The Lifespan of a Silly Argument

February 26, 2012 By 42 Comments

I’m reading this New York Times review of The Lifespan of a Fact, an unusual book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. On each page of the book is a paragraph of an essay D’Agata wrote about the suicide of a Las Vegas teenager; surrounding the paragraph are the queries about the piece by Fingal, a fact-checker for The Believer magazine (which planned to run the piece), and also D’Agata’s responses to Fingal about the fact-checking.

I have not read the book yet, but from the review and other pieces I have read about it online, the problem here appears to be that in regards to the essay, Fingal was under the impression that the piece was non-fiction (probably because The Believer apparently does not accept fiction), and therefore the facts within it had to be, you know, non-fictitious. Whereas D’Agata appears to have argued, essentially, that facts were stupid things, that that their individual truth value was not as important as an overall “Truth” that he was aiming for, and the the essay form in itself was being deprived of resonance due to a slavish insistence on factual correctness. D’Agata and Fingal sparred on these matters for five years before the actual essay was published in The Believer in 2010. Five years.

My thoughts on the five years thing are these:

1. If I were Fingal, eventually — which is to say after about maybe a month — I would have told The Believer that the author was being a complete dick about the fact-checking process, resigned from fact-checking the article, and told my editors that they should under no circumstances print the essay as non-fiction because significant portions of it were simply made up.

2. If I were the editors of The Believer, I would have paid D’Agata a kill fee and washed my hands of the whole mess.

3. If I were D’Agata — well, I wouldn’t be D’Agata, not to put too fine a point on it. If I have a contract for a non-fiction article or book, I do feel obliged to live up to the terms of the contract and write something that is not significantly fictitious, the facts of which can be verified by me or others. Call it professional courtesy. D’Agata may have been under the impression that The Believer was okay with his non-non-fiction, but that impression probably should have changed in the light of evidence to the contrary, namely, The Believer assigning a fact checker to the piece.

At that point, the rational thing would have been either to co-operate with the fact-checker in an efficient fashion or to withdraw the piece and find a more congenial market. D’Agata did neither, apparently, choosing to entrench and make the piece his own literary Verdun. I guess it beats Scrabble.

I find it flummoxing that none of the parties — D’Agata, Fingal or The Believer — did the rational actions available to each of them at certain critical points in the process, choosing to instead to embark on a five-year exercise in — what, exactly? The essay (or the excerpt above which I linked to) is perfectly readable but, stylistically or otherwise, not worth falling on one’s sword for. That D’Agata and Fingal went around and around for five years on the thing suggests to be that either the two men lack the personal support systems that would allow people in their lives to tell them just to let the thing go, or (rather more likely to me) that early on the two men realized their argument might be salable performance art, and the editors of The Believer either signed off on it or shrugged and said “whatever, get it to us when you’re done.”

Again, I haven’t read the book so I can’t speak directly to D’Agata’s theory of the essay, but on the surface I don’t find the idea that an essay can be something other than strictly non-fiction to be  at all controversial. I think it’s perfectly fine to use facts or real-world events as a jumping off point for something that goes fantastical from that point forward, dipping back into reality if and when required by the author’s own vision. If D’Agata does indeed want to plant a flag on that hill, I would tell him to go ahead and do it and have fun and report back to us when he’s done. Just don’t let that essay masquerade around as non-fiction, because it’s not. When you make things up, or intentionally take artistic license on facts, then you’re writing fiction.

And honestly I’m a little confused why this is an issue at all. Look: D’Agata wrote a fictional essay, based on a real event. That’s all he did. I’m not sure why everyone involved chose to make such a production about it, other than the idea that making a production about it was the actual point of the whole exercise. In which case I expect the sequel to be a screenwriter and a historian arguing about what it means that the screenwriter’s gladiator screenplay is rearranging the real-world timeline and fudging historical details for the sake of dramatic convenience. That’ll be a fun one, I’m sure.

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2012 Oscar Prediction Post Addendum

February 26, 2012 By 6 Comments

Every year when the Oscar nominations are announced I make predictions in the top six categories (here’s this year’s), and then closer to the ceremony I (if necessary) tweak my initial guesses. This year I need to do some tweaking, so here’s what I think will go down.

Best Picture & Best Director: In these categories I was leaning toward The Descendants and Alexander Payne, respectively, although I mentioned at the time it was a razor-thin contest between The Descendants/Payne and The Artist/Michel Hazanavicius. In the interim it looks like The Descendants has lost some steam, so now I’m going for The Artist and Hazanavicus to win. It’s that whole “Harvey Weinstein knows how to win Oscars” thing. There’s an outside chance Hugo/Martin Scorsese might sneak in there, but it really is an outside chance.

Supporting Actress: I went with Melissa McCarthy because, I don’t know, I thought the Academy might be adventurous this year. at this point, however, I suspect the relatively safe choice of Octavia Spencer. Although given the momentum of The Artist, it’s entirely possible that Bérénice Bejo might sneak off with this one. If she does, it’s going to be a long night for everyone involved with every other film, because The Artist is going to sweep.

Supporting Actor: I picked Max von Sydow here, but everyone tells me it’s Christopher Plummer’s year. Well, fine. As a “body of work” award, von Sydow should get it, but I’m not going to complain if Plummer picks it off, since he’s not exactly chopped liver in the career category either.

As noted when I first made predictions, this year’s been pretty opaque for me in terms of making guesses, and I’m sort of resigned to doing rather worse than my usual 5-for-6 record when it comes to Oscar predictions. I am not-so-strangely okay with this, however, since it suggests a more interesting Oscar year than other years. In any event we’ll find out this evening.

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Why It’s Nice to Live in a Small Town

February 25, 2012 By 45 Comments

Because when Mike passed away this last week people in town knew and cared.

My daughter’s powerlifting coach showed up at the door with a condolence card for Athena signed by every member of the team.

The local library sent a lovely flower arrangement for Mike’s visitation and sent someone to attend the memorial.

When I ordered a pizza last night, the delivery person refused payment and said the folks at the restaurant offered their condolences.

These are small things, but right now small things are meaningful and it makes me glad to live where I do, among these good folks. Thought I would share that.

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Oh, Hey, a Redshirts Giveaway From Tor.com

February 24, 2012 By

They have five to give away. Want one? Go here and leave a comment. You’ll be entered. And then you might win.

US only. I know. Sorry, rest of the world.

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E-Mail Note + General Status Update

February 24, 2012 By 17 Comments

First the e-mail note and then the update.

E-Mail: Between travel to Boskone last weekend and my father-in-law’s passing this week, lots of e-mail got past me this week. I’m catching up on it today, but if you sent me e-mail in the last week and were hoping for a response, if you have not received a response to it by 5pm today, feel free to resend. The only exception to this is Big Idea queries; I tend to batch process those every couple of weeks. So don’t panic if you don’t see something from me on that immediately.

Update: I’m fine and the rest of the family is fine but we’re all very tired. It’s been an exhausting week physically and emotionally, as you may well imagine. The memorial was yesterday, and although there are still some details to work on involving insurance, Social Security and the like, at this point what we have to do is simply continue on. We’re doing that now. I suspect this weekend will mostly given over to doing not a damn thing except watching big dumb explody movies on TV. At the very least, that seems like a good plan to me. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Once again, thanks to everyone who passed along condolences and good thoughts for my family, and especially to Krissy, Athena, and Dora, my mother-in-law. They were nice to see.

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The Big Idea: Robert Jackson Bennett

February 24, 2012 By 17 Comments

What does YouTube have to do with the vaudeville theaters that used to pepper the United States — and what do either have to do with Art (yes, with a capital “A”)? These are excellent questions, and in the course of writing The Troupe, Shirley Jackson Prize-winner (and current Edgar and Philip K Dick award nominee) Robert Jackson Bennett attempted to answer these questions to his own satisfaction. Will he answer them to yours? Read below and find out.

ROBERT JACKSON BENNETT:

I was once asked exactly what class of zombies I’d chosen to feature in one of my novels. I found it a very difficult question to answer because I had no idea I’d put in any zombies in the story at all. I am still not quite sure what that person meant: I imagine they simply wished to read a zombie story, and were prepared to interpret whichever book they happened to pick up as exactly that.

This oddity recalls to mind another story, this one of a friend’s aunt: the friend was very artistic, often digressing about certain painters at great length, but the aunt always bowed out of the conversation, because she “just didn’t like art.” She never had, she said. It was just one of the things she never “got.”

It was several years later that the aunt discovered she was largely colorblind. How someone can go through life without any awareness of this is beyond me, but it would certainly explain why she’d never cottoned on to Degas.

Art is weird. You are never really sure if what you are interpreting was intentionally put there by the creator, or if you are putting it there yourself.

But I suppose one could say the same thing about the world. We carry invisible filters around our eyes that dictate what we see, and how. Two people witnessing the same incident can come away with completely different conclusions. Is how one interprets a work of art any different from how one interprets the world itself?

This idea sat in my head, and it bubbled, and it percolated. And one day I started thinking of the world like a story. No, not just a story – a performance. Maybe a song, stretching on and on and on. And we, like any reader, like any audience member, try to interpret it, wondering, “Why? Why this? What was the intent behind this? Who wrote this, who sang this, and why?”

That was how The Troupe started. A song in the dark, and a hidden singer, and the whole world wondering about the nature of this song.

So I imagined a troupe of traveling performers, doing their bit and entertaining the low-brow in the most low-brow of fashions. And I knew I wanted their performances to have something fundamental about them, something primordial, as if their style of performance was the progenitor of all forms of entertainment today.

Which, of course, led me straight to vaudeville.

Within vaudeville are the building blocks of all American entertainment. Stretching from the late 19th century right up to the advent of motion pictures, vaudeville was the most accessible, most colorful, most surreal, and the most utterly dominant form of entertainment in America. It was, in its barest essence, a circuit of theaters running along the railways, and all of these theaters were managed by an overarching booking office: the booking office plumbed the depths of the world of entertainment, and tapped a lucky few to travel the circuits; and it chose which of these acts traveled which parts of the circuit, and which theaters they performed at, and where they sat on the bill (for the theater bill was a holy text, a preeminent emblem indicating exactly how important you were, and which sort of act you were, and how much of a crowd you’d get).

There were two main circuits: the Keith-Albee in the East, and the Orpheum in the West. Chicago was the dividing line. If you were booked on either of these circuits, you were undeniably Big Time.

These circuits were so huge, so successful, that the entertainment they showcased set the mold for all American entertainment right up until today. We would not have sketch comedy or standup or musicals without vaudeville – no Saturday Night Live, no Louis CK, no Glee. But we would also not have Youtube, or Bugs Bunny, or a whole hell of a lot of the movies – for the people who first made the movies, and decided what the movies were and what they would do, were people who’d learned and honed their trade in vaudeville.

Vaudeville is in our artistic DNA. Though it appears dead, its standards still resonate, and to some extent it decides what we like and what we don’t like – our past, in many ways, continues to dictate our present.

So it was perfect for my troupe. But that still left the song, and the hidden singer.

Since I’d been thinking about art so much, it made me think a bit about truth. Because when you sit down to read, or watch a movie, or look at a painting, sure, sometimes you just want to be entertained, and have an hour or so filled up in a fairly enjoyable fashion. But other times you want something more. You want for your art to have a little piece of something true in it. You want to see a flash of something in a book or movie or a picture, and think, “Yes, that’s it. That’s how things are. That’s how things really are.”

So I decided that maybe during one of the troupe’s songs, there is a flash of truth… but it is of a truth so great, so powerful, and so tremendous that anyone who saw it came away changed. Yet that change would also be so fundamental that they didn’t even understand that it had happened.

Maybe during their jokes and songs and capering, one of the performers revealed a little splinter of the Eternal. And after seeing such a thing, your life can never be the same.

The Troupe is about a lot of things: on one hand, it’s about vaudeville, and a quest, and heroes and villains and bravado and redemption. But it’s also about figuring out the world, about figuring out yourself, about the elusive nature of truth. It’s about entertainment, and the fine line between the audience and the artist. It’s about growing up, and learning what acceptance and peace really mean.

Perhaps I wished to turn the world into a stage, and hang curtains around it, so we could better view it, and laugh or hurl a rotten tomato or two. With a dab of facepaint and the tinkling of a piano, perhaps we could come to understand the performance that all of us are forced to act in.

—

The Troupe: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Visit the book’s Web site. Visit the author’s site. Follow him on Twitter.

Filed Under: Big Idea

Offline Today

February 23, 2012 By

Last night was the visitation for Mike, my father-in-law; today is the memorial service. I’ll be spending my day with family and friends, remembering Mike and celebrating his life. You’ll see me here again on Friday, I think.

Before I go, I want to extend my thanks to all of you who have offered me and my family good wishes and condolences. It’s meant a lot, and it was good of you to do so. My sincere appreciation to each of you for your thoughts.

I’m going to turn off comments on this particular post; take the time and energy you’d take in comment to tell someone close to you that you love them. It’s more important than you think.

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Shadow War of the Night Dragons Wins Tor.com’s 2011 Readers’ Choice Award

February 22, 2012 By 18 Comments

I’m delighted to say that my overt and tasteless vote-mongering campaign involving kittens worked the people have spoken, and they have graced my short story “Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue” with the laurel of the Tor.com 2011 Readers’ Choice Award, in the category of short fiction. It joins Pat Rothfuss’ The Wise Man’s Fear, which strolled away with the Novel category win (Fuzzy Nation, I’ll note, finished in the top ten, which is nice) and other winners as well. Congratulations to all.

And before you ask, no, I will not be employing the Kitten Strategy™ elsewhere. There’s a fine line between silly and obnoxious. The Kitten Strategy™ in this case? Silly and fun. Elsewhere? Obnoxious. If “Shadow War” pops up on any other slates, it will have to do so entirely kitten-free. And you know, I’ll be okay with that.

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China, Hollywood, 3D

February 22, 2012 By

Would you like to know how a semi-obscure trade decision made by the government of China means that you are likely to have more big, expensive 3D science fiction and fantasy films in your future right here in the United States? Sure you would, which is why I wrote about just this very thing in this week’s FilmCritic.com column. Yes, it’s a small world after all, especially when it has 3D in it.

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Boskone, Briefly

February 21, 2012 By 18 Comments

Dan Dos Santos painting me. Photo by Irene Gallo

 I was planning to do a long recap of Boskone this week, but in a general sense my plans for the week have been upturned due to my father-in-law’s death. Nevertheless I wanted to make sure I made it clear that I had a really excellent time as the convention’s guest of honor. This is due to three things: One, the expert care of the Boskone convention committee and staff, who made sure I wanted for nothing and who also sprang into sympathetic action when my plans changed due to Mike’s passing; Two, the Boskone attendees, who seemed genuinely excited to have me as a guest; Three, the programming schedule, which, while hectic, also did some very neat things for me and the other Guests of Honor.

Chief among them was the combination interview/painting session, in which artist guest of honor Dan Dos Santos did a quick oil painting of me while audience members asked questions. It was a really interesting and fun experience,not to mention slightly absurd in a good way. A great deal of this very cool experience was down to Dan himself — he’s a great guy and a lot of fun to do something like this with. Basically, if you ever get a chance to be painted by Dan Dos Santos, take it.

My Sunday was thrown awry because of the death in the family, and I had to duck out early and missed doing my autographing session. I don’t expect anyone holds that against me, but I still feel bad to have missed people and not to have signed their books. So: Sorry, folks. It’s possible I’ll be in the Boston area in the summer for a book tour; if I am I’ll be happy to sign then. I did still manage to do a panel and my reading, the latter of which was actually very useful to me. I was knocked for a loop about Mike’s death, so being able to dive into performing some of my writing was a nice way to get out of my own head for a bit. So if you were at my Boskone reading, thanks. You helped my brain, you did.

In all, Boskone was fabulous. Thanks for having me, Boston. I’ll be back.

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Fuzzy Nation and Agent to the Stars: Audie Nominated

February 20, 2012 By 11 Comments

So, here’s some good news for me today (and hey, I can use some good news at the moment): My books Fuzzy Nation and Agent to the Stars have both been nominated for an Audie Award. The Audies are the audiobook equivalent to the Grammys, in that distinction in audiobook achievement is given in many different genres; my two nominations, logically enough, are in the Science Fiction category.

I’m nominated as the author, but the nomination is shared with the audiobook narrator, who in both cases is the same person: Wil Wheaton. Naturally, I’m super-mega-thrilled to be sharing a nomination with Wil. Wil, as it happens, is currently on a boat in the middle of an ocean, and probably isn’t aware he’s been nominated for anything. Won’t that be a surprise for him when he gets back in.

Wil’s actually got a third Audie nomination as well, for narrating part of METAtropolis: Cascadia, which is as most of you know the sequel to METAtropolis, which I edited. I didn’t take part in Cascadia, but my friends Jay Lake, Mary Robinette Kowal, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Bear, Karl Schroeder and Ken Scholes did, so I’m thrilled for them also (and for the other narrators on the project as well). They’re nominated in the Original Work category.

Congratulations to everyone nominated. As it happens, the Audie Awards will be taking place on June 5, which just happens to be the release date for Redshirts. That’s going to be a busy day for me, I can tell.

(Also, if you click on the pictures, they will take you to the works’ respective Audible.com pages.)

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This Year’s Nebula Awards Nominations

February 20, 2012 By 22 Comments

Of all people in the world, I think I’m allowed to use the official SFWA press release for this directly:

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is proud to announce the nominees for the 2011 Nebula Awards (presented 2012), the nominees for the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and the nominees for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book.

Novel

  • Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)
  • Embassytown, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey; Subterranean Press)
  • Firebird, Jack McDevitt (Ace Books)
  • God’s War, Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)
  • Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine (Prime Books)
  • The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Novella

  • “Kiss Me Twice,” Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2011)
  • “Silently and Very Fast,” Catherynne M. Valente (WFSA Press; Clarkesworld Magazine, October 2011)
  • “The Ice Owl,” Carolyn Ives Gilman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November/December 2011)
  • “The Man Who Bridged the Mist,” Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November 2011)
  • “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary,” Ken Liu (Panverse Three, Panverse Publishing)
  • “With Unclean Hands,” Adam-Troy Castro (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 2011)

Novelette

  • “Fields of Gold,” Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse 4, Night Shade Books)
  • “Ray of Light,” Brad R. Torgersen (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2011)
  • “Sauerkraut Station,” Ferrett Steinmetz (Giganotosaurus, November 2011)
  • “Six Months, Three Days,” Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com, June 2011)
  • “The Migratory Pattern of Dancers,” Katherine Sparrow (Giganotosaurus, July 2011)
  • “The Old Equations,” Jake Kerr (Lightspeed Magazine, July 2011)
  • “What We Found,” Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2011)

Short Story

  • “Her Husband’s Hands,” Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed Magazine, October 2011)
  • “Mama, We are Zhenya, Your Son,” Tom Crosshill (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2011)
  • “Movement,” Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 2011)
  • “Shipbirth,” Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s Science Fiction, February 2011)
  • “The Axiom of Choice,” David W. Goldman (New Haven Review, Winter 2011)
  • “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees,” E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld Magazine, April 2011)
  • “The Paper Menagerie,” Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2011)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

  • Attack the Block, Joe Cornish (writer/director) (Optimum Releasing; Screen Gems)
  • Captain America: The First Avenger, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely (writers), Joe Johnston (director) (Paramount)
  • Doctor Who: “The Doctor’s Wife,” Neil Gaiman (writer), Richard Clark (director) (BBC Wales)
  • Hugo, John Logan (writer), Martin Scorsese (director) (Paramount)
  • Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen (writer/director) (Sony)
  • Source Code, Ben Ripley (writer), Duncan Jones (director) (Summit)
  • The Adjustment Bureau, George Nolfi (writer/director) (Universal)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book

  • Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor (Viking Juvenile)
  • Chime, Franny Billingsley (Dial Books; Bloomsbury)
  • Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Hodder & Stoughton)
  • Everybody Sees the Ants, A.S. King (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
  • The Boy at the End of the World, Greg van Eekhout (Bloomsbury Children’s Books)
  • The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman (Big Mouth House)
  • The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Rae Carson (Greenwillow Books)
  • Ultraviolet, R.J. Anderson (Orchard Books; Carolrhoda Books)

The winners will be announced at SFWA’s 47th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend, to be held Thursday through Sunday, May 17 to May 20, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, near Reagan National Airport. As announced earlier this year, Connie Willis will be the recipient of the 2011 Damon Knight Grand Master Award for her lifetime contributions and achievements in the field. Walter Jon Williams will preside as toastmaster, with Astronaut Michael Fincke as keynote speaker.  More information on the Nebula Awards Weekend can be found at: http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-awards/nebula-weekend/

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of  SFWA. Voting will open to SFWA Active members on March 1, 2012, and close on March 30, 2012. More information about voting can be found at: http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-awards/how-to-vote/

Back to me personally: Congratulations to all the nominees!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Michael Blauser, 1945 – 2012

February 20, 2012 By 159 Comments

Mike Blauser is my father-in-law, and this last Saturday he passed away.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this and about him, later, when I’m not up late from travel and when I’ve had time to organize my thoughts. For now I will say that Mike was a man I admired for his honesty and his dignity, for his love of his family and for the deep streak of common sense in his character that I see reflected every day in his daughter, my wife. I was honored to know him and grateful to be part of his family, and proud to be his son-in-law.

We will be spending our week saying goodbye to Mike and remembering the good things about him and his life, so my presence here may be limited over the next several days. I know you’ll understand.

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Sunday Update

February 19, 2012 By 36 Comments

Boskone still awesome. Voice still shot. Currently drinking Throat Soother tea. Have reading at one.  Should be interesting or at least raspy. How is your Sunday?

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Boskone Update, Saturday

February 18, 2012 By 14 Comments

Well:

Friday at Boskone hummed along nicely — got to have lunch with Bud Sparhawk, SFWA’s treasurer, fine writer, and all-around good guy, sat in the bar and said hello to folks as they came in, did a panel on reboots that I think went very well, and then hung out in the bar, at the opening Boskone reception and at the SFWA party. I did a lot of socializing, I did. Somewhere along the way I blew out my voice, so this morning I’m being quiet as the proverbial dormouse, since a SFWA business meeting, an interview, a book release party, a panel, a kaffeklatsche, and then an evening event. Yes, Boskone is getting their money’s worth out of me. But I’m having a good time, so I won’t complain. We’ll just see whether or not I’ll have to resort to hand waving by the end of the day.

 

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Not Being Able to Scrape By With $200k Is Usually Your Own Fault

February 17, 2012 By 442 Comments

Gawker, that great engine of social egalitarianism, points us to an article in Toronto Life about the Canadian 1% and how they try to get by in Toronto, Canada’s largest city. The implication is that even with $196,000, which is the income line for the 1% in that far northern country (and that’s Canadian dollars, mind you!), it’s sometimes difficult to make ends meet in that nation’s largest city.

Then you read the article, which does things like complaining that after you subtract “wardrobe refreshes” and “the cost of sushi, pad thai and butter chicken” ordered in three nights a week because of being too tired to cook, $10,400 a month doesn’t go very far, and then drops this bomb:

Then there’s the stuff that fills our houses—the calibre of which is the subject of intense, unspoken competition among my peers and neighbours. During my entire childhood, spent in a comfortable lower-upper-middle-class neighbourhood of Montreal, I am quite sure that my mother did not waste a single moment worrying about replacing her laminate kitchen counters with granite or marble. There was no such thing as a $1,000 Bugaboo stroller, or anything like it. You could host a casual weekend party without spending a fortune on artisanal cheeses. Living the good life simply wasn’t the full-time, across-the-retail-spectrum pursuit it has now become.

Aaaaaaand that’s then I want to start pressing the “It’s time for the goddamned revolution” button. By the time we get to the breakdowns of the monthly expenses of the seven 1% households profiled for the article, which features line items like $800 a month on wine and $1200 for the vacation house on the lake, I’m vaguely surprised Toronto isn’t on fire. The only people I feel any sort of commonality with are the immigrant family, who pack their own lunches for work and aside from the hair salon line item seem to have some perspective on their cash. The retired couple who invested well and are living off the proceeds also gets a pass, because, hey, that’s the goal, right? Otherwise: Purification by flame.

The problem here is that once again we’re confronted with the interesting paradox of “the 1%,” which is that the incomes of within the 1% are surprisingly heterogeneous. It’s a category that encompasses both people with six-figure annual incomes and people making nine-figure annual incomes; likewise, it’s people with seven-figure net worths and people with eleven-figure net worths. The 99% of the 1% do not have helipads and supermodels and dormitories or libraries named after them at their elite school alma maters; they have mortgages and expenses and their kids’ educations will be a non-trivial percentage of their total net worth. So if you’re on the bottom rung of society’s topmost ladder, you’re going to feel you have more in common with the middle class than with the stinkin’ rich, because as a practical matter you do.

But that doesn’t mean you’re middle class, or that your problems are middle class problems; it also means that when you complain about how hard it is to make ends meet and yet you’ve got the lake cottage and you spend $1,000 a month on clothes, the people who really are middle and lower class are going to look at you like, would you please just shut up, you arrogant rich bastard, before I put you and your whole family up against a wall. This is especially true when, as is the case of the Toronto Life article, the heart of the “problem” is that apparently it’s harder today than ever before to maintain and display the overt social cues of your petit bourgeois status.

Speaking as a member of the petit bourgeois, dear other members of the petit bourgeois:

1. Please learn how to budget, because no matter where you live — even in the US! Even in most parts of expensive cities! — $200,000 should be sufficient for a very comfortable lifestyle without much stretching.

2. If you’re in competition with your neighbors about who can live the better lifestyle, you’ve already lost and you’re just embarrassing yourself. Status anxiety is for the betas.

3. When in public, please shut the fuck up about how difficult your life is, economically. It just pisses off everybody else, and there are more of them than there are of you.

4. If your life is genuinely economically difficult, see point one. If necessary, take your wine budget for a month or two and hire an accountant or financial planner and then actually listen to them.

This is not to say that those on the bottom rung of the 1% should not complain about their problems, ever. I’ve noted before that for most people their problems with money is not having enough; for the well-off the problem is managing it well. It is a real problem, and it’s useful to talk to people with the same sort of problem and figure things out. It’s also worth remembering it’s a problem most people would like to have, and will not feel entirely sympathetic toward you for having it, just like you are not entirely sympathetic about the money problems of, say, Alex Rodriguez, or he entirely sympathetic to the money issues of Mark Zuckerberg.

Now, you might say, hey, the people of the 99% are as clueless about my financial issues as I am to theirs, so why is it that I’ll get crap for it and they don’t? Because they have less money, stupid. They are suffering every other economic penalty imaginable; it’s not unreasonable for the social penalty for economic cluelessness to be just about the only thing that vectors upward. The fact you can brood about this at the lake house over the weekend should put this problem of yours in perspective.

So, as Gawker puts it, the 1% must stop insisting they’re not rich, right this instant. They are, or close enough to it for statistical work. If you’re at the bottom end of the 1% you might not be as rich as some, but the ratio of people you are richer than, compared to those you are less rich than, is roughly 99:1. Keep that in mind. Recognize it and be grateful. And rather than asserting that you are not well off, figure out how you can manage your money in such a way that at the end of the day you’re not wondering where the hell all the money went. Because that’s a lot of money. You should be able to live well and still have some of it left over. Even in Toronto. Or anywhere else.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The New Book: 24 Frames Into the Future

February 16, 2012 By 16 Comments

Here it is:

The cover art is by Dan Dos Santos, who is the Artist Guest of Honor here at Boskone. It and the book are quite nice looking. One thing you can’t tell by looking at this picture is that underneath the dust jacket, the book itself is silver. It’s really quite a thing to look at. And the content is, as noted before, a collection of my science fiction film columns from AMC/FilmCritic.com.

If you’re at Boskone, you’ll be able to get it starting tomorrow. If you’re not at Boskone, it will be available for you to get staring early next week. There are only 1100 hardcovers in the first printing, so if you’re a collector, you’ll want to hop to it. It’s worth the getting.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The Obligatory Picture Out the Hotel Window, Boston Style (+ Boskone Schedule)

February 16, 2012 By 31 Comments

There you have it.

In other news, here I am in Boston, a little early for the Boskone convention, which starts tomorrow. If you live in a hundred mile radius and are not there, we will have words.

Also, for those wondering what I’m doing with myself while I’m at Boskone, here’s my program schedule:

  • Reboots: Refreshing or Depressing? (Panel), Fri 19:00 – 20:00, Harbor I (Westin)
  • SFWA Eastern Regional Meeting (Other), Sat 12:00 – 13:00, Carlton (Westin)
  • Guest of Honor Interview and Portrait Painting (Panel), Sat 14:00 – 15:00, Harbor I (Westin)
  • Release Party — New John Scalzi Book From NESFA Press (Other), Sat 15:00 – 16:00, Galleria-Demo (Westin)
  • H. Beam Piper Retrospective (Panel), Sat 16:00 – 17:00, Burroughs (Westin)
  • Kaffeeklatsche: John Scalzi (Kaffeeklatsche), Sat 17:00 – 18:00, Galleria-Kaffeeklatsch 1 (Westin)
  • Boskone Saturday Night Award Event (Other), Sat 21:00 – 22:00, Harbor II&III (Westin)
  • My Top Ten Tips for the Prospective Author (Panel), Sun 11:00 – 12:00, Harbor II (Westin)
  • Reading: John Scalzi (Reading), Sun 13:00 – 14:00, Lewis (Westin)

Yes, they’re keeping me busy. I’ll also be doing an autographing in there somewhere. The new book listed in the schedule is 24 Frames Into the Future: Scalzi on Science Fiction Film, a collection of my AMC/FilmCritic.com columns. I’ll be posting a photo of it as soon as I get my grubby mitts on the thing, I assure you.

Anyway: Hello, Boston. You have to deal with me for a whole weekend.

Oh, stop screaming. It’s not that bad.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The Big Idea: Bruce Schneier

February 16, 2012 By 22 Comments

Do you trust me? And if so, why do you trust me? And what do you trust me for? “Trust” is an interesting term, with some simple definitions, and others that aren’t so simple. Or so Bruce Schneier, the noted security expert, discovered as he was putting together his latest book Liars and Outliers. The web of trust in our society is pervasive and profound, and when the threads of trust are broken, interesting things happen. Here he is to tell you more.

BRUCE SCHNEIER:

My big idea is a big question. Every cooperative system contains parasites. How do we ensure that society’s parasites don’t destroy society’s systems?

It’s all about trust, really. Not the intimate trust we have in our close friends and relatives, but the more impersonal trust we have in the various people and systems we interact with in society. I trust airline pilots, hotel clerks, ATMs, restaurant kitchens, and the company that built the computer I’m writing this short essay on. I trust that they have acted and will act in the ways I expect them to. This type of trust is more a matter of consistency or predictability than of intimacy.

Of course, all of these systems contain parasites. Most people are naturally trustworthy, but some are not. There are hotel clerks who will steal your credit card information. There are ATMs that have been hacked by criminals. Some restaurant kitchens serve tainted food. There was even an airline pilot who deliberately crashed his Boeing 767 into the Atlantic Ocean in 1999.

My central metaphor is the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which nicely exposes the tension between group interest and self-interest. And the dilemma even gives us a terminology to use: cooperators act in the group interest, and defectors act in their own selfish interest, to the detriment of the group. Too many defectors, and everyone suffers — often catastrophically.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is not only useful in describing the problem, but also serves as a way to organize solutions. We humans have developed four basic mechanisms for ways to limit defectors: what I call societal pressure. We use morals, reputation, laws, and security systems. It’s all coercion, really, although we don’t call it that. I’ll spare you the details; it would require a book to explain. And it did.

This book marks another chapter in my career’s endless series of generalizations. From mathematical security — cryptography — to computer and network security; from there to security technology in general; then to the economics of security and the psychology of security; and now to — I suppose — the sociology of security. The more I try to understand how security works, the more of the world I need to encompass within my model.

When I started out writing this book, I thought I’d be talking a lot about the global financial crisis of 2008. It’s an excellent example of group interest vs. self-interest, and how a small minority of parasites almost destroyed the planet’s financial system. I even had a great quote by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, where he admitted a “flaw” in his worldview. The exchange, which took place when he was being questioned by Congressman Alan Waxman at a 2008 Congressional hearing, was once the opening paragraphs of my book. I called the defectors “the dishonest minority,” which was my original title.

That unifying example eventually faded into the background, to be replaced by a lot of separate examples. I talk about overfishing, childhood immunizations, paying taxes, voting, stealing, airplane security, gay marriage, and a whole lot of other things. I dumped the phrase “dishonest minority” entirely, partly because I didn’t need it and partly because a vocal few early readers were reading it not as “the small percentage of us that are dishonest” but as “the minority group that is dishonest” — not at all the meaning I was trying to convey.

I didn’t even realize I was talking about trust until most of the way through. It was a couple of early readers who — coincidentally, on the same day — told me my book wasn’t about security, it was about trust. More specifically, it was about how different societal pressures, security included, induce trust. This interplay between cooperators and defectors, trust and security, compliance and coercion, affects everything having to do with people.

In the book, I wander through a dizzying array of academic disciplines: experimental psychology, evolutionary psychology, sociology, economics, behavioral economics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, game theory, systems dynamics, anthropology, archeology, history, political science, law, philosophy, theology, cognitive science, and computer security. It sometimes felt as if I were blundering through a university, kicking down doors and demanding answers. “You anthropologists: what can you tell me about early human transgressions and punishments?” “Okay neuroscientists, what’s the brain chemistry of cooperation? And you evolutionary psychologists, how can you explain that?” “Hey philosophers, what have you got?” I downloaded thousands — literally — of academic papers. In pre-Internet days I would have had to move into an academic library.

What’s really interesting to me is what this all means for the future. We’ve never been able to eliminate defections. No matter how much societal pressure we bring to bear, we can’t bring the murder rate in society to zero. We’ll never see the end of bad corporate behavior, or embezzlement, or rude people who make cell phone calls in movie theaters. That’s fine, but it starts getting interesting when technology makes each individual defection more dangerous. That is, fishermen will survive even if a few of them defect and overfish — until defectors can deploy driftnets and single-handedly collapse the fishing stock. The occasional terrorist with a machine gun isn’t a problem for society in the overall scheme of things; but a terrorist with a nuclear weapon could be.

Also — and this is the final kicker — not all defectors are bad. If you think about the notions of cooperating and defecting, they’re defined in terms of the societal norm. Cooperators are people who follow the formal or informal rules of society. Defectors are people who, for whatever reason, break the rules. That definition says nothing about the absolute morality of the society or its rules. When society is in the wrong, it’s defectors who are in the vanguard for change. So it was defectors who helped escaped slaves in the antebellum American South. It’s defectors who are agitating to overthrow repressive regimes in the Middle East. And it’s defectors who are fueling the Occupy Wall Street movement. Without defectors, society stagnates.

We simultaneously need more societal pressure to deal with the effects of technology, and less societal pressure to ensure an open, free, and evolving society. This is our big challenge for the coming decade.

—-

Liars and Outliers: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Read an excerpt. Visit Schneier’s blog.

Filed Under: Big Idea

It’s the Little Details That Mean a Lot

February 15, 2012 By 12 Comments

My pal Mark Nevin (former guitarist/songwriter for Fairground Attraction, now solo artist) has a video out for his song “Oh Mama.” It’s a sweet song about how moms are pretty great, so that’s nice (and true!), but I have to say that the element of the video I fixated on from the very first moment are his shoes. Because, wow: Pink with thick waffle soles. I’m vaguely terrified. He threatened to get me a pair. I fear he might.

Filed Under: Uncategorized
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