Category: Uncategorized

Rules of Writing VIII: maintain viability

Most of the posts in this series have revolved around the craft of writing, but now that I’ve had the chance to see the publishing business from both sides, I think this is a good time to look at the business angle. Some of you may recall that during last summer’s lunacy, (was it four kerfluffles ago or only three? I’ve lost count), a certain SFWA president completely lost it in his penultimate act as SFWA president after Random House announced its Hydra imprint. He declared:

Advances are typically all authors make from a book. It’s a competitive market and most books sell relatively small numbers. One reason to go with a publisher at all — especially these days — is because you get a concrete, definable amount of money fronted to you at the start; which is to say, you know you’ll get paid at least that much. The publisher is not doing you a favor by fronting you an advance; the publisher is making a hard-headed determination of how much money it will owe you (under terms of contract) and giving you that much up front so they don’t have to bother with royalties on the back end.

It’s also — importantly — an amount of money the publisher has invested in a book, which it will not get back if the book fails. It’s the publisher’s skin in the game, as it were. If there’s no advance, there’s no skin in the game for the publisher, and no real motivation for the publisher to bust its ass on behalf of the book. Neither Random House nor Bertelsmann is some hard-scrabble, scrappy company trying to make it in this big world; please look again at their revenues and net income. However, even if they were hard-scrabble, scrappy companies it would still be wrong not to offer advances to authors.

This is woefully clueless, but before I explain the essential problem with it, let me first point out that the individual concerned has clearly never grasped the risk-related aspects of the advance, the potential problem it creates for the writer, or the important distinction between short-term financial risk and long-term caeer risk that must be evaluated and balanced by the writer. As evidence, consider what the same author had to say about advances TEN YEARS AGO, before advances began to significantly decline and no-advance deals became increasingly common:

$0 to $3,000: A Shitty Deal. Because that’s what it is, my friends. Possibly the only thing worse than a shitty deal is no deal at all. Possibly.

$3,000 to $5,000: A Contemptible Deal. The deal you get when your publisher has well and truly got your number, and it is low.

$5,000 to $10,000: A “Meh” Deal. It’s not great, you know. But you can pay some bills. Get a few of these, and a tolerant spouse with a regular income, and you can tell your day job to piss off. This year, anyway.

$10,000 to $20,000: A Not Bad Deal. Note that “not bad” here should be said with a slight appreciative rise of the eyebrows and a small approving nod — this is the level at which the money begins to look not embarrassing both to writers and non-writers. A couple of these, and you’ll definitely be punting the day job (I did, anyway).

$20,000 to $100,000: A “Shut Up!” Deal. This needs to be said in the same enviously admiring vocal tone as a teenage girl might use to her girlfriend who is showing off the delicious new pumps she got at Robinsons-May for 30% off, or the vocal tone (same idea, lower register) Jim Kelly used when one of our number admitted to having at least a couple of deals in this range. With this kind of money, you don’t even need a supportive spouse to avoid the Enforced Top Ramen Diet (although, you know. Having one doesn’t hurt). But it’s not so much that the other writers actively begin to hate you.

$100,000 and above: “I’m Getting the Next Round.” Because if you’re at this level, you can buy and sell all the other writers at the table. Get ‘em a friggin’ beer, for God’s sake.

It should be noted that I have received three separate SHUT UP deals from major publishers, so I’m neither ignorant nor in the “sour grapes” category. It is interesting to observe that even at the time, in 2004, other writers recognized that the SFWA president to-be didn’t understand the basic risks involved. Hence the following dialogue between Jeremy Lassen and John Scalzi:

JL: “A $20,000 advance = “not bad?” Fuck that. A $20,000 advance could mean the end of your fucking career. If you don’t sell 7,500 copies of your book in hardcover, or 15,000 of your book in trade paperback, you didn’t earn out.”

JS: “Or really NOT, since that was the exact amount of the advance for my first book, and I’ve subsequently sold six more, including two more to the same company. Sometimes I get more than that $20K, sometimes I get less…. What’s indisputable is that $20K paid my mortgage for the year. That’s Not Bad.”

So, as long as you plan to rip-off Robert Heinlein, then follow that up with rip-offs of Philip K. Dick, H. Beam Piper, and Star Trek, you need not worry about killing off your career with a failed first novel on the basis of an excessive advance. For everyone else capable of learning from the 10 years that have passed by in the meantime, it might be wise to consider this cautionary tale, in which a young woman discovered that a $200,000 book deal was a Trojan Horse insofar as her literary career was concerned:

In 2008 I sold a book-in-progress for $200,000 ($170,000 after commission, to be paid in four installments), which still seems to me like a lot of money. At the time, though, it seemed infinite. The resulting book—a “paperback original,” as they’re called—has sold around 8,000 copies, which is about a fifth of what it needed to sell not to be considered a flop. This essentially guarantees that no one will ever pay me that kind of money to write a book again….

MY FIRST CLUE THAT MY BOOK WOULD NOT BE A BESTSELLER came in a marketing meeting about six months prior to publication. Actually there were several clues in that meeting. The first came when a marketing assistant suggested that I start a blog, and I had to explain that her bosses had acquired my book in part because I was a well-known blogger. The second came when my publicist asked how I thought they should position my book. She rattled off a short list of commercially successful essay collections by funny, quirky female writers like Sloane Crosley, Laurie Notaro, and Julie Klam. Books with “Cake” and “Girls” in the title and jokey subtitles.

Having worked at a publishing house, I know that it’s not possible for
everyone who works at a publishing house to read all the books coming
out that season, or even parts of them, or even the descriptions of them
in the catalog or in-house “tip sheets.” But I also know that if a book
is supposed to be a “big” book, everyone in the office will read it. I
was a young woman, so of course they had lumped me in with the cake-girl
books.

I had a similar problem, although what killed off the Eternal Warriors series was Pocket’s well-intentioned, but mistaken decision to retroactively shoehorn it into the Left Behind department, where it failed, rather than leaving it in the Fantasy department where The War in Heaven sold through all 35,000 copies in its two print runs. They even tossed out the half-completed Rowena painting that would have served as the cover for The World in Shadow. As it happens, Emily Gould survived her disastrous first book in the short term; she somehow managed to finagle a second $30,000 book contract on the strength of her social media presence. However, if Friendship fails, as And the Heart Says Whatever did, her traditional publishing career is done. Traditional publishing is now a two-strikes-and-you’re-out business.

And note that despite paying a $200,000 advance, her publisher only managed to move 8,000 copies. So much for the skin-in-the-game theory. If $200k isn’t enough to focus their attention, how much skin do you think a meager $3k advance going to get you? I can personally attest that not even a $60k contract was enough to get Pocket to do more than return my phone calls.

Now consider if Miss Gould had sold 8,000 ebooks with an independent publisher. At a 50 percent royalty on the $7.99 kindle price, she’d have earned about $2.75 per book, or $22,000. That is ALREADY into SHUT UP deal country; not only that, but she probably wouldn’t have fallen into debt on the basis of her “windfall”. And, if she still wanted to go the traditional route, most publishers would be open to publishing her rather than viewing her as if she’s radioactive.

As long as the writer is looking at his career beyond his current book, it is ALWAYS better to take a no-advance deal so long as a) he isn’t starving, b) the royalty rate is better than the standard 25 percent offered by the major publishers, and c) there is reason to believe that the independent publisher can both produce professional-quality books and find a market for them. Self-publishing is an excellent option, but having been through the oft-aggravating setup process, it is definitely not for everyone and not everyone can afford to drop between $250 and $1,000 on ISBN numbers, to say nothing of the price of good covers and editing.

Only the most short-sighted author will want his publisher to assume all the financial risk for them, because whereas the publisher is merely risking a few thousand dollars that first book, the author is betting his entire career. But very, very few authors write their best, or their most successful book, first. This means that it is downright foolish to attempt to shift the short-term risk to the publisher, because that necessarily means the author is assuming an inordinate amount of medium-to-long-term risk.

Maintaining viability should be the writer’s foremost objective on the business side. One never wants to bet one’s entire career on a single book. The risky bet can pay off, as Dan Brown proved after getting dropped by Pocket Books, but the reason we all know Dan Brown’s name is because he is the very rare exception. And it probably will not have escaped the sophisticated observer’s notice how these exceptions often appear to be linked to what shall be politely described as literary borrowing.

I will provide more information on this in a month or two, when I will conclusively demonstrate that in at least some cases, an author will actually receive a check for an amount equal to a professional word-rate from the new no-advance model months BEFORE he receives it from the traditional advance model.

Playing with fire

What business is it of the NFL’s to interfere with state law in Arizona?

Call it what you want — anti-gay or religious rights — but if Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signs a controversial bill, you might not be calling Arizona the home of the 2015 Super Bowl.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, S.B. 1062, is the current controversy du jour out of Arizona, and the National Football League is with the opposition.

“Our policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or any other improper standard,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told USA Today. “We are following the issue in Arizona and will continue to do so should the bill be signed into law, but will decline further comment at this time.”

The idiots in the league office are making the same mistake that the gatekeepers in SF/F made about 20 years ago. They wrongly assume that they are in a position to dictate to the public, when in fact it is their position that relies upon the good will of  the public.

Tolerance is an evil joke. It is nothing but a stalking horse to impose anti-Christian, anti-Islamic secular values on an unwilling public. It is now eminently clear that the First Amendment was a mistake, considering the way it is being used to attack religion rather than protect it, as was the original intention. Somehow, “Congress shall make no law” has metastasized into “no one anywhere shall be permitted to make a law.”

Arizona should respond by telling the NFL that if it pulls the Super Bowl, it will be taxed 100 percent of its revenues in the state, including revenues derived from television income.

Of orcs and orc talk

John C. Wright points out that the orcs, aka the Insect Army, really mean what they say:

Upon hearing the orcs talking in their orc-talk about ruining the writing field, making the writing field worse, driving good books away and shoving bad books into their shelf space in the name of fair play, and, in short, talking about heaping the writing field high with warm filth and stinking ordure, flies and rivulets and urine,  the sane people react with a blankness of mind akin to shutting one’s eyes at too great a shock. We cannot believe the orcs are serious. We assume they cannot mean that.

You want J.K. Rowlings, the most celebrated writer of our age, to write LESS? The mind reels, we think the orcs do not mean it, we do nothing to shut them down or shut them up, and then the orcs carry out their program, while we scratch our heads, puzzled that no one told us that this was exactly what they meant all alone.

But it is what they mean.

Yes, dear reader, the orcs mean exactly that. They want less talent, less books you like, and more dross and spit and entrails.

It’s hard for those who aren’t pigs to understand that pigs really do enjoy rolling around in the fetid muck. And it’s hard for those who aren’t orcs to understand that orcs really want to destroy human literature and replace it with their own obscene, subhuman schlock. But it’s true. They see themselves in a fundamentally different way than those of us who consider ourselves to be creatures of God, blessed with souls and created for a higher purpose than the momentary gratification of our animal instincts. They are the self-appointed wicked, the haters of God and the good, and the enemies of every noble virtue. They revile the beautiful, they elevate the ugly, they glory in desecration, and they constantly seek to drag others down to their level.

It is illustrative to compare the protagonist Machine in Tom Kratman’s work to the protagonist Man in John Scalzi’s best-known work. Which character better demonstrates the concepts of conscience and honor and sacrifice? Which character speaks more truly of the realities of the human condition?  And which is the human literature and which is the mere grunting of orcs?

Dead Horse: the conclusive beating

Longtime Ilk will recall that once upon a time, in 2004, a lengthy debate was inspired by a book written by Me-So-Michelle that insisted the WWII-era internment of Japanese-Americans was justified on the basis of legitimate military fears of an invasion of America’s West Coast in early 1942. I took extreme exception to that ludicrous attempt to justify internment, knowing that the argument was complete nonsense, and demonstrated that Malkin hadn’t done even a modicum of military research given her incorrect count of US carriers and inability to correctly interpret the significance of US carrier movements in early 1942.

This did not prevent a number of Malkin fans from attempting to defend the woman, mostly on the sophisticated grounds of “yeah, but, how can you REALLY know, for, like, you know, sure?”

As it happens, the recently released gray book of Admiral Chester Nimitz, published by the American Naval Records Society, not only makes for fascinating reading, but conclusively settles the matter of the US military’s historical concerns regarding a potential invasion of the American West Coast in 1942. These are the verbatim words of the US Navy’s assessment of the situation in January 1942, quoted from Volume 1 of the briefings for the USN Commander in Chief, United States Pacific Fleet (CINCPACFLT). There is considerably more information than this available, but I have only transcribed that which is directly relevant to the subject at hand.

January 8, 1942
EMPLOYMENT OF CARRIER TASK FORCES IN JANUARY

ENEMY SITUATION
From the best intelligence we have, it appears that:

  1. The Far East offensives are occupying practically all of the amphibious forces of the enemy plus 3 or 4 carriers, 2 BB’s, about 13 cruisers, about one-third of his destroyers, some submarines and many auxiliary types. How long these forces will be needed in the Far East is problematical but it is believed that the end of January will see them there.
  2. Since the raid on the 7th, all First Fleet units and carriers have apparently remained west of the Eastern Marshalls.
  3. Carrier groups are being refitted or exchanged.

ENEMY INTENTION

In other estimates the enemy’s intentions in general order of priority have been deduced as follows:

a) The prosecution of the offensives in the Far East until all of Malaya, Philippines and NEI have been captured. In this will probably be included Rangoon.
b) Consolidation of this territory.
c) Advance upon Australia.

    While these are going on:

d) Continued submarine raids on our forces and communications, minor attacks against outlying islands and Alaska.
e) Cruiser raids against the routes to Australia, and possibly to the Mainland.
f) Capture Samoa.
g) Capture Canton. [Canton Island (Kiribati)]
i) Capture Java.
J) Attack with strong forces, including carriers, for demolition Johnston, Palmyra, Midway.
k) Sweeps in force along our communications to outlying islands; along our route to Mainland.
l) Carrier raids on West Coast.
m) Attacks for capture of Midway, Palmyra; main Hawaiian Islands; Oahu.

One of the basic questions facing us is: Is the close cover of Oahu necessary at this time? Taking in combination the present state of its defenses and our deductions as to enemy intentions, the answer is “no”.

In other words, the admiral commanding all the US military forces in the Pacific had absolutely no fear of a West Coast invasion, knew perfectly well that the limited Japanese transport capacity was committed elsewhere, and even went so far to conclude that the risk of a Hawaiian invasion was so low that it was not necessary to closely defend Hawaii, let alone California. Not only were Japanese naval forces fully engaged in the Far East, but their anticipated next move was in precisely the opposite direction from the West Coast!

As for the prospective carrier raids, I addressed the logistical aspects of them back in 2004 and showed that no amount of carrier raids could have even slowed down the American production of war materials, much less “cripple the war effort”, as evidenced by the INCREASE in German manufacture under heavier and more regular bombing than the sort permitted by carrier raids.

The lesson, as before, is this: Michelle Malkin is an ignorant media whore with risible intellectual pretensions. To the best of my knowledge, she has never come out and admitted that she was wrong, nor has she publicly disavowed the ridiculous argument she presented in her book In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror.

Free Trade is global fascism

I worked that out on my own, but it turned out to be unnecessary. This document from the 1967 Congressional Record should suffice to demonstrate that conservatives who favor free trade are being played like Ronald Reagan signing the 1986 Immigration Amnesty under the belief that it would reduce future immigration from Mexico:

“For the widespread development of the multinational corporation is one of our major accomplishments in the years since the war, though its meaning and importance have not been generally understood. For the first time in history man has at his command an instrument that enables him to employ resource flexibility to meet the needs of peopels all over the world. Today a corporate management in Detroit or New York or London or Dusseldorf may decide that it can best serve the market of country Z by combining the resources of country X with labor and plan facilities in country Y – and it may alter that decision 6 months from now if changes occur in costs or price or transport. It is the ability to look out over the world and freely survey all possible sources of production… that is enabling man to employ the world’s finite stock of resources with a new degree of efficiency for the benefit of all mandkind.

But to fulfill its full potential the multinational corporation must be able to operate with little regard for national boundaries – or, in other words, for restrictions imposed by individual national governments.

To achieve such a free trading environment we must do far more than merely reduce or eliminate tariffs. We must move in the direction of common fiscal concepts, a common monetary policy, and common ideas of commercial responsibility. Already the economically advanced nations have made some progress in all of these areas through such agencies as the OECD and the committees it has sponsored, the Group of Ten, and the IMF, but we still have a long way to go. In my view, we could steer a faster and more direct course… by agreeing that what we seek at the end of the voyage is the full realization of the benefits of a world economy.

Implied in this, of course, is a considerable erosion of the rigid concepts of national sovereignty, but that erosion is taking place every day as national economies grow increasingly interdependent, and I think it desirable that this process be consciously continued. What I am recommending is nothing so unreal and idealistic as a world government, since I have spent too many years in the guerrilla warfare of practical diplomacy to be bemused by utopian visions. But it seems beyond question that modern business – sustained and reinforced by modern technology – has outgrown the constrictive limits of the antiquated political structures in which most of the world is organized, and that itself is a political fact which cannot be ignored. For the explosion of business beyond national borders will tend to create needs and pressures that can help alter political structures to fit the requirements of modern man far more adequately than the present crazy quilt of small national states. And meanwhile, commercial, monetary, and antitrust policies – and even the domiciliary supervision of earth-straddling corporations – will have to be increasingly entrusted to supranational institutions….

We will never be able to put the world’s resources to use with full efficiency so long as business decisions are frustrated by a multiplicity of different restrictions by relatively small nation states that are based on parochial considerations, reflect no common philosophy, and are keyed to no common goal.

Fascists are always all about “efficiency”. If the thought of global efficiency doesn’t put a shiver down the spine of a God-fearing free trader and cause him to rethink his position, well, there isn’t much hope for him. Note that “the idea behind getting rid of these barriers wasn’t about free trade, it was about reorganizing the world so that corporations could manage resources for “the benefit of mankind””

Corporate resource management in the name of freedom. That’s what “free trade” is.

QUANTUM MORTIS The Programmed Mind

In addition to Big Boys Don’t Cry Castalia House also announced today QUANTUM MORTIS The Programmed Mind.  The book is set centuries before Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower joined MCID-XAR, in a time when the
Greater Terran Ascendancy found itself facing a historic crisis after the
Shiva-class cruiser ATSV Rigel went missing during a routine patrol
through the Kantillon sector. Fortunately for the
Terran empire, the Ascendancy Intelligence Directorate’s top operative,
Daniela York, is on the scene. But is she capable of penetrating the
lethal plot perpetratd by House Dai Zhan’s ruthless assassins,
especially after the Directorate discovers the cyborgs of the
Man-Machine Integration may be involved? 
QUANTUM MORTIS The Programmed Mind is a literary remix of a
true SF classic and is a tightly plotted, intense spy
thriller that lays the deep historical foundation for the futuristic
science fiction world of Quantum Mortis.

I asked a serious fan of the original work upon which QM-TPM is based, The Programmed Man by Jean and Jeff Sutton, to share his thoughts on whether he felt the book lived up to the original, which was a childhood favorite of mine. After reading it, he replied:

“The trouble with “reboots” isn’t that they shouldn’t be done. I’m not terribly sure they can
be done. After all, Tolkien could not return to Middle Earth after Lord
of the Rings. Asimov tried to return to extend his colossal Foundation,
and failed galactically. I can list a score of other examples, and if
the original author is incapable, it seems evident that earnest
successors fare no better. Dune was not improved by re-visits by later
authors, nor was the Hyborian Age, and few Lovecraft pastiches come
anywhere close to the originals.

“That general observation is precisely why you’ll never catch me describing Quantum Mortis: The Programmed Mind with the epithet “reboot.”

“The Programmed Man is among the more memorable science
fiction novels of the New Wave that you have never
heard of. Despite its distribution though young adult book clubs following publication, it was poorly suited
for longevity in the minds of young readers due to its complexity of plot and
its emphasis on intrigue rather than action. The plot is a
galaxy-spanning game of enigmas and deception in the hunt for a lone
individual who may, (or may not), hold the fate of the decline of
humankind in his genes. An extra twist is added to the narrative
in that much of the truth to the labyrinthine plot is concealed in the
words of vested and unreliable witnesses. The book is a lot of things: a
spy novel, a mystery, a nuclear war novel, and a foray into game
theory.

“In The Programmed Man, the core cloak-and-dagger game
structure is analyzed intellectually, and teased out in tantalizing
packets of conversation. The novel’s new successor, Quantum Mortis: The Programmed Mind,
is an explosive action novel that uses the core game structure as the
tinderbox for galactic conflict. It raises the body count and explores
new territory: sexual differences and artificial intelligence, as well as human
origin, awareness and identity. It also just happens to lay some
fascinating and significant historic turning points set within Day’s
Quantum Mortis universe. If The Programmed Man reads like the secret dossier transcripts of the historic event, then Quantum Mortis: The Programmed Mind is the pulse-pounding eyewitness experience.

“Whereas
the typical marriage of public domain works and modern authorship seem
most often to result in those “Jane Austen plus Monsters” semi-parodies, Quantum Mortis: The Programmed Mind breaks new
ground, presenting itself instead as a sizzling collaboration between
two powerful science fiction voices of two different eras.”

From the early reviews:

” Think Hunt For Red October if it was told from Admiral Greer’s perspective instead of Jack Ryan’s.”

 “A great addition to the Quantum Mortis series, highly recommended.”

“Tight story telling. Interesting well thought-out characters… and a fascinating futuristic spy plot.”

Cracks in the Pax

Contra the myth of shining happy progress, China and Japan appear to be heading directly into military conflict again:

Chan Kai Yee of China Daily Mail, a blog with no connection to Beijing, Feb. 22, 2014, provides the following summary translation of an article in Qianzhan.com,
a Chinese-language news site headquartered in the city of Shenzhen in
China’s southeastern Guangdong province, with offices in Beijing and
Hong Kong:

Quite a few people have said that the conflict over the Diaoyus (known as Senkakus in Japan) has passed the stage of oral confrontation and what follows may very probably be direct military conflict.

It is especially so as, relying on US support, Japan is obviously declaring war against China already. Sources say that China’s Central Military Commission has directly given Chinese military the instruction: “Fight if it is appropriate to fight.

Sources pointed out that they had received information that Xi Jinping, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, gave a relevant warning to a Japanese economic and trade delegation that recently visited China. Xi specially pointed out to the delegation when he met them, if Japan kept provoking China and thus gave rise to an unstable situation, it alone has to be responsible for all the consequences.

What we are seeing here is the pre-positioning for the collapse of the global Pax Americana. The US is intervening in the internal affairs of foreign governments ever more actively than any time since the 1950s, but it is doing so now without the benefit of a credible military threat. While the weaponry is still significantly advanced and there is still a core of excellent soldiers, it is no secret that the population has zero will-to-fight and the military has been all but broken by constant misuse and overuse as well as the incessant social meddling by its civilian overseers. Vladimir Putin recognizes this, as do the Communist oligarchs of China. So, too, do the Eurofascists of the EU.

The world’s second-rate powers can’t stand directly against the USA yet, but they know the time is rapidly approaching when they will be able to do so. Remember, it only took 22 years for Germany to go from laying prostrate and defeated before the Western Allies to defeating France. Already, the US finds itself unable to impose its will upon China. In another generation, the USA will be unable to impose its will in Asia.  It’s not unthinkable that a generation after that, its European influence will be gone and US hegemony will be largely limited to the area of the historical Monroe Doctrine.

And clearly it isn’t only the foreign governments who anticipate this:

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001.

The proposal, described by several Pentagon officials on the condition of anonymity in advance of its release on Monday, takes into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly and exhausting land wars. A result, the officials argue, will be a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations.

The size of the military and the expenditure upon it can rapidly change, but the population from which it draws won’t. Between Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Younger, and Obama, is there a single individual one could honestly recommend anyone accepting on oath as a commander-in-chief? And as for the time-hallowed notion of  “serving one’s country”, what country would one serve now? North Mexico? Israel? Melting Pottomia? Democracy?

The only people in whose interests the US government appears completely unwilling to intervene is the Revolutionary American people.

Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman

Castalia House today announced BIG BOYS DON’T CRY. Now available from Amazon, it is a novella from military science fiction author Tom Kratman, known for
A Desert Called Peace and the Carrera series. The novella follows the
life cycle of a Ratha, a sentient future supertank that dutifully fights
Man’s battles on dozens of alien worlds. But will the massive creature
still be grateful to its creators when it discovers it has a conscience?
And how long will an intelligent war machine with enough firepower to
flatten a city be content to remain Man’s obedient slave?

I asked Tom for his thoughts on the publication of BIG BOYS DON’T CRY:

“Not many people think of it this way, but the Boloverse, as in the late Keith Laumer’s Bolos and the spin-offs, is one of the most liberal themes in science fiction.  It’s especially funny precisely because almost nobody understands that it’s liberal.  Why do I say it’s liberal?  Because it’s all about the easy, certain, and reliable programming of altruistic values in sentient beings.  Brother, sister, that’s the penultimate CORE of liberalism.  Interestingly, since the stories can move even me, it suggests to me that we ALL have some liberal in us.

“Big Boys Don’t Cry isn’t a Bolo story, either in the special military technical details or in the theme.  What it is, though, is a deconstruction of that liberal meme on the easy, certain, and reliable programming of altruism in sentient beings.

“It’s also, I think, a pretty good story.”

From the early Amazon reviews:

“Colonel Kratman, the evil, cruel, soulless, right-wing, misogynistic, war
mongering, homophobe has gone and written a tale of loss and betrayal
and honor and redemption that broke my heart….”

“This is my first time reading Kratman. His reputation suggested he was
someone who could weave clever and hard-hitting military sci-fi prose
and this novella is a testament to that.”

“I can gladly recommend it to all lovers of military science fiction.”

“This is one of the darker SF books I have ever read.”

“This book is brutal and moving and worth every penny spent, every minute reading it.”

The NFL flags hate speech

Does anyone in the league office ever actually spend time around the players or pay attention to how they talk? It should be interesting to watch NFL games with half the black players sent to the sidelines by the end of the first quarter. Or perhaps theleague can come up with a policy that permits black players to call each other “nigger” while penalizing white players. Which raises the question; will multiracial players like Russell Wilson only be penalized five yards?

The NFL may implement a new rule this offseason calling for 15-yard penalties for any players who use racial slurs on the field. John Wooten, head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, told CBS Sports that he expects the league to make it an automatic 15-yard penalty if a player uses the N-word on the field, and an automatic ejection for a player who does it twice.

“I will be totally shocked if the competition committee does not uphold us on what we’re trying to do,” Wooten said. “We want this word to be policed from the parking lot to the equipment room to the locker room. Secretaries, PR people, whoever, we want it eliminated completely and want it policed everywhere.”

You would swear this was a parody, but perhaps the wags who predicted that the NFL would devolved to flag football with penalty flags thrown for making other players feel bad weren’t so far off after all.

And it’s fascinating to observe that they are quite willing to set themselves up as the speech police.

The virulent circle

I find it modestly amusing how the only thing that the two sides of the low-grade civil war between the SFWA Old Guard and the Insect Army can agree upon is that I am simply beyond the pale.


“That’s right! I am dangerous, Ice… man!”

Although it’s also amusing how a few of them seem to think that they should be able to discuss how terrible I am without me, you know, letting any of you know about it. Apparently they also think the MORE THAN ~50,000 DAILY READERS here are crackpots and hatey-hatey haters. Shame on all of you! From SFF.net, which I will remind you is the considerably more rational side of the two that are involved.

YOU ARE HEREBY WARNED  This is a hate site. They hate EVERYONE. Also the abode of crackpots.
– Lois Tilton (providing link to VP)

No one has to seek such things out. If we knew exactly why he was kicked out of SFWA, then we need never think of him again. But we don’t.
– Jerry Pournelle

I was pointing out that Beale is predictably taking advantage of the current flapping over the Truesdale matter to do more flapping of his own, on his own blog. 
– Lois Tilton

Vox Day is, of course, a perfect rendition of the Cory Doctorow prescription of writerly success. Welcome to the Promised Land.
– William Barton

As he will tell you.
– Lois Tilton

As far as I know, the only thing Beale has to do with the current flap is that he signed the petition at some point and his name was removed before it went public.  Beale commented on that on his blog.
– Steven Silver

I seriously doubt that. I saw an early draft of the petition and his name wasn’t there.  Dave would not be that dumb; it would have poisoned the whole effort. I wouldn’t take anything Beale says as accurate.
– Chuck Rothman

If Truesdale, a non-member, can present such a petition, Beale, a non-member, should be able to sign it. Removing someone’s name from a petition because one thinks they are an asshat is prima facie evidence that one is, onceself, an asshat. Maybe SFWA can chip in and buy an “UNCLEAN” sign for Beale to wear around his neck? SFWA’s not the fucking Pope.
– William Barton

Regarding Beale I have yet to see either charge or specification, apparently because even the mention of what he did to merit expulsion would be actionable or something of the sort.  I probably misunderstand, but apparently the Board can act as a Court of Star Chamber and doesn’t need charges and specifications.  I can’t say I find that reassuring.
– Jerry Pournelle

Well, Mr. Rothman, Dave was precisely that dumb. It was also downright hilarious to see one member pointing out that Steven Gould’s actions have proved that I was “was the only possible choice for president who might have made me write a dues check this year.”

Anyhow, I sent Mr. Pournelle a copy of the SFWA report as well as my response to it. I have no idea what he will make of it, but at least he will be left in ignorance no longer.

As Lois Tilton has surmised, I don’t mind any of this. I have the impression that running a publishing house will permit me to have considerably more impact on the field of science fiction and fantasy than serving as president of SFWA would have. About which more tomorrow. And as it happens, many of the things I would have implemented inside the organization are equally implementable from the outside. About which more anon.