Whatever

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

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

Before we begin, a couple of quick rules:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Infrogmation, via WikiNews

Question from the gallery:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I may have said too much.

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

We’re all caught up now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In another bit of SFWA-related news, the organization has chosen to delist Dorchester Publishing as a qualifying market, after a year-long period of probation. You may read SFWA’s public statement on the delisting here.

This is, I think, a positive development for SFWA:

Oh, I should probably mention. I'm running for SFWA vice president. My statement of candidacy is in the forums.

—
Rachel Swirsky (@rachelswirsky) February 01, 2012

If you’re a SFWA member, you may read her platform here. If elected, she would succeed Mary Robinette Kowal, who has done an unbelievably excellent job in four years on the SFWA board (two as secretary, two as VP).

I’ve known Rachel for a number of years now and have been deeply impressed with her. I think she would be a very fine VP, if she were elected. If I were re-elected to the president’s chair, I would be happy to serve with her.

(PS: She’s also a fantastic writer.)

Sometimes you’re awake in the middle of the night, not by choice, and need something to distract you from the fact that you’re not able to go back to sleep. What do you do? In my FilmCritic.com column this week, I offer some suggestions for insomniac science fiction. Some of them are good films, others… not so much. But all work at 3am. And if you want, you can offer your own suggestions for insomniac science fiction in the comments.

I interrupt this blog to bring you an importance notice from Hugo-winning author David Levine, of vital importance to those of you in the Pacific Northwest! Take it away, David:

“As you may know, the Science Fiction Writers of America have been holding a quarterly reading series at the Kennedy School in Portland. They are also inaugurating a reading series in the Seattle area.  See http://www.sfwa.org/for-readers/sfwa-northwest-reading-series/ for more information.

“Ted Kosmatka, one of the scheduled readers for this week’s readings, has had to drop out due to a death in the family, and I’ve been asked to step in.  So if you’d like to hear me read from my upcoming story “The Last Days of the Kelly Gang” (a steampunk power-armor story set in the Australian Outback in 1880), along with John A. Pitts (Portland and Seattle), Ken Scholes (Portland), and possibly a special guest star (Seattle), you can come to the readings as follows:

PORTLAND:
Tuesday, January 31
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211
RSVP (optional) at http://is.gd/cmg5HR

SEATTLE:
Wednesday, February 1
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033
RSVP (optional) at http://is.gd/F30Pvi

“Both events are free and open to the public.  Beer, wine, and other typical bar fare will be available for purchase. Dancing is optional, but not discouraged.  Hope to see you there!”

And there you have it, Portlanders and Seattleites — your next two evenings, solved. Go and enjoy!

Question, which seems apt considering the previous post today:

Any thoughts on Jonathan Franzen’s opinions about eBooks?

For those of you who have not seen them, they are here. For those disinclined to link, here’s a quote:

Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring… Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.

On one hand I get what he’s saying, because I do love physical books. Today I got copies of the Spanish language version of Fuzzy Nation, and holding the physical printed object brings home the point that yes, someone bought the book, yes, someone printed it, and yes, people will read the thing (in another language, even!). A printed physical object ties  into my personal sense of accomplishment when it comes to books. It’s like, here it is. In the real world. Finally. I think the love of books as tactile objects is something that’s going to be around for a while, and not just because writers need to be assured there is a (presumably) permanent, unalterable record.

On the other hand I suspect Franzen overprivileges the permanence of the book as a physical object to a considerable degree, and if you want to know why I think that, try reading an original science fiction pulp paperback from the 70s or earlier. They were printed on crappy acidic paper that started turning yellow nearly the moment they got off the printing press, the glue on the spine crumbles, and the thing starts falling apart the second you look at it too hard. You can hold one of these books, but if you try to read it, you run a really good chance of destroying it in the process. Bibliophiles — the ones who love physical books at least — are aware that physical books are anything but permanent. There are lots of ways for them to go away.

Here’s another way of looking at it. I have a copy of China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station on my shelf (it’s the gorgeous limited edition by Subterranean Press). I also have a digital copy of it on my Nook. Which is more permanent? One is a physical object, but that physical object could be lost or stolen, or destroyed if, say, my house burned down to the ground, taking my library with it. The digital object, on the other hand, is hard to lose because it can be in multiple places; I can read it on my computer, or my eReader, or my cell phone or my computer tablet; indeed, I can read it one one, set that down and fire it up on the other and have the book open to the very spot I stopped reading it before. If my house burns up, my digital copy of Perdido will still be there to comfort me. But if Barnes & Noble goes out of business — and it might — then I may be screwed, because there’s no guarantee the access to the book file will survive Barnes & Noble as a company (I have some useless DRMed audio files on my computer as testament of that).

There are other ways that both physical books and digital books can go away, but you get my point, I trust, which is that neither physical books nor digital books have any claim on permanence that can’t be immediately refuted in significant ways. The one unassailable advantage physical books have or digital books is that they don’t require an intermediary piece of hardware to access them — all you need is your eyeballs — and given the turnover in tech hardware, that’s not insignificant. But it doesn’t argue for permanence; it argues for a potentially longer window for information decay.

(Franzen’s also incorrect that physical copies somehow limit the alterations that can be made to texts after the fact; Compare early versions of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles with later versions and you’ll see what I mean. There’s an excellent chance people who have read the later versions are entirely unaware that the text has been significantly altered. Franzen’s also apparently charmingly naive about the number of copy errors that make it through the editorial process, despite everyone’s best efforts.)

Franzen’s dislike of eBooks appears essentially to be an appeal to the romanticism of physical books, which is nice and about which I can sympathize with him, although only up to a point. Ultimately, however, my more pragmatic side comes through, and it says “You want this book in [x] format? You’ll pay me money for it? Here you go.” Which is why my books are variously in hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, eBook (in various formats) and audio (also in various formats), depending on their place in the production cycle and the agreements I have in place with publishers.

Outside of the desire to see my local indie bookstore stay in business, because they are awesome folks and it’s a great shop, and in a larger sense for bookstores to survive because of what I see as the long terms social benefits of having booksellers as part of the matrix of commerce, I’m agnostic regarding format. The words — my words — are the same across all the formats, and it’s those words that matter; the container, less so. I’d note Franzen’s work is out there for electronic consumption, so it seems at the end of the day he is pragmatic about this at well, at least on a contractual level.

I’m going to touch on something that I’ve discussed briefly before but which I think is worth reheating into its own post. Here are the best selling books in the US from 1912, which is (for those of you for whom math is not a strong suit) 100 years ago.

1. The Harvester by Gene Stratton-Porter
2. The Street Called Straight by Basil King
3. Their Yesterdays by Harold Bell Wright
4. The Melting of Molly by Maria Thompson Davies
5. A Hoosier Chronicle by Meredith Nicholson
6. The Winning of Barbara Worth by Harold Bell Wright
7. The Just and the Unjust by Vaughan Kester
8. The Net by Rex Beach
9. Tante by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
10. Fran by J. Breckenridge Ellis

Questions: How many of these have you read? How many of the author names do you recognize? How influential have these books been to modern literature, or at the very least, the literature you choose to read? Do you think these authors believed that their works would, in some way, survive them? I think it’s fair to say that outside of a small group of academic specialists or enthusiasts, these books and their authors don’t have much currency.

This isn’t a slight on the authors or their works, mind you. If you look up some of these authors, they’re pretty interesting. Gene Stratton-Porter was an early conservationist and owned her own movie studio. Meredith Nicholson was a US diplomat to several countries in South America and central America. Howard Bell Wright was reportedly the first author to make more than a million dollars writing fiction, and this was back in 1912, when a million was worth more than $22 million today. I don’t doubt at least some of these books were well-regarded as art. And I would imagine, author egos being what they are, that at least a couple of them imagined that we would be talking about their works today, a hundred years later, as influences if nothing else.

We’re not. Now, I imagine there’s at least a couple people out there shaking their fists at me, wondering how I could not see Stratton-Porter (or whomever) as a towering figure in American literature. As noted above, I cede there is possibly academic or specialized interest. I’m talking about everyone else. I feel pretty confident of my basic knowledge of early 20th century literature, if nothing else than through my interest in HL Mencken, who was one of the preëminient literature critics of the day. If I’m coming up blank on these names and books, I feel reasonably confident in suggesting most readers these days — even the well-read ones — will do similarly.

If you’re a writer, this might depress you. If the best-selling books of 1912 are largely forgotten, what chance do your books have in 2012, especially if they don’t scale the heights of sales these books have? Surprise! Probably little. I mean, it’s certainly possible they will survive: Neither Theodore Dreiser nor Sherwood Anderson got near the year-end bestseller lists between 1910 and 1919, but they are still taught and discussed, and in their way influence literature today. But, yeah. Don’t count on it.

And that’s fine. Relieve yourself of the illusion that you’re writing for the ages. The ages will decide who is doing that on their own; you don’t get a vote. I understand the temptation is to try to write something that will speak to the generations, but, look, in 1912 they hadn’t even yet invented pre-sliced bread. If you aim for being relevant to the future, you’re probably going to fail because you literally cannot imagine it, even if you write science fiction.

Forget even sliced bread; you can’t imagine the values or interests or views on the world that people might have a century from now. Human nature as defined by biology doesn’t change much over decades or centuries but the culture sure does, and it’s a moving target in any event; there’s no end point in attitudes and opinions. If I tried to explain a woman’s place in 1912 United States to my daughter, she would explode with outrage. If a writer in 1912 tried to write specifically to my daughter (or anyone’s daughter) 100 years hence, the disconnect would be impressive. If I tried to write for a thirteen-year-old girl in 2112, the same thing would happen.

If you must aim for relevance, try for being relevant now; it’s a context you understand. We can still read (and do read) Shakespeare and Cervantes and Dickinson, and I think it’s worth noting Shakespeare was busy trying to pack in the groundlings today, Cervantes was writing in no small part to criticize a then-currently popular form of fiction, and Dickinson was barely even publishing at all, i.e., not really caring about future readers. In other words, they were focused on their now. It’s not a bad focus for anyone.

Will your work survive? Probably not, but so what? You won’t survive, either. 100 years from now you’re very likely to be dead. Even if your work survives, it won’t do you much good. In the meantime that still leaves lots of people today to potentially read your stuff, argue about it, be inspired by it (or react against it) and generally make a lot of noise about it. You might even make a living at it, which is a bonus. Focus on those people today, and on today’s times. Enjoy it all now. Enjoy it while it lasts. Then when it’s over, you can say you had fun at the time.

The Kayip Rithim Web site, which is a Turkish site for science fiction and fantasy, has posted the opening chapter of the Turkish translation of Old Man’s War in advance of the book’s publication in (I think) March. Curious as to how the text looks in Turkish? Of course you are. You can find out here.

Here are three questions I was recently asked about writing. I’m going to condense the questions, because when they were asked, they meandered across several paragraphs; they boil down to three sentences, which are:

When may you call yourself a writer? When may you call yourself a professional writer? When may you say you are a good writer?

These are three separate but related questions. Let’s start with the most fundamental.

When may you call yourself a writer?

I tend to be very small-c catholic on this question and say that if you write at all, you can consider yourself a writer. This annoys people who think that tweeting about your lunch or posting on Facebook that your cat horked up a hairball does not rise to the level of true writing, but, look, writing is an act of setting down in words the things about which you have a concern. If you are literate and you can manage to create meaning from the written word, you are, on a very basic level, a writer, even if what you’re writing is “I’ve gone to the store for milk. Be back soon.”

But for the sake of argument, let’s tighten this up a bit. Let’s say that just being able to write a meaningful sentence doesn’t make you a writer, any more than being able to lie with a straight face makes you an actor, or doodling in a boring meeting makes you an artist. So where does the line exist, over which one may say “I’m a writer”?

In this scenario, the line manifests with intent. Does the person sending out an e-mail about where everyone is meeting for after-work drinks intend to write? Other than in the most practical and mechanical sense, no. E-mailing everyone is simply the easiest way to get the information to the largest number of people involved, with the best chance those people will get the information. If it were easier and more practical to send a group voice mail, that would be what would happen.

A writer, on the other hand, chooses written words, and chooses them not just for mechanical and practical reasons, but for (or also for) esthetic and artistic purposes. Writers want to write, rather than have to write. In presenting an idea, the medium they intend for it to be in is the written word.

This is still a bar too low for some people, but screw them, those guys are snobs. I say that if you want to write, and then you do write, then you are writer.

However, it doesn’t make you a good writer. I’ll give you an example, using a different creative field. I recently got a ukulele, and I enjoy playing it, and I actively make music with it. I am a musician. But I’m not a good musician, because right now my chording is merely adequate and my strumming is marginal. I’m no Jake Shimabukuro, nor am I likely ever to be. But that’s fine because I don’t play ukulele to be the best ukulele player ever; I play it because I enjoy it and it’s fun.

Likewise, people may call themselves “writers” even if they recognize they are not very good at it at the moment, or if they suspect they may never be, but just enjoy it anyway. The act of writing — of putting ideas into the medium of the written word — is sufficient. You write? You meant to do that? What you’ve written is intelligible to other humans? Congratulations, you’re a writer.

When may you call yourself a professional writer?

Are you writing with the intent to be paid? Are you being paid? Is writing consistently one of the ways in which you make your living over time? If the answers to each of these is “yes,” then you can probably get away with calling yourself a “professional writer.”

Note that writing, in general, is not a profession in the same manner as being a medical doctor is a profession. You don’t have to go to school to be a writer (I didn’t), you don’t need to have a degree or a certification in the subject to practice it (I don’t), you don’t have to be licensed to do it (at least not in the US) and there are few if any laws that govern its practice. Now, you can go to school for writing, get degrees in the field and even join associations or unions of writers, who may have their own definitions of what constitutes a professional level of achievement (see, as an example, the membership requirements for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, of which I am currently president). But those are choices, not requirements. If you write science fiction and fantasy, you should belong to SFWA (thus ends my plug). But if you don’t, it’s not as if the police will come to the door and arrest you for fraud.

“Professional” in this sense means that you are in the stream of commerce — which is to say, you offer your writing (or your talents as a writer) for sale, and your writing and/or talents are being used and compensated for by others. In my own opinion, for saying that you’re a professional writer, it helps to be able to show that you’ve been able to make money at writing over time. Getting paid for any writing is not a bad thing, mind you. If you get paid for it, whatever the circumstance, then good for you. But let me give you an example from my own experience. When I was in college, I took third place in a student writing competition for a short story, for which I received $250. I got paid for that writing. Did it make me a professional writer of fiction? Not really, since I didn’t then write another piece of fiction for sale for another decade.

I sold a science fiction short to Strange Horizons in 2001, but it too was something of a one-off, more of an experiment to see if I could sell a short story than an entrance into the field as a profession. I date my professional entry into the world of fiction with my sale of Old Man’s War to Tor in 2002, because among other things it was part of a two-book deal, i.e., I’d be getting paid for my fiction work over time. Even then, it wasn’t until Old Man’s War was published in 2005 that I felt comfortable saying I was a professional fiction writer. Now, that’s just me (and note that since I could call myself a pro writer for other reasons, having patience on that part was not difficult for me). Some folks really really really want to call themselves a pro writer the first time they get a check. I’m not going to go out of my way to crap on them for it if they do.

It’s important to note that “professional” is not the same thing as “good,” although in my opinion it does correlate pretty well with “competent”; it’s hard to make money from writing if you can’t actually write. But it’s entirely possible to be a professional, published writer and be only competent. This is because, as I noted long ago, publishing is about what is competent rather than what is “good;” “good” is a value judgement, where “competent” is a standard that’s as objective as we can get when we talk about language. Even in the realm of self-publishing, financially successful writing has to be competent at least.

Which brings us to the third question:

When may you call yourself a good writer?

When you are in control of your instrument. In the case of fiction in particular, this means having the ability to make your reader have the emotional response you intended for them to have, when you set down to write. To put it another way, when a competent writer tells you a story, you know what happened. When a good writer tells you a story, you feel it happen to you.

(When a great writer tells you a story, you feel your life change because of it. But let’s not worry about that one now.)

Caveat: there is no bright line between “competent” and “good.” Some writers can be good in some aspects of writing and merely competent in others. Other writers are competent today and good tomorrow, and vice versa. Good writers can have bad days; competent writers can have really good days, and then later be unable to repeat the performance at will. Writers often can’t tell when what they’re writing is good or just competent (or worse). This is one reason why so many of us are completely neurotic.

And here’s something that really sucks — being a good writer doesn’t necessarily mean that any particular thing you’ve written will get published, because being published is contingent on several things, some of which are not about the writing. I’ve noted here before that when I guest-edited Subterranean Magazine, I had to reject about half the stories I really wanted to buy because I only had so much space and money. I had to pick and choose. The stories I rejected were good, and it killed me to have to let them go.

For all of that, a good writer is good at writing more often than not; the baseline skill is established and it’s at a high level. How a writer becomes good is pretty much like how anyone becomes good at anything: Practice, practice, practice. Talent plays into it but I think talent is overrated and overprivileged, and there are lots of writers with raw talent who never pan out because they expect that raw talent should be all they have to bring to the game. Surprise! It’s not. Lots of good writers are good simply because they’ve learned their craft and they’ve honed their skill.

I am a good writer, but I was a published writer before I was a good writer. The dividing line for me happened in 1997, after I spent a year as an editor for a humor magazine that ran on AOL. Before then I was a competent writer who assumed he was good because he was arrogant; after I had been an editor and spent time dealing with other people’s writing I was able to see the flaws and problems in mine, and it made a difference. I think being a published writer before one is a good writer is not unusual. Lots of competent writers learn to be good writers on the job. It’s part of that whole “practice, practice, practice” thing.

My advice to anyone who wants to be a good writer is simple: Stop thinking about being a good writer and start thinking about being a better writer. Work on the things you know you want to improve on. Stop thinking that you’re going to cross some line and then suddenly you’ll be a good writer. It doesn’t work that way, and even good writers still have things to work on (trust me on this).

You’ll know when you’re a good writer when your craft is good enough that you don’t worry about whether you can do what you want to do with your writing, and instead you wonder about how you’re going to do it. You probably won’t notice the first time this happens. When you do notice it, it probably won’t be a big deal. You’ll be more focused on the writing.

The Newark mayor the subject of same-sex marriage, specifically in New Jersey, but generally applicable everywhere.

When courts decide for same-sex marriage, those who oppose it say it should be the choice of legislatures. When legislatures decide for it, those who oppose it say it should be the choice of the voters. I have no doubt whatsoever that if the voters decided for it, those who oppose it would be in the courts trying to stop it. The folks who oppose same-sex marriage don’t really want anyone to say it’s okay. They just want it not to exist.