Meanwhile, back at the Scalzi Compound:

Me: Washington just passed same-sex marriage! How is our marriage?

Krissy: Last time I checked, still pretty solid.

So, that’s, what? Seven times my marriage has been threatened by same-sex marriage? And yet it’s still managed to survive each time. Somehow. And that’s not even counting Washington, DC!

The auctions begin on the 11th (that’s this Saturday), so there’s time to browse the current auctions to see if there’s anything you like and/or do a last minute auction contribution.

Here’s the general details of the auctions, and here’s the front page of the site — start scrolling to see the auctions on offer.

Slate (reprinting from the Financial Times) has a story on

Naturally, I have theories.

The first and most obvious: I am white, male, heterosexually paired, educated and financially well-off — i.e., the advantages I have are substantial and immediately apparent in our culture, so that even if being agnostic somehow offers a disadvantage, it’s swamped out by other factors. I have privilege in ridiculous amounts and I know it.

Second, neither in my social nor in my work life is being an agnostic a penalty. I write for a living; the writing I do is consumed by a class of people (science fiction and fantasy readers) who generally are not only not scandalized by my agnosticism, but might be mildly surprised if I did have strong religious beliefs. Likewise, my social peers are currently other writers and people who tend toward professions where a lack of strong religious belief is not a problem (science and tech-related fields, with some overlap in creative professions). So again, my lack of faith is really not a penalty.

(One interesting wrinkle on this: I live in a rural, conservative community and have for more than a decade. Rural conservative communities are just the sort of place where atheists and agnostics aren’t supposed to fit in. But in eleven years living here I can’t remember it ever being an issue. I suspect one reason for this is that many of folks here are from churches which have an active policy of tolerance and an emphasis on one’s good works. I suspect that another reason is that people here know I’m a writer and just assume writers are odd ducks anyway.)

Third, as far as being agnostic goes, while I’m perfectly open about it, I’m not aggressively so, nor am I generally antagonistic toward the concept of faith. I’m perfectly happy for others to have faith, and generally speaking I don’t take offense at the display of faith around me, or stand against it so long as that expression of faith does not encroach on my own rights and prerogatives. If having faith and/or being religious gives you joy, then have it and be it; for myself, I’ll pass, thanks. I think it also helps that, from my own personal interest, I know a fair amount about a number of faiths and can speak with at least passing knowledge about them (and am often curious about the things I don’t know). People with faith assume those without it have no knowledge, interest or respect for faith. If you let them know you do, in my experience a lot of suspicion goes away.

Fourth, I’ve been lucky. I grew up without a religious background, so I didn’t have to rebel against it. My education was at schools that actively encouraged pluralism and tolerance for faith, including the absence of faith — I was on my high school’s “Faith Gang” as a representative of secular humanism, for example. I’ve gotten through life largely surrounded by tolerant people, both of faith and without it, which allowed me to develop my own views on faith without undue defensiveness or division. Not everyone has that.

Add it all up and you get an agnostic experience without ostracism or penalty, at least so far. I am led to believe that my lack of faith will keep me from being President of the United States, but inasmuch as that’s not actually a life goal for me (and Krissy wouldn’t let me anyway), this is not a huge setback. Otherwise, essentially, it’s not been a problem for me. I wish others who choose not to believe were as fortunate as I have been.

Photo by Patrick Gensel, via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License

Wow, I gotta tell ya, I really suck at prognosticating this GOP primary season. Just this weekend I mentioned how it was a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, and here it is Wednesday and Rick Santorum has just won the caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado as well as the Missouri primary, with Mitt a distant second in Missouri and Colorado and third in Minnesota (with Ron Paul second!), and poor angry Newt third in CO, fourth in MN, and not even on the ballot in MO at all. If predicting GOP results were my job, I would totally fire me. But then again, after last night I would not be the only person who would have to be fired. There would be a lot of unemployed people today. Which would drive down employment numbers! And that’s good for the GOP’s chances this year. Sorry, I’m rambling.

I also have to tell you that I like this GOP primary season. It’s exciting. By this time Romney was supposed to be blandly cruising his way to the nomination, held aloft by large stacks of money and the air of inevitability cash manufactures, but here on February 8, Santorum has won as many states as more states than Romney has, and while Romney has twice the delegates as Santorum (thanks to Florida’s “winner take all” primary), his lead is not unassailable. Now Romney will have to spend even more money! To fight off Rick Santorum. Who in a rational universe would have been packed away long before now.

Meanwhile: Newt Gingrich, who at this point is not in the race to win it but to hurt Mitt Romney as much as possible between now and the day, hopefully in the late spring, when Romney drags his battered carcass over the 1,144 delegate line he needs to take the nomination. Newt will be sniping Mitt all the way, and Mitt will be distracted by having to deal with Santorum while he does so. This is my new scenario. Because why not.

And yes, I still think Romney’s going to take it, eventually (and yes, probably sooner than later). But, hey, who knows, right? It could be Santorum! I find him a querulous bigot, but apparently “querulous bigot” in Scalzi World equates to “genuine conservative” in GOP Land, and the genuine conservatives out there apparently aren’t happy with Romney and his actual governing track record in Massachusetts. Could Santorum capitalize on his victories last night? Sure. Could GOP voters become increasingly disenchanted with Romney? Absolutely. Will Gingrich stay on mission to stab Romney through the eyeballs at every possible opportunity? You know he will. Santorum could drag it out! And pick up delegates! And win the nomination!

And then get slaughtered in the general election, since outside of GOP circles, querulous bigots are probably bad presidential candidates here in 2012. But if the GOP wants to try the Santorum Solution, then I wouldn’t be the one to try to stop them. Please, GOPers, run Rick Santorum for president. Indeed: Santorum/Bachmann 2012. It would be the best ticket ever. For values of “best” that don’t mean what “best” usually does, mind you; even so.

Anyway, as I said: exciting. Good for the GOP or the nation? Probably not so much. But this is where we are at the moment. I couldn’t tell you where we go from here. The suspense is killing me! I hope it will last!

Over at FilmCritic.com this week, I look at the success of Chronicle in the theaters over Super Bowl weekend, and what lessons, if any, we may glean from its box-office topping performance. Hint: there are lessons to be learned, otherwise my column would be very short, and I don’t get paid for very short columns. Go! Read! Now!

And there you are. Goodnight, everybody!

(Fade to static and poltergeists)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SALADIN AHMED:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is he? I thought? Is he really?

To the Twitters!

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

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John Scalzi (@scalzi) February 06, 2012

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

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John Scalzi (@scalzi) February 06, 2012

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

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Nick Harkaway (@Harkaway) February 06, 2012

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

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John Scalzi (@scalzi) February 06, 2012

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

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Nick Harkaway (@Harkaway) February 06, 2012

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

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Nick Harkaway (@Harkaway) February 06, 2012

.@scalzi An apostoat.

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Nick Harkaway (@Harkaway) February 06, 2012

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

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John Scalzi (@scalzi) February 06, 2012

And so I have.

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