as often as the spirit moves me, which may be sporadic but won’t be never. And I’ll try to keep it as timely and interesting as I can.

2020-02-20 Newsletter Author’s Note: Thoughts on the History and Future of Science Fiction (Part 1)

This author’s note originally appeared in the February 20th edition of my newsletter. To sign up for my author newsletter, click here.

One of the projects I hope to get to someday is to make a podcast on the history of science fiction. I’m a huge fan of podcasts, and subscribe to almost 100 of them, and some of my favorites are history podcasts like Hardcore History, History of Rome, Revolutions, The Cold War: What We Saw, etc. At this point in my life, I don’t think it’s the right time to get into podcasting, but at some point in the next few years I’d really like to try my hand at it.

I have thought a lot about what this History of Science Fiction podcast would look like, though, and it’s led to some interesting thoughts about the future direction of the genre. Let me explain.

Modern science fiction began with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which laid the groundwork for just about everything else. Authors like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells picked up the torch, launching “scientific romance” as its own literary genre. Many of the conventions and tropes of science fiction were set during this era, which lasted from the 1820s through the early 1900s.

The next major era of science fiction was the era of the pulps, which experienced its heyday in the 1920s and 30s. The publishing innovations that had made the penny dreadfuls possible only a generation earlier now led to a proliferation of novels and short story magazines, opening up all sorts of opportunities for new writers.

This was the era of bug-eyed aliens and scantily-clothed damsels in distress, as frequently displayed in the cover art. Science fiction, mystery, western, adventure, and true crime stories were all mashed up together. Major names from this era include Edgar Rice Burroughs and Hugo Gernsback, who coined the term “scientifiction” to distinguish the stories that would later be called under the name “science fiction.”

The pulps laid the groundwork for the golden age, which lasted through the 40s and 50s. It was greatly influenced by John Campbell’s tenure as editor of Astounding Science Fiction, and the authors that he mentored. This was when science fiction really came into its own. Major authors from this era include Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, George Orwell, and Ray Bradbury.

The next major era was the New Wave, when authors like Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Frank Herbert, and Phillip K. Dick broke out of the conventions established by Campbell and other golden age figures, experimenting with new styles and creating new tropes. This was when we began to distinguish between “hard” science fiction that revolved around the hard sciences like physics and math, and “soft” science fiction that revolved instead around things like political science and social studies. The political radicalism of the 60s and 70s also influenced the science fiction of this era.

At this point, most histories of science fiction point to an era called “cyberpunk” or “the digital age,” which emerged in the 80s and defines the period that we’re currently living through. However, I don’t think this is correct. Instead, I think that literary science fiction went through a dark age from the mid-80s to the late 00s, and only recently began to emerge from it. Let me explain.

In film, TV, and video games, the 80s and 90s were a golden age. For books, however, it was exactly the opposite. The rise of the big box stores like Borders and Barnes & Noble drove independent booksellers out of business, which caused many local distribution companies to collapse. This, in turn, led to a period of mergers and consolidation within the publishing industry, giving rise to the “big six”: Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, Random House, and Simon & Schuster.

At the same time, the rise of the internet led to a massive and precipitous decline across newspapers and periodicals, including traditional short story magazines such as Analog and Asimov’s. Most of the science fiction magazines folded, unable to adapt their business models to the changing world. This would later change as podcasting and crowdfunding, but before those innovations would later revolutionize the industry, many considered short stories to be dead.

The effect of all of this was that literary science fiction entered a period of managed (and sometimes catastrophic) decline. As the publishing houses merged and consolidated, their offices all moved to New York City in order to pool talent and resources into one geographic center. However, this also led to problems like groupthink as publishing fell in an echo chamber.

Science fiction began to balkanize. The proliferation of cyberpunk, steampunk, deiselpunk, biopunk, and all the other _____punk subgenres is emblematic of this. Furthermore, as all of the major editors became caught up in the echo chambers of progressive, blue-state politics, they increasingly overlooked red state authors from “flyover country.” Baen, whose offices are in North Carolina, has never suffered from this, but Tor and the other New York publishers really have.

I think Orson Scott Card really bookends this period. In the 80s, he was the first author to win the Hugo and the Nebula in the same year. In the 00s, he was all but excommunicated from the canon for his allegedly homophobic views. Science fiction had transformed from the big tent genre of the 50s, 60s, and 70s to something so balkanized, elitist, and radical that “wrongthink” had unironically become a crime in the very genre that had invented the term.

And then indie publishing happened.

This author’s note is getting long, and there are other things (including writing) that I have to do today, so I’ll have to end on that note. I’ll follow up in my next newsletter with my thoughts on current trends in the science fiction genre, and where we’re heading from here. I think the 20s will see some massive creative destruction, but ultimately I’m hopeful that the best is yet to come. The dark age is over, and there’s never been a better time to be a reader—or a writer!

2020-02-06 Newsletter Author’s Note

This author’s note originally appeared in the February 6th edition of my email newsletter. To sign up for my newsletter, click here.

It has been an eventful week in American politics. Impeachment, State of the Union, Iowa Caucuses… don’t worry, I’m not going to go off on a rant about politics (much as I’m tempted to do so). I recognize that of the three main factions that exist in the United States—Team Red, Team Blue, and Team “I don’t want to talk about politics”—the vast majority of my readers belong to the latter. That probably includes you.

I wonder sometimes about the rest of the science fiction community, though. I read Locus Magazine each month, and while I think the editors generally do a good job of allowing all their contributors to offer their own views, you can hardly turn the page sometimes without an underhanded jab or a snide remark at the people on Team Red. Most of the time, they don’t seem to even realize that they’re doing it.

Does the science fiction genre rightly belong to the people who hold the “correct” political views? Should it? I don’t think so. If science fiction is truly the genre of ideas, then there needs to be a place in the genre for all ideas, even the really bad ones. Why? Because eventually, the people who decide which ideas are good or bad will be the absolute worst people to do so, if we give them that power.

That’s why I still read Locus Magazine, and why I’m still subscribed to all the SF&F short story podcasts (even if I don’t always listen to them). There was a real stinker of a story by N.K. Jemisin on Lightspeed last month: a barely disguised political screed arguing that tolerance is not enough, that free speech shouldn’t be a right, and that “some people are just fucking evil.” I didn’t finish that one. However, Lightspeed has put out some really tremendous stories in the past, and I’m sure they will again in the future.

Is this a frustration that you’ve had with some of the other authors you read? Do you ever feel that they, like many of our politicians, just aren’t listening to you? I think the main reason for all of the outrage in our politics these days is that everyone wants to talk and no one wants to listen. From what I can tell, that’s not just true in the United States, but in Europe, the United Kingdom, France, Hong Kong—pretty much everywhere else as well.

When I was in the Boy Scouts, I did a team-building ropes course during summer camp one year. One of the obstacles took us forever because everyone was screaming at everyone else, telling them what to do. For the next obstacle, our coach told us that the only people who could speak were the ones who had said nothing in the previous obstacle. I thought that we were going to fail. Instead, the quiet kids figured it out faster than any of the rest of us, and with their direction we were able to finish the course faster than I thought possible.

That experience taught me that it’s just as important to listen as it is to speak. Often, even more so. One of the reasons I deleted my social media was because I felt that I was becoming addicted to hearing myself speak, and consciously or not, surrounding myself with people who enabled that addiction.

If science fiction is truly the genre of ideas, then the best way to defeat the bad ideas isn’t to silence or cancel them, but to push them out with better ideas. As for the people who are “just fucking evil,” the best way to deal with that is to take a good, hard look in the mirror. That’s what I try to do. I just wish our politicians would do the same.

2020-01-23 Newsletter Author’s Note

This author’s note originally appeared in the January 23rd edition of my email newsletter. To sign up for my newsletter, click here.

Every week, when I sit down to write the author’s note for this newsletter, I try to come up with something that you’ll find genuinely interesting or insightful. I don’t want to talk about myself too much, since that tends to get boring rather quickly, and I also don’t want to talk too much about writing, since for non-writers that also tends to get boring. Most of my fans probably aren’t professional writers, and those of my colleagues who do subscribe to this newsletter probably just want to keep tabs on what I’m doing and aren’t themselves fans (except for you, J.R. Handley).

Then again, since you’re someone who 1. actually opens the newsletter, and 2. bothers to actually read it, you probably do have some interest in both me and my writing. So I hope you’ll indulge me, because the thing that’s on my mind this week has to do with a couple of blog posts I read by Kristine Katherine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith.

I have tremendous respect for Kris and Dean. Their opinions on writing and publishing had a huge impact on my decision to jump into indie publishing nearly nine years ago. That said, their advice has been a mixed bag: some of it ranks among the best writing and publishing advice I’ve heard, but some of it has sent me down the wrong path, sometimes for years.

On Wednesday, Dean wrote a blog post where he explained his big secret:

It actually boils down to one simple thing… I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. Or of my writing, or methods of writing.
I just flat don’t care.

In other words, the grand key to understanding all of Dean’s writing and publishing advice is this: don’t give a damn about anything else except having fun.

All of a sudden, everything began to fall into place; both his good advice (don’t let agents scam you, trust your own voice, don’t let writing groups boss you around, don’t devalue your work) and his bad advice (never revise anything, never read reviews, do all of your own covers, write everything quickly, don’t outline anything, don’t actively promote your books). It all comes down to his core philosophy of not giving a damn.

But is that really the best approach?

Dean’s advice is very good for writing a certain kind of book. But the kind of books that I want to write are the ones that I like to read: books that really stick with you, either because they get you to think deeply about something, or feel deeply about something in a way you’ve never felt before. And I may be wrong, but Deans approach of not giving a damn seems like a terrible way to write those books.

Another thing that Dean always talks about is “critical voice.” Basically, all writers have two voices in their head: one that understands story and makes you want to write, and the “critical voice” that tells you what’s wrong with everything and makes you want to give up writing forever. Maybe he’s right about that. But does it necessarily follow that the only way to write anything is to get your critical voice to shut up?

For the last few years, I’ve been developing a new method for outlining my books. I used to think that outlining is terrible because it takes all the fun out of writing—in other words, exactly what Dean says. Instead, outlining helps me to keep my “critical voice” in check, because when something is broken the outline helps me to see where the problem is, and how to fix it. It also helps me to eat the proverbial elephant one small bite at a time.

Is there a useful place for “critical voice” in the writing process? Can giving a damn actually be the key to writing a better book, or making writing fun again?

This past week, I was writing a new scene in Star Wanderers from Noemi’s point of view. It takes place during the events of Fidelity and Benefactor, when Mariya’s father loses his job and the family doesn’t know what they’re going to do. It felt like a slog until I realized that the conversation between these two characters, Mariya and Noemi, offered a really interesting chance to explore questions of faith, doubt, and the problem of evil. Suddenly, the scene really came alive for me, and the key was asking myself “what can I offer my readers here? What will they take away from this?” In other words, giving a damn actually made the writing more fun, not less.

A few weeks ago, Kris wrote a really interesting blog post where among other things she said:

If a writer isn’t afraid of what she’s writing, then she’s doing it wrong because she’s not stretching herself. You should always reach just a bit, go a place you haven’t gone before.

I like that. And if I didn’t actually care about what you or others thought—if it was all about myself and “having fun”—I don’t think I’d ever really stretch myself as a writer. Or perhaps I would, but not in the right way. I’d be like one of those bodybuilders, with massive pecks and teeny tiny legs.

All of which is to say that I think I finally understand now why Dean Wesley Smith’s writing and publishing advice is so hit-or-miss. And also, that I understand a little better how to write the kind of books that made me want to write in the first place.

2020-01-16 Newsletter Author’s Note

This author’s note originally appeared in the January 16th edition of my email newsletter. To sign up for my newsletter, click here.

For my birthday last year, Mrs. Vasicek got me the first three books in the Dune series by Frank Herbert. I looove the new cover art, which is mostly why I wanted them, but I’ve only ever read the first book. Since the other books are on our shelves now, I pretty much have to read them, but it’s been years since the last time I read it.

So that’s why I’m reading Dune for the third time, and wow, it is so much better than I remembered. Part of that is because there is so much going on that you have to reread it two or three times just to get it all. The first time I read Dune, I thought it was okay but not all that great—certainly not on par with Lord of the Rings, which everyone compares it to. In reality, though, most of the story went right over my head. I read it again a couple of years later, after catching up on some of the lore, and that time I was much better able to appreciate it.

My own book Desert Stars takes place on a desert planet in a far distant future, but that’s basically where the similarities end. The politics of empire, with the emperor, the great houses, and the spacing guild; the Mentat human supercomputers and secretive Bene Gesserit with their megalomanaical breeding program; the Fremen, the spice, and above all else the transcendant leap in evolution, perfected in Paul Atreides, that allows certain people to see past this dimension into the future. Dune may just be the most perfect science fiction novel ever written.

Having said that, I should point out that Mrs. Vasicek doesn’t really like it. She feels that the characters fall flat, that their near-superhuman abilities strain credulity and make them much less interesting, and that the omniscient point of view makes the book too dense. In the seven months that we’ve been married, I’ve learned that I shouldn’t dismiss her judgment too quickly. Not only does it go a long way toward promoting marital tranquility, but more often than not, she’s actually right.

Then again, she’s only read Dune once. When I read it for the first time, I had many of the same criticisms. And while new things did stand out on my first rereading of it, including things about the characters, it wasn’t like they leaped off the page or the prose itself became any less dense. Mostly, it was all the other things that really stood out: the world building, the politics, and the statement the book makes about mankind’s ultimate destiny.

My new year’s resolution for 2020 is to read 100 books. When I told my sister that, she said “you should read at least 100 of them before the baby is born.” Dune is such a massive brick of a book that I’m already a couple of weeks behind, but I don’t care. It’s really, really good. I’m looking forward to the other ones!

2019-10-24 Newsletter Author’s Note

This author’s note originally appeared in the October 24th edition of my author newsletter. To subscribe to my newsletter, click here.

There’s this guy I follow on YouTube named Tom Luongo who has a very interesting take on Star Wars: The Last Jedi. According to him, it’s one of the best Star Wars films ever made. I recently got into an online conversation with him about it, so I thought it would be interesting to bring up some of that in this newsletter.

Tom is a radical anarcho-capitalist libertarian who lives on a farm in Florida that he and his wife built. I listen to his political commentary mainly for the contrast. He’s a natural contrarian who tends to fall into the trap of wishcasting, which has really blackpilled him in the last few years. I disagree with him almost all of the time, but he’s got a fascinating take on things, and I think his central thesis is basically correct.

You really should read or listen to Tom’s take on The Last Jedi. His argument goes something like this: the Skywalker-Solo family was always bound to come to a tragic end because the original series never resolved any of their underlying flaws, so in order for anything good to come of the family’s fall, everything built up by the previous generation first needs to come crashing down. Unfortunately, The Last Jedi falls in the midpoint of that arc, when the characters hit their lowest point, which is why so many fans were disappointed with it—just like so many fans of A New Hope were disappointed by The Empire Strikes Back the first time they watched it.

If nothing else, his argument has convinced me to watch The Rise of Skywalker, which I wasn’t planning to do. In fact, after The Last Jedi, I had pretty much checked out of the Star Wars fandom forever.

I discovered Star Wars when I was seven years old and saw A New Hope for the first time. Completely blew me away. My parents made me wait a year and a half to watch Empire Strikes Back, and for the last couple of months I was counting down the days. When I first saw Empire, I was lukewarm on it, but I really liked the Battle of Hoth and Luke’s duel with Vader (strangely, I don’t remember being surprised to learn that Vader was Luke’s father). In later rewatchings, it grew to be not only my favorite Star Wars movie, but my favorite movie of all time. I also loved Return of the Jedi, and felt that it really sticked the landing for the trilogy.

I read all the Star Wars books from the library that I could get my hands on. Timothy Zahn, Kevin J. Anderson—but it was Roger Allen McBride’s Corellia Trilogy that really opened my eyes to a different kind of science fiction. Instead of all the flashy lasers and adventurous antics, he used the limitations of physics to depict a universe far more vast and far more ancient than my young, boyish mind had ever dared imagine. I began to branch out to other works of science fiction, and over the next few years I discovered Card, Le Guin, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Herbert, Burroughs, and all the other greats.

When Phantom Menace came out, it was a huge disappointment. Midichloriens? Jar Jar Binx… ugh. Darth Maul was pretty okay, but the rest of the movie was garbage. But I held out hope that Clone Wars would be better… and it wasn’t. Too much CGI, too little story. The romance was icky, the plot was too slow, and the fight scene with Yoda was a farcical caricature. I was disgusted, but I still saw Revenge of the Sith in theaters, because surely they had to get Vader right… and once again, they failed. Massive disappointment. It was like Lukas had taken a massive dump on my childhood, and was trying to sell it back to me as merchandise.

I cooled off to Star Wars for the next few years. It was never a religion to me. I dabbled a bit with the video games and expanded universe novels, but at this point in my life, I was more of a casual fan. I turned to other works of science fiction and fantasy, and began to pursue my own writing more seriously.

Ever since 4th grade, I always knew I would be a writer. All through high school I had some novel project or another I was working on, but it wasn’t until college that I finished any of them. In 2008, I took Brandon Sanderson’s writing class at BYU and finished my first novel. Incidentally, my wife was in the same class, though it would be another ten years before we met each other.

When The Force Awakens came out, my expectations were low. I didn’t want to get shafted like I had by the prequels. It was probably because of those low expectations that I enjoyed it. Han Solo’s character was utterly ruined, and the plot was little more than a rip-off of A New Hope, but hey, at least it didn’t totally suck! Then Rogue One came out, and it was excellent. On par with the original trilogy. Star Wars was back.

And then, The Last Jedi… green alien breastmilk… Leia Poppins… Admiral Gender Studies… Space Vegas…

Ironically, I think I would have hated it less if Rogue One hadn’t been so good. By the time TLJ came out, I felt like I was on a rollercoaster that was giving me a really bad case of whiplash, and I just wanted it to end. The low points felt so low because the high points were so high, and with TLJ it felt like it was all crashing down again.

At that point, I noped out. No more Star Wars. I was out. The fact that so much of my childhood—and not only that, but my chosen career—was so tied up in the franchise only made it that much more painful.

And then I heard Tom Luongo’s take on The Last Jedi, which has made me rethink some things. I’m not entirely convinced that it’s a great film, but perhaps it’s not as flawed as I thought it was. It really does come down to The Rise of Skywalker. Will it bring the roller-coaster ride to a satisfying conclusion, or will it fling us off the rails the way the prequels did? (“nooooooooooooo!”) I guess we’ll find out in December.