Hi Piers

This is the final column of the final issue of the HI PIERS NEWSLETTER. It is sad to see it end, but that is the way of life and business. I understand that an Internet Page will be set up, and I’ll contribute to that, by typing my material and having it transcribed by others who know what they are doing on-line. I repeat, I am not online, have never been, and don’t expect to be soon. I have done interviews there, but those have been by phone, with someone transcribing for me. The last was handled by PEOPLE Magazine, and I hope it worked out okay. The questions were the usual; it is evident that many folk online don’t even check what information is already available there. Much of it was spent waiting while my words were typed in, so I tried to keep them brief.

Brief updates on my assorted exercises: I moved my compound bow up to 60 pounds draw weight, and had to adjust my sights accordingly, because the arrows were going high. I’m doing spot aiming now, because too many arrows were clustering in the center. I aim the first for the center, the next for twelve o’clock as it were, then 6 o’clock, 9 o’clock, and 3 o’clock. That is, center, up, down, left, right. This morning I missed twice, going too high when I aimed up, and too far right when I aimed right, and injured another arrow. I’ll have to watch that. Left handed I had one good day, hitting with 9 of 10 at a hundred feet, but the following time I was back to 50%. So today I moved up to fifty feet, and hit with all arrows, but not at the precise spots on the target I was aiming for. So there is work to be done yet. The RowBike I got I expect to use seldom over the summer, because it makes me too hot, but I have ridden it a cumulative scant twenty miles, and managed to make it up our hill several times. I have also crashed twice; my drive is narrow, and when I veer the wrong way I’m suddenly up against a pine tree. I have the scratches to prove it. I use hand weights for general arm exercise, and they are versatile. I suspect I won’t ever need more than the ten pound weights. Ten pounds may not sound like much, but hefting ten pounds in each hand around at arm’s reach quickly becomes tiring, and I am building muscle. Similar story on the morning newspaper-fetching jogs: a 1.5 mile round trip as fast as I can make it, which is now just over the eight minute mile rate (about seven miles an hour), is laughable in terms of the Olympics, but a solid workout for me at age 62, and keeps me lean and fit. One morning there was heavy rain, and I had to splash through puddles, soaking my shoes, ruining my time, so I bought a pair of tough weather sandals, but they didn’t fit, so I’ll stay with the sneakers and try to avoid bad weather.

There are things I haven’t mentioned in this column, because I hoped to cover them when they were solidly established. Then they fell through. Sigh. So now is the time, since there will not be a tomorrow as far as this publication is concerned. The most exciting prospect was one the Turner entertainment empire was going to do: a sequel movie to The Wizard of Oz. Reviewers are an ignorant lot, but one made a comment years back that made sense to me, saying that Xanth was like a slightly more mature version of Oz. Yes, I think so. I did not try to copy Oz-I suspect the genesis of Xanth owes more to the Raggedy Ann books, with their gardens of lollipops, or the Narnia novels, with their sapient animals-but I did read all 14 original Oz novels to my daughter Penny twice, when she was that age, along with the Arabian Nights and much else. So I was conversant with Oz. Is it the sort of thing I could write, if I chose to? Yes. So when they wanted a pro writer to write an original Oz novel that would be a sequel not to any of the 14 but to the movie, so that the sequel movie could then be made from that novel, I was the one. I took a month and did a 20,000 words sample and summary presentation, following their description, wherein the Wicked Witch of the West is revived and flies on her broomstick through the rainbow to Kansas to recover the magic slippers from Dorothy. But more time has passed than she realizes, and she finds herself in modern day America. At first she is disgusted by the ignorance, as when she flies over Wichita and realizes that it is misspelled: they misplaced the T of Witch-ia. She doesn’t realize that Dorothy is now an old hag, and the one she takes as Dorothy is her great granddaughter of the same name, who has a deadly dull mundane job in New York and lives with her dog Tutu. When a man tries to mug her, the witch is furious, and turns him into a toad. It goes on from there, with analogs of the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion, and Wizard of Oz, who is young Dorothy’s psychiatrist. It was to end in a grand finale in Kansas when Dorothy finally faces down the witch as the magic generates the terrible power of a tornado and blows her house away. I understand they were trying to get Michelle Pfeiffer to play Dorothy and Whoopi Goldberg for the Witch. I think it would have been a great Oz novel and a great movie, and it would have put me right back on the bestseller lists. But something must have fallen through, because it softly and silently faded away, and I was left with an unusable manuscript for which I had never been paid a dime. Next time, I told my agent firmly, they pay up front.

But hope springs eternal. Later, on my own, I worked up a project intended for movie or TV titled Candle, whose essential feature is a house whose front door opens onto a busy Philadelphia street, and whose back door opens onto a 30,000 year old native forest. It is intended to appeal to the dream I suspect most of us have, to reap the benefits of the city with its shopping malls, movies, jobs, and conveniences, while also having immediate access to utter unsoiled wilderness, without the complications of tedious travel. My house in the middle of a tree farm comes as close to this dream as I can, but Candle is moreso. A senior citizen couple rents the house, and discovers that the first month is free, and that the house is stocked with just about anything they want. What is going on here? Much more than meets the eye. So they bring in the grandchildren to explore things thoroughly. The grandkids are characters in their own right: a smart rebellious 15 year old girl and a mouthy 13 year old boy who is nevertheless really hot on electronics. He has a dog, Obsidian, patterned after ours: her philosophy is that there is nothing on earth that can’t be improved by the addition of a cold wet nose. But this is all I’ll say, because my agent likes the project, and is currently negotiating for a TV adaptation. Maybe this, too, will fade away, but the issue has not yet been decided.

Meanwhile it looks as if GEODYSSEY is dying. I had hoped to finish out my life on this significant series, but it has to sell at a price sufficient to cover my expenses, such as a full time researcher, and there is now no certainty of that. So until I find a publisher for #4 Muse of Art, I’ll hold on #5, Climate of Change, and it may never get done, to my deep regret. Meanwhile I’ll try a new project, heroic fantasy, the series titled ChroMagic. A thousand years ago a space ship set down a small human colony on a lovely seeming world named Charm, and never returned. Now there is magic in many colors, and a murder mystery, and magical clones, and a barbarian named Havoc who is made king and wants out. No, not funny fiction; this is serious hard-hitting adult fantasy complete with swords and monsters and revelations that will not much resemble what I have done before, or what others have done. I feel I should be able to do heroic fantasy as well as anyone, and I intend to prove it, in my fashion. Barbarians are not necessarily stupid, monsters are not necessarily without justification, and planets are not necessarily passive. Charm is a rather special world that will be remembered, I think.

Recently we heard from the State of California: it wants $34,000 income tax and penalties from me. Huh? I never lived there. Apparently California feels it is entitled to tax any money that originates there, and I did get movie option money a couple of years ago, for Killobyte, though they never made the movie. This strikes me as an unwarranted grab. The money that Hollywood makes is drawn from movie viewers all over the world; do all those other places demand income tax on it, from the Hollywood studios? The wealth doesn’t originate in California; the state is more of a channel, and an option is really like an advance against that widely spread income. So I am consulting an accountant, and we’ll see.

But my main irritation of the moment is the Audit. This is simplified, as all the details would be tedious and confusing. I have done some business with BAEN BOOKS, a publisher which at first seemed quite promising. But over the years there were little signals of mischief, and then larger ones, and finally a giant one that required me to take firm action. When I agreed to do If I Pay Thee Not In Gold there collaboratively, it was to be the first of a series. But when my collaborator dumped an insultingly sloppy manuscript on me-apparently she was angry at my assumption that I know how to write Piers Anthony style better than she know how to write Piers Anthony style-I cleaned it up as well as I could, a real headache, and told the publisher I would not do another. That marked the turning point in our relations. The publisher paid the collaborator more than $55,000, and paid me $400. And subsequently stopped sending me statements at all. The publisher had originally estimated, and stated so in the contract, that it expected to pay me, as the senior writer, on the order of $100,000. Obviously I would not have made the deal if I had known it would be for peanuts; money aside, the experience was already bad enough. Evidently the books started to be cooked the moment the publisher felt it didn’t need me any more. Not to put too fine a point on this, but I don’t think the collaborator’s contribution was worth well over a hundred times what mine was, and the failure even to send statements was an open breach of contract. I am not a good writer to stiff. When my agent’s repeated queries got nowhere, I acted directly, with a high powered New York auditor backed by the same lawyer I had used before to make TOR honor its own deal. Well, it has now been over four months, and the BAEN is still stonewalling the audit. Preliminary figures indicate that I am owed from $20,000 to $55,000, but these have to be confirmed, and the publisher is not providing the necessary accounts. I suspect it will take a court order to blast them out, and another to force payment actually to be made, with the threat of punitive damages. So the issue is not yet settled, but I think enough shows here to be a warning to other writers who may consider doing business with this publisher.

Let’s turn to lighter matters. Back when HI PIERS was set up, live folk answered the phones by day, and recordings answered by night. Understand, my connection there is indirect; I don’t run that show, but do have to make up the losses that occur. Some joker managed to crack the phone code and substitute a pornographic message, so that those who called thereafter got this sexy female voice promising something like phone sex. I would have thought it hilarious if it had happened to the office of Citizens for Decency, but somehow my sense of humor faded when it happened in my name. Fortunately a loyal reader, actually it was Tommy, mentioned in the Author’s note in Chaos Mode because his school had stolen his autographed copy of Heaven Cent and stonewalled the process of justice, heard the message, caught on, and let us know, so that it was cleaned up within hours. We didn’t talk about it here because we didn’t want more of that to happen. More recently another joker ran up a $67 bill on the HI PIERS account by sending repeated long messages of scratching sounds. What the joker apparently doesn’t know is that the numbers of all callers are recorded. That’s true of all 800 numbers. There is no anonymity, just a reversal of the charges. We know the name, and when he called to ask for a free sample Newsletter. So AT&T will give HI PIERS a credit, and go after the joker directly. For some reason AT&T doesn’t like jokers ripping off its customers. I suspect that some little brat’s seat will be warmed when his daddy gets the bill.

Several years ago Norman Spinrad solicited me for a contribution to his special original anthology, Down in Flames. I’ve known Norm a long time; an editor bought my novel Omnivore unread (and did well with it) on Norman’s say-so, and one of my fans later married him, on her way to becoming a published novelist herself. He’s a fine writer. A number of authors of successful genre series-I understand Larry Niven was one-were to write stories for this anthology that torpedoed their own series. Intrigued, I wrote “Adult Conspiracy,” wherein what goes on inside the stork works is revealed. Definitely unpublishable in any Xanth novel. Esk Ogre and Bria Brassie, not satisfied with just one son, seven year old Brusque Brassie, signaled the stork for identical twins, male and female. What do you mean, how did they do that? He put his hardest part in her softest part. Twice. Oh, that wasn’t your question? Yes, of course I realize that the babies’ can’t be identical if their genders differ, in Mundania. But with magic anything can happen. So the stork obliged with Epoxy Ogre and Benzine Brassie. Sure, the names aren’t perfect, but Esk goofed-I think he was using a cleaning compound at the time-and it was too late to take them back. The twins are now seven years old, and doing well, thank you. I forget what their talents are; I think he can stick any two things together, and she can unstick them. So what did happen in the stork works to generate those babies? Promise not to tell, as it would ruin the Xanth mystique: a Mundane girl was tricked, drugged, impregnated, and sent on a long dream of an ocean cruise, until she delivered; then she was awakened and sent home none the wiser, though she did wonder about the stretch marks. Cloning technology adjusted the genders of the babies. Anyway, it was fun, in its dastardly way, but I never got paid for the story and the volume was never published. Too bad. At least my name wasn’t used in perpetual advertising, the way REALMS OF FANTASY has been doing ever since bouncing the story I wrote on request for it. That still rankles. I will be less obliging for future magazines or anthologies, for reasons editors may never understand.

HI PIERS sent me some more printouts from the Internet. One was from Bogartt, saying that many people like my singleton novels, and non-Xanth series. Yes, and I enjoy writing them. But some he names, like Steppe, Pretender, and Hasan, took years to get published. Steppe made it into print in England only because my agent required the unwilling publisher to take it if it wanted to have the Cluster series; years later the novel finally got published in America. By that time I had given up on it as a series. Pretender as I remember was actually the third novel I wrote, and my first collaborative novel, back in 1965-66, finally first published in 1979 by the small press BORGO, whose proprietor I had known as a genre fan; the big publishers bounced it. Hasan bounced a dozen times before it sold, thanks to my innovation: I solicited a reviewer who didn’t much like my fiction, Richard Delap, to review the kind of novel I could not get into print, instead of blaming me for the kind I could get into print. He accepted the challenge, loved the novel, said so in a fanzine review, and editor Ted White, with whom I had fought in the fanzines, saw the review, solicited the novel and published it in FANTASTIC in 1969. But that ploy won’t work again; Ted White is out of editing, and Delap is dead. Throughout my career I have had to scramble like that to get my written-for-love novels published. I am still so struggling; at this writing I have ten books, collaborative and individual, completed but not yet in print, and some won’t see print until the next millennium, thanks to publisher stalling. Two are Xanths, so they’ll make it on schedule, but the others-I would have to take legal action again to get the publisher to honor its verbal commitment on their scheduling, and that would be extremely chancy. I think publishers get away with reneging more often than not. Writers who try to stand on their rights and enforce contracts can get blacklisted; I have been the route. Publishing is not a nice business. So this is no easy thing. This Internet person also regrets the demise of the Mode series. So do I. In that case my agent got me an extremely nice contract, six figures per novel, and when the publisher bombed out by lack of promotion and distribution it lost a good deal of money, and that ended that. I can’t blame the publisher for not wanting to lose more money, just for booting the series so that it did lose money when it didn’t have to. Sending letters to the publisher won’t accomplish anything; they really don’t much care what individual readers think, just for covering up their mistakes. The Space Tyrant series-should events warrant, I could write The Iron Maiden, but that time is not yet. I left that publisher when it torpedoed the major novel of my career, Tatham Mound, after promising significant support, and I am in the process of reverting all of my novels there, including that series.

Continuing story: remember the man in that fanzine FOSFAX who was blasting me? He finally saw Robert Margroff’s letter, privately, showing how wrong he was. I wondered how he would react. Now we know: he simply dropped the subject. No apology, no clarification, just sudden silence. Par for that course. It is possible for honest folk to disagree, but my average critic strikes me as other than honest, by my definition. I say yet again: if you can’t make your case by sticking to the truth, it isn’t much of a case. I could respect a critic who had a real case, but very few do. Richard Delap, for example, was an honest reviewer; I disagreed with his judgments, and on occasion blasted them in print, but I respected him as a person and we corresponded amicably. I am sorry he is dead.

One day as I rode the recumbent bicycle out to close the gate in the evening, I heard an odd sound. I stopped and investigated, and discovered that one of the pannier pockets I use to carry the newspapers had accumulated a collection of leaves and twigs. I started to clear it out, then realized that this was more serious: wrens were building a nest there. So when I parked the bike I covered it with a swatch of plastic filling material, the kind that comes wrapped around delicate shipped items. Next day the wrens were building a nest in a fold of that. They were really determined, but I suspected they would not like to have their nest make a daily trip to the gate. So I moved the bicycle and draped the plastic over a big iron ring intended for storing firewood. That resembles a bicycle wheel, so maybe they would accept it. I refolded the material to make sure the pocket would not give way, fastening it in place with clothespins. I put all the nesting material in the pocket, and hoped for the best. The setup was right in front of our living room window, so we could watch the proceedings when we chose. And it worked; Carroll and Lina Wren accepted the new situation. We make it a point to stay clear of the nest, but in the morning when the sun slants down right we can see inside, and there are six eggs there. How they will ever feed six chicks I don’t know, but I wish them the best. Meanwhile we are keeping the bird baths filled, so it’s really a pretty good location: sheltered, protected from most predators, with fresh water and bath close by.

Let’s finish on some halfway positive notes: I heard humor on the radio that really set me off. It’s that the Post Orifice might issue a stamp in honor of the fire ant. When you lick that stamp, it leaves red stinging welts on your tongue. I wonder if the same would happen with a stamp honoring critics?

And as I typed this column, Tiger Woods was breaking records at the Masters Gold Tournament. I have next to no interest in golf, but did watch some of those holes. My wife is the sports nut in our family; I normally read a magazine in front of the TV, glancing up when shapely young women or nice forest scenes appear.

The first of these Newsletters was published in Fall 1990. It’s been about six and a half years, and much has changed. I was a best seller back then, and am not now; my career has plummeted. So it has not been a completely happy time for me. But it has been nice making this contact with you loyal readers, and I’m still getting love letters from teen girls, among others. So neither is my life bleak.

PIERS

PS: HI PIERS tells me that it will be running pictures and news about its various associates, and I need to fall in line. Okay. The world is not ending for me with the demise of HI PIERS; I expect my life and career to continue in their petty paces for some time yet, albeit perhaps with diminished interest. Our home life is actually pretty dull. I’m a writaholic, at the computer every day of the week, either writing a novel or answering fan mail, while my wife handles the household and accounts. Though my earnings are declining sharply along with my commercial career, we invested wisely at the height and are in no danger of poverty. We can’t travel at present because our dog Obsidian couldn’t handle it, so we expect to remain indefinitely here on the tree farm, with our wild tortoises, wrens, armadillo, deer, and all, watching the trees grow. It’s a good enough life.

NORMAN SPINRAD VS PARNASSUS

comment by Piers Anthony

I was sent a printed copy of an open electronic letter by Norman Spinrad at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/normanspinrad, titled HELP! addressed to friends, colleagues and even enemies. I fit two or three of those categories, so I am responding in my fashion. I am not online myself, but will try to get this response onto the HIPIERS Page and to Spinrad.

I have a long and mixed history with Norman Spinrad, who came on the SF genre scene about the time I did. In fact his first story was published one month after my first story, in 1963. He is six years my junior, which is par for that course; I was always a slow starter, and took longer to break into print than others my age like Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, or John Brunner. I liked Spinrad’s stories, which were well written and generally original. I met him at a Damon Knight Milford Conference in 1966 when he and I were starting to move up as writers. In fact at one point the redoubtable Harlan Ellison, whom I also met there and with whom I also have mixed relations, said that the hottest new talent in the genre was Norman Spinrad. But it was the time when the critics were raving about Roger Zelazny and Chip Delany, who were also there, without any inkling who was going to be most successful in the genre. This is not to disparage those two writers, both of whom I knew personally and liked, and who were genuine talents, though perhaps not of the magnitude at which they were touted. So writers like Anne McCaffrey (also there – in fact, every writer named here was there), Piers Anthony, and Norman Spinrad were not particularly noticed. (Oops, I almost overlooked one of the critics’ favorites, Tom Disch, perhaps because he wasn’t there. But the point remains: what critics like has no necessary relation to what real readers like. Disch was certainly competent, but never achieved great fame, and he, too, was screwed over by the system.)

Spinrad went on to do provocative novels, such as Bug Jack Barron, which at first suffered the usual fate of original and expressive writing: it was unpublishable in America. Only after it was serialized in a magazine in England, and the distributor refused to distribute an issue because of the “bad” words in it, did the Americans pay attention. Controversy is marketable in a way that quality is not. So Bug was published in America by the same publisher who did my major novel Macroscope, and both novels were wiped out of Nebula Award contention because the publisher goofed on the distribution of the novels to the membership of the Science Fiction Writers of America. So neither Spinrad nor I achieved our breakthroughs to fame on that occasion, though I think we could have, had the playing field been level. Yes, Bug is a great novel, deserving of a place in genre history even if it is out of print. And I am saddened to see a writer of genuine imagination and competence dumped on the trash heap of has-beens by Parnassus. By “Parnassus” I mean the publishing establishment taken as a whole.

So how is it that I got generally known and Spinrad did not? I offer two reasons. One is that he became a columnist in the genre news magazine LOCUS, from which turret he blasted the idiocies of publishers. (No, I was never a columnist there; LOCUS won’t even review my novels. I think that dates from the time they trashed my autobiography, even putting “(sic)” by an “error” that wasn’t in the book, and I exposed their agenda. No publisher tolerates exposure.) I wondered, at the time, what his future was likely to be, because though he was right about publishers in general, they can also be mean spirited and have long memories. Now I know: they have happily declared him to be washed up and therefore unpublishable, never mind how well he can write. I have been just as negative about Parnassus, but lacked the forum he had, so have not suffered that particular consequence. Ironically, I learned later that I was a contributor to Spinrad’s loss of his column at LOCUS, though it was inadvertent. I had written a long letter to them detailing the continuing unfair things the magazine was doing, which letter was of course ignored, as it could not be refuted, and one example was the way they openly favored their columnists with guaranteed favorable reviews. I gave Spinrad as an example; there was even an ad for his book placed beside the review. “Piers Anthony never got treatment like that,” I remarked with pointed understatement. So what happened? Instead of cleaning up their act generally, I understand they ran a negative review of one of Spinrad’s books, though they had a positive one in hand. Disgusted, Spinrad left. I can’t blame him, though at least it showed him how some of the rest of us were being treated.

The second reason I got known is that largely by happenstance I got in with the right publisher at the right time with the right genre, fantasy, and did the Xanth series. That put me, in due course, on the national bestseller lists. I believe that had Spinrad done similar, he could have had similar success. Naturally the critics trashed me when I got successful, but there were big dollars to be made in Xanth, and Parnassus worships the big dollar. So my position was secure, for a time, though idiocies by four different publishers have since been destructive to my career, and I am now struggling to avoid the looming trash heap. So I have a good deal more sympathy with Spinrad than he may realize.

Here is the situation: critical acclaim plus six or seven dollars will buy you one paperback book. The deserved acclaim for Bug Jack Barron yesterday doesn’t make Spinrad publishable today. Only the prospect of more than average sales does. Perhaps more than more-than-average for Spinrad, because of those mean spirited memories of publishers. Shifting to an unknown pen name won’t do it, because unknown writers are not good sales prospects either. In fact, publishers can be so resistive even when a known writer collaborates with an unknown, that good novels can’t get published. I had to take legal action to get some collaborations published, when the publisher tried to renege. Yes, I can one of them: The Willing Spirit, with Alfred Tella, a pleasant, sexy fantasy of medieval India. Publishers are so enamored of the notion of publishing only best sellers that they tend to give short shrift to anything else. This is of course stupid, but saying that publishers are stupid is liking blaming a dodo for being dull: it’s just its nature. The question is, what, if anything, can any writer do about it?

Well, the Internet does offer a prospect. My serious World War Two novel Volk is now at Pulpless.com. But that hasn’t even made expenses. So at present on-line publishing is not a way to make money or earn a living. Will it be so in the future? I hope so. At least it offers a way to get material before the public, so that those who are interested can see what Parnassus won’t print as well as what it will. That satisfaction may be worth no more than critical acclaim in real terms, but perhaps it is an avenue to better things eventually. This is of course one good reason why writers should fight to hold on to their electronic rights, rather than allow Parnassus to swallow them and extend the corral that keeps publishers fat and writers lean. But the NEW YORK TIMES tried to blacklist article writers who refused to give away those rights, and its attitude is hardly unique, so there’s an ugly fight there. But perhaps there is hope. I think of how it was that the Romans lost a battle to the slave army of the rebellious slave Spartacus, because at one point they didn’t even post sentries. Why were the Romans so criminally negligent? “But they were slaves,” the commander explained. Slaves were never taken seriously. Parnassus seems to view writers similarly, so may be slow to comprehend any genuine alternative to conventional publishing. I’d love to see the writers win one, and hear a publishing mogul explain “But they were writers!” Unfortunately the immediate prospects for that are not bright. It has been a long time since David beat Goliath.

As I said, my relations with Norman Spinrad have been mixed. But I’m with him on this one. I hope he finds the help he seeks.

For years I did my column for the HI PIERS Newsletter. Now I’m doing it irregularly for the HI PIERS Page. No, I’m still not online myself, and if I ever do go online, it will likely be anonymously, so that I can surf the net without being bugged by those who feel they have better uses for my attention than I do. If that sounds insulting – well, I’m sure you folk reading this would never ask me to answer eighteen complicated questions by Friday so you can make an A on your school paper, or petition me to attend your friend’s birthday party in a distant state, or ask for money because you want to become a millionaire. But I think you know that there are those who would, if they just had ready access to me. So I hope you understand why I prefer simply to avoid such contacts to the extent feasible.

The past month or so, as I write this, has been personally eventful in minor ways. For example, I was riding my recumbent bicycle, the one that feels like a traveling deck chair – I love it – when I felt a fly or something biting my right elbow. So I tried to rub it off against my shirt – and suddenly the ground was coming at me. I conjecture in retrospect that I jogged the handlebars so that the front wheel jerked right, thus throwing me off balance to the left, and I crashed. I picked myself up, and my left elbow and left knee had been scraped. The fall was only from about two feet high, but my forward motion was maybe ten miles an hour, against the rough asphalt-and-stones drive; blood was flowing. I had several other scrapes, but those were the worst. I dragged myself on home, and my wife got busy with hydrogen peroxide and bandages and repaired me somewhat. This is what wives are for, among other things. The two inch diameter knee gouge was the worst, resembling red tomato pizza with hot sauce; when bandaged it came to resemble white cheese pizza with mustard. So after the first couple of days I left the bandage off, and let a scab form, and now after most of a month it’s healing pretty well from the outside edge inward. All perfectly routine, except for two things. The first is my age: I’m not twelve, when you’re supposed to scrape knees, I’m 63, way too old for such fun. (I had a letter once from a young woman who said that when she learned my age, it ruined her crush on me. Sigh.) The second was my series of jogs.

You see, I exercise for my health, not for fun; it’s not just accident that I am lean and fit at my age, maintaining my college weight and musculature. I’ve tried various things over the years, and now use hand weights, a rowing machine, and archery for my arms. For my legs and heart/lung fitness I ride bicycles and jog. That is, I run out three mornings a week, just before dawn, to fetch in the newspapers. That combines exercise with usefulness. My jogs are not of the caliber I had fifteen years ago; I’m older and slower, and run about 1.6 miles instead of 3 miles. That’s why I call them jogs; they don’t quite achieve the 8 minutes per mile velocity that qualifies as running, and they are interrupted by various things along the way, such as feeding the little magnolia tree some nitrogen, opening our front gate, and collecting the newspapers from their boxes. But I do time them, and rejoice when I have a good one. Over the warm summer any jog completed in under 15 minutes was excellent; my record jog was 14:36. But at this time I had a wonderful streak going, having broken my record three times and gone nine consecutive jogs in under 15 minutes. I wanted to complete it with a tenth good one, before the inevitable slump back to mediocrity. And here was this scraped and bandaged knee. Was this going to ruin the series? Maybe not, because there didn’t seem to be any internal damage, just lost skin. I tried jogging a third of a mile, to see how my knee took it – and there was no trouble at all. So the jog was on, on schedule. But I remained quite concerned, because though my running felt all right, it might not actually be so for the full distance; I might lose steam, or develop a pain, or simply be slow. Such things happen to senior citizens with scraped knees. So I was really up for the effort, wanting to come in under 15 minutes one more time if I possibly could. The temperature was 65°F, the coolest of the summer, which should help; I had been running well despite morning temperatures as high as 76°. I started out, and it seemed good. I continued, and it continued well. It was too dark to read my watch, so I had to judge by feel, but I thought my pace was well under 15. It didn’t fade, and I had foolish hopes of even being near record territory. I made it back to the kitchen, grabbed my glasses, and looked at the sweep hand. 14:11. I had shattered my record by 13 seconds. So my scraped knee had not slowed me at all, and I had my tenth good jog. Okay, okay, I realize that this sort of achievement isn’t even a blip on the screens of you young folk out there in real life, but for me it was a bright moment.

We live in the thunderstorm capital of the nation, and don’t we know it! Our 40 foot TV antenna tower seems to attract lightning better than it does television signals. Summers are nervous times in this respect. We need rain, but too often it comes with fireworks. We have surge suppressers on everything, but there’s only so much they can do. Over the years we’ve had our water pump taken out, our security alarm system nulled, our hi-fi equipment crashed, and of course our TV reception blurred. This summer we were in drought, but we did get our lightning on schedule. A measly three tenths of an inch of rain, and the strike took out our TV, our house intercom system, our upstairs air conditioning, and our garage door opener. We’re still in the process of repairs. We decided to scrap the intercom and go to wall plug-in units, because they cost less and can be unplugged for storms. We got the TV antenna booster repaired. We’re opening the garage door by hand. And we are replacing the air conditioning unit. The thing is, it’s nine years old and they don’t last forever, and it isn’t the kind that was supposed to have been installed anyway. The contractor had changed it without telling us, thus sticking us with a relatively inefficient air-to-air system instead of the geothermal we expected. I hate it when folk think they know better than I do! So rather than repair it, we decided to replace it with geothermal, thus finally getting the type we had always wanted. Here is the difference: an air to air unit puts the heat of the house out into the 95° hot summer air in summer, and draws heat from the freezing cold winter air. This is inherently inefficient. A geothermal system has pipes under the ground which draw from a constant temperature of 60°-70°, so has to work less hard. So it costs about half as much to run, and if you have a heat exchanger, that cuts it farther, and in summer, it heats your hot water too. In effect you move the heat of the air into the water, so you can work in coolth but take a hot shower. So this sort of system appeals to me on both economic and environmental grounds.

Well, we talked with the geothermal folk, and it turned out there were complications. There are always complications! We live on a tree farm, and trees surround our house. We love it. But a full geothermal system requires a considerable array of buried pipes. We had no clear ground. They would have to dig through tree roots galore, and maybe mess up the gopher tortoise burrow that is right near the air conditioning unit. No, I’m not sure the tortoise wanted air conditioning, but can’t swear it’s not so. We have many big tortoises on our property, and we like them, and would try to protect them even if they were not a legally protected species. The last thing we want to do is dig up their burrow. Neither did we want to traumatize the local trees, and in any event those roots would grow back, squeezing the pipes, making mischief. So the horizontal layout of pipes was out. However there is an alternate mode: vertical pipes. They go down rather than across. But we are a peninsula in Lake Tsoda Popka, with the water table close beneath, and this isn’t best for the pipes. It seems they have to be copper, instead of the plastic of the horizontal ones, and there is electrolytic interaction that degrades the copper. Think of a battery. They can coat the copper to protect it, but even so, a large array gets complicated. What to do? Well, there’s a new type of combination unit made by a local company that has a much smaller buried copper footprint, so is less trouble in that respect. It uses air to air for the more extreme differential – I don’t know the exact figures, but you can see how 95° ambient temperature wouldn’t make much difference to a unit radiating 250° temperature – and the underground portion for the lesser differential. Mainly, it’s a more efficient system, with the heat exchanger, so can run as cheaply as a full geothermal unit. So we have ordered one of those, and we’ll see. Of course as luck would have it, we’re getting it just as summer ends, so it will be next year before we see it at full efficiency. But we look forward to it.

I mentioned gopher tortoises. They live in the sand, digging burrows that may extend up to forty feet underground. Several tortoises may share a burrow, and other creatures, such as rabbits and rattlesnakes, may use them too. So the gopher tortoise is called The Landlord: it provides housing for a complex of other creatures, and helps make the Florida backwoods what it is. They live a long time – fifty years or so, I think – and get to be up to maybe a foot long on the shell. They come out in warm weather to graze, and ours eat only the weeds, not our lawn grass. The pattern of the shell of each one is different, so you can tell them apart if you care to take the effort. Once I was standing outside, and three different tortoises passed me on their way to the same burrow by our house. They are surprising alert, and they can move along at a good clip, lifting their shells up so that only their feet touch the hot pavement of our drive. Sure, you can pick one up and move it somewhere, but they don’t seem to be any more comfortable with that than we would be if a hand came out of the sky and grabbed us. So we leave them alone, occasionally waiting for them to get off the drive so we can drive by. Well, this month my wife was coming home, and she didn’t see a gopher tortoise. It was behind tufts of grass, in shadow, by a curve in the drive, and she didn’t know it was there until she felt the bump. She looked back, thinking she had run over a fallen branch, and saw bright red blood, and knew what she had done. She told me in tears, and I went out to see. It was awful: the wheel must have passed right over it, breaking the shell and pressing it so hard that its intestine had popped out and split open; I could see the packed grass it had eaten. There was only one saving grace: I judged it to have been killed instantly. So I moved it to the side of the drive and returned to the house for a shovel. I dug a hole, then picked up the body – and it moved. Oh, no! It was still alive. I couldn’t bury it. So my wife phoned, and learned that there was an animal hospital that took injured tortoises. We got a box and drove out, and I put the tortoise in the box, and we drove across the county to the animal hospital. I explained the situation, and they took my name and where it had happened, and we gave them the box. Yes, the tortoise was still alive. We hoped they could either save it, or put it quickly out of its misery. The woman took one look, and knew that it was hopeless. Our only comfort was that we had done what we could to see that the creature’s suffering ended. On the way back I filled in the unused hole. We still have many gopher tortoises, and that wasn’t one we had known personally, but the horror of its demise remains. We never want to hurt any of them, and never have, before.

I got a new toy. It’s a card for my computer that enables it to show a television picture. So now I can have a two inch wide mini TV screen set in the corner of my typed text. I can zoom it to full size if I want to see details, or mute it, or turn off the screen and keep only the sound. I put the news on late in the day, and a football game or tennis on the weekend, and quality programs on public TV at other times. I don’t pay a lot of attention, and it doesn’t slow my work, but it’s fun to have it there. I do enjoy some of the wonders of technology.

I continue with my archery. But I started having problems. I have two bows: a right handed compound bow set at a 60 pound pull – I worked gradually up from 45 pounds – that fires arrows straight and true and fast. I normally do hit the target at 100 feet. And a left handed bow I bought from a reader that was more difficult to learn; with it I expect to hit the target at 50 feet. Well, the right handed bow started flipping my arrows out as I drew them back. It was as though an invisible hand was pushing them out. One time I tried to draw the same arrow ten times in a row, and it flipped out every time so I couldn’t fire. This was frustrating as hell. What was the matter? We finally concluded that the width of the string was putting pressure on the nock of the arrow, and as the angle changed, it forced the arrow out. I finally tried waxing the string, so that it would slide rather than shove, and that helped; now only a couple of arrows out of ten will pop out. That’s within tolerance. I never had that problem with the left hand bow. But with that one I had fluke misses. I would score a near bullseye, then an arrow aimed the same way would jump right and completely miss the target. When I missed four out of ten that way, I knew something was wrong. It seemed to me that if my aim were bad, I should be missing in all directions, while this was always about 18 inches to the right of where I aimed. Was it that invisible hand again? Then, belatedly, thinking about it as I was at the computer, a dim bulb flashed: I was firing with both eyes open, as it’s not good to perpetually squinch one up; you simply orient on the one you need and ignore the other. But my right eye is mostly dominant. Right handed, no problem; that’s the one I use. But left handed I use the left eye – and sometimes the right eye tries to pre-empt the view. So I was looking through the peepsight on the string with the left, and at the front sight with the right – and my brain integrated the two views, giving me a picture of aligned sights. But I was actually aiming about eighteen inches to the right. Mystery solved. So next time I did close my unused eye, with both bows, and my arrows were going straight and sure and true. Until I missed one fluke right. Hm. But it didn’t happen again, and now I’m hitting the target every time, and as I adjust the sights, scoring more bullseyes. However, on my last session, my left bow was perfect, but my right bow missed one arrow left and one right – and both arrows vanished from the face of the earth. I fear I have hours of searching to do, for they are either completely buried in the forest floor, or hiding somewhere they couldn’t possibly be. Sigh.

I was contacted by a new outfit called Xlibris. This is interesting. Xlibris wants to enable anyone to publish his book on the Internet, or to put his old out-of-print books back into print via this medium. I have been looking for an alternative to the tyranny of Parnassus for a long time, because conventional publishers typically crap on the dreams of hopeful writers. Now, perhaps, Parnassus (by that I mean the literary establishment) can be bypassed. Let’s say you are a hopeful writer, and you realize that your book Second Rate Effort is not exactly the Great American Novel, but you have labored over it for three years and you’d like to see it in print. You have tried sixteen publishers and gotten thirteen printed slip rejections, one lost manuscript, and two black holes – that it, they neither return your manuscript nor answer your letters of query. You have just about had it with the usual arrogance of Parnassus, because this is your dream work, and you feel it deserves at least some hint of weak evidence that someone read as much as the first page before bouncing it. But what can you do? You are a mere maggot in the toilet of Parnassus, with no power except to irritate an anonymous editor by the fact of your existence. Must your dream be forever stifled? Maybe not any more. Xlibris will, for a one time fee of $300, enable you to self publish your book on the Internet and keep it there. Anyone who wants to read it can download it for $3 or order a printed trade paperback copy for $18, and you will get a share of that money. So maybe only five people will order copies, and three of them are your friends who feel sorry for you. But your book is in print and available worldwide. Your dream has been realized, far more cheaply than you could do it any other way. And if later a regular publisher takes an interest, you can still sell it there, because you are the publisher on the Internet; you haven’t given up your literary rights. Damn, I like this dream, so I may even invest in Xlibris, trying to help it happen. You can check it out at www.Xlibris.com. Meanwhile, I hope to put my World War Two novel Volk on there, as well as where it is now, at www.Pulpless.com, to see how it works.

Florida gets lots of rain, but this summer we in north central Florida were in a drought. Then at last a heavy band of rain crossed the state, and in the course of a day and a half dumped fourteen inches of rain on Gulfport, Florida – where we used to live. Parts of the Tampa Bay area look lakes with houses sticking out of the surface. But only three inches here. We could have used that extra rain. Ever thus.

I have ongoing semi legal hassles in New Yuck, Pencil Vania, and Cauliflower, none of them yet quite concluded. So I’ll report as they do conclude. For now you may assume that I have the right of all cases; I just don’t let anyone walk over me or mine, and I do have the will and means to fight them through, ogre fashion.

HI PIERS forwarded a passal of e-mail comments and queries. I have answered those with snail mail addresses individually, and will answer the others here:
JD Gibson asks what happened to Chlorine and Nimby, after Yon Ill Wind. Since the demon Xanth won his bet, he instantly rose up, made Chlorine lovely and smart again, and carried her off to the nameless Castle where he assumed human form and they celebrated in a manner the adult Conspiracy prevents me from describing. Wasn’t that obvious in the novel?
Valerie R Levan says that my books got her interested in reading and she became an A student, for which she thanks me. I love having that effect on young women.
BlueStile1 inquires about a rumor that I wrote a book called Tangled in the Tree. I haven’t written one with such a title, but maybe he’s thinking of Shade of the Tree, or With a Tangled Skein. I once was going to write one about my daughters titled Tanglehair Tales; an editor expressed interest, but never followed up with a contract.
Eric A Siegman inquires how many of my novels or short stories never made it to print. Excluding books currently being marketed, two novels never found publishers: The Unstilled Earth, which was my first novel in college and not good enough to publish, and Volk. Dozens of stories; I was able to sell only about one in four, which is why I graduated to novels. Some I sneaked into print despite editorial rejection, in my collections; that was the case with “Gone to the Dogs” and “The Toaster,” and “Revise and Invent.”
Richard Travis says that the 3D technique described in Demons Don’t Dream could and should have been used in the Companions of Xanth game. That’s hardly the half of it. When I saw an early version of the game, I sent a letter of comment and suggestions, how to make it more accessible to readers who weren’t computer buffs. I mean that was the idea of it; Dug didn’t like computer games, but learned to like this one. The game proprietors called me ignorant and ignored my suggestions. Even so, it was the best selling game in that company’s history. Who knows how it would have done, had they been willing to listen to one who does pay attention to his market? Too bad Richard Travis was not in that company; I like his notions.
Luke Hodges says he loved the game, then read the book and liked it even better. Okay, Luke; maybe you’ll be pleased to know that a main character in Xanth #23, Xone of Contention, will be Edsel, Dug’s friend who stole his girlfriend. They get along okay now, since Dug found a better girlfriend. Yes, Pia will be there too.
HeTautsu reminds me that Crombie said his mother could read minds, when she was mundane. Well, Crombie may have lied, but more likely didn’t realize that this is a talent all mundane mothers have with their children. Don’t you remember your childhood, and the episode of the missing cookie?
Kitty Sexton says she’ll always be first in line to buy my new books. Gee – does that mean that if I see a line at a bookstore, it’s okay to kiss the first girl in that line, knowing who she is?
Nic Rodolph says it would be nice to have an artist make a detailed map of Xanth and areas within it. Well, the Visual Guide to Xanth does that.
Doug Durkee says he’s another loyal faceless fan. That’s the best kind. So is Evan. So is Daniel Lee.
Jamie Davis asks whether I created the dragon horse, Glyph, hippocampus, magic sniffer, chobee, firefly, hornworm, or Blatant Beaste. I draw a lot from mythology and from reader puns. In either case, sure, go ahead and use them in your story. Jamie also asks how I got DEL REY to publish my books. I knew the editor from our time in the magazines; when he became a book editor, he invited me along. Yes, sometimes it helps to have a connection, to get a good book into print. It’s a different crowd at DEL REY now; I believe they do still consider first time manuscripts, but there’s so much competition that your chances are small, there or anywhere. You’ll just have to send in your manuscript, and see what happens. It may take many months to get a response.
Mirson asks about a collaboration with many different authors I did some time ago in THIEVES WORLD. That must be a confusion; I haven’t done any in that series.
Amber Sunz asks about characters in the Big Top and such. She’s thinking of the two Xanth gamebooks by Jody Lynn Nye, now out of print. Too bad; they are fun books, with two slews of puns.
Debbi Ward in England asks about my next release. That’s Faun & Games, but it won’t be published in England. Check a store where they carry the American edition.
Bill Cunningham likes my non-Xanth novels like Omnivore, Tatham Mound and Hope of Earth. He wonders why I didn’t use the ancient Sphinx in that last. Because when analyzed, the evidence was not persuasive, and GEODYSSEY is historical, not fantasy, despite the publisher’s determined mislabeling of it as fantasy. A complete discussion would be too complicated for this column, but I was reluctantly satisfied that the Sphinx was not older than its associated pyramid.
Stephanie Van Herk wonders why some of my novels aren’t on tape. Tape publishers are just as whimsical in their choices as book publishers, and at times seem neither to know nor care what folk really want to hear.
Jamie of “Granville Rainey” invented a character named Saribeth – Sari – who is from the realm of Narnia. I read the seven Narnia fantasies to my daughter when she was young; they were good, if a bit violent in places. Sari, I can’t tell whether you have a future as a writer just from a summary of your story; what counts is how you actually write it, and whether your characters come alive for the reader. Keep working at it; maybe you will be one of the few.
Barbara Hewett wants to post the Xanth timeline on her Wed site. Sure, go ahead. Later we may post the updated one here, and the huge Xanth Character database.
And Corellian asks how come in Ogre, ogre the gourd trades back two half souls for the Demon Fiant, when demons don’t have souls? Because demons are souls. Degraded and undisciplined, because they lack bodies, but souls nonetheless. Since a demon uses its soul substance as its body, it needs another soul in order to have one. But in the real of bad dreams, they don’t bother with that; they just take the whole demon.
So much for this column; there’ll be others at irregular intervals.

Phantom of the Opera

I try to write something for this Page every couple of months, though I never see it online myself. Maybe when they make it possible to access the Internet without a modem, and I can simply press Alt-Shift-Control-I and be there without hassle, for a penny a minute, and never get any spam – I mean, I’m a vegetarian – well, we’ll see. However, my mind is on the Internet now, because I’m writing Xanth #23 Xone of Contention, wherein Edsel and Pia (Dug’s friend and ex-girlfriend from Demons Don’t Dream) discover the O-Xone interface with Xanth and manage to visit it, while Nimby and Chlorine (from Yon Ill Wind) visit Mundania in an exchange of bodies. I’ll have all manner of Net and Web parodies, which is tricky for one with no hands-on experience, but don’t be concerned; I have secret agents known as readers in that realm who are advising me. However, if any from the Xanth Xone wish to proffer any advice, now’s the time, because that’s where I got the Xone part of the title. I may have it written by year’s end, depending on how it moves and what other calls on my time there are; I’m about half through now. When Nimby gets in trouble in Mundania, being deprived of his magic, he will need to contact Xone folk for help. I assume they’ll be willing to give it. No, it’s not limited to Xone folk, but they’ll be more prominent because of the title. In quality novels, the title derives from the content; in Xanth the content derives from the title.

Meanwhile I live in drear Mundania, so naturally my life is occupied with irritations and frustrations and legal complications. For example I read about a program called SmartBoard that makes the Windows paste buffer – I know, I know, MacroHard (to borrow from a Xone parody) calls it something else, but it’s really a paste buffer; I wish they’d stop pointlessly renaming things – able to handle multiple entries. That promised to alleviate some of my frustrations with the limit of paste and the user-unfriendly nature of the Spike, so I sent for it. And it doesn’t work. Says it needs a file my current Win95 lacks, but that I can get it by loading Explorer 3. How, when I’m not online? Why can’t programs come ready to work as described, on the platform described, instead of finding pretexts to renege? So I’m out a bit of money and time, hardly for the first time. I’m a slow learner. This particular dodge isn’t as user-unfriendly as some – I remember when I started with CP/M, and used its PIP mechanism to back up my file, naming first the file and then the place to send it, in normally intuitive manner – and PIP not only didn’t do it, it trashed my file. Because the genius who made CP/M decreed that thou shalt name the place first and the file last. No error message, no warning, it just trashed the original, so I had no file left. That’s user-unfriendly. Still, the computer software industry has a distance to go before it’s truly user friendly. I’m using MS Access for my accounts now, and it makes a big table type file, so it needs to be condensed to fit on a backup disk. My wife and I struggled to remember how to do that, and finally she weaseled it out of a manual. The compacting routine is not in the regular listing; you have to close all files first, and then the sub-menu changes invisibly, and you can reach things that were not listed before, including that feature. Then there are other tricks to figure out before it gets halfway feasible. It’s like a puzzle, as if they think we want game-type challenges. But it can be done. When we got it, I wrote out my own instructions so that we would never again have to wrestle with their useless Help feature or the manual. I think programmers should be required to actually use their programs a few weeks, or get input from those who do, and – but what’s the use? Have I mentioned my imagined dialogue with Bill Gates, should I ever find myself sitting next to him on a flight somewhere? ME: “What makes you think Windows is user-friendly?” HIM: (turning on me a look of sheer scorn) “What makes you think I care?” But I admit he has a pretty fancy hundred million dollar house to live in; US NEWS diagrammed it. At least I know where my money goes.

I’ve had several ongoing semi-legal confrontations. Two years ago I was sued, and by the time that was done, the other party had to pay me, as it had never had any basis. But more cases materialized. One of them has now been settled: BAEN BOOKS paid me about $45,000. My expenses in pursuing the case were about $20,000, so I came out ahead and did make my point, as I usually do. So that matter is done, and I have no current quarrel there. Another is the Cauliflower Franchise Tax Board, which thinks I live in that state and owe state income tax. I’ve been a resident of Flowerda for nigh 39 years, but because my literary agent lives in Cauliflower, and my money goes through him, they think I’m there. I have done my best to clarify the situation, but this is a bureaucracy that just doesn’t listen. Its response to my evidence that I do live in the state that looks like Xanth was to levy a tax lien against me for over $36,000. So now I am on public record as a tax deadbeat. This is beginning to annoy the ogre, and like the Empire, I may in due course strike back. Stay tuned.

I mentioned Xlibris.com last time, starting up as an online semi-publisher of any books anyone wants to publish, with reasonable limits. I have continued my dialogue there, and Volk will definitely be there as well as at Pulpless.com. I have also decided to invest in the company, for ideological reason. I don’t like to gamble, and this is a gamble; I figure chances are 50-50 I’ll lose my money. But I want so much for there to be a viable alternative to Parnassus that I’m doing it by putting my money where my mouth is. If it works, not only will hopeful writers everywhere have a chance to put their novels into print, I’ll make money in the process. So it’s a lose-lose vs. win-win situation. Which one will prevail is yet to be seen.

I had a routine eye check. I use glasses for closework; in fact I can’t read ordinary print without them. But my distance vision has always been all right. But they told me that it is now 20/25 or 20/30, meaning I see at 20 feet what I should see an 25 or 30. Sigh; I’m getting old. It probably didn’t help that I asked the doctor whether when he came to work feeling bad, and someone asked him how he was doing, he’d reply “20/600.” I also asked whether if a person cried a lot, she’d get cataracts. You know, like the cataracts of the Nile? Because of all that water? Oh, forget it.

Folk ask why I don’t mention Jenny Elf much anymore. It’s because her situation isn’t changing much. She’s still mostly paralyzed. I still write to her every week, in thousand word missives, always advising her not to do something she’s not about to do anyway. Like kissing a mirror a fish has farted on. But in this period someone crashed into her special van, totaling it. No, Jenny wasn’t in it at the time. Still, it’s an inconvenience. Sometimes I wonder whether drunk or reckless drivers are try to finish the job they started on her.

Last time I mentioned my series of faster morning jogs, when I managed to make the tenth one after scraping my knee. Well, that series continues, and at this writing stands at 45. I keep expecting it to end, and it keeps staying a few seconds under the wire. But it’s bound to end some time. And yes, my scraped knee has healed, though I still feel that such things are not supposed to happen to old men. Last time I also mentioned putting in a geothermal air conditioning system; it’s in now, and it’s nice the way it heats our water too. It’s too early to tell how much it saves on our power bills, but it’s bound to be more environmentally friendly.

I seldom go out to movies or shows, and in fact have gone to only two movies this year: Men in Black and Anastasia. But in between we attended a musical, Phantom of the Opera. It wowed me, so I wrote a report, and will post that elsewhere on this Page. Apart from such events, my life is dull.

PIERS

Phantom of the Opera

On Sunday, October 12, 1997, we went to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center to experience the matinee performance of the musical The Phantom of the Opera. This seems to be a cross between opera, ballet, and play, and at $66 per ticket we expected a formidable presentation. We were not disappointed. The theater seemed to be completely filled, and our seats near the center of the rear gave us a good if slightly distant view. There were three rows of balcony seats that looked as if they could drop at any time onto the audience below. The audience was well behaved; no whistling or stomping teenagers. The lights dimmed abruptly about 2:05 and the two and a half hour show was on.

The Prologue is an auction: disposing of old props found in an opera house, some dating more than seventy years back. Raoul, about that age, in a wheelchair with an attending nurse, speaks of these things as precious to him because they were treasured by his beloved late wife, and bids on them. Then comes Lot 666, a massive chandelier said to be the very one in the strange affair of the Phantom of the Opera, a disaster and mystery never fully explained. The auctioneer uncovers it, turning it on. The thing comes to life with about 40 glowing lamps. There is a bang and smoke wafts up. The music starts with a rush, sounding like a powerful organ, and sets the mood throughout; whenever the Phantom’s foreboding theme comes, there’s sure to be trouble. The chandelier rises eerily from the stage and moves out over the audience and to the top of the theater, an amazing spectacle. This reverts the stage to the time when the opera house was in its glory; the stage is suddenly crowded with the cast of Hannibal, with armed men, glittering women, and impressive statuary of the Roman era. It is a dress rehearsal. Then, as it is in full magnificent swing, with a huge model elephant for Hannibal to mount – he has some difficulty, as he is a bit fat – the manager walks onstage to introduce two new men who are taking over the production. The rehearsal comes to a confused halt, and the elephant is wheeled away, in the process revealing its other side, open with stage hands inside. The retiring manager asks the prima donna to sing for the new managers. She begins – and a backdrop crashes to the floor. The Phantom of the Opera has struck again. The prima donna, fed up, walks out. But they bring in the chorus girl Christine Daaé, who it seems has been taking lessons from a great teacher. So she, inadequately garbed for the role, sings somewhat hesitantly – and in the process is transformed to full costume and operatic vigor. She can handle the part. Young Raoul is there, and hugely impressed; he remembers her as a gawkish girl he once knew. He wants to renew their acquaintance.

Christine goes to her dressing room, followed by her friend the ballet girl Meg, who asks in awe who has tutored her to became so good. Christine confides that the Angel of Music is guiding her. Soon Raoul comes, and she tells him the same thing. Then the Phantom’s voice comes, and guides her through the mirror and through an underground labyrinth, poling them along in a boat. She is affrighted by the mask he wears over half his face, yet she greatly values his ability with music, and the help he is giving her. Thus is put into place the elements of the story: A lovely young woman beloved by a handsome young man and by a talented but ugly older man. The Phantom has considerable power in the opera house, because he can make thing go awfully wrong, and indeed, he sometimes kills those who annoy him too much. The new managers have to pacify him, though they would rather catch him and dispose of him. There are several episodes, as the war between the Phantom and the management proceeds, with the phantom generally winning. He makes a dramatic appearance at a costume ball, scaring everyone. Christine is torn between her interest in Raoul and her debt to the Phantom, who is clearly a highly talented but tortured man. They sing duets, and his “The Music of the Night” is evocative, a lovely melody. In the end, the Phantom is about to kill rival Raoul, telling Christine she can save Raoul only by giving him up. But she finally stands up to the Phantom, saying “God give me courage to show you you are not alone,” and kisses him long and hard. The Phantom, shaken, then frees Raoul; apparently he can’t deny her, once she has made her choice; the power has become hers. Of Christine he says “You alone can make my song take flight – it’s over now, the music of the night.” When a mob rushes in to grab him, all they find is his mask.

The production had a live orchestra, and the music made a difference. The effects were phenomenal. They were able to change the entire stage in about five seconds of darkness. The phantom appeared in remarkable places, even on the big hanging angels-and-satyrs sculpture. (The satyrs are grabbing the angels full bare breasts.) That moving boat really looked as if it were floating. There was an amazing variety of intricate costumes. At one point they showed the stage from the rear as the cast bows to the audience and retreats behind the wings – and it works. We, the real audience, thus disappear. There is humor, as when characters in one of the presented operas muff their lines or argue with each other. Every so often there’s a Note from the phantom, making demands, and when they don’t obey, he strikes, making them sorry. When they don’t make Christine the prima donna, the other woman’s voice becomes a literal croak in mid-song. Everything is done without stint, a magnificent panoply. Unfortunately, though the songs were sung in English, they were still largely indecipherable, given the auditorium’s acoustics, so the ongoing nuances of the plot were opaque. I had to figure things out later with the aid of the libretto. The $10 Program Book was a rip-off; it had nice pictures and background information, but no libretto, summary, or even a listing of the songs. Fortunately Cheryl lent me a book and CD, both of which were excellent. However, the general story did come through, because of the actions and attitudes of the characters. So was it worth it? Yes, once. I understand that there is resistance by true opera fans to the notion of making this into a movie. Maybe so, but I’m for it, as this stirring story would achieve a much wider audience.

Continuing stories: last column I had succeeded in extending my series of good runs to 45. Well, I made it to 50. Then I hit bad weather for the 51st , and the garbage truck was there when I arrived at the newspaper pickup point, and I had to stand and wait, and my streak ended. I got a stopwatch, so I could time the actual speed of my running without the interruptions; it indicated that I didn’t miss by much, and maybe that waiting had put me off my stride, but excuses aside, my streak was indeed ended. Ah, well. The point is after all the exercise, and to fetch the newspapers; the timing is incidental. A couple of times thereafter the rain was so bad I couldn’t run in the morning, so I ran in lighter rain at noon, and those runs were faster, one being near my record. My conclusion: my body gets stronger as the day progresses, and morning is not the best time if speed is the object. But this was merely confirmation of what I already knew. I run in the morning because it is convenient for my schedule, and in summer it’s cooler, and the exercise is just as good regardless. Now that the weather is cool, I also use the RowBike to ride out to close the gate in the afternoon. In hot weather the exertion is simply too sweaty.

About that rain: yes, we are breaking records in Florida, thanks to El Niño, which in turn is thanks to global warming. There have always been El Niños and La Niñas, but the El’s are getting stronger as they gain more heat-fuel. So we are having summer-like rains in Jamboree, and there is flooding. Now we live on a forested peninsula in Lake Tsoda Popka, our tree farm, and you might think we’d have a personal problem. Our house is ten feet above the water table, and our drive is as little as four feet above it. But in fact we don’t; we have never flooded. Because a whole lot of the local landscape, including parts of the North Village, would have to flood to raise that lake that much, and that doesn’t happen. It’s the places in cul-de-sacs with inadequate drainage that flood, rather than the water table level lakes.

I have ongoing semi-legal battles. Naturally I’m correct in all of them, and the other parties are wrong. It just can take those other parties time to see the light. Last column I had made my point to a publisher; this time I made it to the Cauliflower Frantic Tacks Boor, who abruptly dropped its claim for $36,000. The time from when it first made the claim, until it dropped it, was just over one year. One year and endless communication with a CPA to be satisfied that I don’t live in Cauliflower, and indeed have not been there in a decade. That’s bureaucracy for you. I was pondering suing, as I don’t like being publicly listed as a tax deadbeat.

1998 started well for me: the first thing I did New Year’s Day was find an arrow that had been lost for three months. I practice my archery twice a week, and have a range measured out, but one day I missed the target left and right, and those two arrows seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. I got a metal detector, and in about five minutes it located one arrow, buried in the ground. But the other remained hidden. Sometimes they bounce off the forest floor and sail on who knows where. So each Archery Day I would look again, checking out ever less likely locations. It turned out to be farther out than any before it, point in the ground, fletching hidden in the descending foliage of a tree, so that the arrow shaft looked like the stem of a plant. Clever concealment, but I finally did get it. The arrow was somewhat faded, but remains serviceable, and I trust it’s glad to be back with its companions. No, it hasn’t tried to hide again, since then. Otherwise, my archery is settling down. I have my right hand compound bow set to 60 pounds; that’s why an arrow goes so far when it misses. The left hand bow I bought from Dee Licious Lahr of Kiss Mee continues to serve well, with a new string and peepsight. I use dental floss tape on the strings where the arrows nock. I can hit the target at 50 feet, but my 100 foot range has a problem the right-hand bow doesn’t have, for some reason: the sunlight comes through the peepsight, generating a glare that makes it impossible for me to aim. It’s maddening. I have to go search for a patch of shade, and there’s never shade at my normal ranges. So why does this happen only with the left bow? It’s the same kind of peepsight on both bows; I just face opposite ways when firing. Apparently that changes the angle of light just enough.

New Year’s Day afternoon we got together with Cheryl and saw the movie Titanic. I am biased against $200 million extravaganzas based on incidental historical tragedies, but this one satisfied me. It’s a really solid movie whose special effects are relevant to the story, and a nice romance too. Some scenes you might think would be dull were otherwise, such as the engine room, where giant piston rods conveyed the power to the screw. This was dynamic, especially when the Captain decided to speed up in an effort to arrive a day early. Those forging rods dramatically showed the increasing power. Toward the end, as the ship was sinking, the rising water within it got increasingly fearsome, at first covering a floor an inch deep, but later bursting violently into new chambers. When the rear section of the ship broke off and then went down, with people falling off it–that was awesome. There were no surprises about that; they diagrammed the manner the ship went down, and then you saw it actually happen in awful detail. I regret that the movie did not make more of the irony of the situation: there was another ship an hour away, that could have rescued perhaps all the people, because the Titanic took over two hours to sink. But when that ship, the Californian, tried to warn the Titanic that it was surrounded by ice bergs, the latter replied SHUT UP. So the Californian’s wireless operator wrapped up and shut down for the night. Then the Titanic struck the iceberg, and the one ship close enough to help could not be reached. The Titanic’s sister ship, Olympic, was 500 miles away. A closer German ship was willing to help, but the Titanic rejected it, saying “You fool.” So two thirds of the people died, because of a combination of speeding through dangerous waters, arrogance, and bad luck. Nevertheless, even without that, the movie is great, and I recommend it to young and old alike, all 3+ hours of it.

I still write to Jenny every week; it’s been nine years now, and she’s 21. In Xanth Jenny Elf is getting married. Thus the Adult Conspiracy limits are off. No, I’m not writing sex letters to her. But sometimes there is a hint of off-color. For example, when I played with state names, and they turned suggestive. Here’s that paragraph:

The Pickles comic strip has a fun notion; place names that go with state abbr. Like Shapeless Mass., Goodness ME., Oola LA., Deathly Ill., Hittor Miss., Poison Penn., Grandpa PA., Proan Conn., Coca Colo., Either OR., and Squee Mich. I wonder if more can be done? Like maybe Blushing Virgin. Income TX. Telephone CO. Ga GA. Lock& KY. Ameri CA. Eightnine Tenn. Gold Ore. Doctor MD. Tellme WY. Alack Alas. Dirty Wash. Full MT. Kickthe Kan. Show ID. Hug& KS. Shovit IN. Ah OH. Feel OK. Gimme MO.

Remember when I got SmartBoard, and it wouldn’t work, claiming I needed an updated file, which I couldn’t get because I’m not online? Well, I check everything that comes in the mail, including junk mail, and sometimes I find something useful therein. In this case Macrohard sent a CD disk that said it would equip me to go online and use its service. Now I can’t do this, because I have no modem. But the disk also included MegaMesh Exploder #4 (sorry – I just finished writing Xanth #23 Xone of Contention, and can’t get the parodies out of my mind). I wondered: would that upgrade my key file so that SmartBoard would work? So I shipped off the novel, backed up all my key files, just in case, shook off my wife’s dire misgivings, and tried it. I expected it to balk, saying ERROR, ERROR! YOU HAVE NO MODEM, YOU TURD! JUST FOR THAT WE’RE DESTROYING YOUR SYSTEM WITH A MEGA FATAL ERROR. SO THERE!! But it didn’t. The first thing it did was present a licensing document for me to agree to or else, donating my gonads to Macrohard in case I ever even thought of ever criticizing its godly beneficence. Then it loaded Exploder #4. Then it loaded its go-online files. Finally it thought to check for the modem. Too late; I already had what I wanted. I exited and tried SmartBoard. And it worked! It still took me several hours to figure it all out, because there were no instructions, and half its hotkeys didn’t work. Don’t they try their programs on real systems before they send them out? But gradually I got there, and the functions that do work are nice enough. So now when I copy text it sucks it up with a POP! and then I can go look at it and change my mind before I Paste, and I can save some in a special category for future use if I want. I can put it into a MultiCapture Mode that enables me to copy several text items cumulatively, much like the word processor’s Spike. The glitches are minor, and overall I like it.

As I age, my gums retreat, and it’s gotten to the point where dental flossing doesn’t suffice, so I have to use a small brush shaped like a Christmas tree to get through the crevices. Don’t laugh; you young kids will get there in due course, if you get old enough. I saw a recommendation for a chewable pill called YOW! that can clean crevices without a brush. So I tried it. Three weeks later I felt a constant bloat in my stomach, and it was getting worse, beginning to sap my strength, as evidenced by slowing running times. Then I remembered when my dentist had me use a daily fluoride rinse; that had caused my stomach to develop a slow continuous burn and breakdown of health. So I stopped with the YOW!, and gradually, over the course of a week, the bloat faded, just as the prior burning had. YOW! does not contain fluoride, so it must be something else. I guess there’s just something about tooth rinses that gets my stomach.

There’s nothing so fascinating as an interrupted experience. I will hear a song once, and then may seek it for years. It took me over thirty years to run down “The Girl in the Wood,” otherwise known as “Remember Me,” and I succeeded only thanks to the help of my readers. Now I’m looking for others. When I was hitchhiking in 1953 I was picked up by a man whose interest turned out to be in boys; I politely declined, and he didn’t push it. On the car radio I heard a song which I believe was sung by Eddie Fisher, and I remember some of the words: “I’m glad I kissed those other lips, Before I kissed your own; If I had not kissed those other lips, I never would have known.” The reason I think it’s Eddie Fisher is that years later I saw him on TV, singing that song. Curious, I tried to run it down, and even got a $100 book Lissauer’s Enclyclopedia Of Popular Music In America 1888 To The Present, that lists everything. For 1953 I found listed “Many Times” sung by Eddie Fisher. Could that be it? Many times, many other lips? I got a CD with all Eddie Fisher’s songs on it – and that one wasn’t on it. So I signed up for a junk mail solicitation, TIME/LIFE’s series of CD’s, YOUR HIT PARADE, covering popular songs from 1940-1959 year by year, 24 songs a year, one CD a month. Teasingly, it waited until #18 for 1953. But that song was there! I listened – and it wasn’t the song. Oh, well; I do like the songs of the late 40’s and early 50’s, excluding rock, so I’ll be listening to those CD’s again. Each disk has close to 70 minutes on it; at $16.99+2.15 each they are good value. But I still haven’t found the particular song I was looking for. It may not even be a good song; it’s just my curiosity that’s driving me into these by-paths. There’s another I’d like to find, too, dating from a similar time: I think of it as “Manwell.” Maybe it’s actually spelled Manuel; I don’t know. It’s about a Latin laborer who works for a gracious woman, doing minor chores. He has fallen in love with her, but of course never gives any hint, because she’s several classes above him. She is always courteous to him, having no notion of his devotion. That’s all – just his private unfulfilled love. So it’s a sad song. I’d like to hear it again, but it seems not to exist.

Anyway, with Xanth done for now, and the market for GEODYSSEY in doubt, I’m making notes for next year’s Xanth, The Dastard – he does dastardly deeds, of course – and doing some more writing on Candle, which is my project about a house whose front door opens onto a busy city street, and whose back door opens onto a deep forest untrod by human foot. My dream of heaven on earth. I thought it would make a good TV series, chapter by chapter as the mystery is explored. My literary agent got a producer interested, but the man said “Can’t you make it simpler?” and I said “I don’t see how the basic notion can be simpler,” and he disappeared forever. My estimate of movie mogul eye queue is slight. So maybe I’ll complete it as a novel, and see.

I received a card saying “Someone who thinks a lot of you, Bob Troll, requested and paid for a 12 month subscription to REMINISCE EXTRA on your behalf.” The only trolls I know are in Xanth, or under bridges, but the first issue arrived in due course. It seems to be nostalgia about the Good Old Days. But somehow it doesn’t interest me much. Maybe the future interests me more. Anyway, thanks for the thought.

I try to do a column every two months, though I do find it a chore because I’m a workaholic and hate being taken away from my work. Today my mood is not the very best, because yesterday my agent called and told me that publishers want only one thing from me, Xanth, and won’t even look at anything else. I have done serious historical fiction, martial arts, hard hitting science fiction, limited nonfiction, and had two other fantasy series on the best seller lists in the past, but publishers have me typed for Xanth and that’s it. This is of course idiocy, but it’s the idiocy that governs publishing. It’s not that I don’t like Xanth; it’s fine. I just don’t want to be limited to it. Well, we’ll see. I do have other resources, such as putting unsold novels on the Internet, so that anyone can see what my more ambitious or provocative projects are. Critics typically accuse me of not even trying to do anything significant, when actually my writing is about as varied and ambitious as that of any other writer. The limits are not in me, but in Parnassus, and in the perception of the critics, as is the case for most writers. The current example is Volk, at Pulpless.com and Xlibris.com; there may be more, in due course.

Another reason I’m a bit down at the moment is that this morning I had more dentistry. I don’t like having my teeth worked on, but I’ve had a lot of it, with 16 onlay/crowns and I think 9 root canals, including one that had to be cut out and rebuilt. This time it was a tooth that developed heat sensitivity: a mouthful of hot soup made it react. Not badly, but it’s best not to wait until such things do get bad. Chances were that there was decay and gas building up that would one day bring real mischief. Well, it turned out that it was in an onlayed and root-canaled tooth, so had to be trouble down in the very tips of the roots of it. That meant ontodontic surgery: an apicoectomy. Ouch. So the endodontist cut open the gum, sanded down the bone, and filled the roots from below. Then he stitched me up again. No, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds; I hate the stick of the needle, but after that couldn’t feel anything. Now that the anesthetic has worn off, I feel a dull discomfort there, which is to be expected; my hope is that it won’t get bad enough to require pain medication. I have kept most of my original teeth, but there’s a fair amount of pain and expense in doing so. I hope I have seen the last of it, but doubt that I have. It occurs to me that there are certain similarities between suffering dental surgery and dealing with publishers: I wish I could avoid both, but do need what they provide.

So what have I been doing, these last two months? Well, I returned to a project I started in 1996, Candle, about a house whose front door opens onto a busy city street and whose back door opens onto an endless pristine forest. I’ve always liked the forest, but also craved the comforts of the city, so in the course of my career have done various takes on possible reconciliation of the two. In Candle, a retirement-age couple is offered free rent for the first month in a very nice house. It seems like a bargain, but why did nobody else take advantage of it? Well, there are odd things about the house. It’s not haunted or hostile, just weird in alien ways. They are intrigued, so they bring in their grandchildren, one of whom is a willful rebellious 15 year old girl named Llynn, and the other is a smart bratty 13 year old boy, her cousin Lloyd. The four of them explore the mysteries of the house, and things get stranger as they go: it becomes evident that mere human technology can’t account for all of it. This is crafted as a potential TV series, each chapter an episode. I sent the first two chapters and a summary of the remainder to my agent in 1996, and he got some TV interest, but it came to nothing. But since this is a labor-of-love project, when I had time I returned to it, and now have a novel of 12 chapters, 70,000 words. We’ll see whether there is any interest this time.

I also got to work on chores. There are things I have been postponing for years, because – well, let me give you an example. Back in 1975 I allocated time to clean up my disreputable yard, and to put the piled papers in my study in order. I figured two weeks would do it. But the more I contemplated that chore, the more my imagination turned to fantasy. So I spent time instead working out a fantasy notion, and sent it off in summary to agent and publisher. It was approved, so I went ahead and wrote it in 1976, and it was published in 1977, as I remember. It’s title was A Spell for Chameleon, set in the Land of Xanth. Right: the first Xanth novel, whose sequels were to transform my career and boost me out of the struggling pack of little-known writers. I considered, and concluded that my time had been better spent working on that novel than on my dismal yard and papers. So I resolved that if I ever faced a similar situation, to do the writing instead of the chore. So the next time it happened, and I had extra time, I skipped the chores and wrote Out of Phaze, which reopened what had been a closed series and gave me three more bestsellers. So it continued. But now, as my career ebbs, and publishers are no longer looking for anything from me other than one Xanth novel a year, I really do have tome to catch up on odd jobs. So I wrote Candle part time, and the rest of the time went to chores. It was the only way they were ever going to get done. So what were they? Well, we had converted my records of earnings on novels to the Access database, but thirty years of records needed to be checked for accuracy; there were duplications and omissions and errors. So I put some twenty hours into that, and now that list is more complete and accurate than it has been before, though some tantalizing errors remain. For example, there was an entry for Centaur Aisle in 1983 for $6,694.94. It couldn’t be; the regular entries were there and documented, and this one wasn’t. It must be for something else. But what? I couldn’t find any missing entries for that period. It’s a lot of money; I don’t want to lose it, as it were. So that remains a mystery. But overall, I have a good record, now. I also caught up on my totals for the last three years income, so I have a better notion how much less I am now making than I used to. I dug out the printing calculator, and didn’t remember how to operate it, and then it jammed, printing bunches of figures on top of each other, and one total didn’t jibe with another or with the figures my wife had – in short, my accounts are just like yours. Reading puts me to sleep, but accounts wake me right up, and not pleasantly. Which is one reason I alternate the two.

I also had outdoor chores. Our drive is three quarters of a mile long, through our tree farm, and trees and brush encroach, because that’s where light is let in. We had some cool weather, so I took advantage of it to clip back the foliage, one to three hours a day, until it was mostly done. I also reopened overgrown paths around our lake shore. You see, our tree farm is about 90 acres shaped like the state of Florida, otherwise known as Xanth, a peninsula in Lake Tsoda Popka, all forested. Over the years the trails have largely disappeared. So I went out with heavy clippers and carved them back, so I could take our dog Obsidian (she appears as a character in Candle) on walks. She loves exploring, but I don’t like being dragged through massed vines and nettles and thick brush. No, we don’t let her loose in the forest; she would be too quick to make the acquaintance of rattlesnakes or alligators. So now we can walk without such problems.

But there was a complication there. In the past few years feral pigs have moved in. Back in 1539 Hernando de Soto passed by this region, looking for gold; he didn’t find the gold, but did leave something behind: pigs. They were for eating, but some escaped, and they have been in Florida ever since. Apparently the oinks concluded that after 450 years, our secluded tree farm was nice, so they moved in. But pigs are voracious animals, and they have torn up whole acres of our forest floor, making the region look as if it has been plowed. We fear for the welfare of other animals, who will not be able to forage well after the pigs have eaten everything. We also fear for ourselves, because some of them are big boars, said to be 250-300 pounds with razor sharp tusks and bad attitudes. We could hear them crashing and squealing in the brush. So my wife wouldn’t let me go out too far into the forest, lest I get gored. Wives are like that. But I confess that when I stand amidst the destruction and hear a sound, I do get a mite nervous. So we need to be rid of those pigs. So we made a deal with a neighbor, and he is trying to lure the pigs onto his property where he can catch them and make them domestic pigs. Sure, they will wind up on grills, and we aren’t really comfortable with that, but if it’s a choice between those pigs and the wild creatures we have tried to make a sanctuary for – such as gopher tortoises, a protected species – we’ll take the tortoises. And we hope that soon I’ll feel free to range the length and breath of the tree farm without concern about something else hogging it.

But my life is not all chores and writing. Last year I was given a CD disk with 28 card games on it, and so when I got knotted up on something or other, I’d take a break and play some cards on the computer. When I managed to win one, I’d go onto another. Over the course of a generous year the wins mounted, and finally I was left with the toughest one: Gaps. Therein the cards are all dealt out in four rows, scrambled, and then the four aces are removed, and you play by moving a card into a gap, forming a new gap where it came from. But you can play only to an adjacent number in the same suit: 5 of heart next to the 4 of heart or 6 of heart, in order. The object is to get them all lined up in suits, 2-K. It’s very limited, and soon you stall out with no legal moves left. First time I played it I hated it, but when I focused on it, determined to win it and complete the roster of 28, I got to appreciate it more. Over the course of ten days I played about an hour a day, and finally, gloriously, managed to win it. So I had conquered the roster. Now I don’t play it much, but will do so when I need distraction. I’m sorry the CD didn’t include some of my favorite card solitaires, like Accordion or Crazy Quilt, but maybe eventually there will be a sequel disk. I understand Microsoft will come out with a new program, Chrome, that enables great 3D graphics; I wonder how that would translate to card games?

We had more rain. Almost twelve inches in FeBlueberry, six and a half more in Marsh. And marsh is the word: the water levels rose, making our tree farm a peninsula in open water rather than in muck. It’s El Niño, you know, a function of global warming, as I mentioned last column. It spawned tornadoes too, but they avoided us. Every time we thought the record for water height had been set, more rain came and raised it farther. The neighbor’s mowed field to our north is now a lovely broad lake, with water birds and a four foot long alligator. Finally the water came to the base of our front gate posts, and we judged that two more inches would start flooding our drive. And there it seems to have stopped; it knows the limit. We were concerned because the gopher tortoise burrows were flooding and we were afraid they were drowning, but in the past few days we have seen half a dozen tortoises, including three together just today, so that’s all right. Of course this will feed into a summer drought, but it’s been nice having our water table recharged

So what else is new? One daughter took their home brewings to the state fair and they won several ribbons and best-of-show. The other daughter got chicken pox, at age 27. Life isn’t fair. I read some books, including one for just fun: Li’l Abner, a collection of the first year’s comic strips. That comic started the week after I was born, back in 1934. I must say that that first year was okay but not great; in later years, when I was old enough to read it, it had some great stuff, like Evil Eye Fleegle, who could throw whammies with his eyeballs. I remember a sequence wherein he was demonstrating his powers, and someone asked “Is it true that a half whammy can melt a charging locomotive?” Fleegle said yes, and by an interesting coincidence a train was just approaching. So he let fly at it with half the power of one eyeball, and the next picture showed the locomotive melted on the tracks. That’s my kind of comic strip. Maybe they’ll republish all the fifty years or so if it, and I’ll get to read it all, in time.

And of course I continued my exercise, including archery. My left side accuracy is improving, and one day when I fired both right and left bows at 100 feet I made 11 of 12 hits on the target with both bows. But next time the light was such that I had to go to 50 feet left handed, and I made 12 for 12 at 100 feet right handed, and only 9 of 12 left handed. So you never can tell. I think it’s not the handedness so much as the fact that the right handed bow is compound, with the 60 pound pull reducing to about 20 pounds when drawn, making it easier to aim. The pull on the left handed one is about 40 pounds at the point to which I draw it, but there is no let-off, so it’s harder to hold my aim, and I may fire the arrows with different forces so that they strike high or low. Every so often I still get a fluke right miss, too: the arrow takes off on its own, paying no attention to where I aimed it. But I like the archery, and plant to continue it the rest of my life. No I don’t enter any contests, and I don’t shoot at any animals; it’s just me and my target, twice a week. And my metal detector, to help find lost arrows. Thus my life in the months of FeBlueberry and Marsh, plus Apull Fool, when I wrote this column, no fooling. And the day improved: I suffered no bad pains when eating my soft cold food, and needed no pain pills, not detecting even any swelling in my sore jaw. Life will go on.

I’ve been trying to do these columns every two months, but this one is three months after the last. In fact we were unable to get it to the Page when I wrote it, so I edited it almost a month later, making it close to four months this time. Sorry about that. Part of the problem is that I’m not online and have to work indirectly. The moment what I do involves other folk, it gets complicated. Messages that come in to Hi Piers can take months to reach me, too. It makes it more likely that I will eventually got connected myself, so that I can do this directly.

HI PIERS is shutting down. Like a death from slow illness, the process takes time and is painful. When we first set it up, back in 1990, we had hopes that it would succeed, and be a service to readers who had trouble finding some of my books in the stores. But it cost a good deal more than it made, and finally we shut down the physical office and put it on the Internet, and my wife took it over. But she reports that it still isn’t working; the costs of doing business, such as licenses and maintaining the ability to process credit cards, are greater than what is earned from selling the books. I also don’t like having too much of her time taken; we are now senior citizens and are looking forward to simplifying our lives, and this is a complication. So we’re cutting our losses and shutting it down the rest of the way, somewhat the way a dying patient elects to avoid heroic measures and just let nature take its course. This Hi Piers Page will remain, and if I ever go online I’ll get directly involved with it. But my books will no longer be sold here. I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but we did give it a fair try.

Other aspects of my life are more positive. We don’t travel much, for various reasons, but the major one is that we are satisfied at home and don’t feel the need to get away from it. But we do plan to make one trip, to make the 1950’s college reunion. That’s Goddard College, in Plainfield Vermont. It’s a small college – there were about 75 students when I attended – so single class reunions might field only five or six people; a decade’s reunion may bring ten times as many. Also, it was a community experience; each student knew every person on campus, and friendships were hardly confined to particular classes. So the decade makes sense: everyone who attended from about 1950 to 1960 is invited, the first week in OctOgre. I was asked to write a paragraph encouraging others to attend, so I did, and here it is:

Goddard changed my life. It was here that I discovered my life’s interest in writing, and became a vegetarian, and met the girl I married. (Yes, Cam and I remain married, 42 years later, though I am disappointed that she didn’t stay 19.) Maybe others were not as profoundly affected, but still, there never was another experience quite like Goddard. I’d like to meet the folk I knew there, to remember what was, discover what is, and consider what might have been. I’m a sucker for nostalgia. I hope some of the rest of you are too.

That paragraph was run in an alumni newsletter, along with others, so the word is getting out. I’m attending for exactly the reasons stated; it’s a highly personal thing. But it is true that my circumstances have changed in the ensuing 40+ years. I have become successful as a writer, and a major financial supporter of the college, so am known there for more than just my presence as a student. At one time they wanted to rename a dormitory “Xanth,” but I think sanity returned in time. So I will do a reading there as Piers Anthony, but otherwise hope to be just one more nostalgic alumnus. The Goddard experience really did change my life significantly, and I think it changed the lives of most who were there. Ours was not the only campus marriage, and I was not the only successful graduate. I wasn’t even the only vegetarian. One of my roommates is now a member of the Board of Trustees, and another is coming in from Ukraine, and another is a psychiatrist. A fourth roommate was at the time the table tennis champion of the state, but his real interest was in music. I mean, there’s a lot to catch up on. My wife will have her acquaintances too. So we expect a memorable experience, and yes, chances are that I will write it up in boring detail for Hi Piers, in due course.

As I mention fairly regularly, I exercise, because writing is a sedentary occupation and I’m no longer young and I want to be reasonably healthy. I practice archery, both right and left handed, with a metal detector to locate the arrows I lose when I miss the target; I work out with hand weights, I have a RowBike which gives me rowing exercise as I ride out on the 1.5 mile circuit to our gate (except that with temperatures in the 90’s I have to lay off that: I get too sweaty and have to dump all my clothes in the laundry), and three mornings a week I run out to fetch in our newspapers. Now all this is for my health, not for records, yet when I manage to hit the target with twenty arrows in a row, right and left, I take note, and when I run well I also take note. I ran for a decade, then switched to an exercise cycle, but after wearing out several of those without getting enough exercise, I switched back to running two years ago, this time running just before dawn, before the heat and the biting flies get fierce. I find that I go in cycles, about four months up, four months down. Last fall I had a four month series of 50 circuits under 15:00 minutes, which, after allowing for stops along the way, translates to about an 8 minute mile for 1.6 miles, which is okay for a man in his 60’s. That ended and I sagged into runs between 15 and 16 minutes for four months. Then, as the weather got hot, so did I, to my surprise, and I broke my record on three consecutive runs, one of them breaking the 14 minute barrier for the first time. As I write (edit) this, I’m on a streak of 39 under 15 minute runs, and had a sub-streak of 16 under 14:30 runs. In the fall series I never put together a streak of more than two of those. Something is bound to break the streak, but it’s fun while it lasts, and it does suggest that my health remains good.

I also have had a good streak writing. I am now working on Key to Havoc, projected as a quarter million word fantasy, first in the ChroMagic series, where magic has color and natural functions are not ignored. I mean, if you want to get along with a magic plant – and some of them you had better get along with – you make it an offering of fresh fertilizer, such as urine. Then it recognizes you as a friend. When someone yells “Piss on it!” he’s not swearing; he may be saving your life. Sex is handled openly, as are its dangers. For example, a succubus may take over the body of an attractive woman and come on to an adolescent boy. If she succeeds in seducing him, she will suck out his soul at the moment of climax. The same is true for an incubus with a nubile girl. So children are warned, in the form of educational plays, every detail shown clearly, so that none will be victimized. The Dance of the Succubus is as sexy as anyone will ever see, by definition. Even adult audiences rather enjoy seeing it again, for some reason. Once the maturing youths succeed in resisting the temptation of the demon, they can proceed safely to adult life. The setting is on one highly volcanic planet of a pair of magic and literally colorful worlds closely orbiting each other, making for horrendous tides, and that pair is orbiting a double star, one of which is an erratically flaring black hole. Thus the seasons and weather are something else. So while this novel is conventional in some respects, with magic and adventure and romance, it is unconventional in other respects, so may have a problem with publishers. The heart of it is a mystery: who killed the king, and why? Our “barbarian” hero Havoc wants to know, because now he is king, and the new target of assassination. The answer is not easy to fathom, and will take several novels to comprehend; no simple good guy / bad guy scenarios here. So I’m enjoying writing this, and am moving at a very good clip. Couple more months at this rate, and I’ll complete it. Then we’ll see whether we can get this serious, innovative fantasy into conventional print. If not, there’s always the Internet. I see the Internet as the potential salvation for those who have something to say that Hidebound & Whimsy won’t publish. Which is why my serious World War Two novel Volk is there.

Let’s talk about the weather. We had three months of record rains, and judged that two more inches would begin to flood our tree farm – when it stopped, and we had three months of drought. Then Florida had hundreds of wildfires. Fortunately for us, Citrus County has not been much affected, and our tree farm is a peninsula in Lake Tsoda Popka, so it would not be easy for a fire to reach us. But much more of this drought would have made us increasingly nervous as the lake receded. In the last three weeks we finally got nine inches of rain, a blessing from heaven. Is the worst over? We are not at all sure. Meanwhile, in the decade we have lived on the tree farm, our temperature hit 98°F once and 99° once. JeJune was the first month of our second decade – and it hit 98° or higher 11 times, four of them 100°, shattering our personal records. The Jewel-lye rains cooled things somewhat, but it has indeed been hot.

We went to see a movie: Godzilla. I mean, this is in my genre. No, it’s not the best ever, but it’s competent animation, and I was rooting for the monster. All it wanted to do was have a safe nest for its offspring, with some food nearby. Was that too much to ask, without the natives getting all bent out of shape? Meanwhile I’m pleased to see advances in animation, because one year someone in the industry may realize that story has a lot to do with a movie’s success, and I have a good many competent fantasy stories in print. Speaking of which: I just sold the next three Xanths to TOR, titled The Dastard, Swell Foop, and Up in a Heaval. That publisher will also reprint three older Xanths: Vale of the Vole, Heaven Cent, and Man From Mundania. And publish the fourth GEODYSSEY novel, Muse of Art. The fifth novel, Climate of Change, is on hold with the first 112,000 words written, because of loss of my market and my researcher.

My father is now 89, and he visited Daughter #1 in Florida in JeJune. We collected Daughter #2 and drove down to see them, and we all went to Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa. Naturally the day was burningly hot, 95°-100°, but we took it easy and got through. The zoo isn’t high power entertainment like Busch Gardens or Disney World, but it costs only about a tenth as much and is as educational. There was a plaza with a dozen little fountains for children to run through; they seemed to love it. I was surprised to see that the camels had humps flopped over like empty wineskins, and the rhinoceros was swimming underwater. I thought was what a hippopotamus did. All manner of monkeys, birds, and other creatures, in a jungle-like setting, and the walkways curved around so that the views were good. The souvenir shop had a window under water so that we could see the manatee feeding; they looked like small blimps. I bought a little rubber exotic chameleon to give to Jenny Elf for her 22nd birthday: squeeze it and its tongue unrolls like a party toy. I always give Jenny something quaint and stupid, so she’ll think of me.

Before I came to America I lived in Spain for a year, where my parents were doing relief work during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. Farah Mendlesohn has now done a thesis on that relief effort, wherein my father is prominently mentioned. Reading that, I learned things I had not been in a position to pick up on as a child of five. You might think that it was just a matter of shipping food in and handing it out to children, but it was more complicated than that. Relief work turns out to be no simple matter; there are social and political currents that carry it this way and that. As I have mentioned elsewhere, my father was arrested and deported in 1940, apparently because the new dictatorship didn’t understand why anyone would be giving food to those in need, and thus it was that I wound up in America. But there was good work being done in Spain, for a while, and lives were surely saved.

I subscribe to a number of news, science, and health magazines and newsletters, and they are all good, because I drop the bad ones. One interesting recent item is the discovery that neutrinos have mass. I always thought they did; I mean how can something tangible exist without it? But the key here is that there are so many of them – I understand that several trillion pass through the human body every hour – that even a very small mass means that this may be the answer to the riddle of Dark Matter. Neutrinos certainly answer the description. Thus this may be the realization of the decade. I am also intrigued by the Y2K Bug. That is, the problem many old computers will have when the year 2,000 AD arrives, because they mark years as just 96, 97, 98, and 99, assuming the 19 prefix. So the year 2000 will be assumed to be the year 1900. That seems like a joke, but computers don’t laugh. This is likely to destroy the IRS, which will make Americans celebrate, until the government runs out of money and collapses. Then the cheering may become fainter. You would think that, given several years to fix a known problem, they would be able to do something about it. You would think wrong; there will be mischief. The best advice I’ve seen is not to be in an airplane when that date turns over; the plane may not be able to land safely, with the computers out. Speaking of time: we have a pendulum clock we bought in 1977. It still runs, but the pendulum rotted out. So we fixed it with arrow fletching cement, and now it’s working well, and the clock is accurate to within a minute or so a month. It gains at the beginning, when the winding is tight, and loses at the end.

Thus my current routine existence. As I typed this, we received a batch of emails printed out from Hi Piers, and as I edit this, more are piling in. I answer letters with Post Orifice addresses, but most of these don’t have them. So gives an addendum, and I hope that those who sent in notes will be checking here. But here is the problem: These appear to be the emails of only the past two weeks. There must be more in the pipeline, because it’s been several months since I’ve had a batch. If I answer every one of these notes fully, I will have no time to write my novels. I would become a full time correspondent instead of a novelist. So I won’t do that. I’ll give a generic answer, and that will have to be sufficient. As it is, this is the sixth consecutive day I have written nothing on my novel; the time has all gone to mail, readers, and this column. Tomorrow, by damn, I’m returning to my paying work. (Now, editing, I can say the back e-mails finally turned up, several hundred of them; we’re working through the glut.)

Some want to know whether I’ll write the 6th Space Tyrant novel, The Iron Maiden, or the 4th Mode novel, DoOon Mode, or another Adept or Incarnations novel. Probably not. I must write what I have a market for, and that market is defined by the publishers rather than the readers. It’s not a system I like, especially when publishers are idiots, but that’s the way it is with commercial writing. One person even asks what would it take to get me to write the next Mode novel. Answer: good market for it. Another says my refusal to write the next Mode novel (yet) means he won’t read anything else of mine. He says “Apparently I am wrong in assuming that anything but greed and love of money are the driving forces at work in this author’s life.” Well, apparently I am wrong in assuming that all my readers are intelligent or fair minded. One asks about Spider Legs; that’s in print in hardcover and in due course will be in paperback; it will come eventually. One asks what Xanth novel to start with: any of them; they are designed to be individual entities, though may be more satisfying read in order. If a person doesn’t like the one he/she tries, he/she probably won’t like the others. Several ask about setting up a link to the Hi Piers Page: sure, go ahead. One asks about using information from the Visual Guide to Xanth; sure, just give credit to the source. Same for the one who wants to set up magician Humfrey’s Castle: credit the source, so others don’t get the idea that it’s in the common domain. Someone wants the early printed newsletters put online; I suppose that could be done sometime, but we’d have to gear up to scan them in, and at present don’t have a good enough scanner. Similar goes for doing the newsletter columns for the blind: I’m not set up for it. One asks why I have allowed Waterstones and Dillons to stop stocking my books. Allow? I have no control over which idiots lack the sense to stock my books, just as I have none over the idiots who pan them in reviews. You readers just have to let them knew they went wrong. Several mention that the Jenny Elf site is no longer in operation. Since I’m not online, I have no knowledge of that. I still write to Jenny every week, but I get no response. I suspect that after almost a decade of paralysis, she and her family are pretty tired of it all, as anyone would be. Quite a number of readers just say that they love my novels, and not just the Xanths; I really appreciate that. One mentions On a Pale Horse being a comfort to her when her eldest son died. That was part of the purpose of that novel: to try to help those who had to relate to death. One says to let it be known that I am not a girl. Indeed I am not, but sometimes my unfamiliar first name confuses folk. One informs me that the German translations of Xanth are inept, making the material like a Disney cartoon. Ouch! But again, out of my control. Some would like my snail mail address posted here. This would seem to make sense – except that for the past twenty years or so I have refused to let my address be published, and have cut off anyone who did, including WHO’S WHO references, which is why those don’t have current information on me. Why? First, because I’m already replete with as much mail as I care for; it takes two days a week to answer it, which blots out my free time. A published address leads not only to too much mail, but to solicitations for free books, for contributions to myriad causes, and to occasional unannounced visits by strangers. Most merely want to take up my time, on the apparent assumption that I have nothing better to do with it, no deadlines, no personal appointments, no novels to write. Some would like to live with me. But it’s the others that worry me: those who are not necessarily friends, or who believe that they could be successful writers if only I were out of the way, or that I might marry them if my wife were out of the way. There is just no knowing what a complete stranger may have in mind. So I prefer to filter it, to reduce the volume and to avoid entirely the surprise visits or calls. I do put my address on my correspondence, and I understand that some abuse that by putting it on the Internet. Well, here is the word: if you ever see my address on the Internet, it has been done without my approval, and that person is no friend of mine. Send him a logic bomb. OMNI did it, and when asked to stop, replied arrogantly “Piers Anthony knows where to reach us.” Knowing that I’m not on the net and couldn’t reach them directly. Fortunately a magic curse took them out of business; certainly they would never have had mine. So how do you reach me? By writing through a publisher, who will eventually forward mail, or by emailing Hi Piers and including your Post Orifice address. Then I will answer you. It can take a while, if mail gets backlogged at Hi Piers, as seems to be the case now, or if I have so many to answer that they must be spaced over several letter days. But I do answer. The thing is, I don’t do form letters; each is personal and individual. I do use canned paragraphs for commonly asked questions, but that’s about as impersonal as it gets. I admit to being annoyed when someone sends questions I have just answered in this column, though.

Back to more notes: someone gives an example of a repeated talent in Xanth. It turns out that talents can after all repeat. But even if they didn’t, a similar talent could be accomplished by different kinds of magic. Such as flying without wings: one might do it by invisible jet propulsion, another by becoming very light, another by summoning a strong updraft. So maybe talents really don’t repeat, even when they seem to. Someone asks about the Space Tyrant books: they are out of print and the rights have reverted to me. At some point I want to gear up to scan them onto disk and see about Internet republication. Eventually I’d like to have all my titles available that way. It’s a future dream. When I get the equipment and the time. Oh, sure, I know that at that point all the readers who have been looking for copies will abruptly lose interest, but still I think it’s worth doing. One person thanks me for using his idea; I use many reader ideas, and try to give credit for them in the Author’s notes. Some are pretty good ideas. One says Magician Humfrey should smile more often, and that his stool must have a grouch cushion on it. That must be it. One says what about the effect on forests that go to make the paper for my novels? Well, I do live on my tree farm, which is growing wood for future paper, so I suspect I am at least holding even there. One would like information on the Game in the Adept series. Unfortunately, the day I perfected the game grid I lost it via a computer error, before it was backed up. It was like the death of a pet; sick at heart, I’ve never tried to reconstruct it. One asks when Zombie Lover is coming out: in OctOgre, in hardcover, and in paper a year after. One tells me that all my Xanth women are such sickeningly innocent obliging things; well wait till you meet Breanna of the Black Wave in that novel, and some of the other females.

And some specific letters: Tandy Lauralin Dolin would like to know how the name Tandy came to be in Xanth. When I needed a female name I asked one of my daughters, and she said “Tandy.” So that was it. The Tandy computer was then big, so that may have been why. Tandy Lauralin also provides an idea for more in the Incarnations series, picking up where the present series leaves off. But I feel that series is best left where it is. Amy J Stringe inquires about the name Mortis, who is the Death Horse, as it’s her nickname. It’s from the word for death: mort. A mortal is one who will die. We are all, alas, mortal. Joe Erwin tells how he was hit by a drunk driver and confined to a wheelchair, so he relates to Jenny Elf. The drunk who hit him is, of course, a repeat offender, still out and about. Yes; our society needs to get serious about drunk drivers instead of letting them out with wrist slaps so they can do it again. As it is, a bottle and a car become a license to maim or kill with virtual impunity. Brian Nichols is writing a book with a Xanth setting. Just as long as you know that such a book can never be published; Xanth is proprietary. But as for how to give it a Xanthian twist: what I recommend to readers is that they change their own states to magic lands the way I did when I turned Florida into Xanth. A map of any state will offer opportunities for parody and humor, and you don’t need anyone’s permission to do that. Bobette Bryan writes historical romance and fantasy short stories. She says her word processor changed her “elvens” to “elevens.” Yes, I’ve encountered that. She wonders why my publishers want to restrict me to Xanth, but she answers it herself: that’s where the money is. I think it’s a shame that commercial outfits are taking over the arts, for all that I have made my money by catering to that. I do what I have to, to make my living, but I don’t like the system. And she wonders how to get a dyslexic to read. I’m not sure; it took me three years and five schools to make it through first grade, and I still read slowly. But in my day there were no dyslexics, only stupid students, so I was stupid. I interceded to make sure the school system didn’t do to my daughter what it had done to me, and she learned to read and did very well. I think the best thing is an understanding teacher, a supportive parent, and patience. It’s as if the wires in the head are misconnected, and have to be tediously reprogrammed one by one. This takes time. When a dyslexic finally figures out ways to get around the disability, he can gain ground. I did; it has been some time since anyone other than a book reviewer or critic thought I was stupid.

So this column is good and late, but with luck the next one will be back on schedule. Do keep reading.

First a business note: we keep getting emails expressing regret that we’re shutting down. This is to clarify that HI PIERS as a business has shut down; it no longer has a physical office, and no longer sells books. But this Web Site will remain; we have no plans to shut it down. I will continue to write column for it. In fact if I ever get a modem and learn to use it, I may start visiting the site myself and answering spot queries, so that they don’t have to be printed out for me. We’ll see.

We’re just back from our trip to Vermont, which is enclosed elsewhere; suffice to say here that it took five days and now we’re trying to catch up on what piled up during our absence. So this may be somewhat scattered as I jump from note to note. Let’s start with something simple: why the Microsoft Word Save As function is like quantum physics. For years I couldn’t figure it out; I know how to save a file to a new title, but it kept saving it to the wrong Directory (Folder, in Windows-speak), forcing me to copy, paste where it belonged, and go back to erase the original. Windows doesn’t have a Move function, for reasons of sadism. Finally I tackled it boldly, and after the usual struggle figured it out: Quantum Physics. You see, therein the act of looking at a particle changes it; it remains undefined until viewed. Why a particle should care who looks at it I’m not sure; maybe it has to get its panties on or something. Who can understand the rules of magic? Well, that’s what Save As was doing: the act of checking it changes it. If you don’t check it, it remains on its own default, which isn’t necessarily yours. So every time I looked, it was right, and every time I didn’t look, it was wrong. So now I check it before I use it, and have no further trouble. The key is when you check, to be on a file from the Directory to which you wish to save. It may have been there when you last checked, but may change if your file does, so you can’t trust it to be constant.

Now another analogy: how my exercise runs related to the home run derby. I jog three times a week, and time the runs. Last fall I had a record series of 50 fast (for me) runs. Then, just as it was getting hot at the end of Apull, another series of fast runs started. I know it would soon poop out, because of the heat, but it didn’t. In fact it started breaking my speed records, and kept going all summer. 10, 20, 30 runs – when would it end? I turned 64 and still it continued. I bought new running shoes, as my old ones are over a decade old and worn out, and the new ones make my feet feel better. Meanwhile in baseball Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were hitting home runs. Their season started a bit earlier than mine, but by the end of SapTimber I had a string of 55 fast runs, the same as McGwire’s number of home runs. Then the race got tighter, and the three of us were tied at 63, again at 65, and at 66. Where would it end? Well, my trip to Vermont interrupted my streak at 68, while McGwire was 70 and Sosa was 66. So I was in good company, in my fashion. Not that I care about baseball.

I like to work the chess puzzles in the newspaper. I’m not a great chess player, but those puzzles aren’t very complicated, and I generally get them in one to five minutes. If I can’t solve them quickly, I look up the answer, because I have other things to do. Sometimes I have missed the obvious. But sometimes the given answer is wrong, and I know that no one actually played it through to discover that. One thing that annoys me is the puzzle-maker’s evident ignorance of the rule of taking a pawn en passant: when a pawn jumps two spaces on its first move, if an enemy piece is covering that jumped space, it can move in and take that pawn as if it had moved there. This must be done immediately following that jump, or the chance is lost. Twice this year the answer has depended on just such a jump, with a pawn’s jump making the solution – when the intervening space was covered by an enemy piece. In real chess that pawn would be taken, and there would be no solution. No one has told the puzzle maker this?

Here are three paragraphs from my recent weekly letters to Jenny: This week we went to see the movie The Avengers. That’s right–I’m redeeming this sorry letter with a movie review. We had seen an ad for it when we saw Godzilla, and then when there was no advance showing for the critics, because of course the critics would trash it, we just had to see it. The critics trash anything they think you and I might like. Sure enough, the critics did trash it–and we did enjoy it. It’s about this dapper English hero and this lovely British lady scientist Emma Peel who try to stop the evil weatherman from ruining England’s weather. Naturally they succeed, after fantastic adventures. They are forever pausing for tea, which is something they do in England; ask your British mother. The car even serves fresh hot tea. There are some nice weather effects. And in one scene Emma, who has been abducted by the bad man, who wants to make her his love slave, is trying to find her way out of the castle. She encounters a stairway from an Escher picture, and keeps descending it without getting anywhere. Then she enters a room, and leaves it going on to the next–and finds herself in the same room. Bemused, she smashes a statue on the floor, to mark it–and sure enough, when she goes straight ahead, she enters that same room again, with the smashed statue. This is my kind of fun. She finally hurls herself through the window on the side and lands on the street, where our hero finds her. So it’s a fun movie, that you’d like. So why did the critics trash it? Maybe because critics have no sense of humor, and don’t understand Escher art. We concluded that it was neither a top movie nor a bottom one; I rate it a B-. I’m enclosing a ticket stub for you, of course.

Remember back in Apull, I told you about Gavin Grow, who was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident, and had no reason to live, until a friend lent him my collaboration with Cliff Pickover, Spider Legs, and that novel gave him reason? I quote from his letter to me: “Your book represents my first conscious memory of something good…” I sent him an autographed copy of that, together with Letters to Jenny and Isle of View, with a nice letter, and later I sent him an article about chances for regeneration of injured nerves, just as I do with you. I received an impersonal thank-you letter which didn’t name any books; in retrospect I recognize it as a generic form letter. Well, this week I received a copy of AMERICAN WIND SURFER magazine at the behest of Gavin Grow, containing his first article. There was also a long comment by the editor, saying that Grow was injured 11 years ago, and for the past 6 years has been writing two letters a day to people he admires. He has hundreds of pictures, books, and gifts from folk he has written to. There’s a two page spread showing some of the autographed pictures celebrities have sent him. The editor is very positive, and it’s a beautiful magazine, huge and slick with many lovely pictures. They have set up a Gavin Grow Fund to get him a van with an electric lift for his wheelchair. But here’s the thing: Spider Legs was published in Jamboree 1998. So how could that have been the novel that brought Gavin Grow out of his funk six to eleven years ago? Obviously he just filled that name into a form letter–and filled in other names for the letters to others. So while the man is paralyzed, and I applaud his effort to make something of his life, I do feel used.

And this week was a column by a local newspaper columnist, Howard Troxler. It’s priceless. He asks, suppose the players in the Washington scandal were to write to Ann Landers? What advice would she give? The first letter is from Moping and Lonely, telling how she had an affair with her boss, a prominent middle aged man who dropped her like a hot potato when others found out about it. Do they have a future together? Next letter is from the boss in a rather large government office who got flashed by a young intern, and one thing led to another until somebody blew the whistle on them. Now he’s in hot water with his wife and at the office. Next letter is from a woman who learned that her husband was fooling around with a younger woman at work. Then a letter from an office worker who signs herself Likes to Tattle. And from a secretary covering for the boss. And from Tele-miffed who suspects a man he called was doing something else at the same time. And from Embarrassed at Stanford. And a subpoena from Kenneth W Starr, who just spent $40 million to determine that toilet paper should be hung over the top, not against the wall.

Now back to today’s column. You see, sometimes I write a paragraph first for Jenny, with the intention of using it elsewhere also, because I don’t like to repeat myself. As you can see, all three of these are on subjects of general interest. But I have to say that as I approach ten years of weekly letters to Jenny and little gifts for her birthdays, with the last response from her or her family months in the past, most of a year actually, I am increasingly inclined to bring an end to it. The time is expensive for me, and with no evidence that the effort is still appreciated or even noted, I think it is time to let it go. I can’t quite be sure that my letters are being opened. Jenny Elf is now married in Xanth, and will continue, however. I got a new credit card via AAA, figuring it would be a good one. It was Platinum, with a credit limit of up to $100,000, it said. But when it came the limit was $5,000 and the time one year – compared to twice the credit and three times the time for my old Gold card. It isn’t as if my credit is bad; I routinely deal in larger sums than their max, in and out. I don’t need it; I don’t use credit cards for investments. But it rankles in the way a snub might. I suspect I am about as good a credit risk as exists. So what does it take to rate their maximum? Bill Gates? I think they are guilty of false advertising, and I’m half inclined to let the card go after its year expires. They did send a nice traveling bag, though, for joining.

Speaking of investments, I believe I have mentioned that I ventured into venture capital to invest in Xlibris, an Internet publisher that enables hopeful writers to cheaply self-publish their books, bypassing Parnassus, the conventional New York publishing establishment. Xlibris will actually print out single hardcover copies of the books, indistinguishable from those of regular publishers in appearance and price. My World War Two novel Volk is there. My reason for the investment is ideological: I want there to be a viable alternative that gives everyone a chance. I have never been online, but I see the Internet as the best prospect for doing that. So I want to see Xlibris and other Internet publishers succeed; I think it would be good for the world. I won’t go into detail, but will say that this is turning out to be an education not only about the potentials of the Internet, but about Parnassus itself and the ways of money. I was prepared to lose my investment, and have added to it to be sure the venture survives, but at this point I think I will probably recover it. I will surely have more to say at such time as the fate of Xlibris is certain.

I continue with my archery, which I started as another type of exercise, and remain with for that and pleasure and learning in a new discipline. Each morning I’m not firing arrows I draw the 60 pound compound bow twenty times for arm strength, one day right handed, the next day left handed. For those who came in late, let me clarify: the bow does not weigh 60 pounds, it weighs about 4 pounds. The Draw Weight refers to how hard it is to draw the bowstring back. I started at 45 pounds, went to 50, then 55, and a year and a half ago went to 60 pounds, which is enough. So drawing that string is like doing half a chin; my weight is about 145 pounds, but a chin requires two hands, so each arm would be drawing about 73 pounds. The other arm has to keep the bow in place, so is pushing with the same force. I don’t do chins or pull-ups any more, lacking a bar, but 20 fast bow pulls suffices for a man of age 64. Anyway, for my birthday I bought myself a larger target. The old one is fine, and weighs under 20 pounds; the new one has about twice the target surface and weighs 55 pounds. But I discovered that it didn’t make a lot of difference, because my aim is now fairly accurate, except for flukes that go way out. So I was hitting near the center of the big target – or still missing completely. Sometimes an arrow just doesn’t go where I aim it; it’s a frustration. I have front and rear sights, so I do know where I’m aiming. So I saw a smaller, lighter, cheaper target in an outdoorsman catalog, and ordered two. I set them on top of the big one, and my old target to the right – most misses are to the right, even when I fire left handed – and that array does catch most of my misses. So I no longer have to spend an hour searching for a lost arrow, or try to repair a broken one, and that’s a relief. But when I ordered the targets, I saw a sale on arrows. The local store carries Easton arrows, which are all right, but these were Bear arrows, and my compound bow is a Bear. They were half price, under $2.50 per arrow instead of $5.00. So I bought a dozen. This resulted in my further education. They were shipped full length, without heads. When I buy them at the store, the man cuts them down to my length, 30 inches; he could as readily make them 31″ or 32″. I have some 31″ arrows, and they work okay. But these were 33″, way long. But I like to experiment, so I put three together at that full length and tried them. They worked well; I liked their feel. But they squeaked when drawn. I pondered and considered, and found that these were of larger diameter. My wife figured out the coding, and I got it interpreted in the archery manual that Dee Lightful Dee Lahr of Kiss Mee sent when I bought her left handed bow: I had some 2016, with 20 indicating the diameter of the shaft in 64ths of an inch, and 16 indicating the thickness of the aluminum tube wall in 1,000ths of an inch. Those are my lightest arrows, subject to bendage and breakage. I have some 2117, thicker and thicker, which are stronger. Well, the Bear arrows are 2216, visibly bigger in diameter, but not much heavier because their cell walls are thinner. But since I left them full length, that extra three inches adds to their weight. But they work, and I like them. I learned to use epoxy to glue in the inserts that hold the points, and used point from my old broken arrows, and now I have six functioning king sized arrows, with six more ready for when I go to the archery store and buy more points. Understand, I’m a duffer, so it doesn’t make much difference whether an arrow is properly balanced or flexible; I’m not going to score dead center bullseyes anyway. So I fire several weights and lengths of arrows with both my 60 pound compound right handed bow and my 30 pound reverse left handed bow, and they all work well enough. Well, the big Bear arrows do strike low on the target, left handed, but I can compensate for that. And I learned something else: one reason for a fluke miss is that I can draw an arrow too far back and it drops off the arrow rest just as I fire. Well, that can’t happen with the 33″ arrows. I did have one fluke miss with a Bear arrow; I haven’t figured that one out yet. If I ever write a book about my experiences in Archery, I’ll title it Bone Arrow. Yes, that’s a pun: Bow ‘n Arrow.

Computer challenges: I was using Microsoft’s Access database program to enter some income – my wife keeps my accounts, but I also keep my own accounts, using different systems, and periodically we compare notes and discover each other’s errors – and I tried using the number-pad to make an entry, instead of the top-row numbers on the main keyboard. Access called an error and gave me no option but to shut down the program without saving, thus throwing away all my prior entries – a real rat trap! I assume that the programmers really get their jollies by setting it up that way, refusing to let it be intuitive or user friendly, finding artificial “errors” to call, and refusing to let you save when one happens. What sadism, to flash a message saying, in effect, GOTCHA! CLOSE WITHOUT SAVING, and no option but OK, so you have to seem to agree to throw away your work. I finally figured out the technicality that did it: I normally leave my number-pad natural, while it seems Access expects you to lock it on NUM-LOCK. So it punished me for trying to use it in its natural state. I think programmers must be related to cri-tics, existing in a different and nastier realm than real people do. Sort of the way mischievous fairies find it hilarious to grow a chain of sausages from a man’s nose, that he can’t remove without the agony of cutting his own flesh. Why am I not laughing? Hey, I have the ideal title for my book on the perils of using computers: Hardware’s From Jupiter, Software’s from Neptune.

We shifted some of our investment from mutual bonds to stock funds. The stock market can go up or down a hundred points in a day, while at the same time a bond moves one cent. So the first business day in AwGhost we shifted – and the second business day the stock market dropped 300 points. But the end of the month our new investment had lost about 15% of its value. We had impeccable timing. I may have commented before: I have discovered that after a while I lose my taste for losing money. My daughter Penny gave me a glass mermaid, who is suspended by a thread tied to a hank of her flowing hair. I also heard from Eric Torgerson, who hand sculpts glass fairies: he had a winged one he wanted to send me. She too suspends from a hank of hair. So now I have two lovely slender full-breasted nude figurines floating before my keyboard. I love them.

More is being heard on the Y2K problem – you know, when computers glitch at the Year 2,000 because they think it’s the year 1900. Naturally the Conspiracy theorists are latching on. Some figure it will make for a horrendous economic crash. Some think it will bring on a new dark age as civilization collapses. One says that the resultant chaos will be used as a pretext to put people in concentration camps, establish a New World Order, and eradicate two thirds of the world’s population. Well, I believe there will be a problem, but not to that extent. I hope I’m right. I figure the arrogant IRS will fall, because it will think computers wouldn’t dare to balk lest they be audited, but much of the establishment will tide through merely bruised. Last winter we put in a geothermal air conditioning / heating unit, replacing a conventional one that was breaking down. We hoped it would save us on electric bills, as well as being more environmentally friendly. Well, over the course of the hottest summer yet, it saved us approximately 20%. This looks like success.

HiPiers forwards email printouts. I have been answering those with snail-mail addresses, and sometimes typing letters to be translated into emailese. One said that with respect to my imagined dialogue with Bill Gates about the lack of user-friendliness in Windows that this was not far from the real world, and recommended that I look at http://www.cantrib.org/nobugs.html. I asked HiPiers to check it, but am told that there seems to be no such address. There seems to be a fair number of emails with inoperative return addresses. Meanwhile some emails send good suggestions or puns for Xanth; without addresses I don’t reply, but am noting these as I write #24 The Dastard, which I am about half way through at this writing. One email says “Sexist male pig! Try writing about a strong woman for once! After all, not all women are easy, beautiful, tall, thin, air-headed bimbos! We don’t all wear short, cleavage-showing, scanty dresses and jump in bed with every half-wit male that happens to come along! Stop stereotyping women in your writing you disgusting horny parasite!” The return name is Marie Arnold. Well, Marie, you charming creature, just which of my novels are you describing? Surely not my just-published Xanth novel, Zombie Lover, which features Breanna of the Black Wave, who does not take much guff from any man. Nor my most recently published GEODYSSEY novel, Hope of Earth, whose females are hardly of that nature; in fact one masquerades as a man and takes a position on a Greek fighting boat. Even the most graphically sexual of my novels, Firefly, is not like that; its lead female is 40 and mousy, and the lead male is impotent. You will have to be more specific, if you don’t want me to suspect that you haven’t actually read any of my novels, and are just playing a pseudo-feminist record you direct at all male writers. Show me that you can present an informed opinion, rather than contumely, and I’ll be better able to address your concern.

And I had an interesting publication by regular mail: Alexandra Bonyun sent me a copy of THE XANTH X-TRA, “The Newsletter by Xanthians for Xanthians.” Alexandra and her friend Sara Bruce made it up as a school project, and it strikes me as really clever. It starts with an article on the benefits of crossbreeding, readily accomplished because “There are love springs sprinkled all over Xanth.” There’s the Dragon of the Month, Draco. There’s an advice column by Nada Naga; I liked that notion so well that I wrote it into Xanth #24, The Dastard, as a passing scene; this is obviously Nada’s calling. There’s an interview with Marrow Bones: “How do you feel about Grace’l?” “I’d love to pick a bone with her!” And a public service one on “Surviving the Gap Chasm.” A crossword with words like BEDMONSTER, DEMON, CENTAUR, and ROC. An interview with Magician Humfrey’s wives titled “Half a Wife Too Many?” and a listing of the 25 worst talents of all time, such as the ability to turn back time one second, or to make the smell of sour milk, or to dull pencils from a distance. Alexandra also sent her picture: she’s a brown-haired girl. As I may have mentioned before, I have always been partial to that type; when I met one in college, I married her.

I try to avoid talking politics here, because I feel that whatever credits as a writer I have do not qualify me as a political commentator. My inclination is generally liberal, but I would value an honest conservative over a dishonest liberal. The current situation, Monicagate, bothers me for not quite the ordinary reason. Here’s my analogy: suppose there is a speed trap, with a motorcycle cop hiding behind a Happy Motoring billboard with a radar unit. He watches the cars whiz by, and times nine of them significantly exceeding the speed limit. But only when the tenth speeder passes does he go out and ticket the man. Then he hides again, and lets three more speeders go by, before going out after the fourth. I suggest that this is not justice. Oh, the two cars were speeding all right, but not any worse than the twelve that weren’t challenged. The thing is, they were the only black speeders; all the others were white. This is selective prosecution of a racist nature. Okay, now let’s get political: President Clinton, a womanizer from way back, got caught having sex with a groupie and lying about it. He’s guilty of adultery, and no prize in that respect. But why is he the only one being prosecuted for it? Some of his accusers in Congress are guilty of the same thing, as have been prior presidents and other officers. What makes it an impeachment offense in the one case, and not in the others? From here it looks like hypocrisy by those who don’t like the fact that a Democrat is president, and that he turned out to be not guilty of any real crimes. I suggest that either all of the adulterers and liars of either party should be kicked out, or that the matter be dropped as irrelevant private business. Selective enforcement is not ethical, and in light of the serious national and world problems that are being ignored in favor of voyeurism, it verges on treason.

Meanwhile, having found that I can watch TV on the two inch square in the corner of my computer screen, without interfering with my writing, I’m interested in seeing some of my own kind of junk, such as the old Avenger shows I ordered on sale, or historical videos. So I got a VCP – Video Cassette Player – and am learning to use it. They say the real master of the household can be told by who has the TV remote control; only recently have I figured out even how to use it, in those moments when my wife’s away, and the VCR was pretty much beyond me. But on my own computer maybe I’ll fare better.

And I received a solicitation from Gannon University in Pencil Vania, starting: “As a famous celebrity…” It is addressed to Mr. Anthony Piers, and starts “Dear Mr. Piers.” I gather my books are not much read there.

PIERS

Goddard College Reunion
Piers Anthony

This is the major segment of a two part report. The other part, “Names,” describes more of the people I met, and may not be of interest to my general readership.

We set off at 7:30 on the morning of Thursday, OctOgre 1th, driving the car from Inverness, Florida to the airport in Tampa. I wore my new black “Safari” hat; it’s not that I like affectation, but ever since that little innocuous spot of cancer on my ear six years ago I have tried to keep the sun off my ears; I do learn from experience. The trip was okay, but there was just enough slow traffic to shave our margin, so we had to use the expensive close-by parking to get back on schedule. We caught our noon flight north, sitting in separate seats because even reserving them weeks in advance, we couldn’t get two together. I read Moral Calculations by László Mérö, a book which discusses games of morality such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, showing how their principles come into real life situations as well as international politics. For example, the game of “Chicken,” where two drivers race toward each other, and the first one to swerve aside is chicken. So is it better to be chicken than dead? Adolph Hitler played chicken with the allies in the 1930’s, gaining much ground, until Winston Churchill caught on and balked, and World War Two was upon us. There’s also the “Dollar Auction,” which was new to me but interesting: one one person puts one dollar up for sale to the highest bidder. Say the first bid is for 1¢; would you bid 2¢, making a 98¢ profit if you won? But here’s the kicker: you must pay the amount of your bid regardless whether you win. So if another person bids 3¢ and takes it, you lose your two cents. So you bid 4¢, to stick him with the loss of 3¢. How high will it go? Say it works up to where his bid is $1; do you let it go, rather than pay $1.01, or do you figure you don’t want to lose 99¢ so it’s better to bid higher to salvage that? In practice it seems that a dollar can sell for several dollars, and the seller really rakes it in, because he reaps the winning bid and the losing bid. So if it sells for $5.00 he gets that plus $4.99. $9.99 for $1 is pretty good. You would never get trapped into such an auction? Well, do you buy multiple tickets for the lottery, knowing you can’t get the money back when you lose? You’re in a dollar auction with many bidders. So this book interests me; it does relate to real life, and shows how you can maximize your chances and minimize your losses in different situations with a little calculation and strategy. For one thing, it helps to recognize a dollar auction or a chicken game before you get into it.

We changed planes in Philadelphia and arrived in Burlington, Vermont at 2:40 PM. We rented our car, a compact Neon with the license tag CAM 391, appropriate because my wife is called Cam, and headed out for Montpelier, where we were to pick up my erstwhile roommate Robert Pancoast and his wife Nelli. Theirs is a modern romance: he went to Ukraine to teach American style economics, got lost in Kiev, and finally called out “Does anybody here speak English?” Nelli happened to be in the area, getting a cup of hot water, and indicated that she spoke a little English. Overjoyed, Bob sang her the refrain of the one song he had learned in Ukrainian, not realizing that the words translated to “You are the one I’ve been waiting for.” She almost fell over laughing, thinking him cuckoo, but one thing led to another and now they are married. All we had to do was find them at the bus station. And we couldn’t find it. We drove all through Montpelier in rush hour traffic, and finally asked at a filling station. Right: we had driven by it without seeing it. We went there, and there they were. We exchanged Ukrainian hugs and filled the little car to capacity and headed on to Plainfield and Goddard College, where we checked in at 5 PM. They had a suite in our old dormitory, now renamed and rendered into a studies building, and Cam and I went on to the Marsh-Plain Motel. No, we weren’t excluded from college residence; there’s no smoking there, and my wife smokes, so we went elsewhere.

The scenery was phenomenal, after two years in flat Oklahoma and 39 years in flat Florida. I grew up in the Green Mountains of Vermont, and I miss them. So why did I leave them? Because of the cold winters. When I first heard about Hell, I concluded that that was where I wanted to go when I died, because it’s hot. (Later I learned more about Hell, and realized that it’s not universally hot, so I’m no longer sure it’s for me.) Florida may be flat, but its warm. Our morning low when we left was 74°F; it never got up to that the four days we were in Vermont, but it did get down to freezing. Typically it was in the 50’s, perhaps appropriate for a 50’s Reunion. It wasn’t too bad when the drizzle and wind abated. So we loved seeing the rounded forested mountains speckled with bright orange maple trees – if our first child had been female, we would have named her Maple Irene, but the baby was male, and did not survive – and even the lowering clouds helped frame the scenery. The mountains reached up to intersect the clouds, and the whole scene was beautiful. But cold. We were almost constantly chilled. We had brought several changes of clothing, but had to wear most of them at once in layers. So my series of environmental T-shirts never showed, and Cam never got to wear her skirt or jewelry, and we never changed shoes. This certainly reminded us why we had left Vermont; it dampened most of the events of the occasion for us.

We had supper in the college cafeteria, and I wasted no time in fouling up: what I thought was spinach was spinach soup, so I wound up with soup all over my flat plate soaking into everything else. I thought the hot chocolate would pour as long as I held the button, but it poured a set shot, so that it tried to put two cups into my one cup and I had to pour what didn’t spill into a second cup. I didn’t know how to work the juice machine and had to ask a student. So in terms of being a dull old fogy, I proved myself. The Pancoasts arrived, and Nelli was very talkative, but too many of her words were Ukrainian so it was hard to follow. There was a sign at the entrance: anyone in bare feet would be asked to leave. By that token I know that Goddard is less liberal than it was in my day, for I went barefoot three semesters, to classes and meals, without challenge. A chapter in my autobiography is titled “Bare Feet Don’t Stink.” So what’s with the college, that it can no longer tolerate the sight of the human foot as God made it? Also no smoking, including candles and incense. In my day 50% of the students smoked, including my fiancée; we did not know then how unhealthy smoking is, though it was evident that it was addictive. My fiancée tried to quit, and lasted 23 hours, and never tried again. I call her smoking my ongoing exercise in tolerance, and no, I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for that.

We repaired to the Manor, where we old timers were to have our introductory party. That was the building that led to my suspension for a week when I was a student: for sitting in the lounge talking with my fiancée (now my wife of 42 years) and four other students at 10:40 PM; today folk don’t believe it, because it’s such an un-Goddard thing, sort of like arresting someone for walking on the sidewalk. But two others who had been suspended similarly were there at the reunion, so the facts could not be denied. That act of arrogance on the part of the faculty led to a mass community protest, and I think today it is generally conceded that the faculty was wrong. But it may be that my recent status as a significant contributor to the college dissuades anyone from expressing a contrary opinion. I’d certainly listen; I believe in free expression of contrary opinions, having plenty of my own. We met several long lost friends, but the majority we saw there we didn’t know. It turned out that the 1950’s decade had been extended, and there were folk there from the 1940’s and 1960’s there too.

Friday morning we met our neighbors to the right and left at the motel, from the Goddard classes of 1950 and 1951. They were before my time, my class being 1956, but we turned out to have much in common apart from age. One of them was Gabriel Jacobs. He gave me a copy of his book, When Children Think, and I started reading it as I had spare moments. He was a teacher, then a school principle, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and he tried to encourage his 5th and 6th grade students to think, by having them write journals. At first they recorded simple daily activities, but then they got into thoughts, and it is fascinating to see their learning processes. Ten to twelve year old children do not have all the information they will have as they mature, nor are they sophisticated about social nuances, but they do have thoughts and some nice insights. “Creative thinking,” Mr. Jacobs remarks, “does not usually occur on demand or after a five minute exercise in logical thinking.” Indeed, some of the children’s concerns are practical. Here’s a sample from Ceceile: “Today I wondered why boys ‘eye’ girls when they see them in bathing suits. The boys wear them so can’t they ‘eye’ each other instead of girls. They act as if they have never seen a girl’s shape. On me, they always ‘eye’ me out no matter what I wear!” She also wonders why women “switch” when they walk. I suspect the two things are related. And from Glen: “Can you write a feeling? I say you can’t because some things are so beautiful and ugly you don’t have words for them. If I had a girlfriend and I had a feeling towards her it would be hard to write her. You wouldn’t know that to say.” And from Lisa: “I wonder if a tear is real water. Couldn’t it be some clear fluid secreted by the body? How can your body know when it’s time to cry?” It seems to me that Mr. Jacobs was doing the kind of teaching that this world needs more of, evoking the thoughts of his young students, preparing them for their futures by encouraging them to use their most potent tool: their creative minds. So while I never knew him at Goddard the first time around, I am glad to know him now. I can see the Goddard influence.

Friday was Work Day, and I got into edging the campus walks, using a sort of rounded implement to sever the turf that encroached on the brick. Initially there were several people there, but they tended to fade away, and one was surprised to discover me still hard at work an hour later. Well, it’s my nature; when I have a job to do, I do it, whatever it is. That’s why I write a great deal of fiction and answer a good many letters, seven days a week: it’s my job. But in the afternoon my wife was increasingly fatigued by the cold weather, and we retired to the motel room for warm naps. We returned to the college campus in the evening for dinner in a huge tent set up on the tennis court, with dessert being the big 60th Birthday cake for Goddard. That was followed by the fund-raising auction: 60 items in 60 minutes. One of those items was the only copy of my just-published 22nd Xanth novel Zombie Lover, which I would autograph. The bidding was amazing, and it sold for $500.

Thereafter we went to the Haybarn Theater, where the play Bamberwood was presented. From the description, we expected farce, but we were pleasantly surprised. It was a double love story set in a college like Goddard, with a forming faculty couple and a forming student couple, only at one point student girl got interested in faculty man, who did have a hankering for that type. (Faculty/student liaisons were not unknown at Goddard in my day; I could tell some interesting stories of forbidden love, but with singular discipline am refraining.) Things did work out after due complications, and it was a pleasant event. I liked the way it began with a kind of moderator who changed clothing on stage, then supervised the disposition of minimal props as scenes changed, and danced with the girl when she was dancing alone, so that the audience could see the male figure she dreamed of. At one point, in an evident allusion to The Phantom of the Opera, he wore half a face mask. It’s impressive how much can be done on stage with how little: minimal costumes, a bench, some cloth. This is art and entertainment merged, as they should be. I mentioned minimal costumes: at one point a young man emerged from the nude veggie dorm naked, with only a bucket held strategically before him. At the end he showed us his backside: across his bare buttocks was printed FREE DOM.

On Saturday the third of the month I attended Wil Hamlin’s seminar on Progressive Education. It was like an old time class; he gave a twelve minute presentation, then turned it over to the others. There were 30-45 attendees – another event ran late, so a number arrived late – who discussed ways to improve education. The consensus was that it should be student driven, rather than teacher driven, and that not much is currently being done. These were experienced and expressive people. In fact I was impressed throughout the Reunion with the number of intelligent and eloquent folk; some had heart conditions, but their minds remain sharp. Wil Hamlin was my teacher as I zeroed in on writing as my college major and eventual career, and he was the one faculty member who openly supported the student position when several of us were (improperly) suspended; he, more than any other, represents what Goddard is to me. He is 80 now, but still active in his fashion. He is the one real person I name in my novel Tarot, which describes my crisis at Goddard, filling in what my autobiography skims over. So my attendance here was in part a gesture of support for the one who most supported me when I needed it. The fact is, if the college administration messed with Wil Hamlin, I would be more than annoyed. Of course it would hardly care about the sentiment of one student, but no college ignores the foibles of a contributor. Which is not to say that there were not other important faculty members in my day; there was the late John Pierce, who more than any other understood the concerns of the students and would keep a confidence. I remember early, being isolated and lonely, until someone brought me down to John Pierce’s house where there was a folk sing, and the community of Goddard came alive for me, as it has been ever since. It was in his Crust of the Earth I came to appreciate the ongoing forces of geology and nature; it was perhaps the seed of my later environmentalism. John was a great guy, and a great teacher, though he had one weakness that led to mischief, ironically similar to one that is making national headlines today. I miss him, and mourn his loss from my life. There were others, having their effects. So I could not recover all the poignant roots of my complex relation to Goddard in this visit, but I did remember them.

My next event was my reading from Zombie Lover. It started fifteen minutes late because of a glitch somewhere else, but went smoothly enough. The college president Barbara Mossberg was there to encourage me. I selected a light piece because I wasn’t sure what kind of audience I would have, but assumed mixed student and fogy. There were perhaps 150 there in the Haybarn, and they were responsive. I explained that I do write serious material, but that this was not that. I described the character Breanna of the Black Wave, who is militantly black, and doesn’t want to marry a zombie king who is courting her. When asked why, she says “Well, zombies are all right in their place, but I wouldn’t want to marry one.” Then she realizes what she has said: an echo of the attitude of White toward Black. And she begins to change. The reading selection itself was her encounter with a werewolf prince she is trying to teach how to impress women. In essence, don’t leap to stork summoning, try to impress her with your good qualities first. He has trouble understanding that women have concerns other than the stork. The audience laughed in the right places, and asked sensible questions after, so by my definition it was a successful event. At 2 PM was the Recognition Ceremony in the tent set up by the Manor. Apparently most of the alumni events were in the tents, so as not to disturb the regular student body. I may be in error here, but it was my impression that there was little interaction between the alumni and the current students. Perhaps the separation by two generations was too much to bridge, and if so, that is to be regretted. Barbara Mossberg, as the new college president, was the one being recognized, and she spoke movingly, at one point using an extended analogy from A Canticle For Liebowitz, a science fiction classic by Walter M. Miller, so she is evidently my type of reader. But as she spoke, eight students in the back row turned their chairs around to face the opposite way, then soon departed, an evident protest. Now I am no stranger to protests, and I had trouble at Goddard, and in the US Army, and in Parnassus, so this roused my curiosity. What was their case? I could not get the whole story, but apparently these students feel that the college administration is not treating the faculty members fairly, denying them contracts and tenure. They don’t like the new president or the fund-raising effort to put the college on a secure monetary footing, and want her out. But they don’t seem to have a positive program to offer in lieu of the present one. As a contributor to the new college endowment fund, I’m on the other side. My understanding is that the Goddard faculty members have long-term contracts that are typical of contemporary standards, and are fairly represented on the decision-making board. So the protesters don’t seem to have a real case. It’s easy to be a protester when your food and shelter is guaranteed, but not necessarily meaningful. Protest for the sake of protest has never been my way; there has to be a reasonable basis. Part of the ceremony brought out Nelli Pancoast, who spoke and presented a huge loaf of artistically decorated Ukrainian bread for the attendees to break pieces from to dip in salt and eat. It was excellent bread. And at some point we got butterflies: Barbara M passed out little black butterfly clip-ons for folk to wear, I think symbolizing freedom. Why does that remind me of bare buttocks?

At 5 PM there was supposed to be my autographing of Zombie Lover. The local bookstore had ordered 50 copies two weeks before, but the publisher had not delivered. They had “no record” of the order. Oh? This is typical; I put a lawyer on the case once when they did similar with signed contracts, and forced compliance. Calls resulted in the promise to deliver the books overnight, but they reneged on this too. So there were no copies, and none could be bought or autographed. Well, at least the folk at Goddard learned what writers go through with publishers. You’d think a publisher would want to sell 50 hardcovers. I have watched this sort of thing take me off the bestseller lists and shrink my sales while readers search in vain for my books. But it’s like pushing on an elephant: you don’t make much of an impression unless you’re another elephant. This is one reason I support Internet publishing; there needs to be an alternative. But more must be said: I checked subsequently with the publisher, and learned that there are internal problems; they do want to sell copies, and someone may be fired. I always try to get both sides of a problem; a publisher is not a monolithic entity, but a complex of individuals, some of whom may be torpedoing the efforts of others. I have another book-signing coming up in Jamboree in the Washington DC area, with my lovely co-author Julie Brady, for Dream A Little Dream; we’ll see if things improve

But as is often the case, I was also on the other side of a similar event. I was asked to participate the same day in a radio call-in show, The Education Revolution conducted by Jerry Mintz, and I agreed. Then reneged myself: dinner ran late, and I wasn’t out of it before the show was over, so couldn’t call. I hate that. I suppose I could have skipped the meal, had I anticipated the delay. It wasn’t even a good meal, for us; it was cold, and the chill of the tent got to us, and so we skipped the upcoming cabaret show and the evening dance, and returned to the motel. There at last, under piled blankets, we began to get warm. The weather was the single thing that most diminished our pleasure in the reunion; I would have liked to attend the last two events of the day, and am curious how they turned out, but we Floridians simply lacked the clothing for sustained chill.

Sunday morning we walked around the motel premises, admiring the frost on the grass. We found a mowed path up the steep slope to a lovely panoramic view above. If only we had mountains in Florida! Then we went to the campus and visited the Pancoasts, who gave us lavish gifts from Ukraine: a fancy carved wooden plate, an embroidered Ukrainian shirt, a scarf that says ÓÊÐÀ¯ÍÀ, a fancy table scarf with six matching napkins, and a blue and yellow Ukrainian flag. I mean a real one, full size; there was also a little pin with paired USA and Ukraine flags. And all we’d brought them was a book A Walk in the Woods we thought they would enjoy, because it’s about walking the Appalachian Trail; Bob and I walked part of the Long Trail back in 1953. I was in bare feet; I won’t do that again. We also attended the Alumni Association Annual Meeting, where the question was whether to hire a coordinator to keep in touch; at present it’s not much organized, with one person paid half-time for a full time job. I believe a committee was formed to work on the problem. We had lunch, and gave Goddard a check; as my income declines, so do my gifts to assorted institutions, necessarily, but we do what we can. Then in mid afternoon we returned to the motel, trying to turn in early in preparation for the morrow.

Monday the 5th we got up at 4:30 AM, loaded the car – and couldn’t get moving because heavy frost coated the windshield. This is not a problem we have in Florida. How to get it off? Finally I used a credit card to scrape it away, and that worked reasonably well. So we got moving ten minutes late. The drive was easy, on the Interstate without traffic, until we got to Burlington – and couldn’t find the car rental office. We drove around and around as our thin margin dissolved and we got late with no reprieve in sight; Cam was on the verge of hysteria. Have I mentioned our aversion to traveling? Guess why! Finally we went to the airport and I went in to ask at the information desk. There was no one there. I went to ask at the US AIR window, but the line there was so long we’d miss our plane by the time I got to the head of it. Finally we spied a man with a flashlight outside, and he told us where to go, and we found it. The check-in was fast, and they took us back to the airport fast, and we joined the long line – and an announcement said if we had no bag to check and a prepaid ticket we could go directly to the gate. We went gladly; more time saved. We got in line just in time to enter the plane. We had made it, and from there on it was okay. We changed in Pittsburgh, where we saw another of those escalators that forgot to go up or down and just lay there on the floor to speed our transit between planes. I used the bathroom, and the urinal wouldn’t flush, until a neighbor clued me in: simply step away from it and it flushes itself. Remember, I was raised on a farm with an outhouse; I’m not used to high-tech pissing. At noon we landed in Tampa, got our car after paying $39 for parking it – in my day that was a week’s wages – and headed for home. We arrived at 2:30 and Obsidian Dog was overjoyed to see us. We were home, and could relax at last. Except for the accumulated phone messages, piled up mail, twelve newspapers to catch up on, and this Trip Report to do. Sigh. So what did we get from the visit to our alma mater? It was mixed, as you might expect. We did meet many friends of 40+ years ago, all of them now around retirement age, and caught up on their lives. Some who had seemed to be headed for hell actually turned out to be successful, while others went the opposite way. Some we had not been close to then were far more interesting now. Some we never knew then are great people now. Some we related to in one way then, and another way now. Some we were close to then we seem to have less in common with now. In short, the normal spectrum. The college campus itself has similar dichotomies. The center cluster of buildings remains, but their natures have changed. The college is now much larger than it was, with dormitories extending northward across what used to be open fields. Particular rooms remain, but have changed in nature, somehow.

But mostly the things of the community we knew are gone. The Ping Pong table is not where it was; Goddard’s days of competition in that respect seem to have passed. The square dancing seem to be gone; the dance we missed by retiring early was swing, not square. The folk singing seems to be gone; how I loved those sessions, and I still can recite memorized songs from that era. The functional Community Meeting seems to be gone. In fact the abiding sense of community we knew seems gone. In our day everybody knew everybody, even if the relationships were not necessarily positive. Perhaps it exists today, and I was not in a position to see it. But my sense of it is that Goddard is indeed not what it was, in philosophy as well as people. Perhaps this disillusion is inevitable; you can’t step in the same river twice. But it puts me into a mottled funk. I don’t expect to visit it again. Oh, it’s worth supporting; it’s just that my memories suffice.

One of the most frequent queries I have received for the past five years is where is the next Mode novel? I have explained that the publisher expressed no interest in a continuation of the series, so I have not written DoOon Mode. To recap the details: my literary agent had gotten a really good six figure contract on the second and third Mode novels, twice the advance I had gotten for myself on the first Mode novel, which shows why a writer needs a good agent. This was with the expectation that the series would be a hardcover and paperback bestseller, justifying its price. Then the publisher failed to promote the first novel well – in some cases the salesmen didn’t even tell bookstores eagerly awaiting it that it was being published, and then under-printed it, had to rush back twice in the month of publication to print more copies, but had already blown it; it was like running to catch up to a plane which has just taken off. A likely bestseller had been torpedoed by ineptitude. Now you might think that they would learn from that, and print more copies of the second novel. No, that’s not the way publishers work; they limit the print order of the sequel to the early sell-through of the prior novel, or to some lesser figure, such as 80%. So once they had blown the first one, they blew the other two; it was locked in, like the Titanic going down. That’s the way formula publishing works, and any number of writers are suffering declines of sales as their readers are unable to find their books. So though the advance on the first novel earned out, and I’m still receiving royalties, the other two are way behind, and the publisher has taken a loss. That’s why another Mode novel is not wanted.

So what do you do when the readers want a novel but the publisher doesn’t? Well, in the interim the Internet has become a viable force in publishing. I have invested significantly in two Internet publishers, Xlibris.com and Pulpless.com, because I am ideologically motivated to find a viable alternative to Parnassus – that is, the established New York publishing complex whose potential arrogance and clumsiness is only hinted by the above example. I have a whole lot more to say on the subject of publishing error and dishonesty in the sequel to my autobiography, How Precious Was That While, which naturally has been unable to find a publisher. So I am trying to promote an alternative, and am putting my money where my mouth is, in this respect. This is actually what is called venture capital, a highly risky form of investment that also promises big rewards. I don’t like to gamble; I never buy lottery tickets or similar. Of course the stock market itself is a conservative gamble, and the AwGhost decline gave me a six figure paper loss – which was made up in NoRemember. So it’s hard to avoid some kinds of gambling. I’m supporting Internet publishing, and if I don’t lose my money, this should open up a great new avenue for all writers, both novices and old pros. Meanwhile, be aware that I have a conflict of interest when discussing online publishing, because I do have money riding on it. That means if you’re interested, you should check it out with someone else.

If I can’t get a regular publisher for a book, I can now go to an Internet publisher. I did that with my World War Two novel Volk, which is as both Pulpless and Xlibris, and am now doing it with a less controversial novel Realty Check at Pulpless. I had named this one Candle, but Pulpless came up with a much better title and I like it. This is the one about the house whose front door opens on a busy city street, and whose back door opens on an endless archaic forest. From the front, the house is surrounded by city; from the back, entirely surrounded by forest. This is realty that makes you doubt reality. I’d love to live in such a house, but that’s hard to manage outside of speculative fiction. So why couldn’t I place these novels conventionally? Because Volk shows an aspect of American involvement in the war in a politically incorrect light, and publishers don’t want to antagonize those who don’t want to believe that this country ever did anything wrong. But Realty Check has no such controversial element; what’s the matter there? Well, here is a mock-up of a typical call my literary agent makes: “Hello, Charnel House? I have a new novel by Piers Anthony – no, this one is not in the Xanth series, but it’s a good – Hello? Hello?” That’s the reality check on my work: publishers want only Xanth from me. It’s like pulling teeth to get them even to consider other work. In the past I have been able to get non-Xanth material published, but it’s getting harder, and there is no guarantee on anything else. We had to exert formidable strong-arm pressure to get my recent collaborations published, including a direct threat by a lawyer, so these will still be appearing for a while. But not a lot else, unless I find another way.

Which brings me back to DoOon Mode. Now that Internet publishing is becoming viable, I can afford to write that novel. If I can’t find a regular publisher, I can put it on the Internet. So, unless I get a sudden urgent commitment for other work, I will now at last write that novel, and when my agent gets the usual reaction to a non-Xanth novel, I’ll put it on Xlibris or Pulpless or some other Internet publisher. Let me clarify the difference between those two: Xlibris is a self publishing service which, for a fee of $500 or so depending on the services required, will publish anyone’s novel and pay royalties on copies sold. These are primarily printed copies, indistinguishable from the hardcover or trade paperback books that regular publishers produce. So far, royalties on Volk have been a bit over a hundred dollars, not enough to make up the initial cost, but in time it should happen. It’s no road to riches, but should things pick up, who knows. At least my novel is in the game. If you are a hopeful writer who has been balked by Parnassus, look up Xlibris.com and see whether it’s for you. Do not confuse this with vanity or subsidy publishing, where they may charge you $20,000 for an inadequate job. This is not a rip-off outfit, but a legitimate way to do it yourself. Pulpless does not charge the author, but neither is it looking for unknown writers. It is embarking on a bold project of publishing novels and giving them away free to readers – paid for by advertising, somewhat in the manner of magazines, except the ads will be far more limited. Something like ten pages of ads in a novel. So if you want to read Realty Check, but don’t want to pay for it, and don’t mind the ads, go for it. If you get it, and think it stinks, it may still be worth what you paid for it, and maybe there’ll be an ad for something you want. I don’t know which publisher I’ll go to with DoOon Mode, but I’m sure that one of them will do, so the novel won’t be stifled. So now at last I feel free to write it. I have started organizing its elements, refreshing myself on depressive Colene, honorable Darius, the telepathic horse Seqiro and the others. Barring preemptive commitments elsewhere, such as a publisher offering a barrel of money for a new series, I’ll write it in the next three months. If it finds a publisher, you might see it in the year 2000. If it doesn’t, it should be on the Internet in 1999. I’ll keep you informed via this column.

Meanwhile, if I have any readers in the Washington DC area, I’ll be there for a collaborative book signing in Jamboree. I expect to appear with my lovely collaborator Julie Brady at the Border Books and Music Store in Baileys Crossroads, Virginia, the evening of Saturday, Jamboree 9, 1999. It will start at 7 or 7:30 PM and run – I don’t know, it may depend on how many readers come. I’d love it if you folk swamp the store. But this is a hardcover book, so it’s not cheap. The novel is Dream A Little Dream, a fantasy Julie wrote and I rewrote, about a realm which one or more ordinary folk create from their minds and then occupy. Naturally it turns out to be no simple paradise. If you wonder why I will make such an effort, considering that I don’t like to travel and have seldom left the state of Florida – well, I could say that you haven’t gotten a look at Julie. The more mundane reason is that I support my novels and collaborators to the degree feasible, and this is something I think needs to be done in this case. I won’t be making anything of this at the signing, and you shouldn’t either, but privately I’ll say that my collaborator is a Ligeia, and if that leaves you confused, fine. Those of you who understand, shut up.

Last time I mentioned how I had not had any recent news of Jenny. Her mother finally called, and I learned that Jenny is, well, much the same, still hoping to go to college. It seems that her friends will come fetch her and take her shopping or to the movies. She loved the autographed copy of Zombie Lover I sent her; remember, that’s the novel where Jenny Elf finds her true love and marries. Her mother has been seriously ill, and says she did not check her email for months, and so didn’t realize it was out of order. Jenny’s situation, and the time required to care for her, have reduced the family income so that life is not easy.

Other notes: Hurricane Mitch, with its 180 mph top winds, scared us, as naturally it was eyeing us, but then it stumbled sideways and landed in central America. It was in a weakened state by then, but the heavy rains loosened soil weakened by deforestation, and mud-slides killed thousands. Had it hit Florida, there would not have been mud-slides, but it would have been plenty bad. We face more of such weather, as global warming continues to disrupt the climate. I get conservative manifestos in the junk mail claiming there ain’t no global warming, no ozone hole. Yeah, sure, fellas. I prefer my fantasy in novels. The Y2K threat – Year 2000 computer glitch – continues, however, and that one is real, though probably not as bad as alarmists claim.

Shorter shrift: My computer monitor faded after three years. When it became too fuzzy to read I bought the best replacement: a 19″ Sony. It’s nice, but I conclude that 17″ is plenty big enough for our purposes. Our geothermal air conditioning has proved out; in six months it averaged 20% reduction in our power use, which is good considering that it’s only one of three air conditioning units that serve our house. I had spot surgery in NoRemember to remove a suspicious blemish in the middle of my back, right where I can’t see it even with a mirror. Four stitches, no discomfort, and it turned out to be benign. Just as well. Someone emailed HiPiers, saying two people had told him I was dead. No, it’s not true as far as I know. Maybe they were cri-tics indulging in wish fulfillment. I read from Zombie Lover and autographed copies at the Hudson Library in Florida, and addressed the writing class at Central Florida Community College, as I have off and on for a dozen years. As a general rule, the farther an event is from where I live, the less inclined I am to participate, and I’m not all that eager to attend local ones either. While typing this column, I turned down invitations from Orlando (that’s near Disney World) and Texas. Wife, daughter, and I went to see the movie Pleasantville and liked it. The protagonists, brother and sister, get sucked into a 1950’s TV series where everything is always great, there are no natural functions, the home team always wins, and folk are in black and white. But our modern kids mess this up by introducing some original thinking, and sex, and characters start turning colored as they catch on, leading to complications. Nice use of color to make a social point.

I went walking through our tree farm – our 97 pound dog Obsidian likes to explore, and we keep her on a leash even in the forest, because otherwise she would enthusiastically chase after rattlesnakes, alligators, and whatnot – so I get some exploring done, and noticed that over the years there has developed what I take to be a long thin sinkhole. Only about three feet deep, a dozen feet across, and about a third of a mile long. Maybe an underground river washed it out. The pine trees there didn’t like it; some are tilted, some are fallen, and lines of them are standing dead. Well, maybe we can consider it thinning, nature’s way. The trees are planted close together, and in time need to be thinned out so that the remaining ones have room to grow. I hate the notion of killing some trees just because others need to be favored, but that’s the nature of the business.

I finished writing The Dastard, the 24th Xanth novel, the end of NoRemember, about a man who travels in time to undo the good fortunes of others: dastardly deeds. The three Princesses, Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm, want to stop him, but they are only four years old. So they arrange to change places with their adult Selves on Planet Ptero – you know, the moon that orbits Princess Ida’s head – and they come to tackle the Dastard. Since all three are Sorceresses, and the power of any two squares, and the power of all three together cubes, they should be able to handle it. Then the awful Sea Hag enters the picture, taking over the bodies of pretty young women, and seeks to make a liaison with the Dastard. So it gets complicated and scary, especially when the Hag goes after a Princess. While I was writing it, I gained on the reader suggestions – what I call the pun list – and for one brief shining moment in early NoRemember was all caught up. Wow – I’m not sure that’s ever happened before. But more puns are piling in, and the list is growing again. At least there are now none going back before that time. Speaking of reader suggestions: several years back a girl suggested that I check out Egyptian mythology, and sent a summary of some. I liked it, and used the notion in Muse of Art, the 4th GEODYSSEY novel, to be published next year. But I lost track of the one who had suggested it, and can’t locate the name for a credit. So if that girl is out there, please write me again, and I’ll check my letters file to verify, and add in the credit if there is time.

Last column I commented on the lack of a Move function in Windows. Paul Barrow sent Hipiers an e-mail advising that in Windows Explorer the right mouse button will do it. I tried it, and it works. It’s great. Curious how we had overlooked this, my wife and I checked the huge Windows manuals – and it seems this function is undocumented. That is, not listed. That explains it. It’s par for the Microsoft course. Andreas Kupries had remarked on my imagined dialogue with Bill Gates: “What makes you think Windows is user-friendly?” “What makes you think I care?” He had given a web site to check, but Hipiers couldn’t find it. So Kupries said oops, he’d had an error in it, and he forwarded a transcript of an interview with Gates. The summary says in essence that Microsoft doesn’t care about fixing bugs because there’s not much revenue in that. Yes, I guess that does cover it. At the moment Microsoft is about the only game in town, but if another game ever develops, I’ll be interested.

A cousin alerted me to another thing: an online auction of a manuscript of my novel Macroscope. Apparently it’s one of the copies I made and sent out at my own expense when I multiple-marketed the novel, thus obtaining a better deal than I would otherwise have had. I don’t remember the specific instance, though it is surely in my collected papers at a university, but probably a devout fan asked me for a copy, so I gave it to him. Now it’s been auctioned off, including associated correspondence and packaging, with a minimum bid of $500. I don’t know what it actually sold for. I think I’ll just say that the next fan who asks me for some free memento will not get it. You might think that well, this is just a fan; a pro organization would not do this. I’m not sure. A decade or two back I sent the carbon copy of the first Xanth novel, A Spell For Chameleon, a manuscript I suspect has more value than the one for Macroscope, to Clarion West for auctioning to raise money for their school. I don’t know how well they did with it: they never thanked me. In fact, they never acknowledged it. I know they received it, because I knew one of the attendees, but that’s all. After this experience with professional courtesy I ceased donating to such organizations. If readers wonder why writers become cynical, this is a hint.

Electronics proceeds apace: I recently learned that TOR is licensing two of my novels, Hope of Earth and the collaborative Quest for the Fallen Star (with James Richey and Alan Riggs) to be published by Rocket eBooks. This is a hand-held screen that puts a page of print on to read, and the device can hold about ten novels. It will be interesting to see if there are many such sales. But I suspect it will start rather slowly, because the reader costs about $500, plus the cost for the books to read. If you want to read on the screen, Pulpless.com is cheaper – especially if you take it with ads.

I mentioned that my papers are collected at universities. Most of my early ones are at Syracuse, and my later ones at the University of South Florida. If you correspond with me, and this includes email messages you sent Hipiers, it will eventually wind up at USF. The head of the library until recently was Sam Fustukjian, whom my wife and I came to know and like personally; we once visited at his house. In September – I’m not using the humorous month, because this is serious – he underwent routine laser heart surgery. Something went wrong, and an artery was severed. Evidently the blood supply to the brain was interrupted, and he went into a coma. He remains so at this writing, and I think the outlook is bleak. We never know our future. I recently received a USF library presentation of their special collections, with four pages describing mine in rather laudatory terms, but I take little joy in it, because it reminds me of Sam.

Sometimes I read manuscripts or books for blurbing – that is, for brief favorable comments they can run on the cover to help sell the books. I blurb only if I believe my readers will like the works in question, and while my participation is surely incidental, some of those authors have gone on to considerable success, like David Eddings, Robert Jordan, and Terry Goodkind. But I note increasingly in recent novels, by amateur and pro alike, what is called “saidbookism” or “saidism”: the overuse of words other than “said.” I know how it happens – the author feels that constant use of “said” shows a lack of imagination, so tries to alleviate it. This is a futile effort. It is better just to use the word; the reader will not notice it, any more than the reader notices the very frequent use of words like “the” and “a.” A character who speaks needs to be identified, to avoid confusion; “said” is an identifier and no special attention should be called to it. One would-be writer recently emailed me, asking how he could find more variants for “said.” I told him not to bother. Now I’m telling all the other would-be writers who may tune in here: don’t bother. Your writing will be the better for it. However, it is easy to fall into this without meaning to. A reader commented on Volk; surprised, I checked, and sure enough, I use a lot of alternatives to “said” there. Too late to take them out, but it’s a warning to be on guard. Another problem can be the overuse of exclamation points, and this too has happened to me! Another is the overuse of underlining for emphasis. Don’t do it.

I like my special bicycles, and use them daily. My wife is less athletic; I’d like to have her with me on some of these excursions, but we are ill matched in this respect. However, we recently started considering adult tricycles, whose advantage is that they are unlikely to fall over, and even a quadricycle, really a four wheel bike. It can be provided with a canopy, so it looks like an emaciated car, or a surrey with a fringe on the top. It comes in one seat, two seat, or four seat variants, and we are tempted by the two seater. We could ride and pedal side by side, and the gearing allows each to pedal in his/her own gear. So we are pondering, and may get it, though it’s not cheap; what we want, with options, would be about $2,000. I’ll report here further, in due course, if we do it.

More email from Hipiers: Rithea Hong reports that someone has bought up the domain “www.piersanthony.com” and redirected it to some cheesy celebrity poll thing. All I can say is that this sort of thing is legal, but it’s not me. I don’t do celebrity polls, and have never been online. That may change in future, as I approach the twentieth century just in time for the 21st century, but at such time as I do go online, I’ll probably do it anonymously. So if you see my name anywhere else but here at Hipiers, assume it’s not me. Similarly, if you see me at a convention unannounced, it may be an impostor. I had a report from someone who thought she had encountered me years ago and found me shallow and rude. I was never at the convention identified. Of course I was blamed for being an ogre at conventions well before I ever attended any conventions; my critics have no shame. That’s how my ogre identity started. One email had advice on my archery exercise: I can get good exercise from a regular bow, because I have to hold the string longer to aim. Yes, I do.

Some emails are mysterious. One said “The unthinkable finally happened, THEY turned off my pager, so I’m letting you know to call me at work” and gives a number. I don’t know this person, and didn’t call. Another says I can obtain massive amounts of information on building home made weapons or making dollar bills that can be used continuously in coke machines; just send money for the HUGE FORBIDDEN INFORMATION LIBRARY. I did not, and not just because I’m wary of weapons and don’t drink cola. Then there are the bean-balls. Last time I quoted one accusing me of having all sexy bimbos in my fiction, and I said that I doubted this person had read my fiction. I received a note of support from a woman, and this from a man: “Oh come on Piers, she’s probably referring to your Xanth novels. Admittedly I haven’t read any of your crap in years, but I remember A Spell for Chameleon. Chameleon symbolized just about everything you’ve ever said about women…they are either beautiful and dumb, or ugly and smart…Look hack boy, you can publish your adolescent novels if you want to, but don’t get defensive when someone points out one of your many faults.” In kindness I’m not giving this person’s name; I think he shows pretty well the nature of some of my critics. One reader blasted me for my attitude toward publishers, misquoting what I said, and when I blasted him back, he asked whether I blasted everyone who criticized me. No, I’m like a mirror, responding kindly to kind letters and negatively to negative ones. But here’s one from Rebekah Branch: “How do you stand all of the ignoramuses that insist you are a ‘sexist pig’? obviously these people aren’t interested in what it is that you have to say. As a young woman I find that you have incredible insight into the female mind.” Let’s finish with one from Maria Velasques, who likes my books, but was offended by Breanna of the Black Wave in Zombie Lover. Not the way her blackness was portrayed, but the way she changed her mind. She was patronizing the zombies the same way whites patronize other minorities. “If I were a zombie, I’d tell her off.” Now this is a serious, thoughtful criticism, and I take it seriously; I have quoted only part of it. Maria is close in age to Breanna, and perhaps in experience. Next year I will write Xanth #25, Swell Foop, and I plan to have Breanna return in at least part of it, as she and Justin Tree take over Castle Zombie and start running zombie affairs. There are obvious parallels to Mundane racism, and I don’t want to misplay them. So if my characterization of Breanna bothers others similarly, I hope you will let me know. Meanwhile, I can say there’s a huge difference between the “hack boy” critic above and Maria here; she shows that she reads what I write and understands what I’m trying to do, and tells me how she disagrees. This is what I would call a good critic; that’s not necessarily an oxymoron.

More of the same next time; meanwhile I hope most of you have harpy holidays.

Remember those emoticons? You know, the sidewise symbolistic ;~) crooked smile or the :-{ mustachioed frown or the 8:-) little girl or the 🙂 8 big girl? This week someone sent HI PIERS a long email telling about his idea for “asscons.” He may have something. If anyone is looking over your shoulder at the moment, fold this letter and hold it for private reading; I don’t want to get in trouble. OK: the asscon is a bunch of symbols that you read right-side up, all representing asses. (_!_) is a regular ass. (__!__) is a fat ass. (!) is a tight ass. (_._) is a flat ass. (_^_) is a bubble ass. I’m not sure what kind that is; maybe I just haven’t looked at enough of them. (_*_) is a sore ass. (_!__) is a lopsided ass. (_O_) is an ass that been around a lot. (_x_) is “kiss my ass.” And so on. Isn’t that hilarious? Or maybe asinine. Okay, one more, ass # ten, so as not to leave it at nine asses (you know: asinine): (_e=mc2_) is a smart ass. So, this missive says, now you can e-moon your friends. The sender is cosomoto@greynet.net, if you want to look it up for yourself.

One Shawn Mundane sent HiPiers an e-mail about a virus alert. If you receive an e-mail titled “Badtimes” delete it without opening, or it will erase everything on your hard drive, delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer, demagnetize all of your credit cards, reprogram your ATM access code, screw up the tracking on your VCR, and scratch any CD’s you try to play. It will re-calibrate your refrigerator’s settings so all your ice cream melts and your milk curdles, and program your phone to dial only your mother in law’s number. It will mix antifreeze into your fish tank, drink all your beer, leave dirty socks on the coffee table when you are expecting company, replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, while dating your current boyfriend behind your back and billing the hotel rendezvous to your Visa card. It will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub. It will change your perfume to smell like dill pickles. And more. What, you say your mother knows about that virus? In fact she wrote it? Wow!

Meanwhile, we have encountered mischief off the Internet: it seems that the old 800 HIPIERS number, which we gave up when we shut HiPiers down, has been given to a porno outfit, BLOWN. We called AT&T;, but they say it’s not their fault; another outfit has charge of those numbers. So is this a run-around? All we can do is say that it isn’t us, and is not done with our approval. I have nothing against pornography; I just don’t want folk thinking they’re calling me and getting this stuff. I was alerted to this first by Jason Beebe; thanks, Jason.

Last time I discussed Xlibris.com and Pulpless.com. They are still largely in formation, but Xlibris looks good for the future, and Pulpless says it has the first 10 books, including my Realty Check, published and on sale at amazon.com. Apparently copies are on regular sale for money; I’m foggy on this, but think it’s because a value has to be set before the rates for the advertising editions can be established. So the free edition is not yet available, but it will be in several months, as the full program gets implemented. Have patience, readers. Reader reports indicate that Xlibris has the high ground on courtesy to readers, and Pulpless the low ground. I’ll comment further when the picture comes clearer. I will have a lot more to say on this subject another time; much has happened with both publishers.

I have had a number of requests for autographs from Germany. Each is politely phrased, with a return envelope; none evince any familiarity with my work. I presume it’s an autograph club. I’d like to know how it got my snail mail address. My policy is to cut off anyone who publishes it, and that includes WHO’S WHO volumes. I don’t like being solicited by those who have no apparent interest in my work. And the monetary solicitations continue. On Dismember 12 I received one from Australia, addressed to SIR/MADAM PIERS ANTHONY. No doubt it’s a worthy cause – but I have yet to see a cause that doesn’t consider itself worthy. So are they more worthy than the enterprises that don’t beg money from strangers? I doubt it. I even got a missive addressed to Anthony W Piers. My guess is that the W stands for Writer. As a general rule, I ignore solicitations, preferring to limit my contributions to those causes I understand. On the other hand, a number of folk who have comment groups have asked HiPiers to set up connections to their sites. That’s a different matter, and we’re glad to cooperate.

In Jamboree we ordered a state of the art 450 MHz system with modem, scanner, 250 M zip drive and similar. Naturally the company, Tiger, had to back order, as if nobody bought one of those before, so I remain off-line. But we expect to receive it Real Soon Now, and then I’ll see about learning the Internet. But that doesn’t mean I’ll be publishing my e-mail address; I’ll do it anonymously, so I can feel my way privately. Mainly, we’re getting the system so we can start scanning my old, reverted novels into the computer, so that they can be republished at Xlibris. I rather expect to become Xlibris’ biggest one-author self publisher, as I have about 50 titles to catch up on, and eventually will want the rest online too. At the moment, I have had 112 books published, and more are in the pipeline. That means that those who truly want my titles will be able to get them; they will be in print, in hardcover and maybe for downloading, probably with added Author’s Notes about their histories. This will take time, to scan, and proofread, and all. So it won’t happen all at once. We hope to start with Chthon and Phthor, and continue with the Space Tyrant series. We’ll see how it goes.

In fact the system arrived before I finished writing this column, so here’s an update wedged in later: we unpacked it and set it up, and it worked, except for the sound – maybe that required separate software? Oh, the volume was turned down; it’s fine – and one complication we always have: my Dvorak keyboard layout. I learned Dvorak, which is more efficient than the standard QWERTY layout, before personal computers came on the scene. For some reason that escapes me, they then changed some of the punctuation marks around for the computer version. I, having typed touch on the original, am unwilling to change, so we change the keyboard instead. But Microsoft always has to stick its finger in the pie, changing the way the keyboard translations tables work, so that what worked for DOS did not work for Windows 3.1, and what worked for 3.1 did not work for 95, and what worked for 95 may not work for 98. Each time they make it harder to do it my own way, just because they can. My wife, who was a programmer in the stone age, the 1960’s, says if we have to, we can delete Win98 and put Win95 in, but I resent the need. So she is now struggling to figure it out, and I will not be using that system until she beats Microsoft back (again) or we trash 98 in favor of 95. Ha: she got it; this time they left the file the same, but hid it in a new location. What a cunning ploy! Meanwhile, because this is a Tiger system, instead of the Windows motif on the Desktop it has a pretty tiger. I like it. The 450 system sure is faster than the 66 it replaces. We were surprised when shutting down: instead of taking a minute to sort through things, it flashed the message IT IS NOW SAFE TO – and shut itself down. I mean it turned off the computer. So there will be no changing of minds with this system; touch that button and you’re dead. So far, the little changes in Win98 seem okay; we can live with them. But our introduction to it turned out to be familiar in one respect: we got one of those messages YOUR APPLICATION HAS PERFORMED AN ILLEGAL OPERATION AND WILL BE SHUT DOWN. The application was Windows 98, as we were trying to ascertain which keyboard the system was using. Shame on you, Microsoft; I thought you were going to get rid of those gratuitous self-generated nuisances. I should have known better.

Stray notes: Something I’d like to know: where is Entwood Forest in Middle Earth? I got a map, but it doesn’t seem to have that on it. Is there a Tolkien fan out there who knows? I read those books back in 1959 and have forgotten; now it bugs me. I get bugged by the stupidest things. Meanwhile, I am now writing the 4th Mode novel, DoOon Mode, and am two chapters into it, about 27,000 words. Everything has been coming out of the woodwork to take my time, and this threatens to continue, so progress is slow. Chapter one features the three Felines, Tom, Cat, and Pussy, who compete with other nulls, such as the Swine, for the privilege of going on the Virtual Mode when the chance comes. Chapter 2 picks up exactly where Chaos Mode left off, with Colene and company captured; the evil emperor Ddwng wants them to fetch the Chip that will enable him to make Virtual Modes of his own, and despoil the alternate Modes. Stay tuned. I commented a while back about the newspaper chess puzzle makers not seeming to know about the en passant aspect. Later I reread the rules and discovered that this applies only to a pawn taking a pawn, not to any other piece taking a pawn. Oh. I think the rule is wrong, but it does mean that en passant does not apply where I thought it did. However, those chess puzzles do make other mistakes.

My wife is the TV football fan in our family; she wowed others on our Washington DC trip, because they had never heard of a woman liking to watch football. I hadn’t realized that it was that unusual. We once rescheduled a love making session because there was football on at that time. I can take it or leave it – I am referring to football – but some games I do watch. After seeing the Florida State vs. Tennessee college championship game, I was reminded of a sour joke I made up some time back: two billionaires made a bet as to who could assemble a football team and win in a year’s time. One billionaire went at it scientifically, he thought. He bought the finest players and coaches and equipment, and saw to it that they got the best training and practice. The other billionaire was cheap, and settled for second or third best in all respects. Then they had a dinner while the big game was played; they didn’t deign to watch it themselves. All they wanted was the result. And the second billionaire’s team won. The first billionaire was astonished. “How could this happen? I bought the finest team in the world. Nobody could outplay it.” Then the other billionaire revealed his secret: “I bought the officials.” No, it’s only a joke. I think. But it is why I can take or leave the game. Similar goes for the Olympics, and what passes for judging there.

A year or so back our tree farm was getting overrun by feral pigs. Fearing for the welfare of the wild creatures there – we regard it as an animal sanctuary – we made a deal with neighbors to trap the pigs. The pigs disappeared, and the land recovered. But now they are back; I don’t dare wander our property too freely alone. I don’t like that. So we’ll see what the neighbors can do again. I’m a vegetarian because I don’t like hurting animals. The trouble is, if we have pigs, we may not have many other animals here. One of the environmental organizations has a similar problem, and got blacklisted by another because it was trapping pigs. But I can appreciate its point. Those animals are destructive.

One of the magazines I read is THE NEW SCIENTIST. It’s my favorite, a weekly British publication running about 100 pages an issue with much good material. The issue for Jamboree 16 had more than usual. One article was about Dark Matter. Now I’m a fan of Dark Matter; the mystery has intrigued me for years. In essence it is this: studies of the dynamics of galaxies suggest that they have to have about ten times as much matter as shows; were they as they appear to be, they would be flying apart. So where is the missing mass? I was about satisfied that it consisted in part of MACHOS: Massive Compact Halo Objects, or brown dwarfs, that is, failed stars you can’t see because they’re small and they don’t glow. There could be a lot of them out there. But on occasion some should pass in front of stars, and become apparent by the lensing effect they have as their gravity distorts the light of those stars. Sophisticated observation has located some, but not enough to account for Dark Matter. The other candidate I favored was neutrinos. They are tiny particles that zoom right through planets and stars without interacting. They were thought to have no mass, but it turns out that they do have a little; they are tiny, but there are so many that this could account for much of Dark Matter. Except that they pass through whole galaxies too, not staying around. That means they’re not clumping where Dark Matter must be. So they seem to be out too. But now the theorists are zeroing in on another candidate: a species of WIMP: Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. These may do the job. CERN is building a collider that may be able to create these WIMPs, proving that they exist. We’ll see.

Another article is a review of a book titled Noah’s Flood by William and Walter Pitman. This is something I would have explored in GEODYSSEY, had I not lost my market for serious writing; the fifth novel, Climate of Change sits stalled unfinished at 112,000 words. So I’m discussing it here. According to the Bible, the whole world was flooded, and only Noah’s ship carried survivors. That is surely an exaggeration, but other lands have flood stories too, and it seems likely that there was something formidable. Well, they may have found it. The Mediterranean basin was at one time dry; then the sea came in and filled it, six million years ago. Too early for mankind to take note. But the Black Sea remained empty, and the ground there was rich; the first farmers may have settled there. When the word’s oceans rose after the last Ice Age, the water finally broke through and poured into the Black Sea basin. The waters advanced across this settled area at the rate of about a quarter mile a day, for a year or two. The people had to flee to the hills. The mountains of Turkey, such as Mount Ararat, are in that vicinity. I think we have something here.

And in the same issue there’s a comment that in the region where the Ice Man called Otzi (I have him and his daughter in Hope of Earth) was found they have a brisk trade in chocolate Otzis. Nothing like eating something shaped and colored like five thousand year old human flesh. But perhaps you can see why I like the magazine. I even sent it a question for its question column: why does the phoebe bird wag its tail? No, it never ran that question, so the mystery remains.

Back to mundane matters: I don’t much like monopolies; they get arrogant, because there is no other game in town. That’s why I’m encouraging Internet publishing. But computers themselves are run by an increasingly monopolistic operating system whose proprietors regard fixing bugs as not cost effective. Not cost effective to them, perhaps, but I don’t much like system crashes. So I’m looking for another game, and it is coming into view: LINUX. When I get online I’ll see what I can find there; my next system might be in that mode, if they can develop a good word processor and database. We’ll see. I’m tired of having to fight Microsoft with each update. It was bad enough having to pay for two Windows, because I had two systems: one for novels, the other for letters, both used only by me because I’m the only one in the family using the Dvorak keyboard. I understand LINUX is free, and its source code is open. From here, that looks like nirvana.

There’s a flap in the news that intrigues me. An aide to the mayor of Washington DC used the word “niggardly,” meaning miserly. But because others with a smaller vocabulary thought it resembled a racial slur, he lost his job. I regard Political Correctness as a form of censorship. This goes that one better, because it means that ignorance is prevailing over informed usage. Columnists are having a field day, as they should. They inquire whether it should now be a firing offense to talk of flying a kite if a Jew is nearby, and banish spic and span if a Mexican is close? How about a nip in the air or a chink in the armor if certain Asians might overhear? Could you say you dislike orange juice in the vicinity of an Israeli redhead? What shall we call those invisible biting bugs in Florida known as chiggers? Will guinea pigs have to be renamed? Come Christmas, who will dare sing “Don we now our gay apparel”? I think we have already seen it in operation in computing, because Intel did not follow its 586 system called the Pentium with the obvious for the 686, the Sextium; they called it that lame Pentium II. Enough, already; haven’t we got problems enough without inventing insults where none exist?

E-mail continues to pile in. I read the printouts, and answer those with snail mail addresses, and sometimes dictate answers to others if they seem to warrant it. Some have useful information, such as the one who alerted us to what happened to our old 800 number, or about how piersanthory.com is a celebrity poll unrelated to my works. Many are expressions of support; there seems to be a clear majority who feel that my portrayal of women in Xanth is apt rather than sexist. I especially appreciate the opinions of women who say I have good insight into the minds, hearts, and souls of women. I think it is no secret that I am not now and never have been a woman, but I do have considerable sympathy for the state of that gender in what is, let’s face it, essentially a man’s world. One note points out that Breanna of the Black Wave, who is militantly black, is depicted on the cover as almost white; she should be black and beautiful. That bothers me too, but I don’t paint the cover pictures. A publisher once expurgated one of my black characters to white in the text; today I have better control, and don’t allow that. One man said he liked everything I have written, except my collaborations, because when he read one of those it sucked. Some recommend Web sites for me to visit; I’ll start a list of such suggestions, so I can check them, once I am secretly competent online. One mentions XANTH ONLINE, which plans to put Xanth into a 3D roamable perspective. Oh? I’ll have to check that. Xanth is proprietary, meaning that I am obliged to defend against copyright infringements lest I lose the rights to my own creation. I may have to check with my rights agent about some things. There have been expressions of interest in the online self-publishers I have mentioned; good. Another reader, Rikki Walter, tells me of something called Scott’s Page of Evil taking off on Xanth, saying it’s for teenage boys. Actually it’s for everyone with a sense of humor – sorry about that, critics – but is there something wrong with teenage boys? Of course I find teenage girls more interesting, but that’s typical of most men. Thanks, Rikki; I’ll check out that site, when. I suspect Scott, like other truants, just wants attention.

Let’s conclude on something that came in as I finished this column: Julie Brady, co-author of Dream a Little Dream, found a review on the book. She’s dismayed. It says the novel jumps awkwardly about, has cardboard characters, weak plotting, haphazard execution, precious tone, and is a downer. It says admirers of Anthony’s Xanth series will miss the puns. I told Julie “Welcome to the club! This is a typical anonymous savaging passing for objective commentary. Now you know why writers dislike reviewers.” Note how critics typically condemn Xanth for puns, yet also damn my novels that don’t have puns. The point, of course, is to find a pretext to pan the novel and try to drive readers away from it. Sure, I’m a bad sport about bad reviews; I’m a writer. My theory is that some reviewers are failed writers who resent the success of those who succeed in getting published. So let me make up another little story: Grouch was an anonymous reviewer dedicated to the proposition that no book not authored by himself was worth reading, by definition. He savaged everything, and he was very good at it, so that the books he reviewed sold fewer and fewer copies. Then one day he lost his job, because he had succeeded in making all books sell so little that the publishers went out of business. Then at last Grouch was happy, though he starved.

PIERS

DREAM A LITTLE

The Experience of the Ogre and the Damsel
A trip report by Piers Anthony

Ogres hate to travel, so I don’t do much of it, and when I do, it is for business or strong social reason, not for pleasure. My wife and I traveled to the Washington DC area for the weekend of Jamboree 8-10, 1999, so I could autograph copies of the hardcover publication of Dream a Little Dream with my collaborator Julie Brady. I don’t do this with every collaborator, but I felt that it was appropriate this time. Sometimes a damsel needs an ogre’s support. So Julie and I set it up near where she lives, and informed the store and the publisher, and I went at my own expense. Normally publishers organize autographings and pay the author’s way, but I set my own agenda; I was always an independent cuss in such respects. So why did my wife come along? No, not from any concern about me getting together with a lovely girl the age of our daughters; my wife knows me. It’s because I am as dependent in my private life as I am independent in my public life, and my wife takes care of me. It is perhaps an anomaly that when I travel to speak or autograph, I have no problem with audiences of any size, but get all knotted up at the prospect of traveling alone. I have reason; when I’m alone Fate takes an active interest in my case, and the weather fouls up, my flights get delayed or canceled, phones won’t work for me, hotel reservations turn out to be inoperative, and after that things start going wrong. So while I was going to shepherd Julie through a process that was daunting for her but old hat for me, my wife came along to shepherd me through the daunting process of existing away from home. Fate doesn’t mess with her; it knows better.

We left our home in the tree farm – where else would an ogre live? – Friday at 10 AM, driving to Orlando, Florida, to catch our flight north. The day was fine. The weekend before there had been storms across the nation, and travelers had gotten trapped for days in faraway places; maybe Fate had thought I traveling then. We arrived at the airport in good time, about 11:30, and threaded our way through the labyrinth that is the typical airport. This time I didn’t even set off the metal alarms, which was weird, because I always set them off and have to go through several times while some young lady with a cattle prod pokes me repeatedly in private regions. This was getting suspiciously easy. Naturally it was merely the setup for mischief: when we checked in we learned that our flight was delayed two hours. In fact our plane hadn’t yet taken off from the Wash area, because of bad weather. So we had to wait for three hours – we had of course arrived more than an hour early for our 1:16 flight, per airline requirement – in the waiting room, while other people coughed and hacked and snored. We just love to be a captive market for random illness. We got something to eat, but there was still a lot of time left over. It was hard on my wife because she’s a heavy smoker, and they wouldn’t allow smoking anywhere except at a bar, and she couldn’t smoke there unless she bought something. So they got her reluctant business. But if the airlines think they are being smart forcing folk to do that, what do they think will be our attitude next time we consider traveling? Each rip-off entanglement is another reason for us not to travel. I don’t smoke, but I am perforce familiar with the smokers’ treatment because of my wife. It wouldn’t be hard for them to provide smoking chambers or outdoor standing spots, if they cared half a whit. Meanwhile I read LIBERAL OPINION WEEK, the only place I can find the liberal columnists who care about the environment, civil rights, freedom of expression, education, and the human condition. I always travel prepared.

Our flight finally took off about 3:20 and was fortunately uneventful. Well, there was a minor annoyance: you know how they seat the folk in the rear of the plane first, so as to keep it orderly? We were on Row 8 of 19, and we waited our turn to board. Then, as we were putting up our bags and orienting on our seats, a woman behind me asked me to get out of her way, because her seat was on Row 19. I said “Then you should have gone before.” But I squeezed over to let her by, where she got tangled with my wife and the third person on our bank of seats, messing them up and delaying things. So why the hell hadn’t she taken her turn when it was called out, as we had, instead of coming in late and then blaming us for being in her way? Hadn’t she had to come an hour early, like the rest of us? Failing that, why hadn’t she simply waited for us to take our seats, since she, not we, was the one out of place? The plane was not likely to take off without her. I take exception to those who think the orderly rules of convenience don’t apply to them. So I was curt with her, though if I had had more time to consider the case I might have been downright impolite. The flight was mostly through clouds, but at the very end – like maybe the final six inches – it cleared so the pilot could see to land, which was a relief. We landed about 5:30, admiring the inches deep snow on the ground – we had not seen such snow in forty years – and wended our mystified way through the crowded labyrinth that was the continuation of the one we had left in Florida, only worse. It is surely a truism that the closer you get to this country’s government, the more fouled up things are. We found the shuttle to the main station, and it turned out to be a weird sort of bus set up like a subway car, and we jammed in the back. One more man came, but there was hardly room for him, until he said “Make way for the driver.” Oh. He squeezed his way toward the front, and got the crate moving. Then we looked for the limousine shuttle service area, where we were to catch a shared-ride to our hotel. The hallway continued endlessly with signs galore – but not one of them said LIMO. We walked the whole blocks-long concourse without success. This is typical of my alone-traveling, but now it was happening to my wife, showing that Fate was really determined this time. Finally we asked at the taxi service information desk – and what we wanted was within 50 feet. It was 6:00 PM. We went there, found a limo – and the woman said that we should come back in half an hour. So we waited separately, me reading on a stone ledge inside – naturally there were no waiting room seats – and my wife outside in the freezing weather so she could smoke. Then at 6:30 the lady dispatcher apologised: they were jammed, there had been accidents in the weather, they had no limo. She directed us to the long taxi line. So we nudged our way through that, and were about halfway up when she reappeared at 6:45: they had found a limo! So we broke out of the line and hurried up, and there it was, with just two seats left. We piled in and were on our way to the hotel. We really appreciated the lady dispatcher’s efforts on our behalf; she had steered us well throughout, considering the maelstrom that was the situation.

We reached the hotel at 7:15, about three hours late – and what do you know, they had not lost our reservation. Check-in via credit card was quick – I have my irritations with credit cards, but on the road they are papers from heaven – and the clerk gave us two messages, calls from collaborators Al and Julie. They were both naturally concerned about our failure to get in touch. The moment we got to our room – it was at the farthest end of the farthest hall, where they sequester smokers – I called Alfred Tella, my collaborator on The Willing Spirit, and he said they would come pick us up in half an hour. Then I called Julie to set things up for the morrow. So we got reorganized and the Tellas fetched us to their house. As I understand it, Al Tella and his wife Dorothy have worked in government, for Republican and Democrat administrations, and she had at one time been Chief U.S. Statistician for President Reagan. Al is also an ex economics professor. Their house is like a small museum, with square wood beams and walls, models of animals and birds perched everywhere, and paintings, including the original art for the novel. The library has complete collections of rare first editions of genre authors. Al is a pigeon fancier, as one might guess from the pigeon sequence in Spirit, and has an attached pigeon loft. They served an elegant vegetarian meal with cider and wine, and we chatted compatibly. Thus did a business association – the collaboration – became a personal one; we had not met before. Then they returned us to our hotel a bit after midnight.

Saturday dawned hazy and white. I looked out the window and saw two sets of human footprints tracking through the snow, the trails overlapping at just one point, as though a young woman had come out to kiss her lover and then retreated before her folks missed her. There was a fence of fir trees masking the highway beyond, giving the area a bit of a fairyland-in-winter aspect. Inside was interesting too: the room was roughly triangular, and the bathroom had an alcove with facing mirrors, so that I could see myself reflected endlessly to left and right. I could also see that my hair is not just retreating in front, but thinning in back. That was more than I really cared to know. The TV set not only had cable and pay-per-view – not that we bothered – it could be used to access the Internet. I am not at this moment Internet conversant, but I have bought some books on the subject and am about to upgrade a system so I can finally dip my ignorant toe and discover what it’s all about. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll do it openly; strangers who want to reach me must continue to do so through the filter of HI PIERS, while I gad about anonymously. I hope.

We had a good breakfast in the smoking section of the hotel dining room, and that was just as well, because it would be about 6 PM before we ate again. We had set it up for a leisurely day, but naturally it failed to follow the script. Oh, it started okay; from 9-12 we rested, read, and snoozed. Then we had a call from Julie: they would arrive between 12 and 1. So I went down to the lobby while my wife remained in the room. I read until 1, getting buffeted by cold air each time the door opened, without spying them. Then my wife came down: Julie had called again. They had had trouble renting a car, because the weather had caused accidents and made for a glut of car renting, but would arrive in another half hour. I hadn’t realized they would have to rent; I hadn’t meant to put them to that trouble. I admired the amorphous paintings around the hotel lounge, lobby, and restaurant: like flying swans getting chewed up by snowstorms. We flew through that on the way up. Then they arrived, and we overlooked them, and they overlooked us, because Julie was wearing glasses, and we were seated to the side. But we soon got together. Julie Brady was trim and stunning in long loose curly red hair, and her boyfriend was Mark Tello. Now don’t get confused: Al Tella is a collaborator, Mark Tello a boyfriend; they are different people. We put her change of clothing in our hotel closet, then set off as a party to find the house of Jane Frank, genre art dealer from whom Julie hoped to buy the original art for Dream, which was painted by Tristan Elwell. I had had a letter interchange with her in 1996, but did not make the connection, because I had simply asked Jane to take me off her mailing list because I hated having her waste postage on someone who was not looking to buy any art. Understand, I love genre art; I was a hopeful artist in high school and college, but gave it up because I judged that I would never be good enough to make it commercially. So it’s like bird watching: I look with pleasure, but don’t touch or own. So I, having forgotten the Jane Frank catalog, which strongly resembles an art book, expected a small house containing a woman who had a painting. Al Tella had helped, because he knew Jane, and the cover painting for Spiritwas by the same artist, so he had suggested that she represent the one for Dream. The same artist did the cover painting for my three way collaboration Quest for the Fallen Star, incidentally. In my mind, Jane would have a single wrapped painting in a cubbyhole, and Julie would look at it and decide whether she could afford it, and soon we’d be on our way again.

Well, it wasn’t like that. Jane and her husband greeted us warmly and showed us the house. I said that the Tella residence was reminiscent of a museum; well the Frank residence was reminiscent of an art gallery. I mean, they could charge admission for tours. Room after room, every wall with fantastic fantasy art, the kind I like. You know: rich exotic settings, weird alien creatures, futuristic machines, and phenomenally breasted young women with splendid heads of hair. Conceptually much of it is junk, because in real life you would seldom find a damsel that endowed, that bare, in the middle of a battle between spaceships and bug eyed monsters. But as a visual treat, it’s hard to beat. And some of it really is art by elite definition. Those truly artistic paintings, I learned, are mostly unsalable; publishers want spot commercial appeal without anything as real as pubic hair. So some art is done for art’s sake. It’s not restricted to paintings; they had several elaborate sculptures of operative miniature Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, or roller coaster, replete with dragons and elves and other creatures, each aspect individual and finely crafted. Thus the Franks have become to an extent patrons of art, commissioning such sculptures without any expectation of selling them. Art for art’s sake. I heartily approve. Some art I commissioned for the Xanth Calendar is there. The tour was an hour and a half, but then we had to depart, because we did have other commitments to meet. But this was a surprise as spectacular as unexpected. The house was multi-level, with a fine view of the forested valley and river beyond. I do get jealous of the mountainous scenery of other states; I think the highest spot in peninsular Florida is something like 150 feet. Come the meltdown of Antarctica, we may be in trouble. Their art was expanding beyond the capacity of the house, so they are taking the obvious step: no, not to get rid of any art, but to expand the house. Like the Tellas, they are refined collectors, and it’s a state I well understand though my own collecting mania has been suppressed in favor of writing. I do have one piece I suspect they would envy: the original painting by Darrell Sweet for Bio of an Ogre. I never bought it; the publisher did, and gave it to me, in 1987, and it hangs on my living room wall. And yes, Julie made a deal to make time payments for the painting; she’s not one of those who don’t have to ask the price. Those interested in purchasing genre art can reach Jane Frank at her e-mail address wowart1@erols.com or snail-mail PO Box 814, McLean VA 22101.

We drove to the Borders Books, Music, Video, Café store, not for autographing but as a preliminary check. I don’t like arriving on the scene and discovering there are no books or there’s no place to sign, or whatever other foul-ups can happen, so I like to go early and see. There was also a small mystery: this was set up as a signing, but word was out that it was a reading. Now I have done readings and talks, and that’s no problem, but I need to be prepared if I am to do it well. So we located Colleen Holt, the store’s community relations coordinator, and inquired. Okay: they like to have the authors talk a bit about the book beforehand. That’s easy to do; we’d tell how it came about, answer questions, then do the autographing. They had about 50 chairs set out in a corner, making a handy nook for the purpose. So now we knew the setup, and they knew we were in town; I said we’d return soon after 7 for the 7:30 event. I like to have time around the edges. I advised them not to let folk bring in any books except Dream at first, so that Julie would not be ignored as I signed unrelated copies. “That isn’t going to happen,” I said firmly, taking Julie by the arm in avuncular fashion. There was a larger message there: treat the damsel right, or I was the one who would react. There is no point in riling the ogre. Then we drove back to the hotel, where we changed clothing – no, stop sniggering, you folk with the lascivious minds; Julie changed in the bathroom, I changed in the main room. The object was to look presentable for the event; I may resemble a shaggy dog in real life, but I prefer to emulate a civilized person when on show. I had asked Julie to wear her hair loose so she would resemble her fetching picture; I wanted everyone to see how pretty she is. This sort of thing sells books, and I wanted a good event. So we were ready, but we didn’t have much time left to eat; we had used it up looking at paintings. But we did have to eat; my wife and I were hungry, and Julie and Mark weren’t any better off. Julie was afraid she’d grow faint, and certainly I didn’t want that. Suppose she keeled over at the autographing? Readers might think I’d kept her locked in a cell without food when not on display. We went to a nice Italian restaurant that had a salad bar, so we wouldn’t have to wait for service, and it was a good bar, and a good meal, though I couldn’t resist having raw onions though I knew they’d get on my breath. Julie had some copies of my books for me to autograph, so we took care of that there. Just before the start of the trip, I had realized that in the time since we had written the novel in 1994, I had forgotten just about all of it; I had to reread the first fifty pages to restore my memory. But I figured that Julie would have all the details fresh in mind, so I could refer any technical questions to her. Then she said she had forgotten most of the novel. Oh, no! I offered her the Clechée cross she had sent to me, which she once wore always; it is in its fashion like her soul, which I was holding until sure she would have a good life to go with it, but she declined to take it back just yet. Ah, well; it returns to its place beside my computer monitor, for now. Then on to the store, and we were actually early, getting there about five before seven.

People were already gathering, sitting in the chairs, and reading their copies of Dream a Little Dream. Julie was nervous, but I assured her that it was like swimming in cold water: after the first shock you get numbed. Also, that it’s much easier to answer a direct question, one on one, even in the presence of an audience, than it is to address the audience as a whole. I intended to run any interference required, so that she would not need to do anything herself. There were two high chairs before the signing table, so we sat in those, and I chatted with any who cared to meet me before the event. The chairs filled and overflowed; there were twice as many people there as could be seated, showing that we had drawn more than they had expected. I love doing that. It turned out that the store had done good promotion, so that readers did know about the event. The store had even commissioned a big layer cake with the words “DREAM A LITTLE DREAM – Piers Anthony and Julie Brady” written on the icing. That’s a first for me; no one had done that before. It was a “Luberry” cake, from an invented berry in the novel. Luberries look like white cherries, and taste like a cross between blueberries and peaches. Would you believe: that is what that cake looked and tasted like. So the audience was treated to refreshment, and so were we, though we hardly had time to eat it. The program started on time, with Colleen Holt introducing us. Then I took over, speaking extemporaneously; this is easy for me to do, when I’m talking about myself or my projects. This is approximately what I said, drawn from memory:

“I’m Piers Anthony. I’m an old hand at this sort of thing; you folk don’t faze me at all. But Julie is new to this, so I’ll do the talking.” I glanced at Julie, who sat there as demure and lovely as a model, the shy newcomer. That made it clear who was ogre and who was damsel, just in case there had been any doubt. “I have done 26 collaborations, and each is different. Julie first wrote to me in 1992, and she enclosed her picture. I noticed that.” I think there was a murmur of response; Julie was of course as pretty as a picture. “But she also told me how she could do lucid dreaming. That’s when you are asleep and dreaming, but you know it is a dream, and you can influence it. I think it could be really tempting to be able to step into your own dream realm, leaving the ugly mundane world behind.” Then I drifted off track, mentioning depression, saying that while I am only mildly depressive, others stand much closer to the fires of Hell than I do, and I can appreciate their pain. But I didn’t want to make too much of this aspect, so I hauled myself back to the main narrative. That’s the problem with unrehearsed speech; you can drift. I told of the story I read long ago, “Dreams are Sacred” by Peter Phillips, wherein an agent was sent into the dream of a scientist, to break it up and make the scientist return to the real world. The agent started by abolishing one of the two suns in the dream world, and kept on until he had made the scientist laugh his way out of the dream. I loved that story. Then back to Julie: “She dreamed up a story in serial form, and recorded it. Then she sent me that record, and I thought it could, with some adjustment, make a novel. So we collaborated on it, and it became Dream a Little Dream, about a depressed girl with a horrible life who found a way into the realm of her dreams. Of course things weren’t perfect there either, so it got complicated, but in the end things worked out. So this is Julie’s dream, come to life as it were in the form of this novel.” Then I threw the floor open to questions.

Then something wonderful happened. Until this moment Julie had not said a word; I had deliberately shielded her from the need. But the first question was to Julie, about lucid dreaming. Faced with a direct one-on-one dialogue, she handled it; response is so much easier than initiation. The second question was to her, and the third. In fact virtually all the questions were to her; the subject of lucid dreaming had evidently tweaked the audience’s interest. There must have been about twenty of them, while I sat by, delighted. I broke in every so often to clarify and amplify, but this was very much Julie’s turn. Colleen Holt had said the introductory discussion could be done in fifteen minutes, but this went 35 minutes before being brought to a halt, the audience still interested. After all, we did have autographing to do. “Wasn’t I right?” I asked Julie. “Isn’t it much easier now?” She, catching on to the keyed answer, agreed that it was. She had had her moment on stage, and had seen that the readers were genuinely interested in what she had done and in what she had to say. This was success beyond my expectation. Then we got off the stools and went behind the table, and the autograph line formed. They had the names they wanted written on cards, so I could write FOR SO&SO;, and sign it, then pass the book to Julie. Sometimes she signed first. Autographing is easy; you just do it as they come to you. One woman brought her copy, and said that she had bought a book for her son, and gotten the wrong one by mistake: Dream. But he had read it anyway, and liked it so well that he had finished it in one night, not stopping. One could hardly have a more positive review than that. Most of the people there hadn’t read it yet, because they had just bought it, but this was proof that it had been truly appreciated. I was so glad that Julie had that unexpected endorsement. I had gotten one myself, in the discussion: I was asked what my favorite book by someone else was, and I couldn’t chose a particular one, but did say that I had really enjoyed J R R Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Then Julie answered, and said hers was one of my Xanths, Dragon on A Pedestal. “I didn’t put her up to this!” I protested, not sure the audience believed me. Julie later discovered that at least two people who attended the signing left with new copies of Dragon on a Pedestal. At any rate, the signing continued unabated for an hour for Dream, and over a hundred copies had been sold, a very good performance for an unknown fantasy in hardcover. In the second hour the line continued, but now interspersed with some of my individual titles. I was happy to sign them, now that we were catching up on the Dreams. Even then, Julie wasn’t excluded; she was mentioned in the Author’s Note for If I Pay Thee Not in Gold, so she autographed that mention for one person. It was after 10 PM before the line expired; it had carried on longer than expected, without slack. This was very good. In addition, Julie’s office associates came in force, and Mark’s family too, all of them thrilled by Julie’s success. Kira Heston, to whom I had introduced Julie several years ago, was there; she gave us copies of her nice music on the synthesizer, Kira’s Casio Christmas. There were several of my other correspondents, such as Kim Adams Sweeney and Rachel Browne, who was the one who suggested Breanna of the Black Wave, the heroine of Zombie Lover; Rachel looks a little like Ally McBeal. So, taken as a whole, it was exactly the kind of event I had hoped for, only better. (Readers who would like to contact the damsel without having to go through the ogre can do so via e-mail: Julie’s address is psylentlucidity@yahoo.com.)

Meanwhile our partners were out of the picture. They got along okay, as they both love watching football, and my wife also found an art book I wanted, having just discovered it when a reader brought it to me for autographing that evening: Beyond Fantasy by Darrell K Sweet, published in 1996, for which I had written a Forward. This was unpaid labor, but I think at least the publisher might have sent me a copy, considering the number of paintings illustrating my books in it (nine), and my Forward, and the use of my name on the cover to help sell copies. But this is not my first such experience with publishers, who are hardly known for their generosity, so we just bought a copy for my files. We returned to the hotel in several cars, and had a gathering in the lobby, just chatting and unwinding: Julie and Mark, my wife and I, Mark’s brother in law Mike Davis, who was a reader of mine, Kira Heston, and Julie’s best friend LeJuane McNeill, with her two young children. It was a pleasant scene, a fitting conclusion to the evening. Then we parted; Julie gave me a hug (to say “nice” would be redundant), and my wife and I returned to our room just after midnight. The event was done.

In the morning I looked out the window and saw that the tracks in the snow had grown to resemble those of the Abominable Snowman and his female; who says there’s no magic in Mundania? Our return on Sunday was without delay or stress; the weather was cold but nice, and we reached Florida and home just after 4:30 to be greeted by Daughter Cheryl and Obsidian Dog. And by six newspapers, 18 letters, more than 30 emails from HiPiers, and the manuscript of a novel to read, piled up over the weekend. Naturally the cold weather had followed us home, and we had a freezing night. We were back in drear Mundania. But there was one saving grace: Cheryl had made me a nice soft cushion for my chair. I’m lean, and sitting all day bruises my posterior, but this enabled me to type this report in comfort.

Story of an Article

On OctOgre 26, 1998 I received a letter from the editor of THE WRITER, one of the leading magazines dedicated to the craft of writing. I had done an article for it back in 1989, “Think of the Reader,” which had been published in the magazine and republished in its annual. The editor enclosed a copy of a review for a collaborative novel, which I appreciated, because I had not seen it before. She asked me for a piece about the practical aspects and techniques for the writing of science fiction. Now you might think I would be thrilled to be invited, but the fact is the rates of that magazine are such that anything I do for it represents a loss, because I can earn more using the time to write my fiction, and certain aspects of our prior contact had left me less than eager. So I declined, saying that I have been mostly out of science fiction for the past decade, focusing mostly on light fantasy and serious historical fiction.

On NoRemember 16 came another letter: she had heard from two other SF writers with similar responses. So how about an article on the how-tos of fantasy writing, stressing the fundamentals such as plotting, characterization, and the way fantasy differs from science fiction but shares elements. Okay, she was being candid, and I do regard myself as qualified to do such an article. She had mapped out what she wanted in it, making it easy but also making me suspect that what she really wanted was her article with my name and phrasing. I’m a bit more independent than that, but I do try to help hopeful writers, having been the route myself – remember, it took me eight years before I sold my first story – so this time I agreed. I described what I planned to do: “I can establish the similarities of, and distinctions between, fantasy science fiction, horror, and historical fiction, and present my take on the best way to tackle fantasy. Basics are indeed important, But there’s no getting around the fact that it is quite difficult for a beginner to achieve publication, even when the material is good, so that my normal advice to hopeful writers is to consider some other line of work. There is however another option developing: Internet publishing, and that may be the best future hope for aspiring writers.”

Then I did my research: since I wasn’t online myself, I asked a correspondent, Katharine Krueger, for information on Internet publishing. Katharine has had several novels published online, and keeps herself informed. She responded with generous and candid information, which I digested down to use in my article. I sent her a copy, explaining how I had tried to editor-proof it to prevent the editor from deleting its most useful aspect: the Internet information. I suspect Katharine thought I was being paranoid, as others have when I talk about publishers. No, I was speaking from decades of experience. The article started with a defense of the basics, because they are indeed important, with little examples to engage the reader’s attention or bring a smile. I try to do a good job of whatever I do, including dull basics. Then I moved on to the essence. I gave a capsule personal writing history, because I am not so bold as to assume that all readers have heard of me, showing how slowly I started, but how well I finally succeeded. Then I got into the reality: it’s damned tough to make it as a writer today. But there is an answer: the Internet. Note that this is exactly what I had told the editor I would do. But editors are tricky; I could not be sure that she would allow me to actually tell the truth about writing.

Sure enough, she didn’t. She proposed putting the personal detail into a bio, which was okay, and cutting all of what followed it, about the Internet. That was not okay. I replied: “With reference to my article on writing fantasy: while it is the editor’s prerogative to publish what she chooses, the author also has rights. My desire is to be genuinely helpful to novice writers. This means not only offering a guide to the basics of writing, but also realistically assessing the market, and suggesting a strategy to encourage success. I feel that the editing you propose harms the latter aspects of the article, and therefore diminishes its usefulness to those I wish to help. If you are unable to publish it essentially as I wrote it, discard the copy, and I will publish it elsewhere.” There is a maxim I have for publishers: you can push around a hopeful writer, but you can’t push around an established one. Publishers keep trying, however, and so they keep running into trouble with writers like me. To suggest, as THE WRITER seems to want to do, that all a hopeful writer has to do is write the best he can, and he will succeed – that’s a cruel hoax. He’ll be lucky even to get his material read. A magazine that does not tell the truth – well, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that it is more interested in making money off innocently hopeful writers than it is in actually helping them get published. I hope that’s not the case, but my doubt remains.

At any rate, here is that article, as I wrote it, unedited. Judge for yourself.

Fantasy Writing
Piers Anthony

We have a problem. Standard advice for hopeful writers is to write about what you know, about what you have personal experience with. But how can you know about what can never be? I have some capsule definitions for the genres I have encountered: science fiction is the literature of the possible, fantasy of the impossible, horror of the horrible, and historical fiction is of the memorable. The average contemporary person will not have had much direct personal experience with any of these, apart from what s/he reads. So do we toss out that advice, especially for fantasy?

No, we don’t, because it’s not as irrelevant as it may seem. My most successful fantasy, which seems wild and crazy, is Xanth, and that has been freely adapted from what I know. I take the state of Florida, change the name, add magic and humor, and apply the venerable formula of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy recovers girl, with some adventure and naughtiness along the way. I make fantastic what isn’t, and make seemingly real what isn’t. I mix it well and serve it up to my readers, who actually contribute much of what’s in it. So if the truth be known, I really am writing about what I know; it only seems far out. Adaptation is a powerful tool. When I turned a pun into a main character, in Night Mare, I drew on what I knew of my daughter’s old black horse, and what I remembered of the terrors of my own childhood bad dreams, and those familiar things became a fantasy novel. I did something similar with the Monster Under the Bed, familiar to all children; the proper way to get on the bed at night is to leap from far out so your ankles won’t get grabbed. Oh yes, I know about the fears of darkness – and so do most readers. The thing is, there are dull fundamentals that apply to almost all fiction, fantasy included. Young readers sometimes send me their stories for comment; I don’t like this, in part because the news I have for them is almost invariably bad. They are not writing about what they know, and they seldom have the basics down, and that dooms them. Plotting is one: you have to tell a story, or your reader loses interest. Something must happen, and it has to make some sense, yet not be entirely predictable, and it has to conclude suitably. I liken it to the string that holds the beads: if it breaks, you’ll soon be scrambling in the gutter for your treasures. Clarity is another: you have to handle the language well enough to make quite clear what is going on, especially if it is unbelievable. An artist once told me “It’s a hell of a lot easier to say the plane fell out of the sky than it is to draw it.” Yes, and you must become an artist to describe something that is by definition impossible. Characterization is another: you must make your characters seem real, or the reader won’t care what happens to them. You must encourage the reader to identify. This may be easier than it seems. Have you noticed how things like astrology predictions are couched very generally and positively? Soon you will make a journey; you may suffer disappointment; a positive attitude will enable you to prevail. Just about anything fits. You may make a journey to your mailbox, and be dismayed to find a bill instead of notice of a story sale, but you resolve to do better tomorrow. Your mind makes that prediction fit. Well, you can do that as a writer. My leading men tend to be smart, my leading ladies tend to be attractive, and my children tend to be a bit rebellious. There are not many men, women, or children who will not identify with those. Of course there should be other details, but this is the simple basis that will make it work – for any fiction. Start with effective Story, Clarity, and Character, and you are well on your way to writing well.

The several genres do overlap. I believe it was John W. Campbell, the editor of the old ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, later called ANALOG (I go way back!) who pointed out that to a person of a primitive culture, advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. Consider the airplane (before it falls out of the sky): it’s a magic flying device, perhaps carried by an invisible giant. Television: a magic mirror, showing all manner of impossibly distant scenes. Modern medicine: infernal devices and magic healing potions. The horror genre merely does another take on it, playing for fear rather than wonder. I think of this as the eerie music device: picture a dull housewife fixing a dull meal in a dull kitchen. Who cares? How can you make an interesting story of this? Now start the eerie background music. It gets louder as she approaches the covered pot on the stove. Suddenly we know it’s not dull potatoes in that pot, at least not any more; we are nervous because we know that something awful is going to happen. Is it starting to boil over? Something blotchy green is pushing the lid up; is it a mere vegetable or something else? She reaches for the lid. The music becomes almost piecing. Don’t do it, you fool! She starts to lift the lid – and suddenly the doorbell rings, making us jump. She lets the lid drop back and leaves the kitchen. But we know that whatever is in that pot is still lurking. Okay: your job as a writer is to introduce that eerie music when the time comes. To make your reader aware that something supernatural is incipient. Obviously you can’t actually play music on the page, because you don’t live in a magic realm, but you may be able to provide details that achieve the effect. To make the reader believe that there is something nervously wrong about this ordinary scene, or different, like maybe the child’s doll lying careless on the counter, whose eyes begin to move, tracking the progress of the dull housewife.

I mentioned historical fiction. You may wonder what this has to do with fantasy. Well, I discovered when I got into it that it was quite comfortable and, yes, familiar. Because instead of a medieval fantasy land where magic works, there is a different culture from our own, with different clothing, food, and conventions. A strange alternate realm that nevertheless has some parallels to what we know. Of course it requires considerable research to discover the actual details of those historical settings, but there was nevertheless a similar feel. Also, the mythologies of other lands, past and present, are much like fantasy to us. So again, the fundamental rules apply. I’m not into the Romance genre, or the Mystery genre, or others, but I’m pretty sure that the fundamentals apply to all of them. A good story, good characters, and clear presentation of something the author seems to know about will surely do wonders anywhere.

One thing I have discovered is that the dullest research can make the most interesting fiction. I define research broadly: it’s not just looking up historical accounts, or poring over technical manuals, or touring the region you hope to use as a setting. It’s figuring out what kind of shoe a middle aged peasant woman would wear, or when the strawberry crop ripens in New England, or what effect an aspirin tablet would have on a person who has taken three recent drinks. Because one of the keys to making a scene real is detail; one wrong detail can break the mood. This is especially important in fantasy, because your whole story is impossible; you want to maintain the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. The homey mundane details can make the scene have verisimilitude – that is, to seem true. If the dull housewife is completely realistic, then the horror in the pot or the doll coming alive becomes credible. The reader may not notice the details consciously, but will nevertheless get a sense of realism.

I decided to become a writer at age 20, in college. I got my BA in Creative Writing, and wrote a science fiction novel for my thesis. I wrote stories and tried them on the market, with which I was well familiar; you do have to be conversant with your market. But I was 28 when I made my first story sale: a fantasy story for which I was paid $20. I went on to become one of the more prolific and successful figures of the SF/fantasy genre, with 110 books published. Will you do the same? I doubt it. You don’t need a degree in writing or in anything else to be a writer, but you do need to know how to write well. It took me those eight years to learn how to write well enough, and even so, sales have always been chancy. Today, I believe, it is more difficult for the hopeful writer to make it than it was 40 years ago when I was trying. I said I have seen many stories that are not close to good enough. I have also seen some that are good enough – but are not making it into print. I suspect that there are more publishable pieces today than there are markets for them, so many good ones fail for reasons unrelated to their merit. What, then, is a competent but unlucky fantasy writer to do?

I have an answer that didn’t exist in my day: the Internet. Online publishers are springing up and looking for material. This is largely an unpaid market, or even a self-publishing market: the author pays to put his book in print. This is not what is called subsidy or vanity publishing; the fees are nominal and royalties are paid on sold copies. All the world can find your book – if it wants to. I have published one novel that way, and so far the royalties have not repaid the initial fee, but it seems likely that in time they will. A second novel will be going online soon. Should online publishing catch on, it is possible that the novel will pay well. But my point is not the money, but the publication: my novel is available, and anyone who goes online can find it and order it and receive either an electronic copy to read on the computer, or a printed hardcover or trade paperback copy by mail, indistinguishable from a regularly published book. So if you have a novel, or a collection of stories that you truly believe in but can’t get published conventionally, check the Internet. You probably won’t get rich, but you will get published.

I’m not online myself, though I suspect I will be in the near future. I have to get others to make the connections and relay the responses. But I do know something about online publishing, because of my novels, and the fact that I have invested in two online publishers. That of course may skew my judgment; I invested for ideological reason, because I want to make it possible for writers to realize their dreams, but it is a conflict of interest when it comes to recommending publishers. So I queried a correspondent who has also been published on the Internet, and she provided me with more than twenty names of publishers there. So I’m compromising by presenting one I invested in, www.Xlibris.com, and one she recommended: The Fiction Works, at www.dreams-unlimited.com. Both are open to new writers and actively seeking new inventory. Look them up, download their promotional literature, and see what you think. Then there is Mary Wolf’s guide to electronic publishing, at http://www.coredcs.com/~mermaid/epub.html, which may be the most comprehensive list of electronic publishers of fiction. Another site to check out is not a publisher, but a source of information: Write Connection, at www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/5677/agents.html, which maintains an updated list of dubious agents and publishers. There are sharks on the Internet as well as elsewhere, so the novice must be wary.

In summary: write as well as you can, for markets with which you are familiar, and hope for success. If it eludes you, go to the Internet, where you, rather than a publisher, will make the final decision. This is no fantasy.

I had hoped to have a separate article, “Dialogue with an Agent” posted at this time. Well, maybe next time. I do have an excerpt from the 4th GEODYSSEY novel, Muse of Art, which is to be published by TOR in hardcover next month. Next time I hope to put on the Xanth historical timeline, which gives dates and details for the entire Xanth framework from the year -4000 to +1100. Some readers have found the Xanth family trees confusing; it may be that the translation to HTML messed up the structure. The timeline is about 400 lines long, each line an entry about a character or event; it should be clear enough for those who don’t try to read it straight through. It is intended for reference rather than reading, so that those playing games in Xanth settings have accurate background information. So check this site in a couple of months, just in case there is anything interesting.

At this writing, I have completed the first draft of the fourth Mode novel, DoOon Mode. It’s 121,500 words, which means that by the time I have edited and paginated it, it will be 125-130,000 words, which is a solid novel. Not that a book should be judged by its length, any more than by its cover or its publisher or its author; it should be judged by its relevance and effect on its intended readership. If I ran a school for reviewers, that’s the point I would make, and any that proved to be too dull to understand that would flunk out. So possibly the majority of contemporary reviewers would flunk my course. But this is an idle dream; in the real world atrocities of every nature abound, and there’s much that needs attention before getting down to this minor alcove. As readers of this site know, the Mode series lost its market and was cut off incomplete. The single most frequently asked question at this site may be “Where’s the 4th Mode novel?” So the readers have remained interested, but I saw no point in writing a novel I couldn’t get published. But now, with Internet publishing, I know I can get it into print on my own if I have to. So I will have my literary agent try it on the conventional book market, and if it finds a publisher you will see it in print in a couple of years. If it doesn’t, you will see it on the Internet much faster. I am taking time off to write this column, then will return to edit the novel, a process that normally takes about a week. Chances are that by the time this column appears, DoOon Mode will be on its way to my agent. Then we’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, here is the essence of the novel, with some key details omitted, so as not to ruin it for your later perusal: Our four Virtual Mode travelers are Colene, who is smart and pretty at age 14 but suicidally depressive; Darius, who is the Cyng of Hlahtar (King of Laughter) in his home Mode, a very important position of magic; Nona, who is completely magical and would be queen of her planet in her fractal home Mode, which is why she fled it; and Burgess, completely alien, who floats on a cushion of air. Darius and Colene are now married, but unable to consummate it because of Colene’s horrible memories of sexual abuse. They encounter the three Feline nulls Tom, Pussy and Cat, respectively male, female and neuter, all human but resembling the feline persuasion. After some interaction in the DoOon realm, the seven travel on the Virtual Mode – where the dread mind predator attacks Colene. To escape it they stop off at Colene’s Mode of Earth, and then at Nona’s Mode of Julia, where Nona gets off. This allows the telepathic horse Seqiro to rejoin the group. In the end, Colene battles the mind predator, and the outcome affects the rest of her life.

I have spoken before of Internet publishing and my involvement in it. Now it is time for a bit more detail. My interest is in opening things up for the hopeful writers who otherwise face no realistic outlet for their dreams, because there is room in Parnassus – the global publishing establishment – for only about one book in a hundred available. This makes getting your book published like winning a lottery, unless by some fluke you manage to get into print and then have a recognizable name. You might say that I won my lottery three and a half decades ago and now am comfortably set. But it took me eight years of struggle, and it was a struggle thereafter too, as I got blacklisted for six years for demanding a correct accounting from a publisher who cheated me. You might wonder what kind of a profession would allow such a thing to happen. The answer is thisprofession. I remain alienated from the Science Fiction Writers of America because that organization not only failed to support the wronged writer, it tacitly sided with the publisher, though other members had been similarly cheated, and has on occasion spread malicious misinformation about me. It’s why I support the National Writers Union (NWU), which really does go after errant publishers. If you are a serious writer, published or unpublished, check out its Web site www.nwu.org/nwu, email nwu@nwu.org . NWU recognizes that a writer who spends years struggling to get published is serious, even if Parnassus doesn’t think so. And of course I support Internet publishing, which has the potential to bypass Parnassus. Yet even now Internet bookselling has been tagged for adopting one of the conventional vices: selling shelf space, pushing not the best books, but the ones for which what in the music industry is called “payola” is made. I’m not sure what it’s called in the publishing industry. You wonder why certain books get put in front of the store while others are buried way in the back? The front books are paid for. It’s legal, and considered ethical; the most convenient real estate always costs what the market will bear. Bestsellers are made that way. I have been the route, but never did really like the smell. This will continue as long as Parnassus is the only game in town, and it may not be better in the Internet, but at least there will be a broader alternative. The Internet is essentially ungovernable, which means that no one outfit can corral it, and the mavericks’ day will be longer. It is not inherently superior, but is inherently more egalitarian. So it brings the best and the worst, and that’s best.

I first heard from John Feldcamp, president of Xlibris, in AwGhost 1997. He said “I am the president of a new technology company that provides publishing services for both writers and publishers.” He went on to say that Xlibris would make it possible for every author to be published, and for every work to remain in print forever, via the Internet. “Xlibris is not a publishing company, but rather an enabling service, which provides the infrastructure to allow everyone to become their own publisher.” He solicited my advice, support, or endorsement as a successful author. I was cautious. “At first consideration, my impression is that this is intriguing but unworkable,” I replied. I told how I had lost heavily in connection with Hi Piers, which marketed my own books. I mentioned my World War Two novel Volk, then at Pulpless.com for downloading, saying “So I know that even a good and provocative novel by an established writer does not necessarily pay its way on the Internet.” Then I got down to a serious critique: “You propose to put an enormous amount of material on the Internet. You will need a formidable staff just to handle it, and 90% of it will be inferior, political, or obscene. You seem to have no founder with publishing experience. You are entering treacherous waters. Who will handle copyrighting? Who will track the accounts? Who will deal with the lawsuits by parents, conservatives, or others who don’t believe in free expression? This is vanity publishing on a huge scale…You will have ten year olds applying, and folk who don’t know what paragraphing is, let alone story or theme…Applicants will have unrealistic expectations, and will blame you when those expectations are not met.” I concluded “I regret being so negative, but I have had more experience than I care for with disaster. In the past year I have put lawyers on two publishers who were reneging or cheating…I have a deep disaffection with Parnassus, and would love to see an alternative succeed. I do wish you well. But I doubt you folk appreciate what you are getting into.”

Feldcamp responded with a full clarification, and asked to talk with me by phone. We talked for half an hour in SapTimber, and he impressed me with his knowledge and dedication. He sent me a package of literature on Xlibris, including its business plan. I am a creative type who has made it a point to understand business matters. Xlibris was addressing things competently. My doubt was wavering. “In summary,” I said next, “I am increasingly impressed with Xlibris, and my support of it is likely to grow…Meanwhile, I suspect you folk have yet to appreciate the avarice, ignorance, and duplicity of conventional publishers; you won’t believe it until you have seen it for yourself. So you had better be prepared to operate independently.” I mentioned that I might be interested in investing in Xlibris. Feldcamp recommended that I do a “due diligence” investigation on the company. This may best be described to those who haven’t heard of it, as I had not, as like hiring a private dick to investigate someone, only the investigation is done mostly via paper research. We did so, and the proprietors of Xlibris checked out okay. I felt a little as if I had been peeking into Mr. Feldcamp’s bedroom; I learned when his wife got her Social Security card, and what a former employer thought of him: “We wish we had him back.” This was obviously no swindle outfit. And so, in Dismember 1997, my wife and I invested in Xlibris as venture capitalists, becoming the third of three significant outside investors.

In the course of 1998 Xlibris sought major investors, because the initial round was enough to keep it going only a year or so. Economy of scale means that what is unprofitable at a low level of operation can be profitable at a higher level, but it needed more money to achieve that higher level. In due course it found one: a large Parnassus outfit was seriously interested. The total initial investment from all parties was in six figures; this one would invest in seven figures, and Xlibris would be on its way to vastly increased operation, putting out perhaps 200 new books a month. Negotiations continued for months, as Xlibris fought for the best feasible terms for itself and its investors. But it was like David sparring with Goliath; the smart money is generally on Goliath. Meanwhile, it was running short of cash, so we made a bridge loan, intended to keep the company functioning another four or five months while it completed negotiations. At last, in Jamboree, the deal was agreed to. Then one of the original investors objected: the payoff of 2.7 to 1 (that is, for every dollar invested, $2.70 would be paid back to buy out that investor: this kind of return is standard in venture capital) was not sufficient. This put the deal in peril, because the big investor would not budge: it wanted the small investors out of there, and at that price. I could see why: together we owned about a quarter of Xlibris, and if the big investor’s money made the company a hundred times as valuable, we’d later get paid off a hundred fold, getting a virtually free ride to riches. The deal seemed about to collapse, but finally the small investor talked directly with the big investor, and realized that no blood was about to be squeezed from this stone, and backed off. The deal was on again. We signed over our stock certificates, and the takeover was set to happen late in FeBlueberry. All that was needed was the okay of the big investor’s top man. I told those who queried me that I thought Xlibris was a good place to be, and would probably get better in the future; I was not free to say how much better. Xlibris, retaining effective autonomy as a division of the larger company, with its founders running it and having six figure salaries, was about to become the major player in Internet publishing.

Then the big company’s top man said no. That was it. No reason given. Suddenly, instead of the heights, Xlibris faced the depths. Its operating cash was nearly gone and it faced bankruptcy in short order. No, I didn’t remind Feldcamp of what I had said before about the nature of Parnassus; I had thought the big outfit was serious too. It is possible that it set Xlibris up to crash so that it could pick up the pieces much cheaper in a bankruptcy sale thereafter, but I don’t think so. I presume the winds of investment shifted, and the company simply changed its mind, having meanwhile played its cards close to its chest. But the effect on others who had counted on this acquisition was formidable: the investors stood to lose all that they had put in, and the founders stood to lose their life savings, which they had used to start up Xlibris, and see the destruction of their dream. The writers who were getting published there stood to be abruptly unpublished. Well, I understand this sort of power dealing, having encountered it before in Parnassus – those who think me paranoid on this subject have not had the experience I have had – so my concern was how to play the next stage of the game. My wife and I concluded that it would be best for Xlibris to continue in operation, and seek other investors. We decided to give it more time. John Feldcamp came down in Marsh and spent a night with us, discussing business. Thus we are now in the process of investing more, becoming the major small investor, so that Xlibris can operate at its present level for another year. I also sent out a “Dear Colleagues” letter to other leading writers of the genre, expressing the hope that some would want to join me in investing in Xlibris. The company is also soliciting new investors by more traditional routes. We don’t yet know the outcome of any of these initiatives, but I can say that Xlibris will be with us at least through 1999. Thereafter I don’t know, but a lot can happen in a year, especially in connection with the Internet. It has been a financial adventure, and will likely continue so, because in such ventures one seldom breaks even; one either wins the pot or loses all that he has put in. So my prior cautions to those who have queried me about Xlibris have twice the force now, because I have more money riding on the outcome. Never take the word of one who stands to profit by what he recommends; that’s a conflict of interest, and you need to check it out elsewhere. I didn’t do this for money, and have never been in it for the money. I’m in it because I want there to be a viable alternative to Parnassus, and this seems to be the most promising avenue. I resolved before I ever had money that if I ever did have it, I would try to use it for beneficial purpose, and that is what I am doing now. I do recommend Xlibris to hopeful writers, and to those who want to put their old novels back into print, but my judgment is inevitably compromised by my financial interest. But I will say this: a writer who is published conventionally can see his work out of print within a year, so could be about as well off at Xlibris even if it does fold in that time.

Meanwhile, my life continues in its petty pace from day to day. I was riding on the AweCycle – that’s my recumbent bicycle, named after the store I bought it at, Awesome Cycles – when suddenly I was veering off the edge of the drive toward a tree. I tried to steer, and was about to get by the tree, when I went down: the wheels had skidded on the leaves. I strained my left knee, but was otherwise okay; the thing about the recumbent cycle is that when there’s a crash, you crash feet first. I always wear a helmet, but have never hit my head, just other parts of my body. It seems to me that such crashes are supposed to be for folk fifty years my junior – I am now 64 – but I suppose there were some spills left over, so they came my way. My other cycle, the RowBike, broke a part, and it took me two months to get the current address of the proprietor, which I had stupidly mislaid. Then I called to ask for the cost of a replacement – and they sent it free, because it’s on a lifetime warranty. That pleased me, so I gave them a good testimonial. It’s a rugged bike, and I alternate its use with the AweCycle and with jogging. All part of my exercise routine, which also includes dumbbells and archery. It’s been months since I’ve had to search for a lost arrow, partly because my aim has improved, and party because I now have supplementary targets buttressing the main one, so that the occasional misses don’t get far. I enjoy it.

Glass sculptor Eric Torgerson sent me a lovely bare winged fairy last year. I teased him about making something ugly, like a harpy. So this year he sent me an ugly glass harpy. She’s pot-bellied, with drumstick legs, sagging breasts and drooping tail. She’s perverse, too; I hung her by her thread from the shelf on my desk, beside my fairy and mermaid and Penny coin, but she wouldn’t face me. Half an hour of adjustments did not alleviate her perversity: no matter how I adjusted the string, she faced away. I finally figured it out: her thread is flat on one side, so that it always comes to rest with that side against the shelf. The same is true for the threads of the other figures, but they do not resolutely face away, so I hadn’t noticed before. So there is a mundane explanation. I think.

Last time I mentioned that Pulpless.com had the low ground on courtesy to querents. Pulpless protests that it has tried its best to be courteous to all. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Last time I also mentioned my curiosity about the location of Entwood Forest. Half a dozen informed readers enlightened me, one sending a map, another sending a detailed history of the treelike ents. It seems that their leader was named Fangorn, so their forest came to be called Fangorn instead of Entwood. Thanks, readers; you have resolved a perplexity. Another fan – I presume – is sending me First Day Covers; I have three of these valuable empty envelopes now, and am not sure what to do with them. I continue to ponder Linux as an operating system, and readers have been informing me on that, too, with information and addresses. So I have started a folder – a physical one – for my Linux clippings and info. In Apull I expect to start anonymously surfing the Internet, and I’ll be looking up Linux along with many other sites, getting my bearings. In Marsh I learned email, and can now receive and send it. So, step by step, I am coming into the twentieth century. I know – just in time for the 21st century. I look forward to the Y2K Bug taking out the IRS and at last bringing meaningful tax simplification.

Joe DiMaggio died. He was considered perhaps the best baseball player of all time, and seems to have been a nice guy. My interest in baseball is peripheral, but I am reminded of a joke involving him. It seems a man brought what he claimed was a talking dog to an agent and showed off his stuff. “What’s on top of this house?” The dog said “Rrrrrooff!” The agent was unimpressed. “What’s it like when you rub two pieces of sandpaper together?” “Rrrrufff!” The agent was disgusted. “Who’s the greatest baseball player who ever lived?” “Rrruth!” The agent had had enough. “Get out of here!” Outside, the dog turned to the man and asked “DiMaggio?”

Here’s a paragraph from a Jenny Letter: How about this Internet humor? Remember the Emoticons? And the Asscons? (_!_) Now JFCaroth@CEI.Net sent us a page of Breastcons. (o)(o) are perfect breasts. Then there’s (+)(+) fake silicon breasts. (*)(*) high nipple breasts. (@)(@) big nipple breasts. oo are A cups, and {O}{O} D cups. (oYo) Wonder Bra breasts. And so on: (^)(^) cold breasts, (o)(O) lopsided, (Q)(Q) pierced, \o/\o/ Grandma, |o||o| android. Then there are the specialty breasts: (p)(p) with hanging tassels, (:o)(o) bitten by a vampire, (/)(o) scratched, and (-)(-)flat against the shower door. Now that we’ve seen faces, asses, and breasts, I wonder what’s next?

I sometimes watch videos while writing. I set up a two and a half inch diagonal TV screen in the corner, and play my VCP – Video Cassette Player – while typing notes or text on my novel. It’s odd: I can listen to news or talk on the radio, or watch TV, while writing, but not while reading. Apparently the mental processes differ, so that I can have intake without interfering with outgo, but not two intakes together. When I see the kind of video junk I like on sale, I sometimes get it. You know, wild fantasy or science fiction with shapely young women whose clothing barely fits. But what arrives does not always match my expectation. I got one called Femalien and it turned out to be straight soft porn with no real alien involvement. Not that I object to soft porn, or to hard porn; just that when you’ve seen one of those, you’ve pretty much seen them all. So I was disappointed; it was a waste of a good title. So I didn’t expect much from Barb Wire – but that turned out to be much better, with a truly shapely woman, Pamela Anderson, and cliffhanger SF junk plot, exactly my kind of diversion. At the end it has ten minutes of Pamela dangling from a trapeze, busting out all over. What a body! I watched Cyberzone, which was more of my kind of junk, and Sirens, which turned out to be a quality movie. How did that get in there? So I brought it down for my wife to see sometime, only my daughter ran off with it. She traded me one she had gotten by mistake. She’s a vampire fan, and this one was Nightbreed, subtitled “They only came out at night.” But it wasn’t vampires, but straight soft porn, no story at all. Ah, well, the women are shapely. And I watched Flesh Gordon II, sequel to an infamous one. I loved it; it’s truly dirty humor in a science fiction mode. One example: they fly into space and encounter the Farting Assteroids, which look like human posteriors. The assteroids emit so much foul gas that our heroes in the spaceship are choking. So they aim their cannon and fire huge corks into the holes, plugging them up. Where else can you find naughty nonsense like this?

One reader sent an email to Com Passion, the lady computer in Xanth who is now taking up with Com Puter, and who likes solitaire. Pete Fowler sent a layout for the solitaire game Free Cell that is unwinnable. He says it’s so easy to make up unwinnable layouts that he wonders why the myth that all layouts are winnable. Well, the theory is from Microsoft; maybe this layout should be sent there. They think all their software is user-friendly too. We also get spam. I think that if every email sent were charged, even a very small amount, spam would greatly decrease; it’s the free delivery that encourages it. This one said THIS MAY BE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT LETTER YOU’LL RECEIVE THIS YEAR!! Hardly; it’s a pyramid scheme, dependent on ever greater numbers of fools sending in money. It says to send a dollar to each of the seven names on the list, then remove the top name and add yours to the bottom, and wait for thousands of dollars to come in from those who follow. Apart from the ones who will simply cheat, sending no money but keeping their names on the list to receive it, as was the case with the one we received, there is the fact that you can’t constantly multiply by seven very long before running out of new names. Pyramid schemes depend on people not knowing elementary math. They are also illegal. And how does anyone send dollar bills by email, anyway? So I hope my readers have sense enough to throw away solicitations like this. If you want to waste your money, waste it by buying my books.

Stray other notes: an email titled Happy99.exe arrived at HiPiers. I deleted it without opening. Now I’m curious what it would have done to my system, but can’t find the notice I saw. The bad recent one is Melissa. Our email stopped coming in for a day, and we suspect it was because the Melissa virus was clogging up the Internet. Meanwhile the DOW aspect of the stock market crested just above 10,000, and sank again. Kosovo was bombed, and the experts were confounded when the Serbs didn’t quit, but instead intensified their genocidal efforts. What experts don’t know about human nature would fill more volumes that what they know. Here in Florida, teens got their kicks by dropping rocks on the cars passing under an overpass along I-75, and succeeded in killing a woman. Lovely. As my novels go out of print, their prices on the scalper’s market rises; a reader reported being offered a copy of Macroscope for $107. Well, we have to get by Income Tax season; then we can tackle the balky scanner again and start scanning novels into the computer. Macroscope is one we’ll try to get to this year, for Internet republication. So I hope my readers don’t let themselves be scalped. Also, readers should be advised that HiPiers will not forward chain letters of any kind. Finally, I have an ongoing process of running down songs I once heard. Readers helped me locate “The Girl In the Wood” years ago. Now something reminded me of another. In 1953 I was hitchhiking from Philadelphia to Vermont, and one of the cars I rode in had the radio on, and I heard a song. It wasn’t special, but I remembered the refrain: “I’m glad I kissed those other lips, before I kissed your own; If I had not kissed those other lips, I never would have known.” Years later I heard it again: Eddie Fisher sang it on TV. So I figure it’s an Eddie Fisher song, and I collected all his songs I could find, but that one was never among them. I subscribed to the TIME/LIFE series of CD discs, Your Hit Parade, and the 31st disc just arrived: not there either. That’s what reminded me. So is there by chance a reader out there who dates from the 1950’s and recognizes that song? I’d love to identify it. However, I did get a response to my question about why the Phoebe flycatcher wags its tail: it could be to make predators think it was heading in that direction, when actually it flies the opposite way. I’m not sure I buy that, because other flycatchers seem to survive well enough without such devices; seems more likely to me that it has developed a way to clearly distinguish it from other very similar species. I can’t tell one flycatcher from another by sight, but I know the phoebe instantly. I’ll bet birds can tell similarly. But this is only my conjecture; my appreciation of birds exceeds my knowledge about them.

Thus my dull and ordinary life continues. Readers can have exaggerated notions about the lifestyles of successful writers. It is true that some go to Ireland for the atmosphere and tax benefits, but I like it in backwoods America. Remember, I came from Great Britain. One person once reported in print that I lived in a very posh closed-access private community with its own golf course. A collaborator who knew me sent in a correction, and the magazine refused to run it, showing that the error was not entirely accidental. The fact is, I reside on a tree farm replete with sink holes. I like trees, and the sink holes can be interesting. I never played golf, but I think this terrain would be hellish for it. But mainly I live in my novels, whose realms draw me in. I love it there.

I wrote this column at the end of Marsh. Apull Fool’s Day I edited it – and everything landed in the mail. Eric Torgerson sent me another package, including glass sculptures of two winged bare fairies kissing, and two copies of Jenny Elf. I had teased him about doing Jenny – I think I’m going to have to stop teasing that man! The second Jenny is for me to send on to the real Jenny, which I shall do forthwith. She’s kneeling rather than suspended, shapely bare, with the pointed ears; there’s not enough detail on her hands to see whether she has four fingers. So now mine is kneeling under my computer monitor, while the fairies kiss suspended below it. In the same mail came a box from Pulpless.com: trade paperback copies of their first 18 titles, eight of them autographed by the authors, some with friendly messages. No, I don’t think they do this for everyone; I’m a significant investor. Pulpless’ emblem is a fir tree with a Æ symbol across it: since the novels can be downloaded, no trees need be sacrificed for their publication. I like that. If commercial messages are accepted as part of the package, they will be free. I believe this is now scheduled for Mayhem. So those who like my writing, but don’t like paying for it, should be able to get it free, as well as the works of other writers. I read the first ten pages of one, more or less randomly, and found it well written and interesting. This is Wall Street Blues by Jerome Tuccille, republished from a decade ago, subtitled “A Novel of Corruption and Office Sex.” I had just reached the part where a shapely 25 year old secretary named Monica (sic) approached her 45 year old boss to confess that’s she’s been dreaming of him sexually, X-rated dreams, when I came to the end of my allotted 10 pages and had to stop so as to return to the editing of this column. Sorry about that. You don’t believe me? Go to www.pulpless.com and get your own copy. However, checking farther, I discovered a horrendous typo in the book, so there are evidently bugs remaining to be worked out. My own Realty Check has errors too, that occurred after my proofreading. Overall, these books have nice covers, and they all look interesting; I wish I could read every one, but I’m a slow reader and my time is limited. But others who have more reading time than I do should find Pulpless.com worth tracking.

I conclude with assorted spot notes: reader reactions are coming in on my collaboration with Julie Brady, Dream a Little Dream, and they continue to be quite favorable. As a straight fantasy novel I think Dream is standard, but apparently it has two things going for it: the lucid dream aspect, which fascinates many folk, and the depressive aspect, to which many others relate. So there is a sharp dichotomy between the one pro review we have seen, which trashed it, and real readers, which have so far been unanimous in praising it. Surely as time passes this will level out, but it does serve as an example of the problem of reviewing: it is a good and necessary service that is too much in the hands of the Philistines who don’t relate well to real readers. Now, closer to home: we live in the forest, and we like it that way, though our house is clothed in mud and paper wasp nests and our yard has gopher tortoise burrows, and our swimming pool is now the home of frogs and tadpoles. We moved into nature because we like nature. But sometimes it gets too close, as when a lovely coral snake came into the pool enclosure, or when big spiders get trapped in the kitchen sink, or lizards explore the house. We usher them safely back outside. This time a pair of wrens decided my targets for archery would make a good nesting site. We like wrens; they are bold little birds, and we keep two birdbaths filled for them and others. But I use those targets twice a week, and I don’t think that would be good for birds or eggs. So I stored the targets inside the house. So then they were going to set up housekeeping on my recumbent bicycle. I had covered the panniers with a cloth to prevent this, as I use that cycle on a near-daily basis, but now they were setting up on top of that cloth. So I moved off their early nest makings and tightened the cloth and parked the cycle away from the wall, and that seems to have done it. We moved a bird house to the front portico, but wrens are choosy, and seem to prefer to make their own. We hate seeming to be mean to them, but do need them to nest somewhere else. Meanwhile, I checked with my dentist about some discomfort in my jaw: sure enough, another tooth has developed an infection below the root canal guttapercha, and I will need more dental surgery. I could have financed my higher education with the money that has gone into my mouth. I got sixteen onlays a quarter century ago, but it seems saliva works its way in under them, taking out the nerves, so then I need root canal work and replaced onlays or crowns, but this is below all that, so they have to get at it through the gum below the tooth. This is not cheap or fun. The irony is that I take good care of my mouth; the hygienist often comments how clean it is. The damage proceeds anyway. So what advice to I have for others, to avoid such mischief? Don’t get old. Thus our lives, as Daylight Saving Time comes: each day is its own little adventure.

This time I have a number of complicated subjects to present my simplistic take on. So, somewhat randomly, I’ll start in, mixing the significant with the inconsequential, and see how it goes. Last night my wife had three pictures to send to a friend, so she got online and started the process, and it was molasses in Antarctica, tediously slow. We have a 450 Mhz system with a 56K modem, but it took two and three quarter hours to transmit, and she had to baby-sit the system the whole time. Then, at the end, came a message: it was too large a file so couldn’t be sent. She had just wasted all that online time for nothing. Here is my question: why doesn’t the program give that warning before such a transmission is made, instead of after? Is this ignorance or malice? Whoever programmed it that way needs to be fired and the company sued for restitution. I picture a chamber in Hell for the proprietors of such programs, where their feet are toasted in a steel kiln for three hours before a devil arrives with a message: WRONG CHAMBER – REPORT TO NEXT CELL FOR COMMENCEMENT OF PUNISHMENT. Which punishment will be similar.

We have the Xanth Family Trees chart on, but it seems that HTML doesn’t translate it perfectly, so that some names are misaligned. We’re trying to get that fixed. Meanwhile, this time we’re putting on the Xanth Timeline, or the History of Xanth. That was started by a serious reader whose pseudonym is E Timber Bram – not a pun as far as I know – and I have continued and updated it since, so that it has become almost 400 lines listing deliveries, significant events, and general information such as the list of temporary kings during the NextWave invasion, and the chain of Ida’s Moons as far as is presently known. The Zombie Master found a moon that is off the list; zombies prefer privacy, because living folk can have a peculiar attitude about them. You are not authorized to know future events, so don’t look at the last few lines. Those who use Xanth as a game background should find this listing useful. Those who have additions or corrections to recommend should stifle them let me know.

I reported last time on the Internet publishers I’m invested in. I have an update: Xlibris.com has obtained additional funding and is now in the process of expanding its operation and moving to larger facilities in Philadelphia. My wife and I now have the largest block of stock, and I am a member of the board of directors, but both the operation and the direction of the company will be handled by others with similarly significant stakes. Service to those who publish there and those who buy the books should be significantly improved as new employees are trained. I expect the profile of Xlibris to rise, and it may become an entity to be reckoned with in the publishing arena. Meanwhile we had a visit from Neil Schulman, the proprietor of Pulpless.com, and writer Brad Linaweaver, and added to our investment there too. For those who haven’t been tracking this matter, I’ll clarify that Xlibris is a facility for self publishing physical hardcovers or trade paperbacks for a fee, so that the authors rather than editors choose the books, and quality is likely to be mixed; the point is not great literature, but to enable every writer to present his/her dream so the reading public can judge. Pulpless is a commercial publisher with commercial standards, so there are no fees and only material of a certain level is accepted. It is also experimenting with advertising, hoping to make its books available as free files for downloading. So if you have a book you want to publish, go to Xlibris; if you want to read one free, go to Pulpless. That’s an oversimplification, but you can go to their web sites to get the full stories if you are interested.

I have two daughters who average age 30. Penny just moved to Oregon with goats, geese, husband, furniture and whatnot, so our contact is now mostly by phone, snail, or email. Cheryl lived elsewhere for 8 years, but then returned to Citrus County. I think they take turns supervising the old folk: us. Cheryl is the family movie/video freak, so now we are exposed to more of that. We went with her to see Phantom Menace, the Star Wars prequel. Let me tell you about our history in that respect: back in 1977 when our daughters were ages 9 and 7 they wanted to go see a movie, so we made a deal with them: we’d go see their movie if they would also come see a movie we chose, and we’d see who could pick them better. Naturally they agreed, knowing that old folk are incapable of judging movies. Theirs was Disney’s cartoon feature The Rescuers, and it was fun. Ours was Star Wars, which I had learned about via the excellent radio program ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Maybe only once in a lifetime do the old folks ever win a contest like that, and that was ours. Of course that was 22 years ago and thereafter we sank hopelessly back into old fogydom, but we do remember that high mark. So how was the current movie? I found it to be two hours of violence in a two and a quarter hour show. It had no sex, nudity, or even romance, and the story line was almost hidden by the effects. But it’s my kind of junk. I love space ships, robots, combat with colored light beams, and alien monsters. So I enjoyed it despite the deafening sound and the difficulty tracking who was good and who was bad. But there remain nagging questions: how can a light beam fend off another light beam as if it’s a physical sword? Surely the two should pass through each other, so that fencing is impossible. And when an army of robots is powered from an orbiting space station, and each robot head is a seemingly empty tube, why is a robot commander necessary, speaking in a human voice? Surely the orders would come directly from the space station. Why do they have to hold pistols, instead of having their weapons built in? Why do they have to look like metal human beings, instead of deadly fighting machines? There was, however, another type of robot that did it right: it rolled rapidly to the scene as a ball, then unfolded and started blasting away. So I regard much of this show as nonsense. But, accepting it as science fantasy (they should call it sci-fa rather than sci-fi), it’s fun. I liked the way the enemy agent was no coward; when two Jedi came after him with their light swords, he used a light staff to fend them both off, killing one before going down himself. The special effects were very good. I look forward to the next, which I think will contain the romantic segment of the larger story.

I finally got on the Internet. I started by going to this HiPiers site and using its links to visit other sites. Next I tried typing web site designations in directly. Finally I tried a search engine. I was surprised by the ease with which all systems worked. It’s simple to cruise the Net. The net and sites remind me of a huge bazaar with stalls all along, each with its little display, and some are whole stores with departments and connections to elsewhere. It’s fun to window shop, but after a while it palls. I mean, once you have explored a typical spot site, you’ve seen it all, and it’s time to move on to the next. Others are so big you could wander in them forever – but what’s the point? But for what it’s worth, some impressions: PATH, or the Piers Anthony Thread Homepage, has a lot of stuff, and links to more. I tended to get confused between what was a subsection and what was a link, so wasn’t sure whether the Fox Den (with a picture of a fox) or Raven’s Xanth Homepage were part of the Xanth Xone or something else. Magician Humfrey’s Castle had many links, some of which led nowhere; that, too gets confusing. Mela Merwoman’s Homepage had a picture that looked male (I was hoping for bare breasts), and many mundane links. Collaborator Julie Brady’s site was full of Friesian horses. Geocities sites were a labyrinth. I’ll probably be exploring more, in my dull leisurely fashion. For now I’ll say that some of those sites, like the PATH, seem to have much to offer the Xanth fan, though I was too clumsy to find any of the interviews it mentioned. However, I happen to know that there’s one coming up, because I answered the questions last week.

Let’s tackle a peripheral matter: the Internet is perhaps the world’s greatest-ever common forum, where opinions of any kind can be displayed, and I think that’s good. I believe in free expression, though I am cautious about the crying “FIRE!” in a crowded theater kind, and about deliberate lying. (But that’s not necessarily an easy exception. I read once of a young man who got up before the screen in a movie theater and announced that they were now required to have fire drills, and this was one, so please locate the nearest exits and file out quickly. The audience went along with it, and soon was outside. Well, the man had lied: there was no fire drill. There was a real fire, and he had probably saved lives by getting them out without panic. So was his lie justified?) I’m glad to know that there are many folk on the Internet who like my books, but I believe the complete range of opinion should be covered. So this is to let you know that there are at least a couple of anti-Anthony sites out there, and you should check them too. One is BOOK-A-MINUTE SF/F – THE XANTH SERIES, ultra-condensed by Samuel Stoddard and David J Parker, at http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/anthony.xanth.shtml. (Those last five letters confuse me. I can guess what sh-t stands for, but what about ml? Maybe that’s the count: one million.) It says the Xanth novels formula is a teenaged main character, gratuitous love interest, a sidekick with a body composed of parts from twenty-nine distinct species, a boring old adult, summarized thus: Teenager Main Character and friends go OUT and have a QUEST. Then they COME BACK. Okay; if I tried, I suspect I could think of some Xanth novels that don’t match perfectly, like A Spell for Chameleon, or Night Mare, or Xone of Contention, but overall this is a fair summary. Now how about all the other juvenile genre novels ever written by anyone? They follow a different formula? How about the adult formula of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl? Should all those novels be similarly ridiculed? What is it that makes only Xanth novels ridiculable?

Let’s try another. It is SCOTT’S PAGE OF EVIL, at http://rampages.onramp.net/~scottgl/piers.htm. Apparently Scott just likes to sound off in a way that attracts notoriety. He has on a parallel track provocative comment on religion with which I agree. He calls me the High Lord of Hack Writers, and says that science fiction and fantasy are plagued by eternal sequels and endless mindless series, and that mine are “unmitigated smegma from book one, page one.” He says he read my crap when he was a teen, but hasn’t read anything of mine in sex years. He says a defining feature of my work is the repetition of the word “demesnes,” and that all other words found in my novels adhere to a strict third grade reading level. Hm – I wonder whether he ever looked at my adult novels like Firefly, Tatham Mound, any of the GEODYSSEY series, Volk, the non-novel Letters To Jenny, Tarot, Macroscope, or even the juvenile Balook? If so, he may have a basis for his opinion. I am more than a little tired of ignoramuses who choose to read only my frivolous fantasy, then condemn me for supposedly doing nothing else. That’s a critic’s formula I have seen many times, and they don’t just buzz about Anthony; they seem to resent any success anywhere by anyone–but does this vitriol have any value? I can give the formula for criticizing any trilogy: the first volume is indifferent, the sequel does not achieve that standard of the first, and readers will be sadly disappointed in the third. Who needs to read the books? So visit Scott’s site, and judge whether he is a pretender to the throne of Lord High Hack Critic.

There is, however, a difference between the ignoramus and the thoughtful reader. I take the latter more seriously, though sometimes this, too, can be wrongheaded. I received a long email critique of my work in general and Volk in particular from “Michael” at john@parhelion.freeserve.co.uk. I have his permission to run his email address, with the caution that he does not wish to be deluged with thoughtless reactions, but will welcome considered ones. I understand the sentiment. Michael did not read the novel; he read only the Prolog. He found that so bad that he did not care to continue. Because he is a fan of my work, this bothered him, and so he tried to tell me what is wrong, in the hope that I will heed and improve my writing in future. Now let me say immediately that I have encountered folk who consider any criticism of their work to be a personal attack requiring vengeance, and I resolved long ago not to be one of those. It is not the criticism I object to, but the ignorance or malice so often shown elsewhere, such as with Scott, above. Michael is neither ignorant nor malicious; he’s trying to do me a favor. Unfortunately, I find myself unable to appreciate it, and hope this discussion will show why. The essence of Michael’s critique is that I have an inability to render actual scenes actual when those scenes emerge from a second-hand source. That is, if I don’t invent them, and haven’t experienced them myself, but have to derive them from research, I foul up. So I have no problem in straight fantasy, or in autobiography, but do in historical fiction. Since the prolog of Volk, (which I believe you can read by checking Pulpless.com without having to buy the novel) (oops – I checked there, to make sure, and Volk is no longer there, maybe because it is to be reissued in a corrected edition in SapTimber; sorry about that; you’ll just have to wait for the free edition) is just such a sequence, it is a perfect example of his case. He feels that I messed it up because I wasn’t there in that Spanish Civil War scene and so wasn’t able to recreate it effectively.

Okay. Because Michael did not read to the end of the novel, he missed the Author’s Note, where I tell the personal basis for the novel. I was there – not in the specific site of the described bombing, but in Spain, though I was then a child of five. My parents were doing relief work there, as described in the novel, and while the fighting of the Spanish Civil War was in progress they left my sister and me in England, for safety. Once the war was done, in 1939, we rejoined our parents, and spent about a year in Spain, and began to learn Spanish. Spain was to be our permanent home, as my parents really liked it there. Then my father was arrested without cause, I believe at the time Adolf Hitler of Germany was visiting, and “disappeared.” The government denied it, until he smuggled out a note, and my mother was able to get him released because otherwise some strings could have been pulled to stop some significant foreign aid for the country. Dictatorships don’t admit mistakes, so he was required to leave Spain. That is why I came to America, directly, in 1940, and indirectly why I was to become a writer and why I have an abiding hatred of dictatorships. Spain had a key effect on my life and attitude. So I returned to it in the form of this novel. I was indeed there, in body and spirit. I did not have to have bombs falling on my head to be profoundly affected by that war.

Michael’s critique is, I think longer than the Prolog it addresses. He goes through it sentence by sentence, specifically commenting, and then rewrites it to be the way he feels it should have been. He feels I dallied too long in introspection and explanations, so his revision starts with the actual bombing. It is true that much of that Prolog is quiet, as thoughts are explored. It is true that much of this novel is not like my fast-moving fantasy. That is deliberate on my part; this is a historical novel, not an action-adventure piece. I refuse to limit myself to one type of fiction, and indeed, regard myself has having as broad a range as any writer does. So my comment to Michael was that he was blaming an apple for not being an orange. But I also feel that he was not doing the kind of objective comment he thought he was, and had drifted into the trap of the critic’s love of his own opinions, without regard to their merit. I shall give a single example of this here; others are welcome to check directly with Michael and request his full critique if they wish. About a thousand words into the prolog I have this sentence: “What was that?” Just three words, as a woman sees an airplane she doesn’t recognize. Here is Michael’s comment on that sentence: “Again, the naïve very basic tone of this reveals more ludicrous, mawkish signaling. You have caned the thing to death several times over by this stage. As though the sort of reader who the writer is trying to communicate with is some kind of semi-blind imbecile, who can only be distracted by the most obvious of gestures.”

Onward. I mentioned the virus “Happy99” last time. Since then I have learned more about it. It seems it’s not a virus, it’s a worm, and while it puts a seemingly innocuous fireworks show on the screen, it is also infecting your system to send itself out when you communicate with others, and makes a trap door that will allow someone else to access your files without your knowledge. As I told a young woman who was trying to reassure me that Happy99 is harmless, this is like getting the rape-date drug in your free lemonade: you may never know what you really pay.

Daughter #2 Cheryl gave me the DEER AVENGER computer game. This is a parody of the DEER HUNTER game, and it’s my type. You are a deer, and you are out to bag hunters. You can use a slingshot, a rifle, or a bazooka, and you can use special calls, such as “Help! I’m naked and I have a pizza!” or, if the hunter stubbornly hides, you can make a deer fart to smoke him out. I love it when the deer shoot back.

I have a T-shirt from the 26 member Internet group, the Xanth Email Listserve. I have not tried to get involved in lists or chat rooms, so don’t know what goes on there, but appreciate their interest.

On occasion I look at hopeful-writer material. I try to discourage this, because I seldom have good news, and I don’t get my jollies from dashing fond hopes. But sometimes I do. I read the novel by “Margaret,” which was tough detective fiction. Now this is out of my genre, so my opinion is not expert, but it seemed to me to be a good story and a publishable novel. So I had her contact my literary agent, and a reader there liked the novel. But my agent is in Los Angeles, and they thought it would be better to get New York representation, so they checked with several New York agents. The first reader of the first one like the novel, but the boss was out of town, and somehow it never proceeded from there. To condense this history, in the course of about eight months Margaret was unable to get representation for her novel. This is part of what I feel is wrong with Parnassus: most publishers won’t even read unagented material, and it seems most agents won’t consider material by a writer who is not already known. It’s a catch-22 situation. This is one reason I support Internet publishing; I believe that the whole system needs to be opened up to give the little piggies a chance instead of letting only the old fat hogs have all the swill. I didn’t like the system when I was a little pig, and I still don’t like it now that I’m an aging hog. So I introduced her to Internet publishing, and she plans to use it. Meanwhile, in a separate dialogue with an agent (I’m sorry that column never developed, but I do such things only with the consent of the other parties, and perhaps the agent reconsidered) I mentioned Margaret’s case as an example of what’s wrong, and the agent said that he had never been asked. So I put Margaret in touch, and the agent looked at her novel – and rejected it. I haven’t seen his comment; as I said, this is out-of-genre so I can’t be sure how good it is, just that it seemed good to me and others who read it. So the case remains persuasive: it can be hard for a newcomer to break into print, or even to find out what’s wrong, if anything is wrong. Oh, sure, some do, but it seems to be like lightning striking or winning the lottery: the odds are much against it. My own history, taking eight years of trying to make my first sale, is perhaps an example. For me, much of that was simply getting good enough, but another part was the closed-shop nature of publishing. Coincidentally, while I was writing this column, I received a request from John Tannock that I look at his novel The Divine Suicide. So I went to his publisher’s site, which is Awe-Struck E-Books, run by Kathryn D. Struck. No, I’m not making this up; I think this is one clever name and a nice site. It allows potential readers to download significant segments of the books being offered, so as to get a good idea of their nature before purchasing. I downloaded a hundred pages of The Divine Suicide. I won’t comment specifically on this title here, except to say that if this is typical of the level published by Awe-Struck, it certainly augments my case about good material failing to find regular publishing. Readers should visit this site; they may find books to their liking. And I suppose I should start checking other Internet publishers, and setting up a list of links to them, so that writers in search of publication will know where to look. I’ll try to do something about that next time. The fact that I have invested in two Internet publishers does not mean I wish others any ill; in fact I wish them all well, because there’s great need. For now, here are the addresses: http://www.awe-struck.net, email kathrynd@mwci.net.

An increasing amount of my mail is now email. Most of it consists of expressions of pleasure about my novels, or spot questions, or request for information, such as what’s the complete list of Xanth novels, and HiPiers takes care of that, though I do read all of it. Some warrants my individual comment, and I still do a good many full letters, about a hundred a month. Sometimes I actually say something. So here is the text of a letter I sent to a thoughtful girl; you can judge her points by my topics responding to them. I leave her anonymous to protect her from the kind of attention young women can attract. The letter is set off by asterisks.

*

You’re a brown haired girl! I met one of those once, so I married her, and next month we’ll have our 43rd anniversary. Behold the power of brown hair. But I guess you already knew that.

That Littleton Colorado school massacre has many folk thinking. Congress even passed a tougher gun-control law. It didn’t want to, but the day of the vote there was another gun incident in Georgia, and that did it. I have some trouble making up my mind about gun control, as I do about other significant issues. I’d rather keep the guns out of the hands of the criminals and crazies, but the Constitution does protect the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. It is also true that if every person were armed, it would be harder for anyone to kill many others, because soon someone would shoot back. But if everyone had a gun, there would be more accidental shootings. So it’s hard to know the best course.

I understand your problem with death. The shock of it can be horrendous. A girl your age died of illness, and you surely thought “There but for the grace of God go I.” It shook you up. The reason I know is because when I was 16, my closest cousin, who was 15 and attended the same boarding school I did, died of cancer. He was bright, happy, social, in a well-to-do family and had much to live for, while I was a poor and troubled kid with grade problems and no family to speak of – my parents were divorcing. It seemed that if one of us had to go, it should have been me. It took me a long time to work things out in my mind, and I have been concerned with death ever since. On a Pale Horse features Death as the main character. I also became a vegetarian, because I didn’t want to support death in any way I could avoid, and that applies to animals too. So my life did change significantly, because of that death. Perhaps yours will too, because it is evident that you, too, think about things a lot, trying to make sense of what may seem senseless, trying to come to terms with a universe that has some real problems and real ugliness along with its grandeurs. I, too, think of myself as a liberal, and I try to be tolerant of the ways and beliefs of others, but there are limits – if only I could be sure exactly where they are. I don’t have a problem with those who are gay; they have a right to their own lifestyle, though it isn’t mine. But what about those who, in the name of their religion, kill others who don’t conform? I was raised as a Quaker, and a major tenet of that faith is pacifism – but what about what’s happening in Kosovo? Do we just watch from a distance, being pacifistic, while troops drive people wholesale from their homes, kill the men, rape the women, and maybe enslave the children? How do we stop such savagery – without going to war? This is one reason I elected not to become a Quaker myself, perhaps the lone dissident in my family: I see the limits of pacifism. I don’t have a good answer.

Why does the Xanth Adult Conspiracy mirror that of Mundania? Because the one is a direct parody of the other. If it looks foolish in Xanth, surely it is just as foolish in the real world. If a girl takes a walk in the park, and a man grabs her, bashes in her head, and leaves her for dead – that’s all right to write about in gruesome detail. But if the same girl goes to the same park for a rendezvous with her boyfriend, and they have consensual sex, that’s not all right to write about in any detail. I think that’s backwards. I am reminded of the comment made about Puritanism: the nagging suspicion that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. So it’s all right to have a bad time, but not a good time? The Adult Conspiracy seems to believe so.

BUT – as is discussed in The Color of Her Panties, a Xanth novel that some stores don’t like to carry because they object to the title in some way they won’t quite specify, there are some sound reasons to withhold some information and experience from children until they are old enough to handle it. You comment on this, pointing out how the young don’t have the emotional and intellectual capabilities to deal with some serious adult things. I think of a parallel with language: you mention a bad Latin test score. I had trouble with Latin too; it took me three years to pass two years of it, barely. Yet at age 5 I was learning to speak Spanish, when I lived in Spain. Why was a foreign language so hard for me at 15 when it was easy at 5? Because the younger mind, before it gets set, can more readily assimilate a new language. There is an age for language, and its best to learn it then, because it is much harder later on. You will note how those who learn English as adults always have strong accents. Okay: I think that similarly there are things that should not be learned too young, because they can distort the process of growing up. Like too intimate an acquaintance with the reality of death.

Thinkingitis – it lasts a lifetime, as this letter shows. Welcome to the club. It can be a lonely one at times. (Maybe it’s the brown hair.)

*

That was her coinage: thinkingtis. Thinking too much can interfere with normal human relations, since so many people seem to be on dull autopilot. Letters can be a good place for its expression. Let me do another. The background is that in FeBlueberry we ordered our 450MHz computer system, with scanner, modem, and other connections. Everything worked but the scanner. Nothing we did would make the computer recognize it. We sent for new software, and Umax sent it. Finally we paid a consultant to check the system, and he said it was probably a bad card – that is, the electronic printed circuit board that looks like a complicated city block. So we sent the card back to Umax, and it sent a replacement. No luck. So we took it into a repair shop, and after two days they figured it out: a conflict between the modem and the scanner. They replaced the modem card and finally it worked. So why is it you can buy a complete system whose parts choose not to recognize each other? Our experience is hardly unique.

At this point I had an open letter to Sony Electronics, about a rebate offer that had gone four months without fulfillment, so I figured I’d been stiffed and would have to boycott the company hereafter. But there was a day’s delay in sending the column to our HTML translator, and in that day the rebate finally came. So I had to delete the letter; I was not stiffed, and Sony will remain the company whose TVs and monitors I prefer. Which leads into another letter, where I am on the other side of it: a reader’s email says he will no longer purchase my books, because he read to the end of Virtual Mode and it had no ending. He concludes: “Page 303 of Virtual Mode…imagine you are a reader and ask yourself if you will readily patronize an author who has betrayed you like this. Piers, you suck.” Yes, he signs his name, and I understand his concern. The Mode series was conceived as a series from the first, and I thought readers would appreciate having a hint what the following novels would be like. Evidently this reader thought it was a ploy to snag readers who would not otherwise be interested in my works. I am sorry he took it that way, and sorry to lose him as a reader, but he did have the grace to let me know why. I respect that. I believe this is the way to register a protest to what one feels is unconscionable, exactly as I was doing with Sony. If this reader happened to read the Author’s Note in that volume he would have seen that I expressed the same sentiment there, both sides.

Two readers provided information on the song I mentioned last time, whose words were “I’m glad I kissed those other lips…” One said the song is “When I was Young.” No, it can’t be, because that is a 1967 song, and I heard it in 1953. The other gave me a long address to check, more than 100 characters, and I thought I’d better not try to type all that because I’d be sure to make an obscure error and get nowhere, so I looked for his email letter, to copy it from there – and it came in the time the system was in the shop for the scanner repair, and was received on a different system. Sigh. Eventually I’ll take courage in hand and try it. Others have recommended other sites for things, and I have tried to look them up, but without much success; maybe I mis-keyed, or maybe they don’t actually exist. The Internet is not necessarily kind to duffers. Sigh.

I was going crazy, waiting for the scanner to get functional, so finally I wrote two chapters of Xanth #25, Swell Foop, though I won’t get serious on that until fall. At about that time I also received the galleys for #23, Xone of Contention, so got refreshed on that. Now a Xanth novel is a Xanth novel, and they have similar elements by no coincidence, and it’s hard to choose between them, but this one struck me as one of the stronger ones, perhaps stronger than Zombie Lover, which I also feel is a good one. I get my best judgment on a novel when it has lain fallow a while, and then I read it with a fresher mind. I’m tempted to recommend Xone to Scott Evil as an example demonstrating that even a current Xanth novel does not match his accusations, but of course he’s not reading anything of mine; he’s secure in his set opinion, in the manner of any zealot. But the rest of you can look forward to it, and see whether you concur. Ignore the blurb material on the cover; it describes the novel I perhaps should have written, but didn’t. Coincidentally, I also read Volk, for the corrected Pulpless edition, and that is certainly one of my more significant novels. And now that the scanner is (finally!) working, I’m proofreading the first Space Tyrant novel, Refugee, and that’s a downbeat powerhouse, one of my best. I wrote it the same time as On a Pale Horse, and they were published in the same month in 1983, and I regard the two as equivalent for all that they are quite different types. How could I write two novels together? That was when my study was in the horse pasture, and though Florida is paradise for those who don’t like cold weather, it does manage to get down to freezing on occasion in winter. My study had no electricity and no heating, and my hands got cold and stiff on the manual typewriter. So I sat next to our wood stove in the house and wrote the first draft of Refugee in pencil in two months. But half the winter remained, so then I wrote the first draft of On a Pale Horse in pencil in the next two months. Then it was spring, and I went to the study to type the second and third drafts of each novel. One odd thing: when I finished the draft of Refugee and went on to Pale Horse, the first novel disappeared from my awareness. Then when I returned to it two months later I was amazed by its power: how could I have lost it so completely? But of course Pale Horse has its own power. This review started me thinking: what are my favorite novels of my own? So I made up a list, subject to chronic change as I ponder and reponder: 1 Tatham Mound 2 Tarot 3 Macroscope 4 Hope of Earth 5 Volk 6 Refugee 7 On a Pale Horse 8 Split Infinity 9 Virtual Mode 10 Key to Havoc 11 Chthon 12 Cluster 13 Killobyte 14 Balook 15 Xone of Contention, and Firefly fits in there somewhere too. #10 is as yet unsold and unpublished, but will be published on the Internet in due course if regular publishers can’t handle fantasy this hard-hitting. I suspect few readers will agree with this listing, and that’s their privilege. I do the best I can on every piece I write, and even the least of my novels has aspects that move me. So what is the least novel? But What of Earth?, and no, I don’t consider it a poor novel, just one that because of the publisher’s constraints of time and wordage I was unable to make better. Then the publisher revised it into a truly mediocre thing, and I republished it restored, with my voluminous commentary on the editing it had received. I loved doing that! Those who wonder why writers object to heavy editing have but to look at that example. Anyway, the scene that moved me therein was when our hero, twice dumped by women he thought to marry, was coming to terms with one who believed she was unworthy to love him, but really wanted to. He wanted to be sure, so as not to get hurt a third time. Between his wariness and her guilt, it was a difficult dialogue, but they did come to terms and it was the right match-up. Critics trashed that scene, of course, which suggests that they, too, were moved by it, and couldn’t admit it. I believe I have said before that I regard many critics as a different and inferior breed, and I have indeed studied them. Trying to fathom a critic is a bit like dipping out a septic tank from below, but it’s best to do it when necessary.

So what else is new? I don’t pay a lot of attention to television, being always distracted by reading or writing – this is the nature of a writaholic – but do notice some things in passing. For example in that series THE PRETENDER, which I notice because I have a novel of the same title, where the lead opposition lady appears: I love to see her walking in her pouty little skirt. Which in return reminds me that I’ll be making a trip this Dismember to attend collaborator Julie Brady’s wedding ceremony. Remember, she’s the one with the Dream, but her mortal body could fit that skirt. Oh, yes, you may be sure I will make a full report, in due course. About the wedding, not the skirt. And I bought a boar spear. No, I’m not a hunter; it’s that feral pigs have overrun Florida, and they can be mean customers, as well as tearing up the landscape and ruining it for natural wildlife. We regard our tree farm as a wildlife sanctuary, and we have deer, rabbits, gopher tortoises galore, armadillos, piliated woodpeckers, indigo snakes, sand hill cranes and many other ordinary or rare creatures here. We want all those other creatures to feel welcome, and so we need to be rid of the pigs. Our neighbors on either side are pig hunters, and they are thinning the herd, but I still see the tracks on the pig paths, so know they aren’t yet gone. So when I go out alone I take the spear, and don’t have to worry about what I might encounter. It’s like my attitude toward critics: I’d rather not run afoul of one of those noxious beasts, but if I do, I am prepared to defend my territory.

My literary agent says a publisher is interested in DoOon Mode and is considering whether to make an offer. Stay tuned for further news, when.

I have just done the first draft of my article on Internet Publishing, which will be posted the same time as this column. It is my intent to provide useful discussion and information for writers, both novice and serious, and to update that article regularly to make it increasingly accurate and relevant. My spot survey of sites suggests that there are some very nice ones for hopeful writers to check out, including a number associated with the Romance genre, which overlaps science fiction and fantasy, and seems to have a far more, well, romantic approach that I admit charms me. Maybe next time I’ll report just how far my romance with Romance gets.
The rest of this column is a hodgepodge of irritations and personal bits, of no particular consequence. I generally have too much to say; I want to cut down, but so far haven’t found out how. As I write it this time, I have some physical discomfort, because I strained something in my lower back when exercising. I take physical fitness seriously, and I regularly jog, row, and work out with hand weights. I ran into trouble when leaning forward and moving my arms as if flying, with a ten pound dumbbell in each hand, twenty repetitions. I have done that exercise for years, but this time it got my back; I didn’t realize how much stress that can put on that section. I feel it mainly when leaning forward, such as when I need to pick something up or put on pants, or when getting up from the bed. It will pass, and I’ll be more careful in future, or pay the consequence.
Reader Tandy Dolin put me on to the Nerdity Test, at www.frontier.net/~jbennet/nerd/n500test.html, because I am mentioned in it. That’s some test; it has 500 questions. The one that relates to me is “Have you ever read anything by…” and lists Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Robert A Heinlein, Piers Anthony, J R R Tolkien, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan and others. Yes, I have read things by all of them, and I like the company. I didn’t try to answer all the questions, but a random sampling suggests that I am dangerously close to nerdity.
I received a form letter and a silver pin from SFWA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., saying “Dear Nebula Nominee,” and explaining that their Board of Directors has decided to honor all Nebula nominees throughout SFWA history by awarding them these pins. This would seem to be a nice gesture, but gives me mixed feelings. You see, my relationship with SFWA is distant and hostile, because thirty years ago when I was a member I had the temerity to write a query letter to the SFWA Contracts Committee to see what I could do about a publisher who was violating my contracts and cheating me. That letter was funneled directly to the publisher, when then blacklisted me for six years and spread the word to other publishers in an attempt to wash me out as a writer. It did indeed drastically reduce my market, and I lost at least one novel sale I would have had because the editor was afraid to do business with me. I don’t know what stories were being spread about me, but since I have always played straight with those I deal with, they must have been false. What did SFWA do about that? Its former president wrote me saying that I had acted hastily and rashly and maligned the finest publisher in the world, and would be hurt thereby. That gave me half a notion of the source of some of the mischief. Well, I pursued my case, got a lawyer, got some of the money owed me, and the blacklisting editors later got booted, and the new management at that publisher, knowing the truth, treated me far, far better. I later published the whole matter in my autobiography Bio of an Ogre, and I believe the truth is now generally known: I had the right of the case throughout, and not only was the publisher wrong, so was SFWA for supporting an outfit that I believe was similarly cheating many of its other members. Today, having learned my lesson, I no longer pussyfoot; I query an errant publisher at first politely, and if that does not bring results, I take legal action. I always make my case, having the will and the means to follow through. I don’t get blacklisted again because what idiot would try to blacklist Xanth? There has never been an apology from SFWA; in fact through the years its spokesmen have slandered me, accusing me of saying things I did not say or of writing letters I did not write. Anything to blacken my reputation, apparently, truth no object. So now this dubious organization sends me a silver pin, under the impression that a Nebula nomination is a special thing? All you need is another writer to trade favors with, and nominations are a dime a dozen. Winning is another matter; for that, if the system remains as it was in my day, you need the right connections and a pretty good piece of writing. Not necessarily the best writing, just good enough so as not to embarrass the award. The letter says I was nominated once; in fact all my early novels were nominated, until that blowout with the publisher; then I think I dropped off the nomination radar. My first novel, Chthon, came in third in its year of 1967, as I recall; my second, Omnivore, in 1968, was the leader in number of nominations until the officers changed it to the wrong year and washed it out. My major one, Macroscope, in 1969, was not allowed on the ballot, though what reads very like an apology appeared in that year’s Nebula Awards story collection; I think they knew they did wrong. This was not a campaign against me, just routine foul-ups BP: Before my Publisher run-in. Thereafter it was apparently another matter. The Nebula is supposed to be a merit award, but in fact it is more like a political one; I know that from experience. So what do I do with this pin? I’ll file it away, and return it if they ask for it back. They seem to be already well on the way to obliterating the record of my Nebula nominations, so maybe they can manage to abolish it entirely.
For eight years Daughter #2 Cheryl lived apart from us, in another city. She now lives across town from us, and she is the family movie/video freak, so we see more movies. We saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and you know, I almost fell asleep in the theater. Sure, when I was an English teacher I taught Shakespeare, but let’s face it, Shakespearean language is horribly dated and stilted and often opaque for today’s market, and I had trouble following the dialogue. I believe that movie bombed out, but had they had the wit to update the language it should have done better. Then Cheryl and I saw The Mummy, my wife staying home because that’s not her type of thing; obviously our daughter’s taste for weird yuck did not come from her mother’s side of the family. We liked it; it was much more than just gooey gore. I am partial to archaeological settings, however faked up, and there were some grand ancient Egyptian ruins and labyrinths. There was also the usual fighting adventurer, lovely girl, despicable bad guys, wildly improbable action, impossible magic – this is really my kind of junk. And there was a bonus: they say that the true ruler of the household is the one who has the TV remote control. It was about two decades before I even learned how to use the thing; wife and daughters governed it. Similarly with driving; I hardly ever get to do it. But this time I did. I taught both daughters to drive, way back when, and now Cheryl got to critique my driving. She said I was too slow on the straight-aways and too fast through the turns. Probably so; what do you expect from one who gets to drive about once in five years? So this time it was Daughter wincing at Dad’s driving, rather than the other way around. It doesn’t get much better than that. Cheryl recently had another adventure of a sort: two years ago a month old kitten showed up in the stable of her barn, so she adopted it and named it Barnstable. One year ago another month old kitten showed up, on her carport, so she named that one Carport. This time she was driving to work, and there at an intersection was another month old kitten. No, she didn’t name it Intersection, or the one I suggested, Roadkit. I believe she’s naming it Stagecoach, because the it was found on Stagecoach Road. My daughter the cat-woman.
My main current project is writing the sixth Space Tyrant novel. I moved though the five original novels in the series in six weeks, proofreading and correcting them as my wife scanned them into the system. Scanners may have advanced, but scanner translation software still doesn’t seem able to get things quite right, and one program started blowing out the moment it was invoked. So it was painstaking work for both of us, but the novels are now on disk. In the process I had a thorough review of their story, and was much impressed; it’s some of the best writing I have done. The series is a unified story, tracing the life of the Hispanic refugee Hope Hubris through a military career, and then politics, until he makes it to the top and becomes the Tyrant of Jupiter. Later deposed, he achieves further power of the Solar System itself, facilitating its expansion into galactic travel and colonization. Every aspect was as authentic as I could make it. But it was also the story of Hope’s sister Spirit, arguably the architect behind his career and power behind the throne. They call her two things: “The Dear,” after her associated song, whose key words are “I know who I love, but the dear knows who I’ll marry.” She loves her brother with an intensity verging on incest, but can’t marry him. And they call her “The Iron Maiden,” for her toughness. She is tough, but painfully human inside, as we come to see. I am now 35,000 words into The Iron Maiden, and will work on it the coming month, though at some point I’ll have to break off for the next Xanth novel on deadline.
I try also to read books that I haven’t written. A reader sent me Alexander Dolgun’s Story, about an American who was abducted in Moscow in 1948 and brutally interrogated by the paranoid Russians who wanted him to confess to spying. When he wouldn’t confess to what he hadn’t done, he got shipped to Siberia. It was 24 years before they let him go, and one dreadful and compelling adventure. It makes me disinclined to visit any foreign capital, lest I be unable to return. Then I read Stephen King’s Bag of Bones on the recommendation of Daughter #1 Penny, who said it featured a writer. It starts slow, but gradually gets there, and the middle and later sections get savage. It was published in paperback in the same month, JeJune, as my 3-way collaboration Quest for the Fallen Star; in bulk it looks much bigger, but it is actually a shorter novel than Questby about 30,000 words. It’s an irony that Bag starts with the death of the protagonist’s wife in the vicinity of a car accident, and then Stephen King himself got bashed by a car, and will be long recuperating. Critics claim that King is not a good writer, but the fact is that he is a good one. Not necessarily the best–and who can say objectively who is best?–but there are nice touches and nice characterization here, as the protagonist slowly runs down the mystery of what his wife was up to before she died, and slowly falls in love again, before things get really ugly. Horror fiction is not my preference, as I don’t like that kind of ugliness, but it certainly evokes emotions.
I am at this writing just barely shy of my 65th birthday. For the record, in case there were any question: no, I will not retire. I love writing too much. Meanwhile I’m receiving solicitations for insurance for supplemental Medicare. I suppose I will have to review them at some point and make a decision, but I suspect I’ll settle for the straight Medicare without supplements.
I received an email from David L Kuzminsk, editor at PREDATORS & EDITORS, saying that the HiPiers site has been found deserving of their highest award, and applauding my efforts to help other writers. I may if I wish display their award symbol on my site. I’ll see if that can be done.
The proprietress at http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Studio/2460/story.html asked my permission to run the story/poem I wrote for Ligeia #1, “The Ugly Unicorn,” and I gave it. So those who wish to read that can do so there. The girl I wrote it for was fourteen at the time, desperately depressive, and the poem has 14 lines, each of which is 14 words. Unfortunately, as far as I know she didn’t make it; she was institutionalized and I don’t know whether she ever got out. Meanwhile this site, titled WEHAT’S BRAIN, has several other stories.
One of my correspondents, Tammy Bender, is a devotee of dragonflies. We have discussed them many times, because here on our tree farm we have them in all colors and combinations. Ordinary dragonflies are dull drown, but ours are green, blue, black, yellow, reddish, and combinations. Sometimes one will sit on my hand. I like them in part because the biting flies abruptly flee when a guardian dragonfly approaches. So when I’m concentrating on something, like archery practice, and don’t want to get bitten on the leg when trying to draw the 60 pound pull on my bow and aim at the target, the company of a dragonfly is more than welcome. But Tammy is even more of a dragonfly fan than I am. For evidence of that visit her site at www.angelfire.com/tx/headcancer/poems.html. There she has poems and pictures all relating to dragonflies, and one of the pictures is an animated beauty of a kind I haven’t seen before, a real visual treat.
There has been recent interest in interviewing me; I’m not sure why. PATH, to which we have a link, has one, though one question about Kosovo is already getting dated. I was also contacted by Dryta D’Ken of PERSONALITY DISORDER at www.crosswinds.net/~pdmagazine/, a magazine by and for teens, asking for an interview. She sent their standard roster of questions, and I answered those I felt competent to. That interview is now on the site, cleverly amended by other information and pictures she garnered from who knows where. For those curious about what doesn’t get into print, as it were, I’ll give an example: one question was whether I would randomly kiss someone. I asked in return “Are you offering?” and said it depended on what her hair smelled like and how she related to trees, things discussed in the interview. Sure, this will disgust some, who will wonder whether a man of retirement age doesn’t have better things to do than flirt with teens. Well, flirting is about as far as an ogre my age can go. There is also one at TalkCity coming up on AwGhost 12 at 7 Pacific time, an hour later for each time zone east of that. There may also be one coming up at http://scifi.ign.com/, which seems to be a great informational site for movies and forthcoming genre books.
A daughter put me onto a fairly competent bibliography site that covers many writers, me included. Mine’s at www.sfsite.com/isdb-bin/extract_author.cgi?Piers_Anthony. It misses my online novels and misplaces several Xanths and one GEODYSSEY, but for those who find the biblio material at HiPiers inadequate, check this out. This one lists my stories, for one thing. That same daughter now has some Jacob’s Sheep. She mainly keeps goats, but these are special sheep: they have four or six horns. I also received a “canned courtesy notice” for the Science Fiction Resource Guide at http://sflovers.rutgers.edu/Web/SFRG/. This is surely a useful bibliographic reference, but its entry on me is w-a-a-ay out of date and virtually unusable. If you want current bibliographical material on me, you are better off here at HiPiers. But for other writers, maybe this SF Resource Guide will do.
Another item I received as junk mail, but it intrigues me: MISS UNIVERSE AMATEUR BEAVER PAGEANT 2000. In my day a beaver was either an animal that built dams in rivers, or the genital region of a human woman. So I checked – and sure enough, it’s a competent porn site. I have no philosophical objection, but am not listing the Web address here because that is not the kind of traffic I want at HiPiers. It’s bad enough having the former HiPiers 800 number taken over by a porn outfit.
I am getting better acquainted with the Internet, and with email. Sometimes an error message breaks in and says I SAID RSET, AND THE SMTP SAID ACCESS DENIED. I am trying to figure out what the letters stand for. “Reset,” I can figure, and I think the other must be cussing, something like “Son of a Mitch Total Prune.” I expected to like email and the Internet, and overall, I do. The one is like a snail traveling at light-speed, and the other is like an endless arcade with more booths than I can compass. One thing I still haven’t figured out is how to get one of those spots that says “You are the 99 millionth visitor to this site since yesterday.” I have no idea how many hits HiPiers gets, and would like to know.
I took half a step closer to LINUX. I got a manual, LINUX FOR DUMMIES, and it satisfies me that I am not even up to the level of dummy, because this stuff is mindnumbingly complicated. It has a disk, and I tried that, but before I can install it I need to know all the myriad defaults of my system, and three quarters of them say “in use by an unknown device.” I am unwilling to buy a whole new system with Linux pre-installed until I know whether I like Linux. So this is apt to be a while yet.
I have had better luck on my archery. I started it three years ago and my interest has not flagged. This month I bought some more targets, so that I can flank my main target and not lose arrows when I miss. One is a kick-target; it’s a block of foam one foot cubed that you can kick to anywhere, and shoot at when it lands. I think it’s cute. I also bought a dozen carbon arrows, and those are interesting. The shaft is narrower and lighter than steel. I got a Power Pull, which is like a big slingshot whose rubber bands have a 40 pound pull, to use to exercise my archery muscles on days I’m not firing arrows. 40 pounds? I draw 60 pounds on my compound bow, but I can’t out-muscle the Power Pull. Of course the compound bow has a let-off, so that once cocked, as it were, the pull reduces to about 20 pounds. The Power Pull doesn’t do that. So I keep learning things. Meanwhile I like the carbon arrows, though I don’t seem to be any more accurate with them than with the others. I tried them right handed and left handed, and they work well.
We have a geothermal heat pump, and like it; it saves us about 20% on our electric bill, and it’s only one unit of three. But this past month something went wrong. The upper story of the house kept getting hotter, and so did the hot water, which is heated by the associated heat exchanger. If the unit wasn’t working, what was heating the water? It was burning hot. Finally we called for repairs, and it turned out the Freon (it’s not really Freon, but they still call it that) had leaked out, so most of the unit wasn’t working, and the heat exchanger was trying to do the whole job itself. Thus the boiling water. It’s back to normal now. Just as well, because it’s hot here. All around us they are getting rain, but here on the tree farm we have a spot drought, and the last day of the month peaked at 99°F. So we share the drought that plagues the northeast, and north Florida; it has one little outlying province, and that’s us.
Readers often ask about Jenny Elf, my paralyzed correspondent. I finally have news: she is going to college this fall. So if any of you readers out there find yourself in a class with her, no, she can’t give you a pass to Xanth.
News that should interest readers: my agent has found a publisher for DoOon Mode, the 4th Mode novel. So it may take a couple of years, but TOR will publish it, and all you folk who have been bugging me for six years can then read it and inform me how it’s not what you expected. Similarly, after three years on the market, he placed the sequel to my autobiography, How Precious Was That While, which summarizes my early life then gets serious about the decade from age 50 to 60. It has much to say about writers and publishers, often more candid that either will like, and poems by about 20 depressed correspondents. It’s been so long that I can’t be sure if all of them remain alive. I shall want to send a copy to each, but without valid current addresses that will be tricky. So if any readers of this column are among those contributors, please get in touch in the next year or two; saying what you wrote when, so I can verify it. I was just about ready to put that volume on the Internet, but regular publication will give it a wider distribution.
I continue to receive many solicitations. Each one is for a worthy cause, a school program, a library program, a community program, a political or social cause. But here’s the problem: there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of schools, libraries, communities, and causes, and they are all worthy of support, but it is beyond my capability to send them all money or artifacts. I am unwilling to honor just the ones who ask, because I have no evidence that they are more worthy than the ones that don’t ask; they may simply be more bold. So as a matter of general policy I don’t respond to such solicitations. The same goes for folk who send personal address labels with my name, in an effort to inspire me with guilt. I have a sheet of such labels for Mr. Anthony Piers. That shows how much they know of me.
Stray notes: one reader asked where the pun was in the character Mouse Terian, who works with Com Passion. Well, back in the days of Neandertal man, the culture was called the Mousterian. It’s actually pronounced Moose-terian, but I think it will do as a visual pun. Mouse Terian did say she was very old. Every so often I have a touching query whether I have died. No, not yet. And readers are still suggesting variants of the talent of copying talents. I get tired of explaining that I regard that as too much of a talent.
Correspondent Kimberly Hirsh told me of her site, where the Silly Adept moves mountains by puns. That has a link to HiPiers, but its print is in white so it doesn’t print. It is at www.unc.edu/~khirsh/.
Every so often I mention an old song I’m looking for. This time it’s an old poem. It was in my high school English text, I believe, but despite that I liked it. Its concluding sequence was “Since then no joy I find taught me of trees, turn I back to my own kind, worthy as these; there at least smiles abound, there discourse trills around, there, now and then, are found life loyalties.” Maybe someone from my generation will remember it.
Let me mention one more site that was called to my attention, at www.activeworlds.com. I understand it is associated with an upcoming World Science Fiction Society convention in Australia, and working with virtual reality in three dimensions. I looked at the site, and it’s one of those Grand Central Station affairs, with myriad links to aspects. So anyone who likes to get into the throes of things can check that one.
Last time I bought a boar spear, so as not to have to be concerned about any pigs who might contest ownership of my tree farm with me. Well, in the interim I did encounter a boar. It was on our drive, and actually banged into our car when my wife was driving. So I went out with the spear and saw it. It was a medium sized brown one, and it evidently wasn’t looking for trouble, and soon disappeared. I also saw a large black boar around that time, and we conjecture that Big Black drove Medium Brown out of his territory, so he was looking for a new pasture and was balked by our fence. The company I bought the spear from, COLD STEEL, had a 50% off sale on folding knives, and I bought a couple; that’s my kind of sale. They are bruisers; one has a six inch blade with a wickedly serrated edge. As such time as I have to hack my way through a jungle section of our tree farm, this is the one I’ll use. Then my wife spied some knives at the catalog for AMERICAN SCIENCE & SURPLUS, formerly something like JERICHO, which is like a remainder catalogue for intriguing objects. So we bought cute little folding knives at $1.75 per, and “Swiss Army” multiple purpose knives for $3.50: blade, saw, scissors, can opener, bottle opener, screw driver, Phillips screw driver, nailfile, and corkscrew. I never had one of those before.
Our big dog Obsidian is now about six years old. Remember, she dates from the time Penny passed by a boxful of puppies, and they were going to send the last one to the pound, so Penny took her and in due course passed her along to us. Obsidian decided that my wife was the mistress of the house, and resents any other attention being paid to her. She loves riding in the car to fetch the mail, but on Sundays there is no such trip, so I started taking her on walks through the tree farm then. That’s the one time she wants my company; she loves to explore. But now it is so hot that this become problematical. The fact is, uncomfortable as we may find hot weather, man may be the animal best equipped to handle it; that’s why our bodies are nominally hairless, so we can sweat effectively. Man can range out in heat that will literally kill other animals, provided he has water. So now I have to watch it; when the temperature is 95°F I can go out and do things and return to wash off and change all my clothing. But if I took the dog along I could kill her; she can’t sweat the way I can. (That reminds me of one of my descriptions in Xanth: an invisible giant who smelled like a hundred fat men sweating in unison. Some day a corpulent man may accuse me of insulting him, but if he can’t sweat in unison, he has no case.) So until things cool, I have to be cautious. Thus does my research for paleontological fiction return to affect my routine home life.
My correspondence has been shifting from snail mail to email, now that I know how to do the latter. For years I answered 150 letters a month; that gradually declined last year, and now is 100 letters a month. But we also get about 300 emails. Most are handled by HiPiers with notes to the effect that a printout is being forwarded to me, and that I appreciate the communication. That is exactly what happens; I read every one of them, and sometimes add a note myself. So I spend half an hour a day or more on email, seven days a week, because it comes in continuously. A number of them express doubt that they will actually reach me, but they really do reach me. Sometimes they don’t get answers, because we do answer, and they bounce. Listen, you twerps who ship out bales of mail while blocking incoming mail: I don’t find this waste of my time funny. But the others I appreciate.

PIERS

Internet Publishing

One of the questions I get most often is how can a hopeful writer get started? The simple answer is to just keep writing and trying the market, as I did, hoping for eventual success. But a realistic answer is a good deal more complicated. I seem to be almost incapable of answering a simple question simply, so this may turn out to be rather more information than some care for, but it does seem to be time for me to address this matter in detail. First, let me give my background with respect to getting started:

As many of my readers know, I have a grudge against conventional publishing. For those few who don’t know, a capsule summary: I started writing for publication seriously when I was 20, in college, and my BA degree is in Creative Writing. It still took me eight years to make my first sale, and it was a problem just finding out what the proper format for a manuscript was, or what an editor really wanted. One writer won a magazine contest, and the prize was an hour of the editor’s time. In that hour the writer asked for the straight goods on what the editor wanted. Then he wrote it and made a sale to that editor. But most of us don’t get to win contests. Editors ignored me, or told me not even to try to compete for publication. I entered a story contest, and was among the top ten entries when they decided to have no winner. After four years I got a story accepted – and then the magazine folded. I entered a novel contest, which offered a prize of $230,000, but – you guessed it! – had no winner. When I finally did broke into print it wasn’t much better; rates ran about one cent a word, and only one in four stories ever sold. When I got into novels, my first publisher cheated me, and blacklisted me when I demanded a correct accounting. When the Science Fiction Writers of America tacitly sided with the publisher, though I’m sure many of their other members were also being cheated, I quit that organization in disgust, and have since been slandered by its spokesmen. I have required financial auditing of my accounts at several publishers, and have recovered significant money thereby. Usually this has been carelessness on their part, and they have voluntarily corrected the situation, but sometimes I have taken legal steps to make my point. It is not chicken feed; the amount of money recovered in the aggregate is well over a hundred thousand dollars. So when it comes to mischief in Parnassus, my term for the conventional publishing establishment, I am a battered expert, and yes, my career has suffered because of it. Publishers don’t much like writers who stand on their rights or who speak out the way I do.

Aside from going to law, I have responded by supporting small publishers both financially and with my novels, by speaking out on the truth as I experience it, and by promoting Internet publishing. I believe that the Internet is the current great hope of future writers. I think exact figures do not exist, but I believe there is general agreement that only one of every hundred seriously hopeful fiction writers will ever get published conventionally. It is true that many would-be writers are not as good as they think they are, but it is also true that publishers have the arrogance of power when dealing with writers. I once criticized a publisher’s contract; the publisher then withdrew the offer it had made for my novel. That’s typical. That’s why writers need agents, and the agents handle contract negotiations. If a publisher tries that crap on a reputable agent, that publisher may lose all the future business of that agent, and some have, and they were hurt thereby. An agent can blacklist back. I got around my own blacklist by taking as my agent the one who represented Robert Heinlein, considered by most to be the premiere writer the genre has seen. Lo, then it was the blacklisters who mostly went out of business, while I survived and even flourished. But it is just about as difficult for a beginning writer to get a good agent (and the writer is better off with no agent than a bad one) as to get published. Many agents are as arrogant as publishers in their treatment of writers. So Parnassus has become in a general way a closed shop. Small publishers are more open, but they lack the resources of the big ones, and their books will not be stocked by the majority of bookstores. But the Internet is wide open. So far it is not a way to make money, but it is a way to get published. So if a hopeful writer is in it for money, keep trying Parnassus, because that’s where the money is. Don’t be ashamed of writing for money; as Samuel Johnson said, none but a blockhead ever wrote but for money. Critics who condemn those who get paid for their writing I think are mostly jealous; why don’t they take off on those who get paid for brick-laying, banking, or truck driving? I write for money so that I can spend full time doing what I live for: writing. That does not mean I’m a hack; I do the best I can on everything, and I regard writing as an art form. I think most other writers, published and unpublished, have a similar attitude. But if you just want others to have the chance to read your works, go to the Internet. Actually the Internet does not necessarily preclude conventional publishing; it depends on the contract.

Ah, but where on the Internet do you go? I feel it is time I addressed this matter, and thus I have come to this column. I have done a spot survey of Internet publishers, and while this is hardly authoritative, I hope to correct and update my information as I get feedback from readers and the publishers themselves, so that perhaps in time it will become authoritative. The fact is, there are many Internet publishers, and there are lists and descriptions of them, but some of these lists may be confusing for readers. In any event, the typical query I get is something like this: “Mr. Anthony, I love to write, and my friends all say my work is great, but how do I find out for sure, and how do I get published? Everyone has a different answer, but I trust you.” Because they ask and trust me, I feel constrained to answer meaningfully. I care for my readers; they are my justification for existence, and I don’t like to see them get hurt. So I hope that this column, which I expect to be ongoing, helps those hopeful writers get started, and to find their destinies. Understand, few – very few – of them will ever become rich or famous as writers, but at least they will get to play the game.

I started with information provided by Katharine Krueger, a writer of my generation who found her answer on the Internet. I branched out from there, discovering how wide the net becomes; what follows is a mere fraction of the whole. In general, I see three types of publishers (from here on, assume that the word “Internet” precedes that word): those that pay advances, those that neither pay nor charge, and those that charge. Your first effort should be to get one that pays an advance, and here is why: the advance is really a guarantee. Some publishers, on and off the Internet, cheat writers, but when there’s an advance the writer already has his money. That counts for a lot. The bigger the advance, the better. Even if you don’t care about money, an advance means that the publisher will care about your book. But most simply publish the material and pay royalties for copies that sell. For example, if the royalty rate is thirty per cent (30%) and the download sells for $3.50, the author gets just over a dollar ($1.05) per sold copy. In Parnassus the writer is lucky to get more than 6%, but sales are so much greater that this is still a much better deal; don’t be fooled by the rate. 6% of a hundred thousand sales is more than 30% of a hundred sales. Always look at the larger picture. So look for a decent royalty rate if you can get it. Statements should be every three or six months, so have patience; the publisher has bookkeeping to do, and sometimes seeming sales get unsold, so time is necessary to sort it out. But choose carefully, because some publishers that are here today will be gone tomorrow. That’s a special risk on the Internet. Then there are the ones that charge. Now a distinction has to be made: in Parnassus, paid publication is vanity or subsidy publishing, and it has a very bad smell; it costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, and you don’t get much for your money. Stay clear of it. But you can self-publish via the Internet for under one thousand dollars, and royalties may earn that back. So if you can’t get published any other way, this is your most likely avenue. I plan to self publish about 50 novels in the coming years, and feel no shame in it; I am proud of all my novels, and believe the readers like them. Mine will be mostly republication of novels that were published ten or twenty or thirty years ago and have gone out of print, but I will do some new ones too, if I can’t sell them.

Now the publishers. First I’ll get two conflicts of interest out of the way. I have more to say on these because I know them better; as I learn more about the others I’ll say more about them too. The others are in the order I happened to look them up; position does not indicate merit. I am taking their presentations at face value; if anyone has direct experience, positive or negative, with any of these publishers, let me know and I’ll incorporate it in the next update. I should also say that I understand there have been sites that list bad publishers or agents; apparently there is a campaign to get those sites off the Internet, and I was unable to access any. Well, we’ll see what pressure comes to get HiPiers off the Internet, because I will list what I find and learn here, of whatever nature. I’d like to know just how free the Internet is, if wrongdoers can remove those who blow the whistle on them. That’s exactly like Parnassus, and I don’t want to see it here. But that reminds me: one thing you want in the contract is an audit clause, so if you suspect you are being cheated you can examine the publisher’s books of accounting. That is what I have used against Parnassus. The clause should say that if any error to the writer’s disfavor greater than 10% is found, the publisher must pay the cost of the audit. That actually protects the publisher against frivolous nuisance audits, and against getting hung for an inadvertent five dollar error. And yes, publishers do sometimes make errors in the author’s favor; you can be sure that those really are errors. In one case I used a $200 per hour professional auditor, and made the publisher pay for it. But I repeat: usually publishers are willing to check the books themselves, and will make corrections of inadvertent errors. So query politely first – but do carry the big stick of the audit clause, because that’s like a finesse: you usually don’t have to use it if you have it. If you don’t have it, you may be dead meat. My impression of online publishers is that they are well-meaning, motivated by the principle of freedom of expression, and like the idea of publishing good works that Parnassus shuts out. Chances are they will be open about finances and you won’t have any trouble. Until such time as there is real money in Internet publishing; then the sharks will move in. So you want a tight contract even if the publisher is a personal friend, because times can change. In any event, you are unlikely to get rich here; my guess is that if you make more than a hundred dollars, you’re doing well. Contrast that to a Parnassus advance, which may be $25,000. Oh – the dots following the Web site addresses signify the end of the sentence and are not part of the addresses themselves.

XLIBRIS – at www.xlibris.com. This is a self-publisher, and I have invested in it and am on its board of directors, so I have a conflict of interest in recommending it. I invested because I want something like this to exist, and if it fails it will cost me a pretty penny, and if it succeeds it could make me a prettier penny. So visit its site, get its information, check with anyone you know why may have had experience with it, and decide for yourself; this is a listing, not a recommendation, because of said conflict of interest. Xlibris makes physical hardcovers and trade paperbacks identical to those of Parnassus, and does not download. Xlibris had financing problems and growing problems, and can be slow on responses, but has recently tripled its staff and I believe will give good service in the future. To the best of my knowledge and belief it is honestly run, and yes, if you feel it has treated you unfairly, I will listen, try to get the matter settled, and blow the whistle here if that seems warranted. Basic publication will cost you from $450 to $750, and sales of copies are not rapid, based on my experience. But my novel Volk has just paid back its investment, and I am about eight dollars ahead, after about two years. You may do better or worse, but that provides a notion of the ballpark.

PULPLESS – at www.pulpless.com. This is the other publisher I have invested in, so similar cautions apply. It pays no advance, but hopes to be able to guarantee royalties of $25,000 for name works. (That is, if you are a recognized professional writer.) Much less, I suspect, for nameless writers, but it too provides physical copies, and cheaper downloads. Pulpless is trying to arrange to distribute its books free to readers, paid for by advertising. My novel Realty Check is an example; it can be bought, but I don’t know whether the free edition is yet available. I invested because I feel this is a notion that has the potential to blow open Internet publishing, and perhaps Parnassus too, and I hope it works. But I expect to lose my money. The Pulpless books I have seen are all of standard publishable quality; one reader told me that he has not seen any good Internet novels, but I suspect he hasn’t tried Pulpless. However, Pulpless has had an indifferent attitude about statements of account, and may be sloppy about following up. It is bigger on ambition than on performance in the dull details. So if you like a wild gamble, consider this one.

AWE-STRUCK E-BOOKS – www.awe-stuck.net. I mentioned this in my prior regular column. This was the one that made me decide to do this survey, because I liked the look of it, and the way it offers a real sample for a free download – such as a 100 page segment of a novel – so you can decide whether you want to buy. If you can’t make up your mind in a hundred pages, you need more help than I can give you here. I understand that one of the proprietors is physically disabled, and wrote a book featuring a disabled character, and when he couldn’t get anywhere with Parnassus (an all too familiar story) he decided to set up a publisher for such work. It publishes romance and science fiction, but if you are disabled, or write about that subject, you will surely get a sympathetic hearing here.

NITELINKS – www.nitelinks.com/. I heard from Laura Kercherson, the proprietor, a year ago, and liked her attitude. She is much concerned with quality of fiction, and with the rights of writers. I have not read what she publishes or had experience with her as a writer, but she came across to me as the kind of publisher a talented newcomer should check with first. She is also republishing literary classics that are in the common domain. Her taste seems eclectic, and does include science fiction.

ANTELOPE PUBLISHING – www.teleport.com/~writers/books/index.html. A family oriented site doing children’s books, juveniles, wholesome works of fiction, religious works that teach without preaching, and uplifting nonfiction. But at present it is swamped with submissions, so is not accepting books. Getting swamped like that suggests that it must be treating its writers right, though.

DISKUS PUBLISHING – www.members.tripod.com/diskus_publishing/. This seems to be a Romance site. No problem there; just about every novel in every genre includes a romantic element, and I understand the Romance sites tend to be more friendly to beginning writers than science fiction or fantasy sites. This lists about a dozen categories of fiction, including science fiction, and has plenty of information in subsections, including guidelines for writers. It looks good to me.

BIBLIO BYTES – www.bb.com/. This offers free downloads, so if you like to read and don’t like to pay for it, this is your site. I’m not sure how their authors make money. This also has a forceful article on the battle against censorship, but ironically it will not print out: it’s in white against a black background, and so my printer leaves the print blank. I’ve got 13 pages of nontext. But go and read the article onscreen; I am much with it in spirit.

BOSON BOOKS – www.cmonline.com/boson/. I did not explore the whole site – there are only so many hours in my day – but it does look to be worth exploring. For one thing, it lists other online publishers as links, so if you want to check out several, this is an easy way. I tried the link to The Graham Literary Agency, because one of my quests is to find decent agents for hopeful writers, but it was just like other agencies: it didn’t answer. There is supposed to be a Writer Talk feature, chat sessions with Boson authors. That could be interesting.

DREAMS UNLIMITED – www.dreams-unlimited.com/. This is fantasy/romance with many links, making it another good starting-point site. My prior survey followed an erotic link to another site, giving the impression that it was DU (Dreams Unlimited). Thus this correction: DU does do some erotica, but is not a porn site. If your fantasy, for example, has integral erotic scenes, you probably don’t need to worry about them being chopped out by the editor. DU also does straight Fantasy, Time Travel, Futuristic, and other types generally related in some way to Romance. It says it is looking for hard-to-sell romance, which suggests to me novels that go well beyond the parameters of category romance. This is a good sign. My Arabian Nights fantasy novel Hasan was bounced twelve times by editors because it fell between categories, having strong fantasy, romance, and historical elements. I finally sold it years later it by asking a normally hostile reviewer to review the manuscript, and a normally hostile editor saw the review and bought the novel for magazine serialization, and then it became acceptable to book editors. But most writers can’t put something that weird together. Too bad DU didn’t exist in 1970! Anyway, there’s a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section, Guidelines, sample contract, and a generally good attitude towards writers here, and I recommend this publisher. I do have two caveats: a notice says it is not accepting submissions until August. I looked at it in August, so presumably it’s open now, but this suggests that this publisher is commonly swamped with submissions so it may be hard to get a reading. And much of the site text is white, so that it won’t print out. Those like me who prefer not to spend a lot of time on-line will thus be frustrated because they can’t print out the material and consider it at leisure later.

HARD SHELL WORD FACTORY – www.hardshell.com/. This covers several genres, including science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and shows the covers. It gives author guidelines and other information, and seems like a good site. One correspondent expressed concern because of Hard Shell’s connection to Rocket EBooks, part of a monstrous Parnassus complex. Now I’m as paranoid about Parnassus as anyone, but I don’t see this as necessarily evil. Just watch the contract fine print.

MOUNTAIN VIEW PUBLISHING – www.whitbey.com/mountainview/. This looks good for inspiration fiction. It’s a Christian site.

DOMHAN BOOKS – www.domhanbooks.com/index.htm. This looks like an excellent site. I checked the section for Kate Saundby, whom I know from elsewhere, and the presentations on her books are nice. Indeed, I am mentioned, perhaps because I read and commented on one of her novels, The Wages of Justice. But here is where I blow a whistle: I also happen to know that this publisher has been accused of stiffing its writers on royalties, and that a complaint has been lodged with the National Writer’s Union. Until that matter is resolved, I can’t recommend this publisher.

NEW CONCEPTS PUBLISHING – www.newconceptspublishing.com/. This site took a long time to download, but looks good. It covers a number of genres, including fantasy, and gives brief descriptions of each novel. I took a deeper look at the science fiction romance Endless Night, paired with Rendezvous, so you get two for one. It gives a summary, sample, and author bio. If I were an early writer, this is the kind of treatment I would like.

ORPHEUS ROMANCE – www.orpheusromance.com/. This publisher pays an advance, and provides guidelines for submissions, including format – Courier New 12 point, 1.5 inch margins – which is what I use, except that my right margin is only one inch – and it even provides a sample contract. So if you write romance, start here; everything is upfront, as it should be.

PETALS OF LIFE PUBLISHING – www.members.tripod.com/~PetalsofLife/authors.html. This one is upfront with its submission guidelines. It pays 50% royalty on books sold. This is good. So if you are into Inspiring writing, this is for you.

I was contacted by Jason L. Blair, editor-in-chief of Key 20 publishing, so I looked at his site, http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/Key20/intro.html. Unfortunately this is another with white print, so my printout is blank. But those who work from the screen rather than printouts may find it interesting.

Another is FANTASY TODAY, at www.fantasytoday.com/. This is the home of the Internet Fantasy Writers Association, IFWA, a group of published and unpublished fantasy writers. It is intended to be a crossroads for writers to meet and exchange ideas, and more, but it still seems to be setting up. I was told of it by Darin Park.

DenMark Publishing at www.freeyellow.com/members7/dennismoore/denmark.htmlhopes to change the face of entertainment history, by putting the creativity into the hands of the readers. It seems to be an online book writing program, and I gather anyone can join and participate.

But there are other publishers. Let me tell you where to find them. Go to http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and _Economy/Campanies/Publishing/Electronics_Publishing/, where you will find a list of about 150 online publishers. (Yes, the address does not contain www, though when I typed it in instead of dir, I got there anyway.) So if you really want to search out publishers, this is your site. Here’s another: http://coredes.com/~mermaid/epub.html. Again, if you put in the www it still gets there. This is a practical list of publishers, including many of those I have discussed here. Curious about the author of this list, Mary Wolf, I followed her, and learned that she is a romance fiction author. One thing made me look twice: she offers an excerpt of Julie and Mark’s first meeting in her novel. So I printed that out to forward to my collaborator Julie Brady, who is engaged to marry Mark. Has Julie been moonlighting?

Then there is http://authorlink.com/. Again, it works with www. My printer glitched so I got only the first page of its site, but it seems to be a general publishing information site worth checking out. PAINTED ROCK at www.paintedrock.com also gives advice; my glitch also spiked that printout.

One site worth checking is ROMANCE FORETOLD, at www.romfort.org/. There are those in the SF/fantasy genre who may sneer at the Romance genre, but this a wrongheaded, because these folk evidently have much to offer new writers. I quote: “Romance Foretold, Inc. was created to encourage, inspire and nurture anyone with the love of reading and/or writing the speculative genres.” That is, romance, gothic, suspense, young adult, science fiction, fantasy, and historical. My information is that they really mean it, and are very helpful to those who come to them in need. Their site has two doors, one for members, the other for visitors. I used the visitor’s door, and got a nice welcome and introduction to their services, which include a mentor program to help you learn the writing trade, an art gallery, chat rooms, newsletters, seminars – I mean, this site is loaded, and I can hardly imagine a more friendly place for a timid hopeful writer to come to. They offer a free trial one month membership. I’ll ponder; I may join, simply to find out whether this romance is as nice as it appears, once you marry it.

And EGGPLANT PRODUCTIONS – www.eggplant-productions.com/ep/index.html. This appears to be an electronic magazine centered on science fiction, fantasy and horror, with a number of projects, including “The Newbie Writer Resource Page” for writers new to these genres. Eggplant says it wants to change the way readers view publishing. Seems worth looking into.

There are two I understand are well worth avoiding: Edit Ink, and Commonwealth Publications. I have seen published articles about the nefarious deeds of the former.
There is also a Parnassus agent who is worth reading. I know him from way back. He’s got an attitude somewhat like mine, and I might well have taken him as my agent but for certain aspects that are beyond the scope of this piece. He has always fought for the rights of writers and tried to get improved contracts. He is Richard Curtis, at www.curtisagency.com. Visit that site for some apt discussion of electronic publishing rights. One point he makes is that writers should try to get better definitions of “in print” and “out of print” clauses in contracts. That may seem like irrelevant nit picking to you, but it isn’t; interpretations of the in-print clauses can enable a publisher to hang on to the rights of your novel until seventy years after you die, without necessarily paying any royalties. They say that you remain technically in-print as long as your book is theoretically available by being in the memory of the publisher’s computer. That’s a black hole. My own novels are on license, so that I get them back after a set period of years regardless of their in-print status, but few American publishers will allow licenses, and you have to have fair clout to get them. But you should be able to get licensing with on-line publishers if you bargain for it. Do so.

Another resource for writers is the National Writer’s Union, NWU. This requires a bit of explaining. First, yes, it really is a union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO, so if you don’t like unions, this is not for you. Second, if you are serious about writing, you can join. Most writer’s organizations require a writer to have had something published or sold recently to be eligible; NWU recognizes that the vagaries of sometimes whimsical or mean-spirited editorial decisions are not the definition of a writer. If you are writing, you are probably eligible for membership, and not on a standby or second-tier basis. If you have written a novel, or stories, or articles, and have tried to get them published, in any genre, or if you have written a movie or TV screenplay and it wasn’t a joke, or poetry, or whatever, you are a writer. Maybe an unsuccessful one, but you still do bleed when editorially cut, and NWU cares. It is your dedication and effort that count, your dream and heart, not the luck of the editorial draw. I understand some writers organizations refuse to consider Internet-published writers; no need to be concerned. In short, NWU is doing for writers what the Internet is doing for publication: opening it up so that the common grunts can play too. There is no elitism here.

It will cost you, however. Annual dues are $90 or more. So why should you join? Well, you shouldn’t, if you are not serious about writing. But if you have any notion of making any money at writing, let alone a living, you should join. Other writer’s organizations may or may not help their members when there is mischief; I have described how one actually facilitated a blacklist against me for being right. Some do good work, but on a higher plane; your objection to getting stiffed on a payment for an article may be beneath their notice. But NWU is really there fighting in the trenches. For example, it sued to salvage electronic rights for writers, so that publishers could not stiff writers on the Internet. It actively goes after errant publishers. In terms of protection for writers, this is an attack dog. Its membership is growing rapidly; it is now over 5,000 and not cresting. It maintains an agent database that includes negative as well as positive input. In short, if there is an organization with an attitude much like mine, it is the NWU. I have been a member since 1993, and it has not disappointed me. It is not illustrious, but in gut terms it may be the most influential writer’s organization extant. Check it out at www.nwu.org/nwu. If you are a writer and can join only one organization, this is the one. Oh, there are some glitches; for example, I can’t access their online members-only section, because my password doesn’t work. I’ll complain when I get around to it.

Okay, this is enough for now. I will update in a couple of months, hoping to make my listing more comprehensive and authoritative. Do let me know if anything herein steers you wrong. I will regard this not as an attack, but as a tack, the kind of which it has been said “Blessed is he who sitteth on a tack, for he shall rise again.” That is, a call for action.

I have just finished updating the Internet Publishing survey, a grueling but satisfying two day job. I hope that future updates will be easier to accomplish. That survey is ongoing, and will assume the status of a separate section, so as not to get routinely buried with the outdated HiPiers columns. So that 50% of my readership who are hopeful writers may now move across to that; there’s some good new information there. The rest of you are stuck here; sorry about that. As usual, there is no particular order here; my thoughts just sort of spew out and splatter on the file. My wife says I should learn to control my loquacity. I say it’s her fault: she married a writer.

Last time we flashed a notice of my then-coming interview at Talk City. I have a rule of the ogre thumb: the farther from my control anything gets, the less reliable it is. The TalkCity folk messed up, did not run the material on me, and did not even provide an in-house link to the interview. There was no direct way to get from the TalkCity address to the interview chamber. I got desperate messages from readers trying to get in. Even so, there were 52 names there, and they flashed a warning that the limit was 60. There was supposed to be an established cue for questions, but folk kept breaking in anyway. I found it confusing, but answered as well as I could. One question that stumped me was what was the most unusual fan letter I had received. I have had such a lot of fan response over the years, ranging from useful information to hints of sexual receptivity, that I can’t say what was most remarkable. I think it was a successful session, overall, considering. Anyway, I’m sorry that my readers couldn’t get in, and I doubt I’ll do another such interview soon.

I decided when I was poor that if I ever got rich, I would use my money for good purposes. Unlike some, I did not change my mind when my fortune improved; I have roughly tithed my income over the years in the support of what I deem to be good causes, and once I kick off to the oblivion that awaits an agnostic, much of the rest will go to similar causes. One such cause is the National Writer’s Union. Now that dedication has borne some fruit: the NWU has won its lawsuit against the NEW YORK TIMES et al. More correctly, it lost the suit, but that loss has now been overturned on appeal. What this means is that free lance writers do own the electronic rights to their work. If a publisher wants to put it on the Internet, that publisher will have to buy those rights from the writer. This is a banner day for all writers, because electronic rights are looming ever larger, and may indeed be the future of publishing. Parnassus (the big publishing establishment) may see it another way; well, Tough Beans, Parnassus; you should have had the decency to pay your writers for the electronic use you made of their work in the first place.

We live on our tree farm, and it came time to thin the crop, so that the remaining trees will have room to grow. I wish every tree could endure forever, but this is not the commercial way. Harvesting has changed since my day, when we carefully undercut and felled each tree, sawed it into lengths and carried or hauled it out to the truck pickup point. Now it’s much more mechanized. They brought in huge equipment, some with tires about as tall as I am. I think they have grappling machines that take hold of a tree and cut its base, then haul it off to a pile pretty much in one step. I was going to watch when they got to the edge nearest the house – but they wrapped up without ever doing that section, so I didn’t see it. Maybe the trees there were too small. At any rate, every third row of slash pines has been taken, and our stumpage payments amounted to about $2,000 for the thinning of thirty acres. The final harvest should be considerably more, as the trees will be mature and will go for more sophisticated purposes than pulp. So do I look forward to this slaughter with delight? No; I should be dead before those trees are taken, so I can let them live in peace for the rest of my life. The extra space between the rows should grow up again with underbrush, blueberry bushes, oaks, magnolias, dogwood, cedar and so on as before, making it a suitable habitat for deer, gopher tortoises, rabbits, assorted snakes, armadillos, many birds, and unfortunately pigs. We don’t like that latter because they can ruin it for all the rest; our neighbors have permission to hunt pigs alone, nothing else. We run the tree farm as a tree farm because that’s what it is, but we also regard it as an informal wildlife sanctuary. Meanwhile I take a walk once a week through it carrying my boar spear, not to hunt pigs, but to make sure they don’t hunt me.

Last time I mentioned wanting to find a hit counter, so we could track the traffic here. I got a third of a slew of responses for different counters. One reader even enrolled HiPiers in a counting service. We didn’t follow up, as we haven’t yet made up our minds, so we keep getting reports of zero traffic. But our webmistress told us how to get the stats directly from Mindspring (which incidentally is merging and will lose the name), and from that I have learned that HiPiers receives from 3,000 to 4,000 hits a day. We’ll pass along all the hit counter information to our webmistress to see whether any suit our purpose. So if you see one appear at this site, you’ll know how it worked out. Thanks to all of you who sent in information. I received an email from PC Beacon Support, saying it had attempted to visit my web site and gather some contact information about my organization. Could this be a search engine? Offhand I should hope that anyone who attempts to visit HiPiers succeeds. Another ad says “YOU NEED SENSOR – never lose your website contacts again!” This bears on something I learned when I looked up the HiPiers stats: I have been told that when you surf the Web, you are invisible. Now I know that’s not so; every hit is recorded. Some of the searching I did for the Internet Publishing Survey led me into porno by-paths; I happened to be using my wife’s web address, and now she’s getting ads for hot sex, penis enlargement, and such. “Are you trying to tell me something?” I asked when she handed me the printout. And perhaps related: reader Connie Hedrick told me of WebFerretPRO, which claims to be the fastest, most powerful search utility for finding web pages, information, email addresses, files, chatter channels and so on, on the Net. Haven’t really gotten into search tools yet, but in case someone is interested, the address is www.ferretsoft.com/.

My archery practice is ongoing, as it is one of my regular exercises. Now that I have more supplementary targets to use as baffles, I have moved out to the 150 foot range for the right-handed compound bow, and 75 feet for the left handed composite bow. A clarification for those who have not been following this aspect of my life: a compound bow is basically metal and has pulleys so that when you draw the string, it lets off some of the tension, but when you loose the arrow, it still fires with full force, in this case 60 pounds. It seems like magic to hold it at under 20 pounds pull yet have it fire at 60, but that’s the way it works. My bow has a 65% let-off; some bows have 90%. So I can fire more readily at greater range with more power, and that’s a pleasure. The composite left hand bow is basically plastic and reverse-curve, meaning that you seem to draw it backwards. It is rated at 30 pounds, but I draw it farther back so probably get up to 40. That may not sound like much, but it’s about as hard to fire as the other, because I have to hold it at that 40 pounds while I aim; there is no let-off. I also have to string it each time I use it, in contrast to the compound bow. But I like it about as well, because it broadens my experience, and it’s a much simpler instrument. I draw and fire my arrows faster, but less accurately; that’s one reason I have a shorter range. I don’t like to miss my targets and suffer lost or damaged arrows, plus the aggravation of time lost searching for them. So these days I typically hit my main target with all but one or two of my twelve arrows, and the misses are caught by the baffle targets. My newest set of arrows are carbon; they are different from the metal ones in look and feel, and harder to pull out of the targets, but work about as well. I also have a “Power-Pull” device with strong rubber tubing that pulls like a bow, so that I can exercise my bow-drawing muscles between times; it works well. Plus of course the metal detector for when an arrow is lost. So archery has become a fair hobby, and I like it. I don’t associate with other archers; I do it alone, for exercise, and am satisfied. Of course I also run, row, cycle, and work out with dumbbells; I try to maintain my whole body.

I’m getting old. I received a fan letter from a fourteen year old girl saying she had a crush on me; I said that made me feel 50 years younger for a fond moment, before reality set back in. I love being adored from afar by teen girls. I turned 65, and signed up for Medicare and supplemental insurance. Naturally the process had its complications, with many fractional options, but it’s good coverage. So I am officially a senior citizen now, of retirement age. But I’ll never retire; I love writing too much. My wife and I have been married 43 years and are going for 50; it’s actually a better life in many respects than it was when we were in our 20’s. Of course we are much closer to the end than most of you in your 20’s. That makes for mixed feelings.

We invested in Xlibris, the Internet self-publishing service, two years back, and have added to that since. That’s because, having suffered the arrogance and sometimes bad faith of Parnassus, I very much want to promote an alternative. Hardly one writer in a hundred will ever get published conventionally; with the new Internet publishers that ratio can change so that everyone who wants to get into print can do so. So my investment is ideological, but it does make me a venture capitalist, and I am a member of the Board of Directors. They sent me several hundred business cards with my name on; I’m not much of a card person, so sometimes when asked for an autograph I sign a card. Well, there was a board meeting, so I had to travel to Philadelphia to attend. I don’t like to travel, because Fate takes a personal interest when I do, and this trip was typical. The week it was scheduled, Hurricane Floyd developed 155 mph winds and headed straight for us. It veered north on the day of the trip, but enough of it intercepted Florida to wipe out flights on the east coast and Orlando. There was a solid traffic jam as evacuating residents headed across the state, and the Tampa International Airport was the only one in the region still open. Naturally it was jammed as those who had been scheduled at the Orlando airport came to Tampa. So Xlibris postponed the meeting a week, but it was too late to divert the hurricane; it move on past its secondary target, which is my paralyzed correspondent Jenny Elf, washing out North Carolina on its way – you did see those pictures of pigs on the barn roof? – and Philadelphia. I hope all the folk living in those flooded regions don’t catch on that it all started just to mess up my trip. So what happened next week? The weather, having missed me from the east, took dead aim from the west as Tropical Storm Harvey formed in the Gulf of Mexico. But its eye wasn’t very good, so it couldn’t see my house well, so oriented directly on Tampa instead, so that the airport would be taken out. But it overcorrected, and hit Florida farther south, dumping ten inches of rain, but leaving the airport just clear, and I was able to make my flight. Well, Fate was not pleased about that; during my three day trip the DOW stock average plunged more than 500 points. But I made it. I met the folk who work at Xlibris, and actually saw the new cover to Mercenary on a computer screen, surely there by no coincidence. Did I mention that I sent the files for all five BIO OF A SPACE TYRANT novels there for republication, with $750 each for the fees? They have various little enlistment bonuses, like doing a third novel free if you pay for two, or doing a cover as part of the package for a limited time. I described the cover notions I had, workable from clip art, and they are working on them. So there should be nice editions soon. There’s a certain advantage to participating as a writer as well as an investor; it keeps my finger on the real action.

So what happened at the board meeting? That’s essentially private business, pondering strategies, competition, and the next investment round. It takes a lot of early capital to do a fully competent job, and many of the one-person Internet publishers will not be for the ages. But I can say that I met the other two large investors; each of the three of us represent about a third of the money put into Xlibris. They are businessmen, venture capitalists, in it for the money, and there’s no shame in that. When some company wants to start up, with the hope of being the next Intel or Microsoft, where does it get the money? From venture capital. This is highly risky investment, so not a game for the timid or those living on their pensions. I think most venture capital investments are lost, but those that win can double, triple, quadruple, or multiply the return enormously. I don’t like to gamble, which is why I stress that my investment here is ideological; I’m not in it for the money, but to promote something I believe will benefit all writers and possibly overthrow the Parnassus monopoly. I’d like to help change the face of publishing, and money is merely the instrument. But if it works out, I could see a very healthy return. That’s the nature of venture capitalism. So it was interesting talking with the others, knowing that we come from quite different perspectives. For now, our purposes align; we all want Xlibris to succeed. But we are in other respects alien creatures. If this venture pays off, they will be going on to other investments in other ventures, while I will be glad to get out of it with my hide intact. Oh we chatted amiably enough, and had dinner together, but this is not my realm. At the day-long meeting my voice was always for the writer’s interest. Should a rich outfit come and want to buy out the company, paying each investor ten times what he put in, and convert Xlibris to a high-tech pig farm, I would oppose it. The others might have to think about it. Should that outfit up its offer to a hundred times the prior investment, we’d have a blowout and I would probably lose, because as venture capitalists go I’m a babe in the woods. But I would be a very rich loser. Why does that remind me of my literary career, where I lost the literary acclaim I first tried for, and had to settle for funny fantasy, vilification, and wealth? Sometimes losing has its points. Especially when critics come across as mean spirited idiots. But why belabor the obvious?

I get interesting feedback from readers. I heard from Michael Miller. Here is a slightly-edited-for-brevity version of the account: “The summer before I left for college, my youngest cousin Amy took up an interest in fantasy role-playing games. I told her what I do is read fantasy novels and find a character I like. I bought her a copy of The Hobbitand A Spell For Chameleon. Amy fell in love with Xanth. By the time I came home for Christmas break, she was up to Centaur Aisle. Pretty good for a child that never read. Now Christmas with my family, everybody contributes something. My role is to bake cookies. I take my job very seriously, since I inherited it when my grandmother passed away. That Christmas, my Aunt thought I’d be too busy studying to bake cookies and picked up some store bought cookies. Next Christmas I didn’t bake any cookies thinking my Aunt would get store bought ones again. I called home the night before I was leaving and asked my Mom if she needed anything brought home. She said ‘No, just you and your cookies.’ AUUGGHHH!!!! Here it is 9:00 at night, all the stores are closed, and I have to make Christmas cookies. I tear through the kitchen, I find half a bag of this, quarter bag of that, nothing to make a full batch of anything. I’m freaking now. I told myself the only thing I could do is mix all those half bags together and hope. I mixed flour, raisins, butterscotch chips, two bags of instant brown sugar spice oatmeal, and handful of Christmas M&Ms, a scoop of peanut butter, anything I could find. By midnight I had 4 dozen of this brown, lumpy, ugly cookie. I was disappointed, tired, and had a three hour drive in the morning. The next day was Christmas eve day. I got up, went to the store and bought some pretty cookies. I placed my ugly cookies in the center of the serving dish, and the pretty cookies around them. I drove home. Christmas was wonderful and everyone had a great time. I notice around 7:00 at night, the pretty cookies were all gone and no one touched the ugly cookies. Until Amy sat down next to me with a pint of milk and ½ dozen of the ugly cookies. She said something like, these are the best cookies ever and if no one’s going to eat them can she takes them home. At this point everyone got a little braver and braver, and the next thing I know everyone’s eating and praising the ugly cookies. They wanted to know what they were called, so I told them the story. I then asked what should we call these cookies? Amy said, Ogre Cookies.” I asked her why and she said they reminded her of Smash Ogre, they look real scary but once you got the courage to try them they are very good and sweet. Nine years later, I still make Ogre Cookies every Christmas.” Okay, end of digested quote. I asked for the recipe, in case my readers might like to make Ogre Cookies of their own. I mean, this is Ogre Country. (Those who came in late: I was accused of being on ogre at fan conventions, before I had ever even been to a convention; that shows how early the vilification started. So I wrote Ogre, Ogre, with an ogre as the hero, and it became my first – and evidently the genre’s first – original paperback fantasy national bestseller. So I renamed its month of publication OctOgre, and now wear the mantle of Ogre with pride. Ogres are justifiably proud of their stupidity. And I never did treat a convention or a fan unkindly. Publishers and critics are another matter, though.) Here is Michael’s recipe, starting with Grandma’s Sugar Cookie recipe: 1 cup softened butter/ 1 cup sugar/ 1 large egg/ 2 teaspoons baking powder/ 1 teaspoon vanilla/ 2¾ cups flour. Now add 2 packages of instant brown sugar/spice oatmeal. You can use regular rolled oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Preheat oven to 400°F. Cream butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Add baking powder, oatmeal, and flour one cup at a time. If it’s a little dry, add some milk until soft. And back to Michael: “Now to make true Ogre Cookies you can’t preplan the next part. Go through your cupboards and add anything you find. Here’s a partial list of what I used over the years. Butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, peanut butter, regular and chips, walnuts, coconut, raisins, M&Ms, Reese’s Pieces, and various chopped up candy bars. Once I used Mole Bottoms. I don’t recommend Sore Gum, it makes the cookies a little chewy and painful to eat. Be creative and have fun. Once you get your mixture prepared, roll the dough into little balls and place on a greased cookie sheet. Put the tray in the oven for 6-8 minutes. When they look like little brown rocks, they are done. Take them out and let cool. The next step is to get a large, I mean large glass of milk and enjoy. These cookies are hard and definitely dunkers. My Uncle also calls them those blankety, blanken tooth-breaking, blanken sinker, paper-weight cookies, as he slips several in his pocket. Sorry, the Adult Conspiracy kicked in again.” So now you know, in time for Christmas and Y2K. When the lights go out and civilization ends, at least you will have Ogre Cookies to see you through.

I look at everything that comes in, including junk mail; never can tell what you’ll find. Here’s a spam that might be of interest, though I have not followed it up. It says “THOUSANDS OF FREE BOOKS TO DOWNLOAD. OUT OF THE THOUSANDS OF FREE BOOKS ON THE WEB THERE IS NOT ONE THAT WILL HOLD YOUR ATTENTION LIKE THIS ONE! THE IMMORTAL by J. J. Dewey.” This is represented as an esoteric novel teaching the Twelve Keys of knowledge, beginning with WHO OR WHAT AM I? It says that for this and links to thousands of other free books, go to 34buttons@bigfoot.com and write BOOKS in the subject area. I am wary of books of revelation, on principle, but this is an interesting way to promote one. Meanwhile I read a book that a reader recommended: The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran. This dates from 1927, and it is filled with interesting thoughts, such as “Work is love made visible,” and “Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.” Pretty sharp observations.

HiPiers picked up another spot award: the Wizard Sites award for July 1999. The address is www.sfcrowsnest.com/. Its only regret is that we don’t have more links. Well, HiPiers does not think of itself as a surfing step, but as a repository of information of interest to my readers.

I quoted a few lines of a poem I couldn’t locate, last time. Two readers sent it to me: Jeffrey Caldwell and Paul D. Beasi. It is “In a Wood,” by Thomas Hardy, from “The Woodlanders” circa 1887-1896. Thanks, fellows; that satisfies a long-time frustration of memory. Okay, maybe it’s worth trying for another. When I was in the US Army, 1957-59, and taking the course in artillery survey that I would later teach, one of the savvy survey instructors read us a poem about the four letter word. Its essence was that you could convey just about any thought to a woman if you phrased it circuitously, but that the girl did not live who would respond positively to a more direct statement like “Let’s F – k.” It was very clever and very true, and I have kept it in mind in my own writing; I very seldom use the so-called four letter words, but generally do manage to convey the four-letter thoughts, as annoyed or outraged conservative readers sometimes let me know before they stop reading me forever. I’d love to locate that poem. Do any of my savvy readers know of it?

Speaking of women: I believe it was the excellent radio program MORNING EDITION that had an interview with the proprietor of THE FARMER’S ALMANAC, and one of the things in it was the secret of what women seek in men: #1 A sense of humor. #2 A positive attitude. You mean that all of us men for millennia have missed out on that? I think even I might develop a sense of humor if I tried hard enough. I wonder whether women are similarly obtuse about what men seek in women? Nah; the sales of breast implants and support hose proves they know.

A reader, James, spotted an omission in the Xanth Characters database: The Demon Litho, mentioned as the creator of the wiggles in Vale of the Vole. We had certainly lost that one! Now I’m trying to figure out just who Litho is; maybe an aspect of Demon Earth. Another reader, Aileen, advised me that the link for the nerdity test has changed. Now it is www.armory.com/tests/nerd500.html. Veronica emailed me about a URL you can use to send free food to starving people, costing you nothing. This is www.thehungersite.com.

The Mars Climate Orbiter mission arrived at Mars – and crashed. My wife said they had probably confused metric measurements with the inefficient English kind, and I agreed. Sure enough, that’s what had happened. So over a hundred million dollars is thrown away because nobody thought to check the figures. That reminds me of when they sent up the Hubble telescope with a part put in upside down. Nobody proofreads, apparently.

I ordered some videos, that I play on a two inch screen in the corner of my working screen. Family videos my wife and I watch together downstairs; male-taste ones I watch myself. One of the latter is Totally Nude Aerobics. That’s fun; it’s several shapely young women exercising without their clothes while the camera slowly glides around to see things from different angles. No men, no sex, no provocative poses, no moans or other fakery, just steady calisthenics. What surprised me was the artistry of it: there is music, and their motions are to a beat, and in symmetric patterns, while their loose hair swings around. So I like it in more than one way.

Our swimming pool has long since gone to nature. Frogs moved in, and there are tadpoles. But with some recent heavier rains – we have been in a drought, but those hurricanes and tropical storms have helped – the level rose, and I set a siphon hose to drain it down again. Then to my horror I discovered five dead tadpoles. They must have swum through the hose and stranded on the ground. One I spied alive; I got it in a cup and returned it to the pool. I wish I had anticipated the problem in time to save the others.

Magnolia trees grow wild in our forest. Our drive curves around a lot, because we didn’t want any of them dozed out. Some don’t flower, some flower occasionally, but one always flowers, starting first and ending last. Magnolia flowers are huge, eight or nine inches across. Now the fruits are scattered on the ground, looking like soft grenades. My wife picked one up from the drive – we don’t like to run them over – and brought it inside. As it slowly dries out, the bright red seeds squeeze out, looking like M&Ms. Not all at once; a few appear one day, and a few more another. There must be a hundred of them all told. So we put the works back outside, so that the seeds will have their chance to sprout into trees. Nature has so many little ways, if one but takes a moment to look.

We have a windup radio: no battery, you wind it about 60 turns and it plays for a generous 45 minutes. I use it daily and like it very well; if we ever have a prolonged power blackout, this will serve well. Now the same company has come out with a windup light, so we got that. Same mechanism, except that a single winding lasts for only three minutes. But if you had a sudden power blackout and needed to find your way to the closet for lamps and things, this would be ideal. It does have a rechargeable battery backup, though, which can be charged either by house current or by winding it and setting it on charge instead of light. So you aren’t limited to three minutes at a time. We haven’t had an emergency yet, but that light is there for when the time comes. It could have come with Hurricane Floyd, but for the fickle finger of fate.

Every year or so I have to look up two words again, because their meanings fudge in my memory. They are metonymy and synecdoche. They are figures of speech, like simile and metaphor, but more complicated. Only a writer or an English teacher cares about them; since I have been both, I do care. So here is a very brief summary for those who lack the wit to skip this paragraph: SIMILE – an explicit comparison: “She is like a rose.” METAPHOR – an implied comparison: “She is a rose.” SYNECDOCHE – a substitution of the part for the whole, the special for the general, or vice versa: “wheels” for “car,” “creature” for “woman.” METONYMY – naming a thing by one of its attributes, or exchanging names of related things: “the crown” for “king,” or “the White House” for “presidency.” See – you use these figures of speech all the time; you just never realized that they had technical terms, did you, genius? Actually that’s ordinarily irony, but for the purpose of this discussion I’m assuming that anyone who actually reads and understands this paragraph is extremely smart, making it metonymy.

Now at last it can be told: Letters To Jenny has inspired a movie. I understand it will be shown on CBS TV some time in the future; my guess is next spring. It is Princess Rose, about a little girl who is in a car accident and badly injured, winding up in a coma. The only thing she responds to at all is a story her mother reads her, so the mother writes to the author of the book. He comes to see the girl, and it goes on from there, fantasy intermixed with reality. You can see the connection to my relationship with Jenny, but it’s really a different story. They sent me a summary, I wrote it up in novel form, they are revising it, and eventually it should be the movie and a book. The rights are divided: Jenny’s family gets the money for use of the “Life Story,” and I get a similar amount for the literary participation. Much remains to be worked out, but we have signed contracts, so this should come to pass in due course. Jenny Elf fans should keep alert for Princess Rose.

We went to the movies. Here are two paragraphs from my letters to Jenny that pretty well cover the situation:
Wife, Daughter, and I went to see the highly rated The Blair Witch Project. Critics are virtually unanimous in praising this as the best and scariest movie in years. Since critics make it their business to be mostly wrong, that’s a warning that it is likely to be dull, pointless, and confusing. But because it was done by a group of Florida collegiates, I wanted to see it, hoping for the best. Sigh; the critics came through as usual, and taken as a whole it was a waste of time. There is no violence, nudity, sex, or supernatural, just constant gratuitous use of the F word. It’s the story of three young folk who seek to do a documentary on a local witch legend, get lost in the forest, and finally perish. They cross a river several times, never having the wit to follow it down to civilization. Something leaves piles of stones or bundles of sticks around their tent, evidently warning them to depart. They’re trying to! They find an old abandoned house and maybe run afoul of booby traps. All that remains is their dark, jerky, obscure, constantly-swinging-around video footage. This is terror? The Emperor has no clothes.

We saw the movie The Thomas Crown Affair. You know how the critics give top ratings to dull movies, and so-so ratings to the good ones, so as to try to turn the public off? They rated this one “C” so you know it must be good. And it is; in fact it’s the best one I’ve seen this year. Thomas Crown is a wealthy art lover who steals a hundred million dollar painting from the museum. So they fetch a sharp female investigator to recover it. She looks a bit like Jackie Kennedy in her prime – it’s a generational thing, you had to have been there in the 1960’s when she was the prettiest First Lady ever – and has a steel trap mind. She figures Crown did it, and sets out to steal the painting back. She dates him, and swipes his keys, has them copied, then makes a night raid, locates the painting, takes it back to the museum – and it turns out to be a fake left to fool her. Then she’s really mad, so she dates Crown again – he’s a handsome man in his 40’s – and they have a torrid affair. I like one scene where he is lying naked on a couch, and then the camera pans up and there she is, lying naked on his back. I mean, they really do like each other, apart from the battle of wits, which they also enjoy. Finally he says he will return the painting tomorrow afternoon, and she can either let it happen, or have the police there waiting for him. She, thinking he’s two-timing her with a lush young thing, has the police there, with video cameras and all. Then comes the darndest sequence I’ve seen in a long time, with Crown there in bowler hat and painting-sized valise, evidently containing the painting. But then there’s a second man with the same equipment, and a third, fourth, and so on until there are about fifty of them and the police are totally flummoxed. The painting reappears, and Crown departs after some very nice maneuvers. It faked me out, and I love it. Meanwhile the woman has fallen in love with him, and goes to join him.

Thus my life, as I lurch into Senior citizenship. Without readers, I’d be nothing at all.

I have just completed the 25th Xanth novel, Swell Foop. It is the story of the abduction of the Demon Earth, who needs to be rescued before his magic power of Gravity fades, making things uncomfortable for the natives of his realm. Only the Swell Foop can save him, and only the Six Rings of Xanth can control the Foop, and only the zombies know where the Rings are. So it quickly gets complicated as six mortal heroes tackle the mission. Over a hundred reader notions are used, and it gets pretty wild before it settles. Assuming all goes well, it should be published late in the year 2001. First you have to get through Xone of Contention and The Dastard. Sorry about that.

I’ve had a couple of comments about the length of these columns, so I’ll try to make this one shorter. But I just seem to be a long-winded kind of writer, so those who don’t like that may have to go elsewhere. I seem to have a fair number of readers, though. Last time we set up a hit counter, but I discovered a couple of things. One is that the recorded visits to this site have risen to about 4,000 per day, but the counter gets only a small fraction of those. I think it is that it records only those who pass the home page, not those who go directly to other parts of the site – and though we thought that had been fixed, I found that I could not get to the home page from elsewhere in the site. So anyone who has a section bookmarked, as I do, goes there, and tries to go from there to the home page, couldn’t. So the hit counter ran low, making it look as if I was wildly exaggerating the site hits. Where do I get my information? From the official record of hits, which is authoritative. Folk may believe that when they cruise the Internet they are invisible, if they don’t signal their presence in some tangible way; indeed I have been told that. It’s not true; every one of them is recorded. No, I’m not trying to use that information to snoop on my visitors; for one thing, I doubt I could check on 4,000 a day without blotting out the rest of my life. But I suppose that if one of them sent a bomb threat, I could turn that record over to the authorities. It does make me cautious about where I travel on the Net, however.

So how has my life been, these past two months? Busy as ever; if I am supposed to slow down, as a senior citizen, the world has not yet gotten the message. Each day is its own minor adventure; we never know what’s going to fly in from left field. For example, on the first day of deer hunting season Daughter #2 Cheryl phoned: there was a three legged deer in her yard. What to do? Get in touch with the Wildlife Dept. She called them, and a wildlife officer came over and shot the deer with a dart, but it didn’t have effect and the deer got away. Had it been captured it would have been taken to a sanctuary and cared for. As it was, we believe the coyotes or feral dogs got it. A few days later a second deer turned up in Cheryl’s yard, injured, probably by a hunter. It died, and the neighbors buried it. You might say that none of this concerned me, as it wasn’t in my yard, but it did. It bothers me when innocent wild creatures are hurt, just as it bothers me when innocent people are hurt. Meanwhile I continue my archery, shooting only at targets, but the morning sun kept glaring in my eyes so that I couldn’t orient well. Finally I got fed up and reversed my archery range, so that the sun would be behind me, and that helped. But that meant setting up a new backing to support my targets, in turn getting me into digging post holes and digging old posts out from under the big mound of dirt the gopher tortoises dumped over them, and re-measuring for 50, 100, and 150 feet, and re-zeroing in my sites on right and left handed bows. Overall, about a week before I was done, but now it is done, and I’m firing at the 150′ range right handed and 100′ left handed, and usually hitting the main target. I have marked a central section about ten inches in diameter as my bullseye, and give myself one point for each score there, and subtract a point each time I miss the main target. So far my scores for 24 arrow sessions range from 0 to +3. I never claimed to be more than a duffer, you know.

Last column I commented on how well we liked The Thomas Crown Affair remake. So we ordered the video of the original movie and watched that. Alas, it seemed like a poor imitation of the remake, lacking flair. I believe that normally remakes are considered inferior to the originals; I’m not sure whether they really are, or whether the reviewers have a thing against remakes. A reader recommended Lolita; I haven’t seen it, though I read the book back when it came out. So I ordered both the early and late versions of that movie, and we’ll see. In fact we received a 400 page video catalog from one company, and an 800 page catalog from another, with on offer of 25% off the order, so I ordered a bunch. I plan to spend the month of Dismember 1999 catching up on reading and viewing, as well as attending collaborator Julie Brady’s wedding. Then back to work in 2000. I’m a workaholic; the main way I can do such things as reading and viewing is to schedule them. But on occasion I do watch movies in the corner of my monitor screen as I work. One was The Wicker Man, also recommended by a reader. It was billed as an erotic thriller, but it’s not. It’s the story of a British policeman who comes to an island off Scotland to investigate a report of a girl’s disappearance. He is a good Christian, and they are, it turns out, pagans, with a different way of doing things. The innkeeper’s lovely daughter does a seductive nude dance, tempting him, but he does not succumb. The villagers try to deny that the missing girl ever existed, but he pursues the matter relentlessly, even digging up a coffin, which does not contain her body. The conclusion is truly horrifying yet logical in its brutal way; this is a shocker. I will remember it. But we also went with our movie-freak daughter to see a current movie; here is my review of that, pasted from a letter to Jenny:

We saw American Beauty. This is reviewed as an “A” movie, one of the best in years. That’s a warning signal; if a reviewer likes it that well, there’s bound to be a problem. Understand, reviewers aren’t universally wrong, because if they were, all you’d need to do would be to reverse their reviews, and have a perfect listing of the best movies in the D and F categories. That would defeat their purpose, which is to steer you toward their movies, not yours. So you have to get around their first level of deviousness. Sometimes they give a good rating to a movie that actually is good, but their reasons will not be yours. Okay, so we watched this one, and it was depressing, but not actually bad. And I saw why the reviewers liked it: it’s a compendium of frustration, disillusion, failure, injustice, ugliness, and futility. That really turns on a critic, being a summary of his evident life. So why do I think it’s worthwhile? Because it has an interesting story line, and some nice scenes, and offers insights into corrupt American community life. Aspects strike uncomfortably close to home for many of us, I’m sure. It’s the story of a scant year in the lives of the three members of a dysfunctional suburban family: Man, Wife, teen Daughter. It is narrated by Man, and opens with him masturbating in the shower, because Wife hasn’t touched him in years. He is about to be boosted out of his job by a newly hired and ignorant efficiency expert. Daughter is alienated and hostile. That’s the first example of the way it relates to the quiet desperation of ordinary folk. They maintain the semblance of a positive life, because appearance is everything. Lovely music plays while they eat formal dinner together. But it’s a facade, a pretense covering the bitter barrenness of their existence. Wife won’t touch him because she is absolutely focused on success, and he’s obviously a failure. She is a Realtor, and she is determined to sell the house she represents, and when the day ends and she hasn’t sold it, she sobs with utter grief. Daughter is an introverted, repressed, rebellious teen, rejecting overtures by both parents. Okay: from this ugly start comes a story that gets neatly uglier as it goes. For appearances they attend Daughters cheerleading performance, and it’s a pretty good show. Then Man’s attention focuses on one of the other cheerleaders, a pretty girl, and it’s as if only he and she exist, and she’s opening her bosom to him and red rose petals fly out and suffuse the scene: he’s in love. She’s Daughter’s friend, and comes with her to spend a night, sending him into further raptures of imagination. Daughter notices and is disgusted. Cheerleader notices and is pleased; she likes to have men ogling her, and she thinks Man is cute. A new family moves in next door, with a homophobic father, almost catatonically passive mother, and teen son who deals drugs, and of course Daughter has a relationship with him. She turns out to have considerably more of a figure than was first apparent as she flashes him through the window. Another house is sold by a top male Realtor whom Wife goes gaga over because of his evident success; next thing we know, we see the V of her spread legs on either side of his heartily thrusting body as they get it on. Meanwhile Man starts a program of exercising, so as to make a better impression on Cheerleader, who is more than willing to be impressed; they are slowly coming together through the morass of other complications. But nothing works out smoothly, and the end is violent, with Man, the one person truly finding himself, dying because of a misunderstanding. A nicely crafted irony. The movie gave me a fair amount to ponder, and I rate it about a “B.”

And Shane and May Beck sent me some videos, so I watched them, too, as convenient. One was The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, a fabulous tongue-in-cheek adventure reminding me slightly of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in its dated fantasy. The Baron is a tall-tale teller, but his narration is animated fabulously. Another was The Field, and that’s a savage story of a struggle to control a British field. It’s a quality effort, but I have to say that I don’t enjoy this type of thing the way I do the lighter entertainments. I suppose it is that I am mildly depressive, and I prefer not to get into seriously depressive material. This one reminds me of Macbeth in its deadly grinding down to disaster. The message, I think, is that too rigid a devotion to any one thing can be self-defeating. Life is compromise.

Artemiy Artemiev of Russia sent me several of his music CD’s. Again, I appreciate their quality while not relating perfectly to their type. While I take pride in having a wide ranging imagination, it seems not to range as far as that of those who send me things.

Tom Lang sent me his discussion of GAGOLT: Gods and Godesses Own Land Trust. His concern is Thermal Pollution, the case being that the activities of mankind in using energy inevitably lead to an increase in the temperature of the globe, and eventually to destruction. He proposes to abate this by establishing a religion, GAGOLT, whose purpose is to secure lands for Nature’s own innate use and thus save nature from being taxed, polluted and wasted. This religion recognizes everyone and everything as God or Goddess, and members can worship any way they please so long as the primary focus is the safeguarding of the Natural World. Anyone who would like to have his full discussion of this and other concepts can reach him at G.A.G.O.L.T, c/o Tom Lang, PO Box 723, Wilmington MA 01887-0723.

Here is another discussion adapted from a letter to Jenny. My wife showed me an article in THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY titled “FAME – The Power and Cost of a Fantasy.” It is by the daughter of an eminent psychoanalyst, Erik Erikson. She says that she, as the child of a famous man, was very much aware of that invisible mantle; it affected her life, because of the way it affected others who idolized her father, and thus might try to approach her to get closer to him. She couldn’t ignore it. She says that at such moments she became little more than a conduit for her father’s magic, and that this was one of the many ways in which his fame diminished her and her sense of her own place in the world. Okay, as a father who also became well known, albeit in another circle, I am concerned how that affected my daughters. So I read this article with interest. Mine did indeed have folk trying to get close to them simply because they were close to me; that’s one reason they swore their friends to secrecy when they went to college, not because they were ashamed of me, but because they wanted to have a chance to form their own lives. You might think they could simply have ignored me, but they couldn’t, because of the attitude of others. They were protected to an extent by the fact that I use a pen name, so their own names were not a giveaway, but that wasn’t sufficient. I think they handled it well enough, and no, I don’t think that my notoriety is why Penny moved three thousand miles away.

The article goes on to explore why this phenomenon exists, and concludes that people have a need to idolize others, and that the objects of that idolatry have a need to be enhanced. She says that with the advent of her father’s fame, he acquired a larger-than-life social aura, and seemed to feel as wise and comfortable with himself as others perceived him to be. That even his most casual remarks were heard as profoundly meaningful, magnified by his aura. She says that once she gave a party for some college friends, and saw their excitement the moment her father walked into the room. She also saw a transformation in him as he became the center of their attention. There seemed to be an electricity in the air. It was a dance between the idealizers and the idealized, and she, the daughter whose party it was, felt deflated.

Perhaps that explains where her article goes, because she proceeds to deflate her father and virtually all famous folk. She remarks how he was an immigrant who felt uncertain about the ways of America (I’m an immigrant too…), but that he was surely an insecure man long before he came to this country, and was terrified of the real emotional interactions within his family. She exposes other insecure celebrities, like David Letterman, Lawrence Olivier, Charlie Chapman, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy who she says was a sickly man throughout his life, heartily ashamed of his illnesses, whose career was orchestrated by his father. Fame, she says, is not a successful defense against feelings of inadequacy; it only appears to be. She comments on the emotional isolation in the childhoods of well known people, and I can’t say she is wrong, because I knew that so well myself as to be in serious doubt whether life was worth continuing. Nevertheless, I believe she is mistaken. Because you don’t have to be famous to be isolated and insecure. What she is describing is the common human condition. Everyone feels that way at some point. It just shows up more in the famous folk, because of the cynosure. So I, as a successful writer who does not feel a need to denigrate his family, reject the thesis.

But success does have its aggravations. I receive a constant stream of requests for autographs, pictures, castoffs, appearances, money – sometimes from those who have no evident awareness of me or my business aside from the mythical tag “celebrity.” I honor these to my limited ability and convenience, but it’s a nuisance. Sometimes I send a picture, only to receive an identical request for a picture from the same person, and sometimes there is a third request, showing that no one is paying attention at the other end. Charity requests bother me because of their underlying assumption that the Squeedunk library, school, sports team, or social group is more deserving of support than the thousands of other libraries etc. in the country, simply because it asks for it. But if every group did the same, only the Post Orifice and shippers would benefit, because every community would be sending all its things to every other community, and no one would be ahead. It’s a variant of the pyramid scheme, based on the assumption that there’s always another layer of untouched donors out there eager to oblige. There’s another example of this fallacy: the argument that a person should join a given church, because it alone can guarantee him salvation in the afterlife. I’m agnostic, and rather doubt that there is any afterlife, but if there is, I would have to join every religion in the world, and worship every god and goddess and land trust, to be sure of finding the right one. All the wrong ones, of course, doom heir believers to eternal damnation. And many are mutually exclusive; you can’t be a good Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Mormon, Moslem, Zoroastrian, Confucian, or worshipper of Baal simultaneously. So it’s an impossible crap shoot. So is trying to save the world by contributing to every charity that asks for it. It’s hard enough merely trying to please every reader, when a novel like Firefly, for example, is seriously praised and as seriously condemned in different quarters.

Another aggravation is bounced responses. HiPiers receives requests for information, and it answers, only to have the message rejected at the other end. Folks, why do you ask, if you refuse to receive the answer? Check your listing, and make sure to allow a response to your missive. Chances are, if you emailed me via HiPiers and did not receive an answer, it’s because of that.
JANUARY MAGAZINE says it is doing a survey of people, and asked what are the most memorable books I have read. I pondered, as my opinion on such things changes by the hour, and listed three: Rationale of the Dirty Joke by G. Legman, The Rebellion of Yale Marrat by Robert Rimmer, and Lilith by J. Salamanca. The first is a huge discussion whose thesis is that a person’s real character can be signaled by his favorite dirty joke, along the way telling thousands of such jokes and analyzing them, and coming at more truths of baser human nature than I can think of anywhere else. One of the great works of research literature, surely banned in most places. The second is a novel representing a persuasive rationale for bigamy, and one hell of an entertaining story regardless; Rimmer is always an entertaining and thoughtful writer. The third is a beautifully written novel of a man’s effort to save a lovely woman from insanity, but instead he is drawn into madness himself. I don’t claim that these are necessarily my favorite books, or the best, but all are worthy of serious reading.

Marion Zimmer Bradley died. She was 69, one of the best known female writers of the fantasy genre, author of the Darkover series. I’m not sure I ever read any fiction of hers; I’m a slow reader, with chronically pressed time, and there is too much to keep up with. But I had a limited interaction with her that left me with a positive feeling. To wit: back in the late 1960’s when our first surviving daughter was new – we had lost three stillborn in the prior decade, so really valued what we had once we had it – I wrote pieces and letters for fanzines. For newcomers, think of a Web Site done on crudely inked paper, dedicated to science fiction or fantasy, full of personal bits, opinionations and quarrels, and sent out to a mailing list every month or three: that’s a fanzine. Yes, a lot like this HiPiers site in content, only BC – Before Computers. Fanzine Fandom was a more limited thing than the Internet. Convention Fandom still survives, though when life-sized virtual reality video conferencing gets established, that too may be swallowed by the age of technology. So anyway, I would comment on the usual things, plus my little girl, on whom I doted. Someone wrote in to lambaste me for doing that, since it wasn’t strictly fantasy. Critics abounded in fanzines, as they do on the Net; there’s something about the anonymity that brings them out of the woodwork. And Marion Zimmer Bradley defended me, taking off on the critics, saying why shouldn’t I talk about my little girl? Such was her reputation and force of expression that this particular criticism ended immediately. Thank you, Marion. There was also an occasion I appreciated that did not involve me directly. The unkind comment was made that writers are whores, selling their wares for money. Someone else said with battered pride that we all are whores, and why not? And Marion Zimmer Bradley said that she had a family to feed, and before she would let her children starve, she’d be a real prostitute, so she wasn’t at all ashamed of selling her writing. And I think that not much more was heard thereafter about writing being whoring. Oh, some idiots still blame me for writing for money, but probably they never encountered Marion. So I’m sorry to see her go, and I wish her well in the fantasy hereafter.

I have learned that Jenny, my paralyzed correspondent, has not yet made it to college. She is in the process, going through a study and preparations, as they figure out how to get her there for next spring or summer. It is of course not simply a matter of walking to the nearest community college and signing up for classes.

I used to hear a song on the radio, oh about five decades ago, that seems no longer to exist. Whenever I remark on something like that, readers with good memories or search facilities step in, and sometimes they locate something for me. The refrain of this song is “Hard times in the country, down on Penny’s farm.” I thought the first part might be the title, or the second part, but apparently not. You see, my daughter Penny now farms in Oregon, and I’d love to get a copy of that song to send her; it was obviously written for her, a couple decades before she came to be. I think she doesn’t believe there is such a song.

Stray emails: one saying THIS MAY BE THE MOST IMPORTANT LETTER YOU RECEIVE THIS YEAR. It’s another claim for making money on the pyramid scheme, sending dollars to others on the list, and expecting them to send you $800,000 in three months. Yeah, sure, suckers; apart from being illegal, this sort of thing doesn’t work. Similar goes for the claim that Microsoft will send you thousands of dollars for relaying a message. If you believe it, you’ll get what you deserve. And here’s one of another nature, from Julya in Ukraine: “Hello, Piers Anthony. My name is Julia [yes, the spelling changed]. I am 21 years of age and I am beautiful…I saw some of your photos, and I like you very mach. Don’t moke at me.” I think she meant “don’t mock me,” but I’m not sure. Sorry, Julya, I suspect you didn’t realize that I am 65 years old and my wife runs my romantic life. I suspect she would Not Approve. Correspondence is about as far as I can go, alas. Another email says, entire: “I must admit that I quite enjoyed your books up to 7th grade, but then I realized what a hack you are. Taking your reader’s ideas and churning out weak story after weak story with the same weak plot does not constitute a good book What it DOES constitute, evidently, is money, and that is, after all, what you’re all about, isn’t it?” He gave his name, but it would not be kind to give it here. I must admit to wondering whether in 7th grade he walked out and saw a burning bush or something, and God spake to him and said “Piers Anthony is a hack who writes for money. No other writers do, so thou shalt read all but Piers.” Good reading to you, sir. Another email was an ad for the ultimate hardcore action, the wildest and craziest sex site on the Net. So I checked, and the address was invalid. Now why should such an ad be sent out, if it was not to solicit business? I doubt that I would have been buying anything there, but I am bemused by the false lead. Understand, I don’t object to pornography or erotic material; I believe it should be available for those who like it, and I like it. But a fake ad? This is not the first I have encountered. Then there’s www.talk.to/plants that an email advised me to check. I did, and found a girl’s site, with cute pictures of her, a humorous listing of 50 reasons why others don’t like her, etc. Such sites are fun, but I think not really in the ambiance of Internet Publishing, so I mention it here instead. Another email ad claims it can tell you how to meet beautiful women and make dates with them. Okay, and what about ordinary women? Are they beneath notice? Is physical appearance all that matters in a woman? Do they have another site for women to meet rich men and date them? I get a little impatient with the reduction of people to single qualities, such as beauty or wealth, but I suppose that lecture is passé by now. Another email told me of www.four-way.net/rwalter/, which seemed to be mainly a listing of books. Another email recommended a site which in turn warned about spiders: those Internet crawlers that may index your site, or copy things you don’t want copied. Probably it is best not to post material on your site that you don’t want copied, unless you have a way to prevent copying. Such ways do exist, but I don’t know how they work. Another recommended http://junior.apk.net/~jbarta/idiot/html. This has a button to click, only the button moves away from your mouse cursor. Cute! And I tried my own address at Xlibris.com – and it bounced. So I can’t reach me there. I shall have to inquire, as I am a board member. And something from the daily newspaper: each day it lists the high and low temperatures around the nation for the prior day, but I’m not sure how reliable this is. On NoRemember 26 the high was 82°F in Mesa, Arizona. But my town of Inverness, Florida had a high of 83°, and others in our area ranged on up to 87°. All listed on that same page. Why does this remind me of football officiating or Olympic judging?

The Dismember Internet Publishing Survey Update is presented separately, elsewhere in HiPiers. That ongoing project is getting too big to manage conveniently, so I’m trying to figure out how to simplify it.

Next time, I should have my report on that wedding, and maybe some comment on some of the books I hope to have read, and movies and videos I hope to have viewed. See you then.

I set aside one month to catch up on reading and videos, because I’m a slow reader and a workaholic and this was the only way I was likely to get either done. Well, that month became two months, and I still haven’t caught up. But I can’t stand to be away from writing longer, so soon I’ll return to it. Meanwhile I will do a condensed Book & Video Report, since that’s most of what I did these past two months. Not all; I did make three trips, to Miami, Orlando, and New York. Reports on two of them accompany this column: Julie Got Married, and Why I Hate to Travel: Version 2000.126. Those are pretty much self explanatory, so readers who don’t find this long column sufficiently boring can skip over to them. Meanwhile, a few incidental notes.

There are some clever commercials on TV, concluding “Life sucks without a car.” That started me pondering: what is the derivation of “sucks” in this sense? My RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY says “Slang. to be repellent or disgusting: Poverty sucks.” To get the derivation I had to go to the Oxford English Dictionary: the phrase “To suck the hind tit (teat)” meaning to be inferior, dates back to 1940. To practice fellatio goes back another decade, but that doesn’t seem to be precisely it. Variations as children’s expressions of contempt go back to 1900. So apparently this expression has been around, and finally made it to acceptable social dialogue. And I still don’t know how the action of sucking translated to disgustingness. I remember the line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “I have given suck,” spoken by a woman, meaning she had nursed a baby. Nothing disgusting about that.

I was raised as a Quaker, in the Religious Society of Friends, one of whose tenets is pacifism. I elected not to join, because I concluded that while pacifism is a worthy approach in many cases, it is not ultimately effective. The bully in the school yard loves pacifism in others; it makes his ugly dominance easy. He doesn’t understand the notion that others might have rights or feelings. What he does understand is when someone hits him back and makes it stick. The “Curtis” comic strip shows bullies realistically. That’s a black strip, with a token white, Gunk, who is a crazy vegetarian who does magic. I love that. But I wander from the subject: defense. So as I grew, I learned how to strike back, and that is part of the reason I have taken legal steps to brush back errant publishers who abused their trust. I don’t seek quarrels, but when a bully refuses to respect my rights, I have found ways to make him regret it. Thus, perhaps, my reputation as the Ogre in Parnassus: I hit back. With the onset of adulthood, I have not encountered physical bullying, but did take three years of the martial art of judo just in case. I remain interested in being able to protect myself, should I need to, with the main threat being feral pigs on my tree farm. More recently I have acquired unobtrusive weapons, such as the Armadillo, a solid knife that protects the hand while presenting a sharp blade with a wickedly serrated backside. In close quarters that would be devastating. (We have real live armadillos too: they are inoffensive.) For greater distance I have a boar spear, and I do carry it where I might encounter boars. Right now they seem to be absent; I think the long drought that dried up our lake left them no water, so they went elsewhere, for the time being. Their paths remain; they’ll be back when the climate changes again. But what of the in-between range of defense? Most recently I got a baton: it looks like an eight inch section of pipe, carried in a pouch that fastens to the belt. But when it is taken out and flicked, it telescopes into a twenty inch club with enough heft to be effective. So while I hope never to have to use any of these for in earnest, I keep them just in case. For that matter I have my bows and arrows; I shoot only at set targets, never at living things, but if I had to put on the hunting arrowheads, those would be weapons too. No, I don’t have a gun, as the evidence is that a gun can be almost as dangerous to the owner as to an attacker. Research continues on a safe gun; if they ever make one, I may be interested. I have had some interesting dialogues with readers who know about guns. I am not anti-gun so much as anti-gun-abuse; I’d like to find a way to keep those things out of the hands of criminals and crazies, just as I’d like to keep drunks from driving cars. As it is, the continuing death toll is horrendous. Thus the philosophy of a failed pacifist.

I also believe in health and fitness, and in this period finally found heavier dumbbells on sale locally. So I bought a set of 20 lb. dumbbells, and use them along with my 8 and 10 pound ones. 20 pounds may not sound like much, but the set make 40 pounds, and I really feel them as I do 20 lifts. They don’t make the lighter ones obsolete; I discovered how I can move the 8 pound weights the hard way, from overhead to straight out from my body, and back up again, slowly, from there. That’s all the workout my arms need, at my age.

It occurs to me that if I comment on twelve books in succession, I’ll bore most readers, so I’ll intermix them. The first I read, in Dismember, was Paradox of Oz, by Edward Einhorn, for blurbing. This is published by HUNGRY TIGER PRESS, and is one of the endless sequels to the Oz series. But you know, some of the sequels are better than some of the original Baum novels, if the heretical truth be told. Not many, perhaps, but some. This one seems equivalent, being a story of Princess Ozma, who rides a parrot ox – a huge creature with the body of an ox and head and wings of a parrot – into the past. There she encounters – you guessed it – paradox, because she inadvertently changes an early event that causes the whole of her realm to disappear, replaced by a much less pleasant one. Now she’s in for it. She struggles valiantly through, and finally untangles piled paradoxes and restores the wonderful original land of Oz, but it’s a considerable struggle, with some nice concepts. Do I recommend this for children and Oz fans? Yes. It’s a good story, profusely illustrated in the manner of the originals. No sex or violence, no naughty hints of the kind you find in Xanth; just good clean fantasy and mystery.

When I got the video card for my computer, and a VCP, I was able to watch movies in the corner of my screen as I worked. That opened up a pleasant world to me. So I got about twenty videos from catalogs, and watch one whenever I’m doing the kind of work that doesn’t require complete attention. That spaces them out, and I have barely made it through half of them so far, but that’s okay; they are entertainment, not work. Incidentally, a reader clued me in on a fun site that compiles opinions galore on current movies; I checked it, and it’s easy to follow, color coded for good and bad. It’s at www.rotten-tomatoes.com. The first of my ordered videos I watched was Picture Perfect, a 1997 movie featuring a brown haired girl. I like brown haired girls; when I met one in college, I married her, and in a few months we’ll have our 44th anniversary. I mean, brown hair is better. Back in first grade I did a scientific test to see whether a brown egg was better than a white egg, and the white egg had a larger empty space in it, so the brown egg had more actual egg and was better. I had proved it scientifically, and have preferred brown eggs ever since. I’m sure the principle applies to women too, especially where it counts, in the head. What with a 25% off sale plus postage, this video cost about $12. Try getting a woman for that! It first came to my attention for the very stupidest male-chauvinist reason: we watched The Full Monty on the recommendation of a reader – my readers take good care of me, advising me what books and movies are worthwhile – and there was a preview of this one, showing the woman spinning around in a chair and crossing her fine bare legs under a short skirt. What exposure! Of course they figured some male idiot would buy it just for that, despite correctly suspecting that that was the whole of that type of scene in the movie. They sure had me figured. So I bought it and watched it, and it’s light romance, nothing special but fun. I don’t regret getting it, but have to say I wouldn’t have, had she been blonde or in a longer skirt.

So what did I do for my own brown haired girl, for Christmas? My vaunted imagination always fails me for such occasions, but I have come across an old standby that is nevertheless appreciated: chocolate. I bought her two boxes of chocolates, that she could eat without sharing. That works every time. Women do love chocolate. I think it makes their hair brown.

I next read Bornshire, a manuscript for comment, and then the galleys of my own Heaven Cent, as that Xanth novel wends its way toward republication. Then on to the heavyweight, Carl Sagon: a Life, by Keay Davidson. He was three months younger than I, but died before me, in 1996. That sort of thing gives me a weird feeling. I tend to watch for folk in my age range, trusting that they are good ones. I hate it when they die. Carl was good, and he suffered something else I can relate to: his great popular success caused others to resent him and torpedo him when they could, so that he was not granted tenure at Harvard and not admitted to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences despite being well qualified. The consensus is that other scientists were jealous of his notoriety. You would think that scientists would be well beyond that sort of cheapness – but of course you would think that writers would be, too. Welcome to reality; the baser passions govern to a far greater extent than it is politic to advertise, masked by high sounding ideals. It puts me in mind of a concern I have: Will mankind survive his own intemperance? And the corollary question: Does he deserve to? I wish I had positive answers. At any rate, I was curious about Carl Sagan because of his age, his science – he claimed he never said “Billions and billions” but that’s how I think of him – and the fact that he wrote science fiction, one time. He certainly seemed like my kind of person. When I mentioned in an interview that I was about to read a biography of him, I received an email from his sister, Cari Sagan Green. That made it personal; I’m sure I’d like her if I met her. So I read it, and learned that if Carl and I had gone to school together, we would have had little in common. He was a tall, athletic, outgoing, popular figure; I was a short, athletically excluded, withdrawn nonentity. Later in life, of course, I became a physical fitness buff, while he suffered chronic ill health and finally died from it, and I achieved success and notoriety of my own that was significant though not as great as his, and of course the popularity and consequence of it. I applaud his essentially liberal agenda; he was on the right side of most things. He was also a snob, occasionally alienating others by an indifference to the values of others verging on racism. As an adult, he seemed to perceive two types of people: those that interested him, and nonentities. He could be fabulously communicative and friendly with those who had qualities he liked, and the others simply dropped off his radar. I would have departed his radar by choice, because I believe that every person (and every other creature) has his own special value. So I think there was more than jealousy coming home to roost for him; those who are indifferent to the rights, concerns, and feelings of others may not understand why others come to dislike them. He alienated two wives by his indifference to their needs or rights; the third wife finally took him in hand and went far toward humanizing him. When his first wife was leaving him, he argued that she should stay because he was already famous and would be moreso soon; nothing about loving or needing her personally. Ouch! He seemed to have the need to be constantly adored by tens of thousands of people, without trying to do anything for them other than flash his brilliance. That looks like fundamental insecurity from here. Still, he should have been judged on his accomplishments, which were considerable. He motivated much of the search for extraterrestrial life, for example. He also was a passionate debunker of pseudo-science. He has been called the greatest popularizer of science of the twentieth century. So I am glad to have come to know him better, via this book, but I wouldn’t trade places with him, and not just because he’s dead. And I may have one bit of information that the author of the book, despite his encyclopedic research, did not: One of Carl’s favorite radio programs (today’s kids don’t know how big radio serials were in our day) explored occult mysteries, then showed their simple, logical explanations. The author thinks it was Superman. By no means; it was House of Mystery. Carl may also have liked Superman – I did – but it wasn’t a scientific study. Oops, rechecking that entry, I discover that it’s the next line down from Superman, and is Superstition. I don’t know that one; possibly it was as described. So I may have flubbed my solitary claim to superior information. Sigh.

During that paragraph I had an experience of my own: more gum surgery. There’s another joy worth avoiding. I take care of my teeth, but heredity bequeathed me problematical teeth. Thus I have learned, the hard way, the natural and expensive succession of treatments for those who wish to keep their original teeth. First there are fillings. When there are so many that the tooth structure can’t hold, there are crowns, or in my case onlays, covering the full upper surface. When there is trouble below those, there are the root canals, replacing the dead nerves with gutta-percha, which incidentally is also used for golf balls, make of that what you will. When there is still trouble, we get to an apicoectomy, with the base of the root cut out and replaced. And when there is still more trouble, as was the present case, there is surgery to remove the root entirely, leaving the tooth above. My problem was a cracked root that prevented last year’s apicoectomy from healing properly, so I started getting swelling and pain. So now I am suffering the discomfort to that spot surgery, and it’s an experience I heartily recommend to my critics. But there is one silver lining: I have to rinse my mouth several times a day with a warm salt solution. I discovered that when I put the salt in the mug of cold water and stir, before heating it in the microwave oven, the spoon makes a clinking sound that rapidly descends as the salt dissolves. So salt in suspension clinks high, while salt in solution clinks low. Fascinating. I never realized that the chemistry of the fluid could affect the sound quality of the cup. Have I serendipitously discovered a new phenomenon that will wow science some distant year when it comes to its attention? Something Carl Sagan would have applauded? Or is this something that everyone else knew long before I caught on?

On New Year’s Day we discovered two things: Y2K and an anonymous bad neighbor. The latter evidently dumped a truckful of garage trash along our drive; he couldn’t be bothered to drive it all the way to the dump, so now we’ll have to. The former came differently to our computers: two set themselves on the year 1980 but accepted and kept the correct date, one had no trouble, and the one I use most, my Pentium I system, is locked onto 2094 so that I must reset it every morning. We have four because we don’t throw out old ones; we keep them in reserve. I have a nefarious suspicion that Y2K is a mechanism of the computer industry to encourage us to upgrade soon. I’m still watching Linux; if I find a good word processor for that, I well may upgrade right out of Macrohard software.

We saw Bicentennial Man. We expected it to be a wild and funny story of a robot becoming human. Instead it was a serious story of a robot becoming human, and I think rivaling the best we saw in 1999. Naturally the reviewers gave it so-so to poor ratings. Apparently all they want from Robin Williams is humor, and figure he washes out if he gets serious. I may have remarked before that I consider reviewers to be a different and inferior life form. At any rate, he starts as a family household robot with a molded smile, bought by a family with two daughters. They call him Andrew, for android. The cute littlest girl he calls Little Missy takes to him, but the slightly older girl doesn’t. She tells him to jump out the second story window. He does, and is in rather battered condition after the crash, but survives. This may be the start of certain differences between him and other robots. For one thing, he develops a sense of artistry, and makes lovely figurines. When it is apparent that the robot company wishes to exchange him for a more standard robot, so it can trash him (can’t have robots differing from the norm; bad for sales) the man of the house takes charge and protects him, even setting him up with a bank account so he can sell his creations. As time passes, Andrew becomes wealthy. Little Missy grows up and gets married and has two bratty boys. Andrew goes in search of other robots like him, with human sensitivities. He finds none; he is unique. But he finances research for advancements that can make him have human feelings, both physically and emotionally. He returns decades later to find Little Missy as an old woman, and her granddaughter much resembling her in youth. He falls in love with the granddaughter and courts her, and the rest of the movie is their story as he fights for legal recognition as a human being. There are some real issues here, and it’s a fine exploration of the meaning of humanity as well as a nice romance with some humor.

I read Silver Screen by Justina Robson. Therein hangs a tale. Most of the readers I hear from are American, but some are from elsewhere around the globe. Thus I have a girl in Singapore, several in Australia, 24 year old twins in the Philippines (bad flooding last year cost Zai her collection of Anthony books – ouch! – and you can check Red’s web site at http://homes.acmecity.com/friends/chef/115/ for pictures, interests, and how their parents met in a bowling alley) and I hear now and then from Japan, South Africa, India, Europe and elsewhere. Justina was a girl in England whose father had died when she was ten. I relate to England; I was after all born there some time ago, and am a naturalized American citizen. We corresponded, and she sent me a poem about her memory of her father, which I included in the sequel to my autobiography, How Precious Was That While, which book has been sold but not yet scheduled for publication. Thereafter I called her the shoe polish girl, because of a reference in the poem: she remembered the smell of it. She came to see me when she was in the neighborhood of sixteen. Unfortunately her companions were so intrigued by the notion of meeting an actual writer that Justine was squeezed out and hardly said a word. I regretted that, but found no way around it; I mean I couldn’t demand that I be given time alone with a teen girl, however honorable my intention. But at least we met, and continued an intermittent correspondence. I watched her grow up and become a competitive archer; then I called her Diana the Huntress, but I was sad to see the shoe polish fade. And at last, verging on 30, she became a published novelist. She sent me a copy, and when my schedule permitted I read it. I found it competent, but a bit distant, as if there was a parental closeness she had lost. It relates to computer consciousness, with the computer – actually a global program – coming across like a character. So I recommend it to hard science fiction readers and not to soft fantasy readers. I think Diana wrote this, rather than Shoe Polish. Regardless, I’m glad Justina made it; so many don’t.

I also watched more of the videos I bought when MOVIES UNLIMITED sent me an 800 page catalog with a 25% off sale. After all, they were talking my language. Two of them were Lolita; the 1962 and 1997 versions. Nabokov’s novel was the story of a middle aged man’s sexual affair with a girl of about 12, a shocker in its day. I was curious about two things: how could they make a movie of this forbidden affair, and how did the original movie compare with the remake? Now I know the answer to the first: they eliminated the youth and the sex. Lolita is a stunning teen, about 15 and self possessed, like a starlet. I don’t think even a kiss is shown in the first movie. She whispers in his ear, then there is a suggestion that she will get into bed with him – and then it is next day, diving the car. It is unrated, but would be G but for the suggestion that the girl is underage. The remake, rated R, follows the book more closely, and has Lolita age 14 but looking and acting 12, cute rather than sexy, and she certainly kisses. No sex or private flesh is shown, but the surrounding dialogue makes quite clear what is going on between them. Theoretically the man is preying on the child, but it is evident that the child is preying on the man too, exploiting her power over him. The conclusion is especially brutal, per the book. Overall, the remake is superior. That attracted my attention to the book, which remains on my shelf, as I verified just how closely the videos followed it. I remembered one paragraph that startled me, way back decades ago when I read it: it described the schedule of sex between them, once it got sexual. They did it something like fifteen times in a day, trying to satisfy the man’s seemingly insatiable hunger for very young flesh. But this time I couldn’t find that paragraph. Did I imagine it? I don’t think so. So where is it? Maybe some reader who is more freshly conversant with the novel will identify it for me, or advise me that there is none such.

I heard from Kim Hirsh, who explained how she had come by the nickname The Deerslayer. In her own words: “My mother just bought me Deer Avenger, noting that it had approval from you. I have a rather funny anecdote about that as well. I have been nicknamed ‘Deerslayer’ by my friends – have no fear, it’s not because I ACTUALLY kill any deer. And now for the story: My friend Cynthia is a rather well-endowed young lady, and myself likewise. One day Cindy was blithely enjoying nature when a hummingbird flew right into her chest. The poor thing broke its neck and died within the week. Finding this episode sad but hilarious, I ran to my friend Ryan and said to him ‘RYAN! CINDY KILLED A HUMMINGBIRD WITH HER BOOBS!’ Ryan looked me up and down and said ‘What’d you kill, a deer?’ Thus I am the Deerslayer. It’s a running joke I thought you might enjoy.” I do, though I’m sorry for the hummingbird.

Meanwhile I read Chthon and Phthor, the first being my first published novel, the second being its sequel, in the form of galleys for their republication at Xlibris. No need to comment in detail; they are science fantasy, and completist collectors will now be able to get them. I hope readers appreciate the Author’s Notes I added to these editions. It was interesting, reading my own work as it was in the neighborhood of 30 years ago; some sequences I had entirely forgotten. Thus it was like reading someone else’s books, and I found that I liked his way of writing. Chthon remains the most intricately structured novel I have done, possibly the most intricate the genre has seen, with many literary references, but it’s a solid hard-hitting story too, not gentle in the manner of my light fantasy. The protagonist does some really ugly things. So I don’t recommend it to my twelve year old readers. I also read The Gift, sent by Marisol Ramos, whom you can find by traveling the link to the Xanth Thread. The thesis there is that historically, culturally, gifts were not free; they were required, and return gifts were required, and significant personal status depended on proper performance in this respect. So the exchange of gifts was not the nice thing we think of today; it was deadly serious business. From it, perhaps, our present system of trade evolved. And yes, the book was a gift. Probably because I had sent Marisol an early copy of Xone of Contention, to which she contributed.

Some readers send me my own books, to be autographed and returned. The problem here is not just the time it takes me; like as not I have to pay the postage too. For example, they may send a return envelope with Canadian postage; the US Post Orifice will not accept that, or metered return postage, because it doesn’t have the current date on it. Thus it costs me $3.20 to return, despite the fact that the owner of the book has already paid that postage. Don’t ask my why the P O is like that; I guess it makes more money, finding pretexts to charge twice. Another reader sent a book with a ten dollar bill; we couldn’t return his change because the package had to be sealed before mailing and we didn’t know the postage. So do I expend more postage with a separate letter to return his money? I thought he might write again, maybe with a thank-you note, and I’d return it then, but so far, silence. Readers have marvelous insight; the ones I most want to hear from again promptly disappear.

We watched the video What Dreams May Come. Now there was a pleasant surprise; it’s a phenomenal feast for the eyes. Robin Williams meets and marries his love, but their children are killed in an accident, and then he is also killed. He finds himself in a situation very like heaven, consisting of scenes painted by his beloved wife, and when he touches things there, the fresh paint smears colorfully. Then his grief-struck wife commits suicide, and thus goes to a situation more like hell. So he goes to rescue her, and the scenery becomes violent and ugly. Of course he succeeds, after much doubt. But what makes this movie great is the visual effects, and the feeling surprises along the way, such as the identity of a lovely young woman who helps him in heaven. I recommend it to anyone; it’s a memorable experience.

I popped a blood vessel in my left eye. I think it happened when my wife and I were screwing. Now don’t tell me that folk in their 60’s are too old to even remember how, let alone do it; we’re not too old and we did do it. It was for the new shelving in my study library, to make room for more books. She used the power drill to drill the holes, and I used a Phillips screwdriver to screw in the screws. They became quite tight, and it was all I could do to turn them an eighth turn at a time. I must have held my breath and done my utmost – and burst a vein. The outer corner of my eye looked awful, blood red, and I was alarmed, despite the complete lack of pain, until we figured it out. The medical book said it is harmless and fades in a few days, and that’s what happened. Moral: don’t screw around too hard when you’re no longer young.

I read the galleys for The Gutbucket Quest, my collaboration with Ron Leming, scheduled to be published in hardcover by TOR in Mayhem. It’s a good novel, about the blues music, with much philosophy. The Gutbucket is a stringed instrument fashioned with the ashes of a blues devotee, with magic power. I’m an ignoramus about the blues, but my collaborator obviously knows them well. I also read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, because readers are asking me what I think of these British fantasy novels. It’s okay; it’s the story of an eleven year boy who goes to a school for wizards, and makes it through despite same evil machinations. It’s a children’s book, but evidently bought and read by many adults, because the first three Harry Potter novels became the top three on the New York Times bestseller lists. What I want to know is how come all the other fantasy writers who write equivalently well and appeal to children and adults can’t get similarly published and promoted? It is evident that the market exists, but the publishers have mostly refused to address it. Will that change, or will they simply tune out this formidable evidence and continue to stifle most British and American fantasy writers? Don’t hold your breath.

For a decade we had a kitchen garbage disposal unit, one of those devices that grinds up organic matter so that it can be washed on into the septic tank. Yes, one of the advantages of living in nowhere is that we have our own pump for water and our own septic tank for wastes; no city connections or charges. Then the unit quit. Rather than replace it, we tried shifting back to the old fashioned way: burying the garbage outside. If there’s enough, it may form into a compost heap that will generate new soil. Well, it’s been a couple of months, and now we are seeing an incidental benefit: things are growing. We have eleven volunteer potato plants and one cabbage leaf, except that we hadn’t buried any cabbage leftovers so it must be something else. It will be interesting to see what it turns out to be. Probably not a Martian Paradise Plant, alas.

Sometimes readers send me things. I have quite a collection of etchings, statuettes, pictures, carvings, decorative plates and such, and I still use a nice blue scarf a girl in Tampa sent me over a decade ago. I also receive First Day Covers from an anonymous party; I’m not sure what to do with them, as I’m not a collector of such things. Recently I have received several videos, and have watched them along with the ones I bought. One is Embrace of the Vampire, a mixture of horror and some of the nicest bare breasts I’ve seen. Readers who think I have a fixation on panties should see me react to breasts. Another is Four Rooms, a farce that also has some bare breasts. Time Bandits, with wild adventures along history. Monty Python and the Holy Grail, parodying the realm of King Arthur. All good fun. So is Tank Girl, one of the ones I bought myself, sexy futuristic junk: my kind of thing. I have several more to watch when I get the chance. Understand, I don’t just watch a video, I do it when I’m doing something else, like writing a novel or cleaning up old files, in proper workaholic fashion. So my attention is seldom complete, and I hope to watch many of these again with similar inattention. One that was a challenge, several months ago, was I Am Curious (Yellow), because it was in a foreign language with subtitles: I couldn’t pick it up peripherally. But what a luscious bare girl that one had! Readers generally let me know their reactions to my comments, such as whether I ramble on too long – one said so, but since then three have told me they like my rambles of any length, and anyone who doesn’t like them should quit reading them – and some are dismayed by my unrecalcitrant admiration of nude young women, so I’m sure I’ll be hearing soon whether all these book & video comments are a glut on the market.

One correspondent has a problem I’m not sure how to address. It is neighbors from hell. For about the past year these neighbors seem to have dedicated themselves to harassing my correspondent, apparently having nothing better to do. They trespass, they threaten, they sabotage, they even once seem to have used their car to knock her husband off his bicycle in a hit and run “accident,” and they call the police to complain about made-up things – and the authorities accept the word of the perpetrators rather than the victims. It’s like pro wrestling, where the referee admonishes the good guy while the bad guy fouls with impunity. Thus it is the victim who gets hit with court orders to stay clear, and not the trespasser. My guess is that the neighbors want to force this family to move, and don’t care how they do it. Okay, you may wonder how well I know this correspondent; is she paranoid? I know her well enough; we have been in touch about twenty years, and once we met at a convention. I believe my correspondent. Now if this were happening to me, I’d get a lawyer and make a legal case that would make the harasser sorry. I have done it in other circumstances; I am after all the Ogre. But I have the will and the means; my correspondent doesn’t. She can’t put $20,000 into a legal case, and now she can hardly even write a letter, for the tears. So here is a question I hope some experienced reader will answer: how can a person fight back, in a case like this?

I read Till We have Faces, by C S Lewis. Lewis is one of the recognized great writers, and while it galls me ever to agree with the critics, I did enjoy his adult science fantasy trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength when I was young, as well as the seven volume CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, which I read to my daughter when she was young. He is also noted for philosophical works as he wrestled with Christian theology. The movie Shadowlands shows his relationship with the love of his later life, Joy, the woman he married who then died of cancer. He adopted her son, but did not outlive her by many years. So when the Book of the Month Club offered an edition of one of his novels I had missed, we got it and I read it while traveling. Faces is based on the legend of Cupid and Psyche: the goddess Venus was jealous of mortal Psyche’s beauty, so ordered her son Cupid to afflict the girl with a passion for the basest of men. But Cupid fell in love with her himself, so carried her to a secret palace where he made love to her by night. He forbade her even to see his face, lest word of his perfidy reach his powerful mother. When her sisters visited Psyche they were jealous of her fortune, and plotted to destroy her happiness. They suggested to her that her husband must really be a horrible monster, and she should sneak a light into the bedroom when he was sleeping to verify this. She did so, but found instead an irresistibly handsome man. He woke, rebuked her, and flew away, leaving her desolate. Cupid then got back at the sisters by leading them to their deaths, and the goddess Venus seized Psyche and enslaved her. Eventually Cupid forgave her – remember, she was the most beautiful of mortals – and interceded with Jupiter to make her a goddess. Venus was reconciled, and all ended well. However, C S Lewis felt that the legend was not entirely accurate, and Faces is her story retold – from the perspective of Orual, the ugly elder sister. Orual is actually a decent person, who sincerely loves her lovely little sister and seeks what is best for her. This is a fine story, beautifully told as historical fiction, with significant insights into the human condition, and it did move me. I’m glad I read it, and its implications will remain with me. I am a cynical reader in my dotage, and books that thrilled me decades ago no longer do so, but this confirms in my mind the quality of this author’s fiction. Do I recommend it to others? Yes, for those who have thoughtful minds and an eye for style; this is not simple adventure fantasy, though it perhaps could be read on that level.

I don’t pay a lot of attention to pro football, leaving that to my wife, but when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers made it to the playoffs I got interested. And got a blunt reminder why I don’t pay much attention: did you see that bad call? The Bucs had played well, and it was a close game, and were driving in the final minute for the score that would have won it and put them in the Superbowl – and the referees reviewed a 13 yard pass play and called it incomplete. I understand that of 34 sports commentators, not one supported that call. It was simply wrong. There’s an act that needs to be cleaned up; it’s not supposed to be like pro wrestling. So the Bucs lost – they might have lost anyway, but that will now always be in doubt – and I tuned out. I did not watch the Superbowl, though I understand it had many interesting commercials.

I read one more novel: Proposition 31, by Robert H Rimmer. In the last HiPiers column I mentioned how I had listed Rimmer’s The Rebellion of Yale Marratt as one of my favorites, and the author saw that and emailed me. I can hardly think of someone I would rather have heard from; I really liked his fiction, thirty years ago. Now he is 83 and still shaking up the establishment with his thoughts on other types of marriage. In fact he is getting his books republished at iUniverse, so anyone can see what I mean. His novel The Harrad Experiment foreshadowed coed college dormitories, and perhaps facilitated their acceptance. I visited his site, and will try to put a link to it so that others can see it, simply because sometimes my readers want to know what I like to read. We wound up exchanging books: he sent me Proposition 31 and Thursday, My Love, and I sent him Firefly and Virtual Mode. He said he was enjoying Firefly, and meanwhile I read his novel. It turned out that I had read it before – I wasn’t sure, after 30 years, but I did remember some scenes as I read them – but this was my critical reading, and I was curious to see how I reacted this time. Well – mixed. Rimmer is a good writer with great ideas, a bestseller in his day, now largely shut out by Parnassus. (Why does that seem familiar?) But Proposition 31 is by no means an exciting adventure story, or an erotic effort; it’s a serious exploration of the feasibility of what he terms corporate marriage. That is, two or three couples may merge and form a larger marriage unit, where Husband A has sex with Wife A and with Wife B, and similar for Husband B with both women. It’s not wife swapping; the women are co-equal partners, as choosy as the men, and it happens only if they want it too. Four or six people in love with each other. The book starts as third person, sometimes omniscient viewpoint, sometimes play format, then switches to first person, and finally to other views and even a diagram of a collective marriage residence. Thus it becomes a treatise, and I understand some critics object to that, which means it must be effective. So this is not simplistic reading, though it does have sexy episodes; read it to consider its implications, and be intrigued or furious. Rimmer would like to change society, and his books are persuasive arguments. I learned from his autobiographical essay – yes, I sent him mine, too – that this novel reflects his own life in spirit. He and his wife had a long term sexual liaison with another married couple, until death did them part. So he knows it can work; he has done it. I view this from my perspective as a paleontological nature-of-man researcher for my GEODYSSEY series, and believe he has a case. We have heard about the “four year itch” that leads to the current 50% divorce rate; maybe our species isn’t quite comfortable with one couple action for too long a time. Maybe in prehistory group marriage was the norm. There’s the ditty “Hogamus higamus, man is poligamous; higamus hogamus, woman monogamous.” Maybe that seeming conflict can be resolved by a larger marriage, with the men satisfied with two or three shared wives, and the women satisfied as long as that group is stable. Could it not be so? Read Rimmer and ponder. I’ll try to report on the second book next time, and on others as I get to them. Check his web site at www.harrad2000.com/.

Every Sunday I take Obsidian Dog for a walk. That’s because the other six days a week my wife takes her for a ride to the edge of our tree farm three quarters of a mile distant to fetch the mail, and she lives for the sniffing along the way. She’s a highly nose oriented dog. So I fill in on Sunday with the walk, and she loves that too. It is as if we traverse three realms on that walk: first the wild oak forest we live in, then the dry lakebed – I’m not fooling when I say we have a drought – which is now an open expanse of dry water plants and mud flats, and then the tree farm portion, with the slash pines standing in their long rows. Each seems to be its own world. Not much evidence of pigs these days; I think they have no water to drink here, so have gone elsewhere.

It used to be that I put my ideas for the derivation and nature of mankind in my GEODYSSEY series, such as the Triple Ploy by which Woman captivates Man, or the true nature and purpose of dreams. I figure that when some scientist wins the Nobel prize for one of these notions, I’ll be able to show where I published it first. It’s a little game I play with concepts, requiring that I live long enough to see one of these chickens roost. But since I lost my market for that series – too many readers prefer Xanth – I won’t be presenting bold new concepts therein for a while. So I’ll present one here instead. I have long pondered the mystery of Vitamin C. I use it for general health and to stop the common cold, so that it has been longer than I remember since I have had a cold. The medical establishment still is balky about admitting that C is effective against that, but those who try it seriously know that it is. Not against flu, unfortunately; we’re trying eucalyptus juice for that, but haven’t yet verified it. Most other animals manufacture Vitamin C in their bodies, so seldom have colds, but we don’t. So here is the mystery: why did our ancestors lose the ability to make C? Some conjecture that at one time we ate a vegetarian diet so rich in C that we had no need to synthesize it, but I don’t believe that despite being a vegetarian. It is just about impossible to match the level of C animals make via diet alone. So I figure that there must have been an offsetting advantage. That is known in other ways. For example, we can choke, accidentally swallowing liquids the wrong way and going into coughing fits. Other apes can’t. Why did we do it? Because the change in position of our air-passage anatomy facilitates the sounds of speech. We have the most versatile noisemaking capacity in the animal kingdom. The developing ability to speak powered language, and that in turn powered the increase in brain size, and the advantage gave us dominion over the world. It more than offset the liability of choking. Truly does the Bible speak: in the beginning was the Word. Another example: we lost our fur, so that we shiver in coolth that our pets can readily handle, and have to wear clumsy clothing to make up for it. Why did we do it? Because we needed to handle heat, there in tropical Africa, and to go out in the midday sun with the mad dogs to fetch in marrow-filled bones left over from lion kills for our dinner before the hyenas got them. We have the most effective heat dissipation system in the animal kingdom, thanks to our seemingly bare skin and sweat glands. That offset the handsome fur we originally possessed; dinner preempted beauty. So it does happen. But what could offset the phenomenal advantage of an internal supply of Vitamin C? That bugged me for years. Until the past month, when I saw an article clarifying the antioxidant/cancer connection. It seems the body does have some use for free radicals, which are like bullets battering the body’s cells, the product of our use of the dangerous element oxygen. Those radical bullets are worse for cancer cells. But when we use antioxidants like Vitamin C to clean up those free radicals, that also deprives the body of a significant weapon against cancer. So the cancer gets worse. Linus Pauling, who promoted the uses of Vitamin C, spend some time trying to show that it was effective also against cancer, but failed; I think now we know why. Okay: in effect we are trading cancer for the common cold. The cold generally won’t kill you, but untreated cancer generally will. Primitive man did not have fancy medicine, chemotherapy, radiation and such, so needed other ways to slow cancer. And the elimination of Vitamin C contributed to that. But why do other animals retain C? Here’s the key: animals live shorter lives than we do. As measured in heartbeats, to eliminate the distortion of differing rates of metabolism, we live about twice as long as the average. There are reasons why; to oversimplify it, animals are subject to nature’s red tooth and claw, and must live fast and breed young before they get killed. Old age is almost unknown in wild nature. We have achieved more power over our environment, and live longer, reaping many practical and cultural advantages thereby. So here is the connection: cancer is typically slow to develop, so doesn’t have great effect on creatures who are likely to be hunted and eaten young. But it becomes a leading killer among those who live long enough for it to complete its course. So we needed a weapon to stop it – and that was the promotion of free radicals. We may not be as healthy when young as wild animals, but we do handily outlive them. We sacrificed C to longevity, and gained power thereby. I believe that is the answer to the riddle of Vitamin C. Now if I can just figure out the answer to the nature of Dark Matter, and consciousness. Have patience; I’m working on it.

My readers deluge me with thoughts and information, somewhat like free radicals. Let me mention some. I received a copy of RIDGE TO RIVER, a Publication of Arkansas State University-Newport. This seems to be a free magazine of poetry and prose of interest to the community and school, and seems to be open to anyone. Check it out at www.asun.arknet.edu/ridgetoriver.htm. I also received a gift subscription to UNITY MAGAZINE, from Mr. Norman Sukin. I don’t think I know him, and my interest in biblical interpretation, prayer, meditation, and the application of spiritual principles in life is limited. I received a Flash Animated E-Card from Ynot.com on GO Network. It turned out to be a blank page, with no sender listed. I mentioned my search for the song “Down on Penny’s (Penney’s) Farm” last time; several readers sent me information, including the complete words. Thank you; that clarifies that. I received notice that my site was successfully submitted at the web’s most relevant search engine, www.hotrate.com. Thank you; maybe that explains why my daily hits are now running between 4,000 and 5,000 and trending upward. I received a solicitation for Search Engine Registration: for about $30 a month my site will be submitted to more than 350 search engines and directories. Another report indicates that my site is not among the top 30 in any of the top 30 search engines. Okay, let’s address this subject: I understand sites can now pay to be listed near the top. I’m not interested. I feel that a search engine that lists sites by pay rather than by reader interest is defaulting on its job. Don’t we already have too much of this buying of access in politics? When I search for something, I want the search focused on what I want, not on a paid ad. I’ll be alert for an honest search engine that does just that. It is my impression that most folk are already suffering a bellyful of intrusive Internet commercialism, and so such ads and paid placements are suffering erosion of effect. I hope so. Another reader advised me that he had worked on the Hubble Space Telescope for twelve years, and no parts were put in upside down, but that a component of one of the testing apparatuses was backwards and upside down. Another reader has been educating me about Pokemon, which sounds like an interesting game. Had I been born fifty years later, I would surely be captive to it.

Meanwhile, the next column, for Apull 2000, should be much shorter, as my energy will go to a thorough update and integration of the Internet Publishing Survey, maybe alphabetizing it and adding significant new material, pro and con. Then I’ll probably let it ride for some time, as I do have other things to do, such as writing novels. This past two month stint of non-writing is perhaps my record since I went full-time in 1966, and I’m tired of it. I want to get back to finish The Iron Maiden, and then perhaps write my horror novel, The Sopaths, now that I have figured out how to make it writably less horrible.

–PIERS

JULIE GOT MARRIED

My wife and I left home at 1:09 PM Tuesday and drove our Saturn to the Tampa Airport, arriving just before 3. We found the spot for Continental, and were surprised. I mean, you might figure with a name like that, they’d have a big jet airplane. Not so; this was a two propeller mini holding 19 passengers. We had to walk bowed over, because the chamber height was about four feet. We had the last row, which was lucky for us, because that gave us a third seat between, for stretching out. The plane followed the coast south, then cut across the everglades. I saw a blah swampscape with huge puddles the shape of footprints. What invisible giant walked there so recently? Did anyone else notice? An hour’s flight took us to Miami, where we got lost in the terminal, which had no indication where to catch a taxi. We finally figured it should be near the baggage pickup, so went there, and out, and there were yellow cabs going by. We snagged one, and for $24 flat fee got to the Alexander hotel in Miami Beach, where we had the usual trouble checking in: apparently the machine couldn’t read our credit cards. They never just let me into a hotel; there’s always something. But when we finally did win through to our room, lo, it was a suite with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, and living room/dinette, with 2 TV sets and plenty of furniture. All this for $159 a night. It seems you get a price break for off-season wedding parties; the suite was normally $420 a night. This meant that I could go take a morning shower without disturbing my wife, and watch the morning news, and read, and make notes for this report. I’m a morning person; she’s a night person. No, I don’t know how we ever got together, 43 years ago; something about opposites.

We went to the Rehearsal Dinner at 7:30, where we met Julie – remember, she’s my collaborator on the fantasy novel Dream A Little Dream – and fiancé Mark and the other members of the party. Rather than embarrass assorted folk by naming names and complicated family relations on the Internet, not to mention that my sieve-like memory lost them as they were introduced, I’ll just say that both the Bride and Groom’s family were well represented. We had understood it was to be informal, so I wore a plaid shirt, but I turned out to be the only one not in coat and tie. We sat at a table with my correspondent Kira and her husband; I had introduced her to Julie some years back, and the acquaintance seems to have taken. They are of similar ages and interests. This was a steak house, which was awkward for us vegetarians; we settled for beef steak tomato salad and carved the huge tomato sections with the steak knives. There were a number of toasts to Bride and Groom, wishing them very well. Actually Julie hardly looked like a bride, in a regular outfit with her hair done in a bun with pins sticking out as if fastening her head in place. But she was a gracious hostess.

Next day we got a cab to the seaport, as the process was due to start at 11:30 AM, but found that they weren’t letting anyone board until noon. They also required us to give up our driver’s licenses as ID’s, to be held hostage until we left the ship and picked them up again. I had understood that was illegal, but we went along because we did want to attend the wedding. It was on the Jubilee, part of the Carnival fleet of entertainment cruises. Yes, the same company recently in the news for shipboard fires and backed-up toilets. But that was a different boat. This one seemed to be in good order, as it floated beside the pier. This was just as well, since the happy couple and some relatives were to take a cruise thereon immediately after the wedding. It seems that these are boom times for the cruise industry, despite some bad headlines. I understand that they get employees from places like the Philippines and pay waiters as little as $50 a month plus board, though they can earn several times that from tips. Other crew members make about $400 a month. It’s good pay for where they come from, but also shows why such ships fly foreign flags.

We were in due course allowed to board, as a party. I had had a mental image of the big boat anchored parallel to a flat open pier, with a long thin gangplank slanting between them, as it was when I arrived in America in 1940. But things have changed in nigh 60 years. We trekked along the long labyrinth of the enclosed multi-story pier, which rather resembled an airport, complete with personal and baggage inspection, and those horizontal escalators I presume they make by taking vertical ones and puling them cruelly flat. There were also stairs up and down; we had to go up, then down and around to snake into the tiny aperture of the ship’s entrance. There must be some reason for this convoluted layout. The ship turned out to be another labyrinth, with 9 floors serviced by a bank of elevators and stairs. It resembled a shopping mall, complete with assorted stores and theater and entertainment chambers. Its cabin regions were like a hotel, with long narrow halls and cramped room cells. One of the larger chambers was for gambling, with all manner of gaming machines and craps tables and whatnot; this appears to be the real appeal of such cruises, as the gambling addicts get free of American law. I wandered around, checking the upper decks, which bore life-craft and smelled of chlorine, with sea wind blowing. I had the little throwaway camera Julie gave me; the deal was to take pictures of the wedding, and we’d get a copy of the prints. I figured a wider compass would provide perspective, so I snapped pictures of the ship as well as the wedding. The flash didn’t always work, but I hope I got some good ones.

The wedding was on the A deck – A for Atlantis – about halfway down, in the Churchill room. There were seats there for maybe 40, but they weren’t needed, because most of the wedding party was participating in the ceremony. Fortunately Julie’s father was there; otherwise I would have had to walk her down the aisle, and I had almost flubbed that when I did it for my own daughter in 1995. The men were handsome in black suits, and the women lovely in wine colored gowns. The groom’s niece was the flower girl, about four years old, absolutely darling in her outfit. Sigh; we had cute girls like that once, but they disappeared into adults. The bride of course had been transformed by the magic of her wedding gown into a floatingly enchanting creature. The double-ring ceremony itself was formal and brief. Mark and Julie were man and wife.

The wedding party then adjourned to the Promenade deck for champagne, pictures, cake, and some special events. Julie is an artist and dreamer and horse lover, but not a singer. I believe she made the little swan place markers, and swan party favors, and handled much of the rest of the detail of the occasion. But she was resolved to sing, on the theory that if she could get through that, she could make a go of marriage. Remember, in Jamboree 1999 I shielded her from the perils of public speaking, as I am comfortable with that. It’s travel that knots me up, not stage fright. But this time she was on her own. She faced Mark and sang – and the ship’s announcement system came on, blaring her out with inconsequentials. O joy, O rapture unforeseen. But it was in a way a relief, being the worst mishap, when so much could have gone so wrong. After it finally exhausted itself, Julie had to start over. She sang bravely if not well, with meaningful words I knew I would never forget – and I can’t remember them now. But she had made her commitment, surviving the Sing. Then Mark did similar, singing a poem she had written. There was indeed something quite touching about the way they faced each other and sang to each other, advertising their mutual commitment. Then the Bride threw her bouquet, and the Groom fondled her leg and drew off her garter, and threw that. Her young half brother nabbed that. I’m not sure whether that violates the Adult Conspiracy. Then there were toasts. Meanwhile, the bridesmaid tunneled under the back of Julie’s long train to pin it up and make the gown navigable. It looked as if she were trying to reach a wind-up handle in back so as to prime Julie for more activity. I would have snapped a naughty picture, but I had used up my camera. Darn!

The aftermath continued, but we had a plane to catch and had to leave at 2:25 to be sure of getting home. So we missed the wedding cake. We threaded our way out of the boat and along the pier, going against the incoming flow. We recovered our suitcase and ID cards and got a taxi to the airport. Incoming security was very tight, with both of us and our things double-checked by X-ray and wand for explosive residue and drugs. Announcements were in English, Spanish, French, and we’re not sure what else. Miami is truly an international airport, with dozens of airlines we never heard of elsewhere. We used the johns to change back to travel clothes. This time our plane had grown into four propeller 50 passenger effort – with only eight passengers. The entry was from the rear. The stewardess was in shorts and short sleeves. We snacked on tomato juice she served, and granola bars we had brought with us, our only food for the day. The flight ran only slightly late. We learned that they had a full load for the return trip; apparently everyone was going to Miami, not from it, at this season. After our experience with Miami prices, even out of season, it’s hard to appreciate why.

Then our two hour drive home, after dark, where 10 regular letters and 16 emails had piled in, in only one day. We were back in drear Mundania. I still hate to travel. But Julie did get married.

Why I Hate to Travel: Version 2000.126

Something always goes wrong when I travel alone. I would much rather stay home. But when I invested in Xlibris, the company that enables anyone to publish his own books, I became a member of its board of directors, and that means I have to travel to attend board meetings. Last year it was Philadelphia, and I almost missed my return flight. This year – Jamboree 2000 – I had a similar problem. The moment my trip was scheduled, fate generated the worst storm of the winter, dumping much snow and closing many east coast airports. Similar happened last summer; remember Hurricane Floyd, with the North Carolina pigs standing on barn roofs? That’s what messed up that trip, by no coincidence. But this one missed me by a day, and the flight was not canceled. My wife and I left the house at 11:20 AM on the 26th, arrived at the Tampa Airport just after 1 PM, and I caught the Continental flight out, taking off at 2:40. No trouble there, but of course there isn’t when my wife is with me. I tried to fathom the complicated ticket, which was jammed with words and numbers but didn’t tell me what I needed to know, such as the departure gate or when the flight might arrive. It arrived in Newark New Jersey close to on time, 5:30. But the flight before it was delayed; that plane loaded only about ten minutes before mine, and my seat mate had been scheduled for that one, so evidently there was overflow. Had that storm hit its mark, it would have been my flight impacted; as it was, it barely missed.
I entered the Newark airport. My itinerary said that another board member, whom I shall call Angel, would meet me at the gate, and we’d then take a limousine to the hotel in New York. Let me clarify something: I am not going to say anything about the board meeting itself, or identify any of the other board members, because this is private business. So Angel is named for his business, which is to make angel investments. That is, he is a venture capitalist who seeks promising start-up companies that can’t get money elsewhere and supports them. Without such angels, such companies would never make it out of hell, let alone see the heaven of success. My investment is similar, except that I am a writer, not a natural venture capitalist. I invested because I want to help make it possible for every writer to realize his or her dream and see his/her book published. So it’s ideological, and highly risky; I know I could lose all the money I put in. So I do pay attention, and do attend board meetings, hoping to help steer the company right. If it proves to be successful, and demonstrates that it can make a profit by serving writers’ dreams, not only will every writer have his chance, but I will make an obscene amount of money. (Dream on…) But I wish I could support it without traveling. Sure enough, Angel was not there. Something had gone wrong, and I was alone in a strange city. I really hate that!

Well, I walked along the long concourse, looking desperately for a familiar face, or failing that, a phone. Nothing. Finally I reached the airport entrance, beyond which the freezing weather of the storm held sway. Where now? I asked a woman where an information desk was, and she pointed me in a direction, but there was none. But I did find a bank of pay telephones. Now there’s another nightmare for me, but I bravely made the attempt. As I understand it, you follow printed instructions, pick up the receiver, dial your number, and an operator will tell you how much money to put in to complete your call. The instructions on this phone were obscure, except that it said it was 35¢ for a local call and didn’t specify what charges for a long distance call. I tried three times, and didn’t get anywhere. The third time an operator came on and told me that this was a restricted phone; I could not call from it. “You mean I have to find another telephone?” I asked, and she agreed. But all the phones in this bank were just like this one, and I saw no others. I do wonder why it wasn’t marked “Restricted,” and why they would put phones in an airport that a traveler couldn’t use. Obviously I’m a misfit as a traveler; there is so much not to understand. So I resumed walking, and asked another airport employee where I could get information. She pointed me back the way I had come and said to find a person in a red jacket. There were no red jackets. (Next day they were all over, however; maybe it was their snack break hour.) Finally I saw a one-person desk that didn’t say information, but I asked anyway, explaining my predicament. She looked at Angel’s cell-phone number and dialed it, and handed me the phone, and suddenly we were in touch. He promised to find me within 5 minutes. 15 minutes later he did; I was waiting near the ticket windows, but he had been told they were on another floor. Another cute little airport trick? They had ticket windows on two floors. It turned out that the Newark airport, unlike most others, doesn’t let folk meet folk at the gates. There were no warnings; apparently you’re just supposed to know. Computer programs aren’t the only things that can be user unfriendly. Travel could be so much easier if they posted meaningful notices or had helpers where they are needed. I have heard that some travelers even fake injury, just to get the help they need to find their way. But the air travel industry reminds me increasingly of the bygone railroad industry in its covert customer-be-damned attitude. So, half an hour late, we got the limo and made it through the Holland Tunnel to the New York hotel by 7:30.

I called my wife – I hate the way they jack up the phone rates in hotels – and verified that she had gotten safely home. Actually the weather struck Florida too, and during my absence bottomed out at 26°F on our tree farm, damaging or killing some of our flowering shrubs. I do pay for it when I travel, one way or another. Then Angel and I went to a hotel restaurant for supper, I wrestled with the menu as usual to find something vegetarianistically edible (I have mentioned travel hazards?) and asked for something not on the menu: an omelet without meat. The waiter said he lacked authority for that and didn’t want to get in trouble, but I did get it. Whatever happened to the days when the customer was the authority on what he ordered? Angel and I chatted, and we discovered mutual interests in astronomy and the descent of mankind. What is the nature of Dark Matter? I really hope I live long enough to find out. What is the nature of Man? I held forth on my Triple Ploy analysis presented in the GEODYSSEY series – you know, how Woman evolved to hold Man’s attention, with Sex Appeal, Romantic Love, and Commitment, in that order. That remains effective today, as any glance at the way women dress confirms. Then Ceo joined us. That’s the Chief Executive Officer of the company. He had taken a train, so was even later than we were. By the time dialogues and meal were done, and I returned to my room to turn in, it was after 1 AM, well past my bed time. Naturally I woke early, at 4:45 AM, so had to make do on a scant four hours sleep for the big day. Ever thus. Irregular meals, can’t brush teeth after, lost sleep, the tension of uncertainty – all good reasons to stay home. If only I could.

We gathered in the hotel lobby and went to the site for the board meeting, which ran from 8 to noon and was packed with information. Then we had lunch and returned to the hotel to fetch our bags and catch the limo back. The day was dire cold with a cutting wind; I think the temperature rose from 5° to 25°, a nasty range for a Florida retiree. Fortunately my wife had prepared me, and I wore the heavy sweater and scarf my daughter had given me. The sweater shows a sheep; my daughter now farms in Oregon, with goats and Jacob sheep, a handsome breed that has four horns.

The flight back was an hour late, but we had prepared for that; I simply stayed at the Tampa Airport hotel for the night, and my wife picked me up next day. Remember, we are old folk; we don’t like to drive at night or in rush hours. The choice of sandwiches on the plane was ham or chicken, so I skipped it. Why I don’t like to travel: let me count the ways again. I tried the 35 cable TV channels – we don’t have cable at home, being stuck in the backwoods where we belong, and in the last millennium – and of course found little to watch, and went to sleep viewing the James Bond movie Octopussy, which was fine for the occasion. There are those who criticize the formula of pretty girls, fantastic gimmicks, and mindless action, but I go for it. I also finished reading the book I had taken on the trip, Till We Have Faces by C S Lewis, which features an ugly girl and depth of thought: I go for that too. So we made it home around 2 PM and I piled into the accumulated emails and letters and started in answering them, and reading the two back newspapers. I was safely back in the real world. But I wonder: next time I have to travel – and Xlibris is threatening to have board meetings every two months – maybe I should get a cell phone. That way I could call somebody when I get lost and the pay phones reject me. I hate to get roped into such an expensive device, but I need some way to cope, until such time, if ever, that I become competent as a traveler.

The last column, two months ago, ran novelette length, 12,000 words. One reader had told me that I ran on too long, but since then several have told me to take all the length I need. Well, this time I hope to run only story length, under 6,000 words. I have just completed my Internet Publishing survey update, which took me twelve working hours, and that’s enough. It has about 60 entries, virtually all of them checked and updated, and I have put it in alphabetical order. Hereafter I hope to modify it only in spot detail as Internet publishers appear, disappear, or change, hoping that this suffices for hopeful writers who want to know what prospects exist.

Perhaps the biggest associated story is about the two I invested in, Xlibris and Pulpless.com. I am blowing the whistle on the latter, pronouncing it dead in the water, my investment lost. But the former has made a strategic alliance with Bertelsmann/Random House and is greatly expanding its operations; I suspect it will in due course become the major self-publishing services facility in the world, and yes, my investment therein has now quadrupled on paper and more than made up the loss I’m taking with Pulpless. So in this case I am doing well by doing good. Of course paper profits are not real until cashed in, like poker chips, and I’m not cashing in; I’ll let it ride, for good or ill, because I don’t need the money and do want the company to succeed. Every writer shall publish: that’s its motto, and I want to see it happen. Already many formerly balked writers are appearing in print, at Xlibris or elsewhere, and I suspect that the future best successes and greatest art will rise from exactly this kind of opportunity. No longer can a narrow minded, whimsical, or stupid editor stifle genius; only the readers will have that power.

I do have a sour grape. At one point I sent out a “Dear Colleague” letter to some of the most successful genre writers, telling of Xlibris and asking that they consider investing in it, while also warning of the highly risky nature of venture capital investment. I thought others might share my motive, the desire to open things up so that everyone could have a similar shot at success, not just the one in a hundred who presently squeeze through the grinder of Parnassus. I did not invest to make money; I was quite prepared to lose it, and in one case did. I invested because of ideological conviction, the desire to change the ways of Parnassus for the better. Xlibris was in a perilous state, with a cash flow problem, and I hoped that other writers with resources similar to mine might step in and help me save it. But as far as I know, the response was nil. I don’t think anyone even inquired. Maybe their agents declined to relay the letter to the writers, but some must have received it and ignored it. Instead it was the Empire that struck back, the biggest publishing complex on the globe, Bertelsmann/Random House, investing and making Xlibris viable for the long term. The supposed enemy saved my dream. I am going to have to ponder that. I had been reluctant to do business with that colossus, and have not sold them a novel in a dozen years, but I find my attitude changing. Meanwhile I wonder: can I be the only successful writer who wants to build a bridge for every other writer’s dream? That bothers me, and I hope it is not true. They can’t all be “I got mine, tough luck for you.”

Let’s get mundane. My life continues in its petty pace, with here and there an interesting detail. For example, there was the puzzle castle. This was a jigsaw puzzle that assembled in three dimensions to form a lovely fancy castle. My wife and daughter Cheryl worked together on it several years ago, gradually piecing it together until finally they had it whole. I did not participate; I love puzzles of all kinds, but I knew if I got started, I’d get locked in and use time I should be devoting to the writing of novels, answering of letters, and similarly exotic pursuits. So I admired their effort from a distance as it were. It sat resplendently in the living room, and I recommend this sort of thing to those who have a secret desire to live in a castle, but who lack the means. Some few American writers have indeed moved to castles and zero taxes in Ireland, but I’m naturalized American and like it here. Then Christmas came, and we had to set up for that. Daughter Penny helped, and she moved the castle out of the way. Next morning in the darkness as I went to the closet for my coat I stumbled on something that clung to my feet; I tried to lift it clear, but it tore apart in my hands. What on earth was it? I turned on the light and discovered the castle in ruins; I had kicked it apart. Oh, no! I set the wreckage aside and went on with my business. Then Cheryl discovered it. That could have led to internecine internal family war, but I explained that I had done it by accident, not knowing it was there. So the matter rested, but I felt guilty. I prefer to build castles on clouds, not destroy them. I put the fragments in a box and set it on a lower shelf, hoping to repair it at some point. Then, years later, when I had to clean off that shelf in order to set up new shelving–remember the bleeding eyeball screwing incident?–I decided that this was the time. I brought it to the living room, and thereafter did a spot of repair each time I passed by. Later Cheryl helped, and the castle was restored, with the exception of two roofs that were lost in the mayhem. So now it is back in the living room, and my guilt has abated somewhat.

I have a sign a reader, Karen Clay, sent me nine years ago. It’s an indecipherable series of blocks, but if you retreat about twenty feet you can read it: NO SEX CAUSES BAD EYES. Well, I have a corollary, based on recent experience: Screwing improves vision. We have tools around the house; in fact we raised our daughters to know how to use tools, so as not to be helpless females. When there’s a repair job around the house, like as not it’s my wife who tackles it. But there’s one I have to do, and for it I use the smallest tool: a tiny screwdriver whose total length, handle included, is one and a half inches. I use it for my wife’s glasses; periodically their earpieces loosen and need tightening, and she can’t do it because she can’t see without her glasses on, and the screws are microscopically small. So at this point in the column, I dug out my tiny tool kit and screwed for her, and now her vision is improved.

Each week I dutifully check the stats for HiPiers, and as usual there are about as many hits in a day as the counter on the home page records for a week. For the last week in Marsh it suddenly jumped to an average of 7,428 a day. I try to check to see whether it takes several hits to make a counter click, but the addresses seem to be from all over. Apparently 51,994 folk passed by this way, that week, without pausing at the home page. I do hear from some of them. For years I answered an average of 150 letters a month. Then about three years ago it suddenly dropped down to closer to 100 a month. This year it is running at about 125 a month, plus about 10 emails a day that I read and HiPiers answers. So I have letter contact of one sort or another with about 400 folk a month, and I still do take two days a week on that. Sometimes there are oddities: in this period I received a letter by accident. It had been addressed to one Peter Antinori but got in my pile of mail instead, forwarded by a publisher. It was asking how much the publisher would charge to publish a novel. I concluded that that accidental correspondent was probably better off with me, and I told her about the basic nature of commercial publishing, and about Xlibris and Internet publishing. She had been in touch with vanity publishers who were quoting charges of tens of thousands of dollars; I freed that maiden from that fate worse than death. It is for folk like that I have made the Internet Publishing survey, and supported Xlibris. Garbage to garden: I mentioned before how I started burying organic garbage in the garden when our sink grinder broke, and plants started growing therefrom. That continues. We have concluded that the main patches are green peppers; the first two patches are fading, but the next two are surging strongly. We also planted a sprouting onion that is joyfully growing. There’s also what I called a cabbagy plant, though we planted no cabbage. It started as a few little leaves, overshadowed by the peppers, but slowly expanded, and now it’s the single biggest plant, with leaves nine inches long on steps of similar length. Our best guess is that it’s a rutabaga. Time will tell. I have an affinity for things that start slow and small, but it time become increasingly successful, having been that route myself. For those who haven’t heard before, I took three years to make it through first grade, and later graduated from my ninth grade class as the shortest and smallest, male or female. But I’m neither small nor stupid any more. I was also one of the unremarkable students, finishing in the third quarter of my class (and not the top of that) with no accomplishments worthy of note under my high school graduation picture. That, too, later changed; I may be the most public and commercially successful member of that class. But I remember, and sympathize with those who are struggling to make it in an indifferent and often heartless world.

Last time I discussed Vitamin C: why our species forgot how to make it internally. My conjecture is that cancer is a greater threat to the long-lived than to the short-lived, and C interferes with cancer resistance. Since then two things: comment from a reader who says that hamsters don’t make C either, and they don’t live long. Hm. And a news item that those who take half a gram of C a day have arteries thicken faster than those who don’t. Double hm. Could it be to save our arteries we don’t make C? Cancer does cause the body to grow blood vessels to feed it, so C might help choke that off. But that’s the reverse of my case, so the answer is by no means clear. All in all, I think we need another study that says that C does not clog arteries and that hamsters live longer than their C-bearing cousins. After all, we can’t let my lovely theory be lost. We got a short census form. One of the questions was how many people lived at our residence as of Apull 1th. So we waited, because until that date came, we could not say for sure. I think many others did the same. And we all got hassled for not sending in the forms promptly.

I still do my archery twice a week, firing my right handed compound 60 pound draw bow at 150 feet and my left handed recurve bow at 100 feet. Usually I hit the center section more often than I miss the target completely; in fact I subtract the latter from the former for my net score. My worst in this period was -4 and my best was +12. So what made that one day so bad? My first three arrows all missed to the side, and my aim hardly improved thereafter. But damn it, I was aiming for the center, using the sights; the arrows simply were not going where I was aiming them. How can that be accounted for? I understand that some professional archers have that problem, and it ruins them. So it became a challenge: how was it possible for an arrow to go where not aimed? My wife said maybe it was the heavy jacket I wore on that cold day. I doubted it, but I humored her, removing the jacket–and the arrows turned accurate again, so that my score was not as bad as it had been trying for. But, damn it, my jacket is not collected to the bow; how could it affect the arrow? And I came up with an answer: the thickness of the jacket affects the way I hold the bow. In effect I twist it, so that though I am sighting from rear to front sight, the string is at a slight angle to the bow. When I loose it, that string tries to get back in line with the bow, in the process changing the trust of the arrow. Not a lot, but at 150 feet, an inch can change its strike by up to four feet. If it varied only half that, it would account for my problem. So I think I have the answer, thanks to my wife. My aim would surely be worse, but for her. There’s something about wives, who sometimes make the most irrelevant sense. And if any archers are reading this, I hope this solves their problem. Don’t twist the bow with your tight grip as you draw the string.

I received anonymously a video titled “The Early 70’s Horror Trailer,” so I watched it. It was a melange of images and swatches of sound, apparently taken from assorted horror movies. No cohesion, just things and people and special effects. I guess I’m not much of a fan of horror movies if they don’t have bare breasts; I prefer things that make some semblance of sense. However, serious reader Daniel Reitz sent me two Steven King videos: Salem’s Lot and The Stand. I read the first novel back circa 1980, and saw parts of the TV series of the second, so I’ll be catching up on those in due course. One of the differences between King and some others is that his horror has some coherence, and his text is readable. Meanwhile we saw Flowers For Algernon on TV and it was okay. The novelette and later novel, in contrast, represent perhaps the finest science fiction published. And I watched Starship Troopers on video. We had skipped it at the movies, because I remember Heinlein’s novel as a dark, serious, thoughtful story of war as it could be in the future, while the teaser was just spacemen shooting big bugs, obviously junk. So I didn’t expect much, but the video was cheap, about twelve dollars, so I got it from morbid curiosity. And lo, it turned out to be just about the best video I’ve seen recently, a sharp Heinlein juvenile story–today’s readers may not be aware how good the later Heinlein juveniles were compared to standard fare–of cadets going for training and war against a truly horrendous enemy. I no longer remember the novel enough to know whether the movie is true to it; I assume it is not, because movie makers seem almost incapable of being true to a book, especially if it is a good one. But taken for itself, it’s a memorable young-person-adventure show. I watched it once, while working on something else, as it my wont, so my attention was partial, but it impressed me enough so that I will surely watch it again with more attention. Some bits remain in my mind, such as the unisex shower, with the girls stripping and casually joining the boys, and no one taking any note. No leering, no sex, just a sharing of facilities. Would that it could be that way in real life. That does not mean the young folk were sexless; at one point the main Boy loses his Girl because she must strive for a better career, and a secondary Girl at a dance makes known her interest in him. She is worthy, but not quite as pretty as Girl #1, and he curtly rejects her. Then the training sergeant comes by and proffers advice: “Never pass up a good thing.” So Boy reconsiders, dances with Girl, and they wind up in bed together amicably enough. Later in the story she performs heroically against the Bugs, but gets gutted by one. She says bravely to Boy “At least I had you,” and dies. The movie doesn’t pause, but that remains in my memory as a bit of philosophy: if Boy had not done something with her when he had the chance, that chance would have been forever lost, for both of them, and she would have died unfulfilled. There are indeed things like that in life. So maybe the story is shallow and unrealistic, but it’s damn well done regardless. A E van Vogt died. This may be another name that current readers don’t recognize, but he was considered to be part of the Golden Age of science fiction in the 1940s and 1950s, and his passing brought eulogies by a number of prominent genre writers. My relations with him, and opinions of him, were mixed, as mine tend to be with others. He was the author of the Slan and World of à novels, The Weapon Shops of Isher, The Voyage of the Space Beagle, and others. At his best he was as good as any writer in the genre, and certainly one of my favorites. But when Ron Hubbard invented Dianetics, a hack psychology later to become a similar religion, van Vogt joined and set up his own sub domain, and I think that destroyed his career as a writer. Then once in a fanzine he remarked that my novel Hasan was an attempt to cash in on the fantasy fad. Hasan was actually my effort to introduce contemporary readers to the fabulous Arabian Nights tales; it was an adaptation of one of the longest and best of those tales to a fantasy novel, done in the 1960’s before fantasy hit it big on the market. So it was a cheap shot. So I responded in kind, to give him a taste of his own medicine, saying that in that case, Slanwas van Vogt’s attempt to cash in on the juvenile fad. Another reader, the late Richard Delap, applauded the aptness of my comeback, which was purposely as specious as his dismissal of my novel, and it shut van Vogt up for several years. Until, after I had left SFWA, he wrote there that he had made an objective comment on one of my novels, and received a savage response, so had stayed clear thereafter. He was making himself out to be reasonable, and me a wild man. That was hardly the true case. Of course my own memory favors me, and van Vogt can’t come to his own defense, but a reader is now researching my voluminous contributions to fanzine fandam, and will surely come up with the original exchange, and see who is closer to the truth. So I regarded van Vogt as a great writer who had descended into pseudo religion and cheap spite. But for all that, Slan was a great novel, a classic, and readers would do well to look it up.

Each Sunday I take Obsidian for a walk. She’s a 90+ pound dog who growls when I happen to get close to my wife, resenting any attention my wife might spare for me, so the dog and I don’t interact a lot. She lives to ride in the car when my wife goes to fetch the mail, but there is no snail mail on Sunday, to I take Obsidian for a half hour walk instead, and that is one of the two times I become her favorite person. The other time is when I’m cutting some cheese for my snack; I give her a fragment. She is highly smell oriented, and our forest has much to smell. I mostly give her her head, and we follow the forest paths I have made, but sometimes she likes to veer into the thorny tick-infested underbrush. So I try to make new paths, so we can go there without mischief. One day we crossed the dry mudflat that is what the drought has made of Lake Tsoda Popka in our region and forged through the jungle back to our drive and thence the house. So I cut new paths to make that access easier–and of course the dog lost interest in that region, so we have hardly used them. But an incidental aspect assumed meaning. I clip brush back from our drive and paths to keep them open, but I don’t really like doing it, because I see all the small trees reaching desperately for the light, and there’s more light on drive or path, so that’s where they go–only to get destroyed by my clippers. They aren’t trying to do me any harm, except for the savage thorn bushes, but I behead them. It seems like an analogy of life, with some innocent people getting killed just for being somewhere at the wrong time, such as crossing the street when a drunk driver chooses to run the light, as was the case with Jenny Elf. If there is a God (see my discussion below), maybe he has purpose in this, but it seems unfair to me. Yet if I don’t sacrifice those innocent plants, there won’t be any paths or drive. So I do it with regret. And one of the plants I clipped back had nice leaves similar to maple. Maple doesn’t grow down here, but I remember it from my youth in new England, just as I remember all the birds I knew there, and miss the mountains. I actually get jealous of other states’ mountains; you’d think they’d be able to spar a few little ones for flat Florida. So I put them in Xanth. So that five pointed leaf was probably sweetgum, and I brought the small branch home to show my wife. She said to put it in water, so I put the stem in water and the wilting leaves revived. It’s been three weeks now, and not only do they remain firm, new leaves are growing. It’s obviously alive, though it has no roots. If it should start roots, I’ll plant it, perhaps in that way atoning in partial measure for the damage done when clipping my path.

I saw an item in the newspaper that brought other memories. A while back I head from a survivor of Waco, a woman who hid under the bed with her children while bullets flew in the first Waco incident that lead to the siege and subsequent murder of that entire community. Her husband was shot to death, her children were taken away from her, and she spent three years in prison for, I think, “resisting arrest.” She survived because she had left the compound in the interim between shootings, but obviously the government was out for vengeance just because she had been part of the cult. No, I’m not an anti-government conspiracy nut, and I certainly didn’t like the ways of the cult; I just think that in this case the conspiracy was more that of the government than the cult. Evidence is gradually emerging to make that case. I didn’t want to bring any more mischief down on my correspondent’s head, so kept quiet. But now that her story has appeared in the newspaper, I feel free to comment. I don’t like to see wrong done anywhere; it is not suddenly all right when our government does it. That’s my case in Volk, about the American death camps for disarmed German soldiers after World War Two, that I think made that novel unpublishable at Parnassus. At least the truth is slowly coming out about Waco. Maybe some justice will yet be done.

Al of which reminds me that occasionally I do have famous readers. Years ago a woman broke her leg a mile deep in a western cave, and it was national news as they put together a mission to get her safely out. She was one of mine; I met her thereafter in New York, still wearing her cast. Another had been a hitchhiking teen girl; a man picked her up, then raped her, chopped off her arms, and left her for dead in a gully. She somehow survived, and they got the man and put him away for a few years; when they let him out, he killed another woman here in Florida. But the armless one was a reader of mine, finding some solace in my novels. So I may not be much, but I do have some interesting readers.

Last time I commented on Robert Rimmer’s Proposition 31. This time it’s Thursday, My Love. This is an argument for open marriage; Rimmer feels that the present format is too restrictive. But actually the book barely gets to that before it ends, so it’s essentially the story of an affair between a man and woman both happily married to others. They are satisfied with their marriages, but want something more, and that is what they get with each other on Thursdays. It is well enough done, with considerable reflection along the way, replete with a number of relevant quotations, but I think not an earth-shaker. If you want literate, thoughtful discussion of the nature of love and marriage without cheapness, this is it, despite what the cover says.

I was considering getting a cell phone, so that at least I could call out when lost in airports, but two things changed my mind. First the expense; it’s a lot of money for what would be very little use for me. Second, I saw a study that tends to confirm that there is a health risk associated with the use of such instruments, because they have strong radiation right next to the head. I have enough craziness already, thank you.

I have also been considering moving to the operating system Linux. Hitherto it did not seem to have a good competent current word processor, but now Corel has a Word Perfect edition for Linux. That may make it feasible. But the word is that Linux can be beastly to try to install, and that it is best to have competent help close by if you aren’t a computer geek. Since I can’t afford to get hung up long by a difficult computer system, I’m waiting for that last aspect to fall into place. But I rather expect to make the move before the year is out.

I came down with a pain in the left side, just over the ribs. I didn’t seem to have strained anything, but in the course of three days it became strong, interfering with my exercises and giving cruel jolts when I coughed or sneezed or even blew my nose. The pain was exactly where the book shows shingles most often appears. I had shingles four years ago, in the right upper jaw, and thought I shouldn’t have it again, but I wonder. At any rate it crested and slowly faded, and after a month was gone. There is normally a skin rash or breakout in the region, and I didn’t have that, but maybe it was a very mild case that did not reach that level.

I am openly agnostic, and that bothers some of my readers. I don’t have the temerity to claim to know the nature of God, and I doubt any other mortal really knows it either. But I can’t prove absolutely that there is no God, so I’m not an atheist; they are also claiming to know God’s nature–nonexistent–and that is similar arrogance. A reader sent me two pamphlets by John N. Clayton. One is “A Practical Man’s Proof of God.” It starts with an analogy to the universe: either we had a beginning, or we did not. It says the atheist says we did not have a beginning; matter is self existing. But the expanding universe suggests that there was a point source beginning several billion years ago. Also, if the present system of hydrogen-consuming stars had existed forever, they would have used up their fuel long since. So they can’t be eternal. And what about the laws of conservation of matter/energy? How could matter and energy be created from nothing? Therefore the atheist is wrong and the Bible right. The atheist also says we are the products of sheer chance, and this is not to be believed. So God must have made the universe to a particular design. Okay; I don’t buy this. I’m not sure the atheist position is being correctly stated, and refuting it does not necessarily mean that God exists, any more that proving that a duck is not red means it is blue. There are other choices, and the exploration of the nature of the universe is a continuing and fascinating exercise not much given to simplistic either-or choices. My inclination is to apply the same arguments to God: either he had a beginning or he did not. If he had a beginning, who made him? If he is eternal, why hasn’t he long since used up his energy? I don’t think the answers are any easier than they are for the universe; in either case, something must always have existed or have been generated from nothing. The other pamphlet addresses this matter: “Does God Exist? Who Created God?” It replies that the Bible says that God is a spirit, existing outside the bounds of our physical realm, unlimited in time, so the rules don’t apply to him. God created time, God began the beginning. The Bible says so. Okay, if God could do that, why couldn’t the universe do it likewise? I think it is unfair to apply rules to the universe and exempt God. I could claim to be God myself if I exempted myself from the rules of the universe. I point out that if the universe is physical, God must have a physical component in order to create it, or he is violating the rules of the universe in making it. God can’t be purely spirit. So I remain in doubt about both the origin of the universe and the existence of God. However, the concluding statement of this pamphlet takes a shot directly at me: “The agnostic position that there is nothing that can be said to support God’s existence that cannot be said against that existence cannot, in the opinion of the author, stand in the face of this evidence.” Really? The author’s evidence is selective logic and the Bible. It all boils down to faith. That, in the opinion of this agnostic, cannot stand in the face of a more objective analysis. There may be God, but these faith-based pamphlets have not proved it. I remember the small boy’s definition of faith: “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” So my position remains as it is for ghosts and flying saucers: show them to me, and maybe then I’ll believe in them. Meanwhile I regard them as no more than ideas, useful for fantasy fiction, but without tangible substance. Just like theories about the origin of the universe.

Other references: Artemiy Artemiev sent me more CDs from Russia. This is electronic music, interesting, with an otherworldly flavor, that would surely make good background for a deep space science fiction movie. I received an email calling my attention to The Kingdom of Talossa, so checked its site at www.execpc.com/~talossa/main.html. This is a sort of fantasy realm, an independent sovereign country which seceded from the US in 1979, and is an ongoing political adventure. An idea, if you will, perhaps as real as God. I was also advised of the book-a-minute site at www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/sff.shtml. This purports to simplify a person’s search for reading matter by providing extremely brief reviews. So I checked to see what it said of mine. Here it is: “The collected works of Piers Anthony: I’m Piers Anthony. I can write nonsense and sell it.” See–now you know what you’re reading. Another email said “Looking for some hot teen girls?” It turned out to be Nude Celeb Teens, described as barely legal. The sample pictures are sexy enough, with partly clothed pretty girls, some in sexual poses. I don’t mean sultry glances, I mean genitals in contact. So it’s a porn site. What I wonder is why it feels the need to call attention to their supposed youth; the implication is that the most sexually desirable girls are beneath the age of consent. That’s mischief; too many twelve year old girls are already getting raped and murdered. And a notice from THE WRITER: the magazine has been sold to Kalmbach Publishing Co. The editor says she still would like to have material from me. This is the magazine that refused to run my last article unless I deleted my reference to Internet publishing, so I withdrew the article and ran it at HiPiers. No wonder the magazine is fading out; it seems to be determined not to let its readers know that they need no longer be bound by the whimsical editorial restrictions of Parnassus. It is doing those readers no favor. I did not answer. And to finish on a cute note: Dawna D emailed me an address to check while I was writing this column. I checked it, and it said: You have reached the Last Page of the Internet. Now turn off your computer and go out and play.

Last column I left out several things. They were in a bunch of papers that got mislaid until after the column was posted, so I added them to the pile for this one. That means I have a folder about the size of a ream of paper, containing whole magazines and whatnot. I’ll do my best to boil it down somewhat. But this is as usual a hodgepodge of disconnected items and thoughts and opinions. I have a sweatshirt that says I’M NOT OPINIONATED, JUST ALWAYS RIGHT. You can see me wearing it at the head of this section. So if you don’t like opinionations, what are you doing here?

The big news in Florida has been the drought, which is now near or at the record for the century. There is a dryness scale wherein 800 is a desert, and we’re at 752. We are in one of the two Florida counties hit worst. It did affect us personally, and not just because the trees of our tree farm are a crop that would cost a good deal more than a season if lost. Pine trees are tough, and ours seem to be surviving. But the water table has dropped ten to twelve feet, and anything with roots that can’t go that much deeper is hurting. One magnolia tree along our drive starts flowering early, flowers profusely, and finishes late; this time it started, then quit, too stressed for more flowers. Other trees are dying. At the house our water turned muddy, and got full of air; it would fizz out as the tiny bubbles dissipated in the glass. This was because the water table had dropped below the level of our pump, so it was drawing air. The well man came and made it well (note for critics: yes, that is an egregious pun) by lowering it fourteen feet. Considering that when we built this house it was ten feet above the level of the lake–yes, the lake is long since dry. Our worst fear is fire: if it comes, we won’t have much way to stop it. We were a peninsula the approximate shape of the Land of Xanth, in Lake Tsoda Popka, with our house about where the North Village is on the map, but we’re land-bound now. Each morning I dip water out of our returned-to-nature swimming pool to water our yard plants, and we are saving otherwise wasted water wherever we can, such as from the air conditioning condensate and the water-filter system, for more watering. However, this past week, as I type this, we did get rain, almost two inches, the most so far this year. That helps. Now if the regular rainy season will just return…

However, there has been one silver lining to the absence of rain clouds: birds patronize our birdbaths. We now keep them filled, and they represent pretty much the only game in town, or at least in this neck of the woods. So we get the usual small birds, like cardinals, wrens, tanagers, and titmice, but also some rarer ones, like an out-of-district black throated blue warbler, and big ones, like a pair of red shouldered hawks, a whole family of four piliated woodpeckers, and barred owls. The hawks are finicky, but an owl can splash out a third of the water in one set of plumpings. We can see the bird bath from the front window of the house; the birds don’t know they are being watched, so are less wary. No, we haven’t seen any harpies. Yet. And rocs are too big for an eighteen inch diameter bath.

As I make sure is no secret, I am on the board of directors of Xlibris, the publishing services company. This was my introduction to the realm of venture capital investment, and it has been like riding a roller coaster across heaven and hell. At present it seems to be shaping up to be a very good investment, both in terms of money and of accomplishing something I deeply desire: to help change the face of publishing to give every writer his fair chance. The company has extraordinary ambition, and aspects of that will be appearing in the coming months, some very soon after this column. But one problem has been contracts: it proposed to work with writers without personal contracts. Hoo, that’s a minefield, as I have tried to get across to the management. Now they are laboring to get their agreements straight, and asked for my comment on a draft. I suggested that plain-language capsule summaries of the actual meaning of the necessary legalese be included so that real folk could understand what was what. Such as for the liabilities clause, which is a liability to the health of the eyeballs just to read: “e;When the poop hits the fan, it’s my fault.”e; That’s what the writer is signing, in essence, in this or any publishing contract; I have merely proffered an efficient translation. I sent in my assorted suggestions and heard no more, not even acknowledgment. I have been known to have that effect.

I have suffered mild chronic fatigue for 38 years. Not the official syndrome, because the definition of that seems to be designed to exclude real people, with stipulations like having to suffer a sore throat for six months, as if that’s relevant. I just get tired soon when I stand on my feet, and am always a little tired. It started in 1962 when I was under stress: the twin threats of losing my job, and of my wife losing her third baby. I saw a doctor about it, and he concluded that I was imagining it all, and told me it would pass when my fears proved groundless. He told me this on the day that I did lose my job and my wife did lose the baby. This may offer a hint why I can be a bit cynical about the competence of doctors: their attitude seems to be that if they can’t diagnose it, the patient is crazy. I was thereafter excluded on my health insurance for all mental diseases, and the premium was raised to almost double. Yes, I dumped that insurance, and have had no respect for the company, which I think was Aetna, since. A decade later a more comprehensive medical exam indicated that I might have a marginal case of Type Two diabetes. That’s also called Adult Onset, and is not the killer that Juvenile Onset is. My insurance, arranged via the Author’s Guild, did not appear to know the distinction, and had all kinds of stipulations relating to Type One. I dumped that too. Two decades after that when I was writing Killobyte the doctor I was consulting on that project remarked that no way did my medical statistics indicate diabetes, and indeed, I have suffered none of the complications thereof, other that the chronic fatigue. But I was hesitant to pursue the matter, because I didn’t want to be medically diagnosed crazy again; wouldn’t that confirm my critics worst certainties! So for a decade I was simply in limbo, no viable diagnosis, my fatigue unchanged. In fact it was been just about the most stable aspect of my life; my wife and I went from the prospect of being unable ever to have a family, to the survival and growth to adulthood of two bright daughters, and we went from near poverty to outright wealth, and my career went from nowhere to highly successful–but the fatigue never changed. I take that as an indication of a physical or chemical problem, not a psychological one.

But when all is said and done, I’m tired of being tired, and even this late in life would like to be free of the fatigue and the mild depression that may be a concomitant. Of course it might be that I owe much of my success as a writer to it, because the fatigue keeps me sitting longer, and the depression enables me to relate to depressive readers, as the Mode series shows. I have asked myself: if I found a pill that would cure me, and abate both conditions, giving me energy and happiness–but also reduced my effectiveness as a writer, would I take it? And I think I would not. Well, that question may no longer be academic. Here is the story behind the story on that. I look at everything that comes my way, including every piece of email–readers who think I don’t see their missives are mistaken–and every piece of spam and junk mail. Sometimes I find value in that ongoing slush pile of life. I saw a simple test for low thyroid function in an ad for SECOND OPINION, a health newsletter I once subscribed to but didn’t keep. It was okay, but I had five newsletters, and wanted to cut them down to two or one. The one I stayed with was ALTERNATIVES. But I looked at the ad anyway, and it had this test I had forgotten about: paint a silver dollar sized swatch of 2% iodine solution on the skin of your belly. It should take 24 hours to fade; if it fades faster, you may be deficient in iodine, and the body is greedily absorbing it so your thyroid can function better. The thyroid gland relates to the energy level of the body, and to mood too. Well, now. So I tried the swatch–and it faded in less than six hours. I tried it several times with similar result. That may not be a valid test, but if valid, it was a strong indication. It happened that I had a routine appointment with the doctor who checks my skin for cancer–in 1992 I had spot surgery to cut out a basil cell carcinoma from my right ear, a not very dangerous variety of cancer, but cancer nevertheless, which is why I now wear a hat outside to keep the sun off my face–so I asked him for a blood test for thyroid function. That did indicate a thyroid imbalance, so he referred me to an internal medicine doctor, who turned out to be pretty solidly booked up, but there was a new doctor sharing the office who was open, so I took that appointment. This tuned out to be an attractive lady doctor, about the age of one of my daughters. She may become my primary care physician. She says it could be “e;subclinical hypothyroidsm”e;–medicalese for not quiet enough oomph in the energy gland. Meanwhile she prescribed thyroid pills–the K-Mart pharmacist recognized me and got an autograph, though all of this was done in my anonymous legal mundane identity, not my public writing pseudonym–and I have been taking them about three weeks. They do seem to be helping, but the effect is slight, within the range of the placebo effect or imagination, so I can’t be sure. What will count is the six week blood test, which won’t depend on subjective impressions. If the pills are really helping, the dosage can be increased so that I get the full benefit. So maybe, just maybe, I will finally get a diagnosis and effective treatment for my fatigue of nigh four decades–thanks to looking at my junk mail. Meanwhile I don’t know if that iodine swatch treatment is valid, but readers are welcome to try it if they want to. Stay tuned for a further report, when.

My effort to put my out-of-print novels back into print continues, and now at Xlibris, in addition to Volk and Realty Check the first five Bio of a Space Tyrant novels are coming out at one month intervals, JeJune through OctOgre. Somewhere parallel will be Chthonand Phthor; the latter in British format because the only spare copy I had to work from was the British edition. Actually I think single quotes for dialogue, and double quotes for dialogue inside dialogue make sense; America has it backwards. But you can be sure some idiot American reader will trash Phthor for that, and some genius British reader will love it for the same reason. We are now struggling to scan Mute from the original manuscript carbon; that novel was cut from 190,000 words to about 165,000, and I want to republish it restored. But fuzzy carbon doesn’t scan well, so this is a very slow process. Others in mind for republication: the martial arts series with Roberto Fuentes, the BATTLE CIRCLE trilogy (that was going to be five novels, but I lost my market, way back when), the Cluster trilogy, the Omnivore trilogy, and we’ll see what else as we muddle along year by year. Eventually I want to have all of my novels in print, which means over a hundred. But I have to have some time to write my new novels.

Which brings me to what I am writing now: the ChroMagic series. The first novel, Key to Havoc, is 250,000 words long, and the sequels will be similar. The setting is the planet Charm, so called because it looked charmingly colorful from space when a ship from Earth came to colonize it a thousand years before. It was one of two sister planets orbiting each other, Charm and Counter-Charm, in turn orbiting a normal sun-type star and a companion black hole. So the orbital dynamics are something else, as is the climate. Little did they realize that this was the least of it; the color is from myriad volcanoes that cover the entire planet–no oceans, just some scattered lakes–each belching a different color of magic. The vegetation and animals near a blue volcano are blue and do blue magic; human settlers in that region gradually turn blue and do blue magic too. Those near a red volcano turn red and do red magic, and so on. Some volcanoes erupt water; some suck inward. Some are invisible, and so are their creatures, who must use magic illusion to become apparent; it is not entirely coincidental that all of their women are beautiful. But their magic works only in its own color; a Green man can do no magic in a Yellow zone. Thus the Chroma: magic colors. The plants and creatures of a Chroma zone are a good deal smarter and more self-willed than is any nonChroma life and can’t be taken for granted. Some human beings live between volcanoes, so are nonChroma, and these are the ones that actually govern the planet, in part because they can travel freely without losing magic they never had; Chroma folk are pretty much bound to their Chroma by choice. Would you leave your home territory if that cost you all your convenient magic, while all the creatures of the place you visited had their magic? Different Chroma tend to specialize in particular types of magic, such as fire, water, golems, plants, demons, or science–others regard that last one as distinctly odd, but it does seem to work in its zone. The story starts when the able and smart but ignorant nonChroma villager Havoc is selected to become King, and he is not pleased, but will be executed for treason if he declines or messes up. Thus the key to Havoc–and he does wreak some havoc before he is done. The sequel, Key to Chroma, pertains to the mystery of the origin of the changelings; King Havoc and his girlfriend Gale are changelings, and something is trying to kill them. Overall, this is a richly magical setting, probably more sexy than any fantasy gets that is not pornographic, and each novel is an exploration of the by-paths of the planet and its culture and creatures. There’s not a lot of humor, violence, swordplay, evil wizardry, or political conspiracy; this has its own original flavor of manners, insights, and inset stories. There are dragons and horses, spiders and millipedes, but these are not of any types remotely known on Earth. The third novel will explore the ultimate secret of Charm, which is surprising and vital. I love this series, and think it will make some waves, because you ain’t seen fantasy quite like this before, and if no publisher has the gumption to take it, I’ll put in print myself via Xlibris, in due course.

Readers ask my about movies: has it occurred to me to make one of my novels into one? So here is a brief rehash of that situation: movies are made by studios financed by the cousins of Scrooge McDuck, with so much money they need depth gauges to measure it in the vault. I don’t have that kind of money, so all I can do is say yea or nay to an offer by some outfit that does. So far none have been interested enough to make a movie. My closest call was Killobyte, where I was paid about a quarter million dollars for the movie rights; I understand they paid several times that much to a script writer who didn’t write anything close to the novel. Since the novel is structured as a big computer game, translating that into a movie should be easy, but since they wouldn’t follow the novel, they got too far away to make it viable. That’s my theory on why it foundered. Hollywood really does seem more than somewhat addled, from here. Sometimes I have had hopes, but all were dashed. Once a script writer did a script for Firefly with my approval, and he followed the novel exactly; I loved it and felt it would have been great. It got nowhere. I guess he violated the cardinal rule: thou shalt not follow the novel. On a Pale Horse is a constant center of interest, but so far no substance. Xanth–similar story. There are others percolating now; if everything fell into place at the same time, I could have half a dozen movies. More likely, nothing will fall into place. It really is a never-never land.

The disconnect between the official hit counter on the HiPiers home page and the recordings of actual site hits continues. The daily hits used to be around 4,000, but more recently jumped to 8,000, and the last week was over 9,000 a day. I don’t know whether the growth of the Internet leads to a growth in hits on every site, or whether more search engines are listing this site, or whether I am holding on to old visitors while finding new ones. The hits come from all over the world: Australia, Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa–every so often some come from Nepal. I have a fan in Nepal?

I have had a fair amount of feedback on my comments on God and agnosticism; some agree, some feel I have not properly explored the situation. It is not a subject I care to discuss at length; there must be whole web sites devoted to religious thought. But I will say that one reader caused me to look up a couple of words and learn something: he mentioned a-theism and a-deism. So I looked of theism, and found that it reflects belief in god, supernatural included, while deism is belief in God but not the supernatural. Neither seems to relate to religion. That’s interesting. But I remain uncommitted to any concept of God with or without the supernatural, and am rather strongly doubtful that either exists.

One of my concerns is self defense, which really is a part of my larger concern with health. I try to eat right, exercise, keep emotionally stable, buckle my seat belt, avoid pollution and so on, but suppose I am out in the forest and an aggressive boar attacks me? No, I am not referring to a critic; that is spelled “e;bore.”e; Or a rabid raccoon? That’s why I go out with my spear, or telescoping baton, or my “e;Armadillo”e; knife with the shielded hilt; these are deadly instruments. I hope never to use any of them, but want to have them in case the need ever arises. It’s the seat belt analogy: I never want to crash (again), but if it happens, I want to survive it. But suppose I am on a distant city street, trying to find my way (I just do seem to get lost too readily) and a mugger accosts me? I won’t have any of those weapons, because you can’t take them on an airplane, yet I don’t want to be helpless. I took judo classes for three years, twenty years ago, and while I never got beyond green belt–that’s midway through the student grades–I did learn what to do if charged by a mayhem-minded man. But is there a simpler way? So I have kept my eye out, and may finally have found what I want. This is a piece of hard plastic shaped like the capital letter L, five and a half inches tall, with a big eyelet at the top, as if someone thought it was the lower case letter “e;i”e; and dotted it, only with one of those circles some girls use instead of a dot. (Girls tend to be rounded in various ways; I love that too.) A pretty silly looking item, of no apparent practical use. Yet it is one neat defensive weapon. You put your forefinger through the loop and wrap your hand around the stem; the base of the L sticks out awkwardly below your fist. But if someone attacks you, this dingus is deadly. If he grabs your shoulder, pretend you are holding a hammer, and hammer his hand with that base; he’ll let go in a hurry, or get his hand broken. If he remains aggressive, hammer him on the head; if he doesn’t retreat, it could break his face. If he tries to choke you, jam the tip of the base of the L into his hand or arm until he changes his mind. This is like brass knuckles, only plastic, with the base becoming the striking part, not the knuckles. I believe a woman could use this as readily as a man, and I think she could give a purse snatcher or rapist one hell of an ugly surprise before she retreats to safer territory. In fact I think any concerned woman should carry one, on her body, not in her purse, so that she can get her hand on it instantly. Meanwhile, I’ll be carrying mine. So what is this tool? It is called an Impact Kerambit, pronounced keRAMbit, and I found it for $8 plus postage in a catalog titled SHOMER-TEC that specializes in law-enforcement equipment, but I suspect it is also available elsewhere. I also bought the instruction video for $29, and that’s okay, but I have covered the essence here. I regret sounding like a salesman, but this was one item in a junk mail catalog that made a real impression on me. I see that the Impact Kerambit proprietor has a web site: http://www.kellyworden.com, so folk can check it out directly. However, that seems to be concerned with martial arts in general, rather than this particular instrument. I suppose if you went there and asked for it, they would respond. Actually I took an hour off work one day–a real sacrifice for a workaholic–and ordered things from three catalogs, and they all delivered promptly. From COLD STEEL I ordered a six foot long Lathi (Lah-Tee), which is a rattan hiking staff, for $28, and a Sjambok (Sham-Bock) for $6, which is a kind of cross between a club and a whip, useful for non-lethal self defense as it can inflict a painful welt. From the CABELA’S archery catalog I got The Block, a $150 (plus $20 postage) 28 inch square target that is supposed to last for tens of thousands of shots with my field-point arrows. My old target was getting worn, especially in the center region. This thing is beautiful. It weighs just shy of fifty pounds and is composed of about 250 thin layers of foam plastic. The arrows go between layers and are stopped by friction. I expect to be my main target for the next several years. It better be; I don’t spend that kind of money lightly. I have drawn a one foot square on one side, and a 13.5 inch diameter circle on the other (the two have about the same area) to serve as my bullseyes. My system is to count +1 for each score in the center, and -1 each time I miss the target entirely, shooting right handed with the compound bow at 150 feet, and left handed with the recurve bow at 100 feet. So far my best score for 24 arrows (12 each way) has been +12, and my worst -4, so I do usually hit the center more than I miss the target, but it’s no sure thing. Usually I do better right handed than left handed; I think that’s more because the compound bow is easier to use, than the fact that I am right handed. I have baffle targets around the main one so that my misses don’t lose or break arrows. So how does it work? During this column, which took several days–chores have a way of extending themselves–I had an archery session, and it was awful. Not because of the new target; my arrows kept falling out of the bow, and one fell out just as I loosed it, causing the bow to dry-fire and messing it up so that I missed several following shots. Bad business. I concluded that the heat–it was about 90°F–and the dryness of the drought expanded the arrow nocks and dried out the bowstrings so that the fit was no longer tight. But I did get a few good shots off, and the Block has a sort of dull thunk when struck, as if made of porridge. The arrows are not easy to pull out; the friction grabs them whichever way they are going, but steady pressure does it. So I would not recommend the Block to someone who prefers two finger arrow removal, but otherwise it seems to be a good target. I may have a further report in four years, after I have put 10,000 arrows into it.

I use a credit card when I need to, when traveling or for target orders, and there’s a story there too. Back when I first applied for one, at DISCOVER, I was turned down, because they said I had insufficient credit history. I had paid off all debts, such a mortgages, long since, and incurred no new ones; I owe nobody nothing. I thought their definition was backwards, and sure enough, later they had financial problems. I mean if you turn down your best credit risks, what kind will you be accepting? Another year they phone-solicited me, and I told them that they had rejected me, so now I rejected them–and the phone girl said the same thing had happened to one of their own executives. Wow! Talk about ironic justice. I love it. I have had a similar attitude toward agents and publishers who rejected me when I was in my early career, and who later wanted my business. I mean, why would they want me late, when the critics agree that I was marginally publishable only early, and promptly degenerated to hack level the moment I became a bestseller? So we went to MASTER CARD and they accepted us instantly, and we have been satisfied with them ever since. But we use a defensive strategy, just in case a card gets stolen: my wife uses the MASTER CARD, while I got a VISA card. That way the loss of one card won’t compromise the other. The card I got was tied in with the Wilderness Society, kicking in a bit of cash to them when I used it. It’s a good card. But then I read about the head man of the Wilderness Society bulldozing old-growth trees from his private property. What hypocrisy! So I wrote them a letter inquiring about that, in case the report was in error. They did not answer, and as far as I know they never addressed the matter in their publications. I take that as confirmation. I am an environmentalist, and a situation like this turns me off. I am no longer willing to support the Wilderness Society. But that VISA card was better than any other I’ve tried. So I am in the odd position of liking the huge monolithic money-minded corporation, while disliking the environmental outfit. So when they phone-solicited me for an upgraded card, I accepted, asking that it not be tied to the Wilderness Society. Then the card arrived, and it was a beginner-entry MASTER CARD, not as represented, and not close to the Platinum VISA I already had. They blew it, and I still can’t get away from the Wilderness. Sigh.

As I have mentioned, I answer over a hundred letters a month–currently it averages 130–and read about 300 emails. Every email addressed to me at HiPiers gets printed out and I read it. Most I don’t answer; HiPiers does, saying that I appreciate the compliments on my novels, that we still don’t know when DoOon Mode will be published, that I am not the one who decides whether there will be a Xanth movie, and so on for the routine stuff. If the emailers can’t be bothered to look at the information here at HiPiers, I don’t see why I should take special time for them. I will add brief notes to some, and sometimes tear loose with a full letter. The fact that I don’t add a note to a particular email answer does not mean that I don’t appreciate hearing from teen girls who adore me and my works (one even signs herself “e;Smooches”e;), or older readers who have been with me for a score or more years, or teachers who use my books to encourage reading in their classes. I love them all. It’s just that if I don’t have something more to say than “e;thank you,”e; I leave it to HiPiers and get on with my writing. Sometimes I make a note for this column. Here are some notes: one reader, Teri Small, expressed outrage that the dictionary of imaginary places did not list Xanth. I replied: “e;This is unfortunately typical. As far as I know, none of my fantasy worlds are in any of these listings. It seems to be part of a general policy of ignoring my works, pretending they aren’t there, or aren’t important enough to notice. I don’t like it, but am not sure there is anything I can do about it. It is similar with recommendations: my fantasies are never included in lists of good fantasy.”e; I am not sure how much of this exclusion is ignorance and how much is malice, but suspect it is a bit of both. The critics do not just disparage me, they try to see that others do not learn of me, because a person who actually reads one of my novels is apt to became a fan of mine. One year the genre news magazine LOCUS skipped its annual listing of the British Fantasy Awards: the year A Spell for Chameleon won. I asked the magazine proprietor, Charles N Brown, about that when I met him at a convention, since theoretically LOCUS has no private malign agenda; he more or less shrugged, and no correction was published, and currently my fantasy is never recommended there, or even reviewed. This is hardly the only case. So I welcome the outrage of readers when they see it happening, but until such time as my readers grow up and become editors and critics (is that an oxymoron: a decent critic?), the situation seems unlikely to change.

Another reader discussed rape: of men. I wanted to tell him about the organization fantasy writer Stephen Donaldson set up to address this problem, but don’t know the address. Briefly, from memory, Donaldson, who later became the best-selling author of the Thomas Covenant fantasy series, participated in a passive demonstration against a local outrage, was arrested, and gang raped in prison. Now he’s trying to do something about that sort of thing. I’m sure he could give far more current and valid statistics, and if any reader of this column knows the address of that organization, such as maybe a web site, let me know and I’ll give it here. It is possible that more men get raped than women, fantastic as that may seem. It happens in prison, and they are raped by male heterosexual criminals. Which is not to say that women don’t get raped in prison too; they do, by male guards. Prison authorities seem to be in general denial; it is one of the ongoing shames of our prison system.

Another reader asked about Xanth role playing games. I told her that there are many of them, and that a web search should turn them up. She replied that she had done such a search, and it turned up nothing. Something is out of kilter here, so maybe I need to start listing such games based on Xanth or my other settings, the MUDs and such, so that she and other readers can find them. If anyone cares to inform me of these, I’ll add their sites to the links section of HiPiers. You may wonder why I don’t simply perform my own web searches for such things. Right: I get lost there too. Programs just don’t seem to work for me the way they do for others. I just tried to load Adobe Acrobat so I could read a file sent by a reader; my system refused to recognize the disk. Maybe some year they will make computers and programs usable by ordinary folk without endless hassle; that day has not yet come. I hope LINUX doesn’t turn out to be a similar case, when I go there.

Another reader sent me a copy of a paper on the Hyperphoton, which is supposed to be a quanta of the Fifth Force. Understand, we know of only four forces in the normal universe: The strong nuclear, the weak nuclear, electro-magnetic, and gravity. In my fantasy there is a fifth, magic. This paper suggests that there is a Graviphoton, which is a weak anti-gravitational force emitted by all matter, and that both are boson particles, or nutrinos, and together comprise Dark Matter. It also discusses the Graviscalar, a quanta of a sixth force, that can be used to read human verbal thoughts from as far away as two thousand miles, or to disable or even kill a person. Sorry; I am a skeptic about this; in fact I think it is nonsense, but it does lead into my own discussion of Dark Matter, below.

My favorite magazine is the British NEW SCIENTIST, a weekly compendium of everything relating to science. I also like the science section of the British THE ECONOMIST. I have so many subscriptions to magazines it’s a chore to try to count them, but if I had to cut back to only one science magazine and one news magazine, those would be the two. Fortunately I don’t have to cut back, so I get to read SCIENCE NEWS, DISCOVER, US NEWS & WORLD REPORT, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, and my wife only knows what else. The problem is that they are all so good I can’t let them go. They stretch my mind, and evoke thoughts that I’d love to share with my readers, but these columns are already way too long. So let me just give a couple of examples, and then stifle it lest I never get back to paying writing. NEW SCIENTIST (and others) had an article on the proposition that creatures who eat less live longer. Underfed mice can extend their lives significantly. But I am in doubt: are they really living longer, or merely living slower? That is, adopting a lower metabolism, fewer heartbeats per minute, and so on, so as to conserve energy. I suspect that if lives are measured by accomplishment, a normal healthy diet best facilitates that. Next subject: I’m a fan of Dark Matter–you know, the mysterious substance that permeates the universe. THE ECONONOMIST had an item on that, suggesting that perhaps only 4-6% of the universe is apparent to our senses; the rest is some unknown substance that indicates its presence only by its gravitational effect. It can’t be conventional matter, or hidden in black holes; it has to be weird beyond our present comprehension. NEW SCIENTIST might have a lead on that: its article presents the notion that both space and the material world may be created out of nothing but random noise. That jibes with my theory that the universe is like a mathematical equation set to zero: 10-4 = 2X3, 6=6, 0=0, canceling out. Something like that, only more complicated. So if you took all the matter and antimatter and put them together, you’d have nothing; they equal each other. But as long as you keep them apart, you have substance on either side. That’s our universe, created from nothing. But these magazine articles gave not yet reached that conclusion; they’re still working on the half of the equation we can see. The detail of such articles gets too complicated to get into here, but for those who haven’t wondered about Dark Matter, I’ll just say that the evidence for it is that the galaxies are rotating at such rates that if their visible matter were all they had, they would fly apart. So there must be something else holding them together, something that generates enormous but diffuse gravity, and the great mystery is what that is. There have been many theories, but so far nothing has been nailed. But we seem to be getting closer to the answer, and I am reasonably confident that it will be known in my lifetime. Meanwhile I have a simple fantasy explanation: all the myriad multiple alternate universes where magic works do exist, and only a trace of their gravity leaks through to our own universe, contributing to its stability. So we can’t see those other universes, which overlay ours, but they are there. Isn’t that as satisfying an explanation as any?

But apart from fantasy, the riddle of Dark Matter is serious, and I take it seriously. And I may have a serious answer. We may have been looking in the wrong place. I understand that recent studies have indicated that the vacuum of space is not exactly empty; it has enormous energy. Could we but tap that energy for useful purpose, we’d have a virtually inexhaustible supply. Well, Einstein’s E = MC2 equation indicates that matter and energy are merely different forms of the same thing, and the one can be translated into the other. Nuclear power is an example of such a translation. Matter has gravity–so shouldn’t energy have gravity too? It doesn’t make much sense to assume that gravity magically appears when energy is transformed into matter; where does it suddenly come from? That energy is merely highly concentrated when it forms atoms, so that the trace gravity begins to be felt. Think of grains of sand making a mountain, or drops of water making an ocean: concentration works wonders, and you discover qualities that weren’t evident in the single grains or drops or quanta. In which case the enormous energy of space itself should have diffuse gravity. The theory of interstellar ether was discredited, but maybe it was merely not understood. We have been looking for something, when we should have been looking at nothing–at pure interstellar and intergalactic vacuum. That’s why we can’t see it: there is nothing to see. No matter, just energy. A lot of it, exerting its gravitic force on the universe. Of course this doesn’t explain why there seems to be more Dark Matter in the vicinity of galaxies, or why the universe appears to be expanding more rapidly as it goes; I’ll leave those mysteries for another column. I try to limit myself to solving only one riddle of the universe per column. Meanwhile if there are any scientists among my readers, I’ll be happy to listen to reasons why my conjecture is wrong.

I got a survey about sleeping problems in the mail, no solicitation for donation, not trying to sell me anything; they just wanted information, and in return they would send me the results. So I filled it out. The fact is, I don’t have much problem sleeping; I get sleepy around 10:30 PM and wake around 5:30 AM, and when I read I get sleepy, so have to break it up and do writing or something else. But when they sent me the results, they had marked in my supposed answers, all wrong, pretending that I have bad sleep problems, and offering a Free Video & Information Kit. Yeah, sure. So it’s a fake. Too bad. I have a real interest in the nature of sleep and dreaming, as shown in Shame of Man, another universal riddle that it seems only I have solved. Next survey for something, I’ll toss it out.

I received an ad from DNA PUBLICATIONS. No, not a genetic research outfit; it publishes five genre magazines: ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE, ABORIGINAL SCIENCE FICTION, WEIRD TALES, PIRATE WRITINGS, and DREAMS OF DECADENCE. I no longer have time to read genre magazines; I’m too busy with news and science magazines, but it seems worth a mention. This is unabashed pulp fiction, and I have no objection, but critics will surely savage this. I grew up on pulp science fiction, and have fond memories. They don’t seem to have a web site, though.

There was an article three months back (I’m into the material I overlooked last time) about how three English teachers refused to teach a high school freshman student. He had written a fictional essay describing a shooting at the school. He was suspended, and the teachers are blacklisting him–because he tackled a relevant subject realistically. Now I was once an English teacher. I would have applauded such an essay. I don’t know all the details of this case, but that school and those teachers come across to me as folk who need remedial classes in the First Amendment, not to mention Education. To punish a student for writing something some others don’t like–this is appalling. What kind of ignorant, vindictive ilk is running today’s schools? A more recent case is that of Al-Najjar, who worked for a University of South Florida think tank in Tampa. Members were linked to Arab terrorists, so the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) locked him in jail. He was never charged with a crime or allowed to see the evidence against him, but he remains locked up for three years now. What about Habeas Corpus? What about the right to face your accuser? I am a naturalized citizen myself, and don’t like to see the Constitution I believe in flouted this way. I don’t care if the man is a terrorist, he deserves fair treatment by our laws. I don’t like terrorists, but as I see it, it is the INS that is practicing terrorism here. They should present the evidence and either punish the man or let him go with an apology. If they can jail folk for years without charges, no citizen is safe. Fortunately some Florida politicians are belatedly getting interested, and maybe American law will start to be applied. If I ran things, those who use their authority to violate the Constitutional rights of others would be the ones in jail.

Tovah Veats, a contributor to Xanth, and her daughter, had dessert at Nieman-Marcus, and loved their cookies, so asked for the recipe. The waitress said it cost only two-fifty, so Tovah bought it. Then her credit card was debited $250, a hundred times what she had been given to understand. She called, but they wouldn’t budge; she was stuck for it. That made her angry, and she decided that this outfit should never rip off another person that way. So she put the recipe on the Internet, encouraging others to spread it widely about. If you want the recipe, you can get it from her free at www.toad_u_so@hotmail.com. Sometimes the worm does turn.

I look at spam too, and sometimes it is interesting, though not necessarily in the way intended. One was headlined FIND OUT (ANYTHING) ABOUT (ANYONE, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, right on the Internet. It says you can get a copy of your FBI file, find debtors and locate hidden assets, check criminal drug and driving records, look up someone’s employment history, check out your new or old love interest–maybe I have the wrong attitude, but this makes me wonder who is checking me out this way. Nevertheless, I haven’t thrown it out. If I ever catch the license plate of the jerk who dumps his trash in my tree farm, I might use this to get background information before deciding whether to sue.

Then there are the borderline cases, part personal, part spam. One email started out “e;I have been a huge fan of yours ever since I first read Macroscope,”e; and went on to comment on the HiPiers site, contrasting it favorably with those of other writers. I have no reason to doubt his credits as a fan of mine. Then he got down to business: how about helping spread the word about a web cam site? These sites broadcast the daily life of individuals, usually comely young woman; you subscribe so that you can watch them studying, eating, sleeping, showering, whatever. It’s voyeurism. Now I don’t object to voyeurism, or for that matter to commercializing sex; it’s a free country, and if someone wants to broadcast the private aspects of her life, and someone else is willing to pay to watch, that’s their business. I object to forced sex or humiliation, like rape or incest, but not to mutually consensual relationships. So gives no moralistic lecture here. But I regard HiPiers as a service to my readers, with information about my books and projects, news of me, links to other sites relating to me or my works, information on Internet publishing, and anything else of relevant interest to me or my readers. I doubt that links to sexy web cams fits that description. I suppose if the young woman were a fan of mine, and had a link to HiPiers, I might see it differently. So I’ll give my report here, and will be guided by reader response whether ever to do it again. The one recommended to me is Adora, at www.adoracam.com. Adora is 19 and comely, and seems like a nice girl. As I like to remind readers, once upon a time I encountered a nice brown haired nineteen year old girl, so I married her, and this month we’ll have our 44th anniversary. Adora’s site, when I checked it in Marsh, had a daily diary and an assortment of pictures, two of them bare breasted, and an invitation to subscribe for a scant $20 a month. It’s what in fan publishing would be called a personalzine, only I presume animated, and I admit I wouldn’t mind watching Adora for a while, especially while changing her clothing. But I suspect my interest would fade after about half an hour, so it’s hardly worth a month’s subscription, and I do have books to write. Ads for other life cams clustered the site access, for titles like TrueLesbians, LatinaVista, Aspiring Actresses, Couple TV with sex, and other voyeur sites. So if this is your scene, and you have money to spend, here it is spread out for you.

I received a solicitation to be listed in the SOUTHEAST REGIONAL YELLOW PAGES, for only $181 a year. The entry was for PIERS ANTHOHY (sic) WRITER, with my full home street address. I didn’t answer. But just so the rest of you know, I don’t care to pay to be listed anywhere, and I don’t want my address published. I routinely cut off any outfit that publishes any address of mine but HiPiers.com, and that includes more than one WHO’S WHO series, in case you wonder why those volumes are getting badly out of date on me. I told them not to, they ignored me and did it anyway, so they are gone. A leading fanzine publisher ran my address to spite me; in later years when I was a bestseller he wanted my participation and never got a response. Another fanzine “e;accidentally”e; did it; the proprietor apologized, but I was gone. I don’t communicate with the high school I graduated from: same reason. Those who insist on testing the Ogre learn the hard way. If you wonder why, it’s the same reason celebrities use fake addresses: to prevent rabid fans from dropping in unexpectedly to take my time, to want to come live with me, or perhaps to kill me and take my place. Only that last has not yet happened. I prefer to get to know someone before letting him/her know where I live. Some fans I have allowed to visit me at home, but it’s a rarity–and no, you nascent critics, they have not all been cute teen girls. Anyway, their mothers were along. On occasion some rectum will run it on the Internet, subjecting me to more autograph requests from folk who have no notion of my business. If you know of any site currently doing it, give me the site address and I’ll see what remedy I can find. I suspect I have readers who know how to make an errant mischief maker sorry.

A family of wrens nested in our swimming pool enclosure. Understand, our pool has long since returned to nature; a tree poked a branch through the ceiling mesh, and frogs took up residence, and we have had several generations of tadpoles and nesting wrens. They are bold little birds, and the go after bugs; we’re glad to have them. But we worried: when the little ones set out to fly for the first time, suppose one fell in the pool? And while I was writing this column–it got spread out over several days, because other things kept intruding–it happened. The nestlings flew, and one was hesitant; we watched from the house, keeping our too-eager dog clear, and did open an enclosure door so it could bypass the pool, and thought it had, but next morning it was floating drowned. Damn! I know it is nature’s way, uncompromising, the unfit perish for whatever reason, but still I hate to see it in action. Who knows what illustrious future that bird might have had, had it been given the chance?

One of the interruptions to this column was The OneRing interview. We had the notice on at HiPiers.com, and a link, so my readers could find it. Naturally when I used that link to go there myself, I got halfway lost; I swear I hit the right keys, but kept getting notices about MICROSOFT IS NOT YOUR DEFAULT BROWSER, DO YOU WANT US TO TAKE OVER, YOU CHUMP? or words to that effect, and then I was in some kind of wrestling site, and finally at OneRing, but there seemed to be no direct way to communicate my presence. So I typed repeatedly THIS IS PIERS ANTHONY–I’M LOST–HOW DO I PROCEED? Eventually one of my online friends, Marisol, spotted me and clued me in, as it were taking me by the hand–bless you, Marisol, if you weren’t engaged I’d kiss you–and I finally got set up for the interview, a bit late. After that I was able to muddle through, with plenty of typos, and it was all right, except for the chronic delays; I had assumed they would have questions set up so the moderator could click the next one instantly on, but apparently he had to type each one while I waited. I was also distracted by the interminable ZILCH SIGNING ON and FESTER QUITTING notices. Isn’t there some place other than the middle of an interview for that? I was curious who was attending, but my screen showed only the middle section of the list and did not respond to my attempts to see the beginning or end. I kept getting jumped in mid-answer to a private dialogue box, and sometimes my answers simply disappeared and I had to type them over. I guess I don’t understand chat rooms, as if that were any news. Aside from that it was okay; I got the usual questions and gave the usual answers. At the end they allowed unmoderated questions in, and then there was a flood so that a number rolled offscreen before I could read them. Overall it was a two hour session, and I hope those there were satisfied. I understand there were a few over 50 attendees: a small audience for me. This is the second time I have tried a chat room interview directly; before I got online I had some telephone ones, where a typist transcribed my ongoing answers, so I didn’t have to be concerned about the protocols. Xlibris is setting up chat rooms, and I may participate there; as an investor I feel obliged to support the company, after all. Marisol says maybe she’ll run one that is more user friendly. So eventually I’ll get it straight, maybe. I did get feedback from a reader who was desperate to “e;meet”e; me there, but got the wrong time and missed it. I got her snail address and sent her a letter.

A reader asked my opinion of the Elian case. In case anyone doesn’t know, Elian is a six year old boy from Cuba whose mother died trying to cross the sea to the USA. I have had some interest in Cuba, because of my Cuban exile collaborator on the martial arts novels, Roberto Fuentes. The question was whether Elian should remain here, or be reunited with his father in Cuba. The Miami exile community wouldn’t let him go, until there was a gun-toting raid that took him by force, and now he is with his father. I think he does belong with his father, though I have some sympathy for Marisleysis, the 20 year old young woman who was taking care of him. When I was in England, I was cared for by a young nanny who may have been similar, and if the truth be known, I liked her better than my parents, and my abrupt involuntary separation from her at age four was the first of a series of painful emotional wounds that were in time to make me regret living. It is one of a number of reasons I so readily identify with young folk who are hurting; I have been there myself. So I am sorry that the Elian situation has been so difficult, and I hope Marisleysis is allowed to visit him on occasion.

I reported last time on a sweetgum twig I cut when clearing a path, and how it was surviving in water. Well, it did its best, and even grew small new leaves, but never put down roots. Finally, at 11 weeks, its limited resources were exhausted, and it faded. That grieves me. Not all transplanted twigs can survive, despite their efforts or the efforts of others.

My movie-freak daughter sees that we drag ourselves out every so often to see a movie, and we did see a couple recently. She likes the same kind of junk I do, so it’s okay. We saw Dinosaur and liked it; the animation was excellent, the story passable, and the authenticity ludicrous. We also saw Mission impossible II, and that was similar in its fashion: explosions were excellent, story passable, and credibility ludicrous. But let’s face it: you don’t attend such a show to improve your mind. It delivered what it promised, in good measure, and the boy did get the girl.

I am getting queries, so it is time to mention again what happened with the old HiPiers 800 number. When we shut down the bookstore aspect of HiPiers we returned the number to AT&T;, and it was taken by a porno sex outfit. We protested, and got the run-around: AT&T; claimed it did not handle the number and could do nothing about it. Then to make it worse, the publisher took so long to put the collaborations into print that I forget that there was mention of the number in an Author’s Note, and my collaborator didn’t realize it was defunct, so it got republished and now new readers are calling it and getting the sexual come-on. I have no objection to sexual come-ons elsewhere, but I hate having my young fans or their mothers getting involuntarily diverted to this; it’s like walking into a toy store and getting flashed by a pervert. It can hardly have a positive effect on my reputation. But in the face of the company’s refusal to do anything about it, I’m stuck. I’m a minor AT&T; stockholder, so I hate to see such abuse from that angle too. AT&T; should have a better attitude about such things.

I had an email from Peggy Sanderson of http://fantasypuppet.com/ who has adopted a baby dragon and was looking for a name for it. I suggested Nimby or Draco or maybe DragNet. The site sells small sculpted dragons, so may be of interest to fantasy readers or dragon fans.

There was a news item on the 30th anniversary of the Kent State disaster. This may be old dull history to current readers, but it was fresh news to me when it happened, so I’m rehearsing it here. When the Vietnam war was current, there were many protests, especially at colleges, and one of the riots occurred at the campus of Kent State. The ROTC building was burned, and the National Guard was called out. It fired on the students, and some were killed. There’s a famous picture taken at the scene. But a perceptive columnist of the time pointed out a more subtle but perhaps more significant aspect: for generations rioting blacks got shot and it hardly made news, but this time rioting whites got killed. That wasn’t supposed to happen. At that point the white community got a taste of what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that sort of law enforcement. Attitudes began to change, and perhaps some good is coming of it, though there’s a way to go yet; blacks still get thrown into prison more, and for longer sentences, than whites do for similar crimes. If more whites were treated by courts as blacks are, there would be more attention to fairness.

I’m not sure how I get on some mailings lists. I am an unabashed social and political liberal, but I get some catalogs from hard rightist outfits. Such as CLS PUBLISHING: “e;What type of criminal is Bill Clinton?”e; According to it, Bill and Hillary were involved in the supposed murder of Vince Foster, and a respected businesswoman was brutally raped by Clinton. Suspicious deaths of government personnel, Clinton friends, parents and business associates, terrorism, airline disasters. Then on into the Oklahoma City bombing, TWA Flight 800 crash, Waco, and so on. I save such stuff because otherwise folk I mention it to may not believe me when I say it exists. For the record: there are some questions about these matters, but I doubt that these folk are interested in the truth unless it has potential to put a Republican conservative into office. Since I am interested in the truth about anything, of whatever nature, this sort of agenda turns me off. I will confess that some liberal propaganda turns me off too, such as when liberals endorse protectionism or oppose free speech for conservatives. But overall I think the liberals are more realistic and decent than the conservatives, with some appreciation for ordinary folk and the environment rather than just money and power. I wish more folk of all persuasions had more interest in the truth and fairness than they show. The idea of publishing only what agrees with a particular political persuasion, whatever its nature or accuracy, disgusts me.

Readers recommend many sites to me, and I try to check them out, and comment on them here, or add them to the Internet Publishing survey, or put links to them. Some are tricky to classify, and some surprise me. For example, one flashed an error message at me with the words “e;You don’t have permission to access.”e; I concluded that that would not be suitable for my listing. Some seem to be prone to locking up my system. One took more than five minutes to load, and wouldn’t let go. My main interest is in listing online publishers for hopeful writers to try, and services that will help hopeful writers find their way. What, then, of general information sites? The line becomes fuzzy. Www.mervius.com is for science fiction and fantasy fans, and has relevant book reviews, movie reviews, news, commentary, crossword puzzle, bestseller list, box-office movie figures, and links to recommended writers such as Stephen King and Harlan Ellison. But not to Piers Anthony, which lets me know where I stand. It did, however, have a timely and accurate report on my OneRing interview. It seems useful enough to readers, so I’ll add it to our links, but not to the publisher survey because it isn’t a publisher. Www.sffworld.com interviewed me and posted the interview, and has similar interviews with other genre figures; again it is not a publisher but is worth a link. Http://virtualxanth.homepage.com is hosted by the Demoness Metria, hugely bare breasted; how could I pass that by? So gives another link. Www.justbooks.de is a German site with more than 400,000 titles, including some of mine, so there’s another link. Artemiy Artemiev sends me his Electroshock CDs; I don’t claim to understand this music, but maybe others will; he’s at www.gamma-shop.com/. But I am conscious of the huge number of informational sites out there, and I can’t list them all, so this is haphazard.

In a prior column I commented on several things, like a recent study that indicated that Vitamin C might be mischief for the body, and my wariness of cell phones because of the expense and possible radiation to the head. Readers let me know that the evidence in both cases is suspect; Vitamin C remains healthy, and told me that there is a deal for prepaid wireless cell phone: you buy your minutes ahead, and use them up at your convenience, without ongoing service charges. That could be worthwhile for occasional use. Another told me of a vegetarian site, www.ivu.org. IVU stands for International Vegetarian Union. Since most of my readers are not vegetarians, I think it doesn’t deserve a link. Unless maybe it listed me somewhere. So I checked–and it lists Famous Vegetarians, and under Writers, there I am. Okay, it got me; it gets a link. Have I mentioned recently my encounter with an ignoramus on that subject? He asked me whether I was a vegetarian, and I said yes, and he asked whether I ate fish, and I said no, and he said then I wasn’t a vegetarian because his cousin was a vegetarian and he ate fish. Years later SF writer Larry Niven tried to lecture me on the unhealthiness of vegetarianism; that showed me something about the depth of his knowledge. It would be nice if folk who don’t know much about a subject did not try to teach those who do; I call it the arrogance of ignorance. I already have more than enough ignorance of my own to advertise in this column. Someone clued me into a fun site, Barbie Dolls of the 90s, such as Divorced Barbie, Teenage Single Parent Barbie, Crack Addict Barbie, Breast implant Barbie, Feminist Barbie–you get the idea. I don’t think it deserves a link on the links section, but maybe here in this column: www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Cove/1416/Study/barbie90.htm.

There was an item on a posh new Florida gated community development that was overrun by snakes. Folk were horrified, and killed the damned things as fast as they could. What perverse idiocy! It was obviously a breeding ground for snakes that the people moved into, and they weren’t poisonous, just going about their lifestyles. For those who don’t know it, snakes are essentially beneficial to the purposes of man, as they eat things like rodents that otherwise invade houses, and they seldom seek to bother people. We have rattlesnakes and coral snakes here on our tree farm, and we leave them alone and they leave us alone. We also have the handsome rare indigo snakes, a protected species, and value them. I was annoyed that the newspaper article went into none of this, just the horror of having snakes in your yard. Fortunately some newspaper readers did respond with some common sense comment. The rule is simple: if you see a snake, leave it alone.

We have occasional dealings with the P&C; Bank in Pennsylvania. Our grown daughters are named Penny and Cheryl, so I always think of it as the Penny & Cheryl Bank, in PennyCherylvania. I don’t know why I keep hearing groans in my wake. Penny now lives on a farm in Oregon with Llamas, emus, and four-horned Jacob Sheep, while Cheryl, our daughter the Newspaper woman, works at the local paper. One day it ran a news item about a fabulous cache of dinosaur footprints that had been discovered; some big newspapers didn’t bother, having ignorant editors, but the local one did. Because Cheryl, an erstwhile dinosaur fan, chose to run it. Thus the small paper may have more class than the big one. For those who wonder why Penny moved so far away from me, an episode of family history may suffice: as a child, she had been given a fancy mug. When we had company, she called from upstairs “e;Shall I bring my mug down?”e; I called back “e;Yes. And bring the rest of you too.”e; I get letters from young fans saying my daughters are lucky to have a father like me. My daughters could scorch their ears with their response.

And I have a 11,000 word column, again. These novelette length columns have to stop; they gobble up my time, and may be putting readers to sleep. As I edited it, I heard a noise on the roof over my study; when I went out to check, several big black vultures flew off. Wow; those critics are getting bolder! Next time I’ll tackle the riddle of consciousness, another of my private fascinations. Until then–

I have some continuing stories this time. For anyone who is new to this column, it is a bi-monthly ramble ranging from 5,000 to 12,000 words, covering anything that interests me or might conceivably interest my readers. I’m surprised how many are interested; I get a fair amount of feedback, and the daily hits on this site are averaging about 8,000, and about ten emails, excluding spam. The spam surprises me too; theoretically marketers are so sophisticated that they can spot a fly on your kitchen ceiling, but in practice they are generally stupid. I get offers to clear up my bad credit record or consolidate my assorted debts or get loans. For the record: I did not waste my money when I made it, and am quite well off financially, having paid off all debts (mainly real estate mortgages) about fifteen years ago and have never been in debt since. I have never made payments on a car, furniture, TV set, or anything else, having always paid cash. So if the spammers had made even the slightest check on me, they would not have bothered. Of course the solicitations for donations is constant; my policy there is to contribute generously to those few causes I know and understand, approximately tithing my income, and to ignore the others; there are too many rip-offs out there. No, I don’t belong to any religion; I just find the concept of tithing useful. But I wander, as usual; I have trouble sticking to the subject even when there is no subject. This will not be news to most of my readers.

Follow-up #1: The Cookie Story. Yes, I fell for it, because I knew the correspondent and thought she wouldn. t deceive me. Maybe I am too trusting of my readers; I view them as superior individuals. Nieman Marcus did not charge a woman $250 for a $2.50 chocolate chip recipe. It is a long-time urban legend, with whole Internet sites devoted to its exposure. In fact it is even in a book I bought in 1999, Too Good To Be True, the Colossal Book of Urban Legends. So I could have checked it out myself, if I had thought to. It is a fun book, and I see from it that I am not the only one to get caught. I see there another story about cookies I heard on Paul Harvey News long ago, about a woman at a shopping center who was incensed because a man keep eating cookies from her bag of them. Rather than make an ugly scene, she departed–only to discover her own cookies in her purse. And here’s one about a different kind of cookie: A long time ago, when commercial airplane flights were new, an airline allowed businessmen’s wives to ride free, just to show that there was no danger. It was very popular, and many women did fly with their men. The company kept a record of the names, and six months later wrote to all of the wives asking how they had enjoyed their air trips. And ninety per cent of the letters came back with the question “What airplane trip?” Sigh; I had meant to read that book, but got caught up in affairs of the moment–let me rephrase that, in other business–and did not. Now I think I had better do so. Meanwhile, thanks to the ten or so column readers who clued me in on the error. I hate making mistakes, and hate looking as stupid as I am, but do appreciate the corrections when I do blunder. Yes, I notified my correspondent that her name was being used, and heard from her brother. I guess it was a joke.

Which reminds me of another blunder. My novels are generally published first in hardcover, then a year or so later in paperback. Sometimes the publisher inquires whether there are any corrections to be made between editions. This was the case for Xone of Contention, now in hardcover, due in paper this SapTimber or OctOgre. I received the query, checked my hardcover copy, saw no corrections, and reported there were none. Then, months later, I discovered that the folded paper I had taken as a temporary bookmark was not; it was an email from Timothy Willoughby calling out nineteen typographical errors. I had proofread the galleys, but as I like to say, errors grow on the pages after the proofreading. I had evidently missed a bunch. What about the copyeditor? Yes, they pay copyeditors to catch such things, but the ones on my books seem to read them with blindfolds, because they miss more than I do. I had thanked Mr. Willoughby and said I would see to the corrections–and then totally missed them when the time came. I desperately queried the editor by email: was it too late? He did not respond. That is editor-speak for “Tough luck, loser.” So the errors will be published in the paperback edition, and this is my embarrassed apology to Mr. Willoughby and the readers. Darn it to heaven! I hope you folk enjoy the novel anyway. Which in turn reminds me of the sick joke: “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” If you don’t get it, ask a historian.

Follow-up #2: Last column, I mentioned best-selling fantasy novelist Stephen Donaldson’s campaign to stop prisoner rapes, whose address I did not have. Several readers put me on to that (how would I ever survive without helpful readers? I love you all!), and it was as it turned out a brutal education. Those who are squeamish about frank sexual discussion are advised to skip this and the following two paragraphs; it gets bare-knuckled (or bare-assed) in spots. Here is what I learned: Stop Prisoner Rape is at www.spr.org and is still in operation. Stephen Donaldson was its president from 1988-96, and active on behalf of the cause, as a rape counselor, article writer, spokesman, and legal activist. But that’s only a fraction of the story, and the rest of it astonished me. Here is what I remember personally, perhaps imperfect in detail but in essence correct: I met Donaldson in 1987 and he was a clean-cut young man whose career affected mine. That is, when editor Lester del Rey made unreasonable revision demands–such as for him to include in a novel material justifying cover art the editor wanted to have, instead of having the art reflect the actual novel–he balked, and was ready to leave DEL REY BOOKS. But the publisher, faced with the loss of a writer selling a quarter million hardcover books per title, interceded, and set up a private editor just for him. Lester, in a funk, refused to run the fantasy symbol on his books thereafter. Then came my turn: faced with similarly unconscionable editing, I balked and asked for a different editor. “No way!” Lester said, and in the interim he had taken steps to see that he could not again be bypassed that way. I am not a good person to cross, and Lester had crossed the line, so I got my new editor the hard way: by leaving DEL REY BOOKS, and that is how Xanth went to a new publisher. Never since has my fantasy been censored or abused, other than by critics. Which is not to say I liked leaving DEL REY; I would have preferred to stay, and the publisher wanted me to stay, but neither of us could get around the editor. It was a real irony. Lester had been good as an editor, but refused to recognize when he was going wrong, and went far to destroying the best-selling fantasy empire he had built, as several top writers departed for similar reason. But I think it started with Stephen Donaldson: he was right, and I applaud him for fighting and winning his case. But it made my subsequent case a loser. Meanwhile, there was a strong element in Donaldson. s fantasy that made me wonder: its guilt theme. In the first novel, Lord Foul’s Bane, the hero found himself in a lovely fantasy land, and a pretty girl was explaining to him their nice romantic customs, when he abruptly raped her and fled. How’s that for a startling change? Naturally the fantasy land folk were angry, but as fate would have it, the man was necessary to their salvation, so they had to tolerate him. That was not the only example; it seemed that whenever there was something especially nice or beautiful, something ugly came to destroy it. I wondered why Donaldson insisted on writing such material, and why the readers made it a bestseller; it was not a route I cared to go. That aspect did not ameliorate with time; I understand it got worse, with really vicious elements. What was going on? Well, now I think I know.

Stephen Donaldson was gay. He was born Robert A Martin, Jr., and adopted the name Stephen Donaldson as a pseudonym for his involvement in the gay liberation movement. He was the founder of the world’s first gay student organization at college, and was the first sailor to publicly fight discharge from the US Navy for “homosexual behavior.” In 1973 he participated in a peaceful Quaker (that’s the Religious Society of Friends–I was raised as a Quaker, though I elected not to join) protest against the bombing of Cambodia. He was arrested–and over a two day period was gang-raped by prisoners approximately 60 times. He had to have rectal surgery. Thereafter he was active in the issue of prisoner rape, until his death in 1996, of complications of AIDS contracted during that gang rape. He was 49. So he had reason to write about rape and violation, in and out of his fantasy; he knew well whereof he wrote. In fact I think he even tried to understand the position of the rapist, making him the hero in his novels. So what is the current state of the issue? SPR says that 60,000 unwanted sexual acts occur in prisons every day. Elsewhere I have read that more men are raped than women, and it may be so: raped by heterosexual males in prison. Stephen Donaldson tried to do something about this. The fact that he was gay is irrelevant; the rapists don’t ask about a man’s sexual preference any more than they do with women.

So what about women? Another reader put me on to some distaff sites. One is www.zip.xom.au/ , with numerous links to organizations, including some on male rape. This is a good place to start for general advice, especially if you have suffered such abuse. Another is WHISPER RAPE at http://nwina.com/whisper-rape/ . This has commentary and advice on every aspect, and if you want a single source for much good information, this is it. It covers victims, partners, perpetrators, society, myths–everything. It says there are about 57,000 forcible rapes of women every month (compare the 60,000 a day in prisons–but definitions may differ). But I have a couple of caveats: it cites as a myth that rape is primarily a sexual crime. It says it is almost always an issue of power, control, and anger. “If it were one of a sexual nature then how could we explain the rapes that occur to children or the elderly.” I call this dangerous naiveté. Rapes, like thefts, are crimes of opportunity; if an old woman is caught alone and helpless, she can get raped, and unprotected children are prime candidates. I have heard from them, and from men whose sexual interest is specifically in children. The divisions of sexual interest go way beyond straight adult hetero and homo, and since there is not legitimate deviant sex in our culture, it finds expression in rape. Apparently some women–even some rape counselors–have difficulty understanding the breadth and force of the male sexual impulse, so think it must be an expression of some other interest, such as power. They have it backwards; for men, power is generally the means to the end of sex, not the other way around. Which is not to say that sex can’t be a tool of power, as systematic rapes of women during war show. But sex is usually its own objective, as I see it. Sexually attractive women do get raped more often than the old or the young, as they are the preferred targets, but in their absence, any body will do for some men. Even men become sexual objects in prison, as has been seen. (And of course attractive female prisoners become the playthings of male guards; it’s an ongoing scandal.) Animals can also become objects; I understand that’s why some colleges don’t permit students to have pets. I have also heard that female sheep–ewes–can be popular on farms, because their internal genital anatomy closely resembles that of human females. So those men are trying to assert their power over the sheep? To embarrass them? Humiliate them? Because men are angry at ewes for being female? Do they beat the sheep until they promise not to tell? Why am I doubtful? Another argument is that 34% of men who rape show some type of sexual dysfunction. I don. t see that as evidence that rape is not sexually motivated. Most men would rather have a luscious and eager young woman; rape is more catch as catch can, and the woman (or whatever) may not be attractive and certainly not eager. That’s more likely to be a turn-off, even for a rapist. The fact that he is desperate or twisted enough to rape does not have to mean that he does not have some lingering restraints of conscience or esthetics that simultaneously unman him. And there is one other thing that may relate: at the root of some religious training is the notion that sex is sinful. Isn’t Adam and Eve really about sexual awakening? So some men can’t really perform sexually with “good” women who are ideally pristine beings without sexual parts; they have to do it with “bad” women who have vulvas, and try to make the rape victim “bad” so she qualifies. I think that explains a lot of the degradation that really does occur. I suspect that professional prostitutes, bad by such definition, could tell some illustrative stories. Another “myth” I am wary of is that “Rape is a non-violent crime.” I think usually it is violent, but it can be non-violent, such as when the date-rape drug is used. The object is sex, and if a man can get it without the woman even knowing, that’s normally fine with him. So I would eliminate the violent part of the definition, and simply say that rape is rape, however performed. Otherwise use of the drug would by definition make it not rape: it wasn’t physically violent. It is rape if the woman doesn’t want it. Of course this leads to fuzzy definitions: what about a disparity of sexual interest in marriage? He wants sex twice a day, she wants it once a week. He will divorce her if he doesn’t get it, so she acquiesces. Is that rape? The distinction between compromise and coercion may be difficult. So when push comes to shove, there are no easy answers. I am emphatically against rape, but I feel that it is a crime that needs to be properly understood in order to be stopped, and that some of the myth-exposers have myths of their own that are dangerously counterproductive. I don’t claim to be an expert here, just a writer who has heard from hundreds of abused readers, and a few of their abusers, and who has made a genuine effort to understand. I did not get into this study by choice; my readers brought me in, asking for help, and I am still searching for realistic answers for them. This paragraph hardly begins to address the subject; I could–and will not–tell horror stories galore. Some of those little girls have truly big-girl problems. I do recommend these sites for generally excellent commentary, ninety per cent of which I agree with, by no coincidence. If you have a problem of this nature, go there; it will help, though you are never going to be completely whole again.

Follow-up #3: A reader had trouble finding role playing games (RPGs) or Multi User Dungeons (MUDs) for Xanth, so I asked my readers. Okay, I’ve got addresses now. I have not checked them all directly, and I understand these things come and go, so some may no longer be operating, but here they are. Michael Foley reports Xanth MUSH at http://xanth.mushhaven.net. There’s a listing of MUDs at www.mudconnect.com. “Gap in Thyme” is at telnet://fluff.dhs.org:1977. Tom Whiting at xanth@demon.mudservices.net is setting up a MUD with Xanth characters; potential players might contact him. Shawn Mundane sent a list of nine RPGs for Xanth; most are at Yahoo.com, with a straightforward introductory pages listing number of members, which ranges from 73 down to 6, and recent messages. The ninth is not currently available, so I’m skipping it. Here they are:
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/axanthrpg
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/demonxanthsdomain
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/thelandofxanth
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/landofxanth
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/thexanthandmundaniaportal
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/xanthandbeyond
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/thepunnyxanthhangout
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/dimensionalvortex
One in progress is at www.codedistortion.com/xanth/ ; they have pretty much finished coding the game, and have begun to concentrate on areas for it. It is still in a private beta phase, but readers can contact them to look around or help. “Ramahir” advised me of WorldofXanthRPG at www.egroups.com/group/WorldofXanthRPG, which says it will be a mailing list expressly for a roleplay based on Xanth, and says to remember, they abide by the Adult Conspiracy. And there is a Warriors Guild with over 20 active members; I’m not sure whether this is quite the same, but trust that readers understand better than I do. It is at http://members.home.net/seabhac-fionn/wg/members.html. And another kind of Xanth game: Taylor Herrick had a Page dedicated to the Companions of Xanth computer game. Those who play the game and get balked along the way can check here for a complete walk-through of it, that should help. And here’s one that’s not a game at all, but I don’t know where else to put it: the magazine CENTAURS GATHERUM has been published off and on since 1985 and features all manner of centaur art and literature. It’s amazing how many varieties of centaur there are; the Xanth centaurs are comparatively tame. So if you are a centaur fan, check its site at http://cg.ponyhome.com and subscribe. And yet another that’s not exactly a game, and is not Xanth, but can be played as a game, depending: Stephanie Peters in Germany has made her own Animation Tarot deck, the one that goes with my novel Tarot, with nice representations of all 100 cards. If this interests you, contact her at StephanieP@gmx.de. She does speak English, 80% of which she says she learned from my books. I can’t help liking that girl.

Follow-up #4: personal health. Remember, I turned 65, got on Medicare, and now am getting into 66 and getting a general physical examination. They have procedures that didn’t exist in my heyday. I am trying to run down the cause of my decades-long mild fatigue, and now trying thyroid pills. They have brought my thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) up to normal, but my fatigue remains. My readers, several of whom are on similar medication, tell me the effect is cumulative, and it may take time to feel the whole of it. We’ll see. But before I get further into me, let me cover something peripheral: in the interim between my signing on with the lady doctor and the main works, she made the news. She was out golfing–that’s what doctors do–and got struck by lightning. So there were four people sprawled on the ground. Another doctor saw them and rushed to help, but there was only one of him and two men were in cardiac arrest. Then he saw the lady doctor sitting up dazedly and recognized her. “Snap out of it,” he said. “We need you.” So she helped him resuscitate one of the men. Then help arrived, and three men were sent to the hospital at Gainesville, while she was taken by ambulance to the one in Inverness, being the least damaged. They kept her overnight and let her go; she was all right. You probably didn’t think of golf as a dangerous sport. But this is near the thunderstorm capital of the country, and now that our drought is over we’re getting storms. We had ten inches of rain each of the last two months, and bits of Lake Tsoda Popka are beginning to show again. But Cumulus Fracto Nimbus resents folk having a good time outside, and strikes when he can. This was a reminder. So the doctor was all right, and I didn’t get out of the prostate exam. Or the fecal occult test. No, that’s not a constipated ghost; they check stool samples for blood that may not show to the naked eye; that’s why its called occult, or hidden. Blood means mischief. Getting those samples was something else. (Those who are squeamish about scatology please skip on to the next paragraph, or the one following; we’re about to get into it here.) Consider the normal process: feces drop into the water of the toilet bowl, sometimes with a marvelous bottom-soaking splash. How was I to get a smear from one of those? I was sure the test required nice clean sanitary samples, not dirty contaminated ones. So I defecated into a plastic bag. As fate would have it, I had a huge cumbersome movement the consistency of hot fudge. I took the samples and dumped the bag into the toilet, but of course the matter was all folded over now, and it tried to block the flush. O joy! A couple of flushes and some scraping got it on its way. Only two more days to go! They did not get easier, but I did get my sanitary smears and took them in to the designated lab. Where they told me they didn’t take that kind of sample, and sent me to another lab. This one said they didn’t take that kind either, and sent me back to the doctor’s office. Nobody was about to take my shit! Maybe they thought I was a literary critic. The doctor’s office said the first lab should have taken it. So I left the samples at the office, and they would see about getting the lab to take them. It was something about the cardboard used in the sample kit; different labs have different systems. So I hope the crap found its home, in due course.

But the medics weren’t through with my anus. I had to have a colonoscopy. That’s colon, as in rectum, and scope, as in looking. It seems that fogies my age are prone to complications of the digestive tract, and many of them get taken out by cancer of the colon. So the best thing to do is take a look to see if there’s anything in there. You’ve heard about the book no one wants to read, Memoirs of a Near-Sighted Proctologist? This is worse. They run a tube with a lens and a light bulb six feet deep. Naturally they don’t want any fecal company in there, so there’s a preparatory diet: a day and a half of clear liquids only, plus laxatives such as milk of magnesia and something new to me: phospho-soda. That turned my innards to dirty water, and hoo, did it ever want to come out. Several times in the course of the night. Lucky I didn’t launch toward the moon on a wet jet. But the doctor did have his clean colon to inspect. The procedure itself was nothing; they hooked me to an IV for a sedative, and the gastroenterologist had at my posterior. They checked my heartbeat, blood pressure, blood oxygen level, and whatnot, and had a TV monitor there to show the scene. I caught a glimpse of my rear and the doctor’s gloved hand on the screen; the pickup was working. Much of the interior was just so much red wall, but every so often there was a cave-like passage ahead. I think they pump air in to distend the colon, so that it can be properly viewed. Slight discomfort at one point, no pain; I doubted I needed the sedative. But later I pondered: the procedure had taken perhaps twenty minutes, but had seemed like five minutes, and the doctor had snipped a polyp I never felt. I suspect I was conscious of less than I thought I was. I inquired, and the doctor said the sedative is designed to leave the patient conscious, but to make him forget. That explains it: I saw it all, but forgot. So my report for others who contemplate this procedure is take the sedative, and you’ll hardly feel a thing. Of course once I got home and started eating again, the food turned straight to gas and I had an awful bloat. It took several days for my system to get back to normal. But nothing bad was found; I’m healthy there. That’s the point of it all. Meanwhile the doctor is also a writer; I read his article on harmonious living in the local newspaper.

Follow-up #5: Garbage gardening. Remember, our kitchen sink garbage grinder quit working, so now we compost the garbage out back, and things are growing. Four patches of what looked like potatoes to me, but my wife said she hadn’t been fixing potatoes, so maybe they were peppers. Well, they did turn out to be potatoes, and we have now harvested between 50 and 60 medium to small ones. One tomato plant came up, and it started a dozen fruits. One never developed, two were eaten out by bugs, but we harvested one, and have eight more ripening. So that’s another success. Then there was the little cabbagy plant, so slight compared to the robust potatoes. But it kept slowly growing, and finally it became the biggest plant in the garden, spreading out robustly. We concluded it must be a rutabaga, which is a variety of yellow turnip. At last it faded, so I dug it up–and there wasn’t enough root there to bother with. All that growth for nothing! Maybe it’s too hot in Florida for this type of vegetable. I transplanted our pot of chive there, but it doesn’t seem to be flourishing either. We do now have one little radish growing; we’ll see how that does.

Follow-up #6: Archery. Last time I had gotten The Block target, which stops arrows by friction rather than force. It works, though the arrows are not two-finger easy to pull out. I drew a one foot square on one side, and a circle of equivalent area on the other side, and I alternate them; those are my center sections. I count +1 for each arrow in the center, and -1 for each arrow that misses the target entirely. Any score above 0 is positive. I shoot from 150 feet right handed with the compound bow, and 100 feet left handed with the composite recurve bow, and the two are about even at those ranges. The thing is that the compound bow has the wheels on it, that allow me to draw and hold with about twenty pounds pull, but still fire the arrow an 60 pounds. That makes aiming much easier: the force is always the same, and I. m not struggling to hold it while aiming. Now you might thing I’d be improving, and maybe I am, but my scares still range mostly from 0 to 8. One day I broke my record by making +13, but other days I. ll struggle to make 0. Once I missed two of the first three arrows, then got nine centers in a row, for +7, but it wasn’t a record because the left hand did not do well that day. I seem to do better with the square center than the round one, but suspect that is chance. Sometimes an arrow does get by my baffle targets and lost in the forest; I hate that. Sometimes an arrow squeezes between the main target and a baffle target and gets away, so now I stuff plastic foam there, but am not sure how well it works. Since the rains returned, so have the mosquitoes, and they swarm as I try to aim; one landed on my left ear as I fired and I missed wide left. So I tried repellent on my socks; they avoided the socks but clustered everywhere else. So I tried spraying the spot where I stand with RAID House & Garden bug killer, and what do you know: not a mosquito buzzed me. I don’t use that stuff much, preferring to catch indoor bugs in a jar and let them go outside (and we leave spiders alone; they have bug-catching webs in a number of corners), but those mosquitoes would not listen to reason. Despite such complications I still like archery very well. I got into it for exercise, and continue it for exercise, and have stronger arms because of it. I like to think that it also exercises my sight, balance, coordination, and judgment, and maybe helps keep my brain from fossilizing, because of the discipline required to put an arrow in a one-square-foot region from 150 feet away. That target looks like a postage stamp from that distance. And in the day between my writing of this column, and my editing it (my update of the Internet Publishing survey intervened), I had another archery session, and my left side made nine centers with no misses, for a new record overall score of 14. Hardly Olympic caliber, but great for me.

Now let’s get into the new material. Daughter #2 Cheryl took us to the stage production of Riverdance. We. ve seen the video of that and a sequel, but there’s something different when it’s live. It was impressive, and not just because of all those fine female legs. The dances were interspersed by songs and skits. One was fun and funny: three formally garbed white men got into a competitive contest with three informal black men. The one trio would dance while the other yawned; then the other would dance just as well. At one point the white leader did a truly impressive tap dance that brought audience applause. Then the black leader did his dance, just as impressive, to more applause. The one group was as good as the other. But the fun part of it was when the blacks did a parody of the whites, their arms ridiculously stiff. Then the whites parodied the blacks, their arms waving wildly around. Beautiful! Wordless humor in dancing: great stuff. Okay; before we saw the show we stopped at the cafeteria for lunch. It had precious little for three vegetarians; we had to skip much of it and settle for salad, bread, cake, and beverage, at too high a price. As we sat there I looked around; I always like to know what. s going on. The tables were below the level of the main passage, so the passing people were a bit above us. No, I didn’t look up under any skirts! What do you think I am? Right: the level was not high enough for that. But I did see men, women, and children going whenever, and a notion came to me. Folk often ask where I get my ideas, and I answer that they can come from anywhere. This is an example. I am now writing the second ChroMagic novel, Key to Chroma, the setting with the colored magic volcanoes, and one of the features of that culture is that most traveling is by foot, and folk can. t do magic outside their own Chroma, so are vulnerable to brigands and such. So it’s better to travel in company, preferably a caravan, but at least with a fellow traveler. There is no money; barter is all. So if a woman needs to travel alone, she will typically seek as a companion a strong man who can protect her, and do it “no fault”–that is, she will be to him as a wife or mistress, but that is a temporary relationship that ends the moment she gets where she is going, with no further ties or obligations. He will be a husband to her, similarly, sharing food, protecting her, doing whatever a husband would to guarantee her safety and comfort along the way. This is an accepted convention, and their real spouses or families take no note of it; she travels safely, is all. Men like to travel no fault with pretty women, and actually some women like to travel no fault with handsome men. Readers who object to this element should stay away from this novel, or maybe elect not to travel. Okay, that’s the travel set-up here; the notion I had when seeing folk passing along the hall was that no fault could be a much larger concept. Suppose a child had to travel alone? It would not be safe, especially for a girl; brigands might take her to be a slave. So she needs a no fault father. A family relationship, not a sexual one. And as I watched the show, the idea kept percolating through my cranium, and when I got home I made 800 words notes on it. Thereafter I wrote a 14,000 word inset story about an old man and a nine year old girl traveling no fault as grandfather and granddaughter. It’s already my favorite of the novel. He’s a retired drummer, and she’s a learning dancer, because her mother is a dancer. They never met before the trip, and do not seem to be ideal companions, because she’s spirited and he’s frail. But his know-how gets them through, and her magic healing ability helps him too. They get along great; she never knew her real grandfather, and he never had a granddaughter; both miss the relationship, and fill it well for each other. Meanwhile, they practice drumming and dancing; the two do go together. Then when they arrive, they don’t want to part, because they have fallen love with the relationship. There is a pressing need for a drummer and a dancer, in an important tournament of troupes. They get into it, and manage to do very well, despite having to compete against his expert-drummer son and her beautiful-dancer mother. It’s more complicated than that, and there is magic, but that’s the essence, and I just love it. So there is the genesis of a story idea; those who have trouble generating ideas may profit from the example. Meanwhile, at a later date we went with our daughter to the movie X-Men, and it was fun though we were not familiar with the comic series from which it derives. Teens suddenly develop great special powers and have trouble adapting. Meanwhile the world is becoming aware of this, and wants to identify and perhaps quarantine them, while an evil mutant organization wants to fight back more aggressively. No, I didn’t get another great notion for a story from that, maybe because we didn’t have lunch and watch folk walking by. Ah, well.

I had the frustration of taking more than two hours to download a program that then didn’t work–I hope there’s a suitable place in hell for programmers who don’t actually try their wares–and I had to baby-sit it throughout. So I caught up on magazine reading, and looked randomly in a book on my shelf, another of those good ones I really do mean to read some day. It was Eye to Eye–How People Interact , that I’ve had for a decade, and it said that extroverted men prefer big breasts on women, while introverted men prefer small breasts. Now that’s interesting. I prefer medium size, and that seems to match, as I see myself as neither extro nor intro, but balanced, and I think my wife is about right in that respect. Neither Dolly Parton nor Ally McBeal thrill me in terms of body parts, though I think the one is a good singer and the other has delightfully twisted social interactions.

We have grasshoppers. Years ago they came, those big American Grasshoppers, and the standard advice was to stomp them to oblivion lest they eat up your yard. I didn. t want to do that, so instead I caught them in jars and transported them to Ogre Corner and let them go. That. s close to the field in the north where cows ranged, and with the cows were cattle egrets, a wild species from Africa that is nice to have around, because those birds eat bugs. If the grasshoppers wanted to survive, all the had to do was stay on our property. But I suspect they had libertarian notions, and refused to be restricted. Anyway, I counted about 150 grasshoppers one year, and about 100 another, and a paltry 50 another, and then they petered into almost nothing. But now, several years later, they are back with a vengeance, so I resumed catching and hauling, and they’ve been shattering records: 240 in the month of Jewel-Lye alone. I conjecture that the drought dried up so much lake that it left plenty of hatching area for them, and now they’re here. I hope they diminish.

Last time I commented on the riddle of Dark Matter, conjecturing that it is actually the energy in vacuum. One reader thought that was plausible; none have argued against it. Well, give it time, and we’ll see whether I. m right. I promised to comment this time on another pet mystery of mine: the riddle of consciousness. I have spent over a decade searching for the explanation of its nature, and read a number of books, and not been impressed. I was sure that the secret of consciousness must lie in feedback. One woman who lectured on brain fiction said in her book that feedback could not be it, because it would have to be either all on or all off, like a circuit. I see that as nonsense; circuits can be partial, low power or high power, or variable–and in any event, why would that exclude consciousness? We wake in the morning conscious; we sleep at night, more or less unconscious. So our circuits can click on or off, and we are conscious. So I wasn. t getting viable answers from experts. Until I read The Creative Loop by Erich Harth, subtitled “How the Brain Makes a Mind.” And he by damn proposes feedback circuits. I am quick to appreciate genius in those who agree with me. He calls it the creative loop, as the title suggests. Much of the problem of consciousness has been that we can’t locate it; somewhere in the head there seems to be a homunculus, a little man watching the gages and inputs and making sense of them. But where is that little man, and in any event, how does hisconsciousness work? Harth shows how the brain has some rather complicated processing of something as seemingly straightforward as vision: a picture does not go straight from the eye to the brain, but through a phalanx of intermediary stations that direct signals every which way, including back toward the eye. So parts of the picture get fed back to foul up the original picture. What is the point of this confusion? And he has the answer: This is consciousness . The feedback loop. We see ourselves seeing, and make judgments about it, and constantly change the process, somewhat in the manner of lucid dreaming, making it to a degree subjective. There are similar feedbacks in all our senses, and in all of them lies the secret of consciousness. Ever notice how when you look at something, you seem to be there? And when you close your eyes and listen, you seem to be there in the sound? That’s because you are using the loops in the visual circuits–or the loops in the auditory circuit. And so on throughout the body. You can’t fix a permanent place of consciousness because it’s not in the same region when you look or when you hear or when you touch; it’s moving. And always it is reading itself: self consciousness.

Why are we conscious? That’s easy: because we can survive better with less brain if we are aware. Animals tend to be more programmed; ants do what they do based mostly on set instructions that hardly change. They are ROM programmed. Humans have much more RAM, and can program themselves to a considerable extent. So they don’t need a dozen ROM programs filling up their hard disks; they can consciously choose what makes sense. I once experimented with cards, playing the game of War as solitaire: my opponent was the deck, shuffled and random, while I could choose which cards to put out, before seeing their opposition. I won, because I know when my opponent had more high cards remaining, so I played low, and vice versa. Consciousness beat random play. Similarly it beats preprogrammed instructions. If you are out in the jungle, it helps to assess where the saber-tooth tiger is likely to be, and arrange to be elsewhere; consciousness has survival advantage. Even the limited consciousness of primitive creatures is a significant advantage; that’s why animals tend to take advantage of plants. (Though plants do have their qualities, some quite sophisticated.) So it helps us survive, and natural selection encourages it. The tougher question is how are we conscious? I believe that if we can but fathom the mechanism, then it would be possible to make conscious machines–computers or robots. I see no necessary requirement for a conscious mind to be fashioned of living flesh; wires and circuit boards will do, if put together correctly. I do see feedback circuitry as the answer, and believe that when more scientists orient on this approach, success will come. I also believe that emotion is integral to consciousness, particularly pleasure and pain, and interactive memory. How would emotion be instilled in a machine? I think that’s another feedback circuit, one that not only looks at incoming data, but decides how to feel about it. I believe that the dreams of living creatures are part of the processing of memories for feeling. Thus machines may have to dream. So it will be no simple thing, but I think it can and will be done. Of course then will also come the formidable ethical question: is it murder to turn off a conscious, self-aware machine? As a science fiction writer I have pondered this for decades, and am not easy with an easy answer. I always did like Isaac Asimov’s robot stories; they were obviously aware.

Meanwhile the routine minutia of a writer’s existence continues. I am annoyed by autograph hunters who take my time, then sell the autographs on eBay; they are costing me more in the value of my time than they can make from the sales, apart from the dubious ethics of it. But like swindlers of any kind, they hardly care about that. Most autographs, I truly hope, are sought by those who really value them, and those are the ones I want to oblige. I have interacted with some readers via chat room interviews (the last was Writers. Village University), and on occasion receive visits from some, but mostly its snails and emails, some quite meaningful. Many ask for advice on writing or marketing, and I try to give it, and of course my ongoing Internet Publishing survey is intended as a service to those hopeful writers. One thing to add here: when you query a publisher of any type, put a time limit on it. Otherwise you can get hung up indefinitely by publishers that don’t answer. Thusly: “If I do not hear from you within a month, I will assume you are not interested.” Then when the month passes without response, market elsewhere. If a publisher is interested, but its editor is backlogged and must take longer, it can damn well tell you that. If a publisher gets mad because of such a reasonable limit, then it’s probably not one you would be happy with anyway. Sometimes one can get published unknowingly; my dirty novel Pornucopia was pirated and on sale at some of the big Internet booksellers. Neither the original publisher nor I got any money from those sales. We’re going after the pirate, who will settle quickly if he is smart. Meanwhile I do want to return that novel to print, but remain hung up on how to prevent it from being sold to teens, whose angry mothers will then blacklist me. And there is Xlibris; as a board member I am privy to its secrets. You have no idea how ambitious this company is; I’m halfway croggled. (That’s old-time fan-speak for amazed.) My general advice to skeptics is, don’t bet against it. One person claims Xlibris is a scam that doesn’t really sell books; my information is that the average title there sells 60 to 100, and it is rising. But keep this in perspective: conventional publishers measure their title sales in thousands for hardcover, and tens of thousands for paperback. The money remains in Parnassus. Another says he was told that if your book is 180,000 words long, you are required to choose the premium ($1,200) service. Well, it is a business, and that’s a big book. But I wonder whether you could break it into two volumes for the free “core” service? One complained about the Xlibris Web Site, which he found very badly designed and terribly confusing. Yes–I complained myself about the impossibility of getting from the “bookselling” section to the “writers” section, and was informed that they want it that way, to keep them separate. As if book buyers don’t know that there are writers involved in the process of publishing. I am trying to decide whether I am annoyed enough to bring it up at a board meeting; as an investor I don’t like seeing potential clients alienated. I also had a query from a reader who had read The Magical Monarch of Moas a child and loved it, but couldn’t find it in library or store. Had I heard of it? Yes, I read it way back when and also liked it, and thought it was by L Frank Baum, the author of the Oz series, but I couldn. t find it listed anywhere either. So does anyone know a viable source for this book? And a reader put me on to a bad review of Yon Ill Wind listed at Amazon.com. Gee, thanks! Actually I think Amazon.com’s system of reader reviews is good; these are real readers reacting, for good or ill, instead of the rarefied snobs evident elsewhere. This particular review says “I was disgusted with how poor the writing itself was. Maybe this is because I’m an English major…” Well, I’m a writing major and a former English teacher, so I was curious exactly what this “bad writing” was. Maybe he thought I used bad grammar? It turns out, he says, to be far too much “telling” and too-convenient plot points. He says that’s something you DON’T do. Okay, I did wonder what planet he was coming from, as my fiction is known for showing rather than telling, and for putting the reader right into the action. Xanth is of course largely parody and fun; my serious writing is of a different nature. It sounds more like the critic’s own indigestion than what’s in the book. What I found especially interesting was the review of the review: how many found this review helpful? The answer was “0 of 1.” That is, the only person to comment on the review found it to be unhelpful. The reader reviews before and after this one both gave the novel five stars –the top rating, and the average of all reviewers was four and a half stars. So this reviewer was not describing the experience of the average reader, and that, by my definition, is a bad review. He needs to look to his own quality of writing. Here’s another critic: a family man who objected to The Gutbucket Quest: “This book should be in a brown cover and in the adult section only. It has so much sex and foul language that it should be rated X.” He says he can’t read any more of my books if this is where I’m going, and is saddened thereby. I responded “About the only books of mine where sex is suppressed or hidden is Xanth. Others are adult, and you do run the risk of encountering adult material. I hope you find satisfactory reading elsewhere.” To which he replied to HiPiers: “I promise that locally I will be very vocal in getting his books black listed at the public library.” Okay, so he encountered an adult novel and didn’t like it, but I wondered whether this could be the whole story. Why not just do what I suggested, and stick to Xanth, and to other writer’s efforts? Why try to blacklist all my works? What does he do with all the other adult books in that library? It’s a wonder he can even set foot in it, for the evil emanating from the shelves. If that is really his objection. Well, Gutbucket is a collaborative story of a white blues player who finds himself in a parallel world where magic works, and falls in love with a lovely woman there. It’s a sensitive story that others have praised, and hardly extreme with respect to vocabulary or sex. But I think now I see the key: the woman is black. White is loving black. Need I say more? Speaking of strong reactions: I printed out an article suggesting that the Bible advocates human sacrifice, a legacy Christianity needs to get rid of. The address is www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/2000/1/001front.html . I agree, but of course I’m agnostic; my own ox is not being gored here. As the saying goes: it is easy to be philosophical about the other person’s problems.

And the personal bits: our house is in the middle of the forest, and the wildlife is not much in awe of it. I have commented before how frogs have taken over our swimming pool. Well, in this period we got a hawk in there too. A young male, we think, who got into the pool enclosure and couldn. t find his way out. I opened the doors and tried to shoo him across to them, but he kept flying into the mesh and banging his head. So finally I cut open a section of the mesh and flung it back so he could fly out through the wall, as it were. I shooed him toward it–and he flew out the open door instead. Sigh. We also have wasps. Other summers we’ve had cute miniature wasps, with wingspans about the breadth of a fingernail. This summer big regular wasps started a nest right on the upper door sill of my study exit; every time the door opens, that nest gets jogged. They live with it. For a time there were four of them, but then there were five, and six, and now eight; new ones are evidently hatching. Most are out foraging during the day, but one always remains home to guard the nest. At night they cluster on it; that’s when I count them, though they don’t like to be looked at. As long as they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone. The outside of our house is not pretty, with the spiders and wasps and their assorted webs and nests, but we’re living in their territory and follow the Golden Rule. Meanwhile, inside, we have a problem with the kitchen light: it’s fluorescent, and doesn’t like to turn on, so now we leave it on all the time. That’s easier than having it off for months at a time. I get up before dawn, and don’t like to stumble in the dark. But Fracto likes to mess it up, by striking lightning nearby so that the power blinks, and the light goes out. We can get it back on if we try immediately, before it has cooled, but sometimes that’s not enough. So it has been somewhat nip and tuck, but at the moment it is on. But getting these storms is better than the prior situation with the drought, when we were in fear of a forest fire that could wipe us out. Which reminds me: that devastating fire that was supposed to be a controlled burn but got out of hand and swept into Los Alamos, doing much damage–it turns out it was not the controlled burn that did it, but a backfire set unnecessarily to contain it. If they had left the original blaze alone, it would have burned out harmlessly. I learned this from Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE), an excellent environmental organization. And a note from RESIST, “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” (I subscribe to all kinds of subversive newsletters–the kind that really believe in the US constitution and the rights of ordinary folk)–fresh water may be the most pressing problem facing mankind today. In Bolivia they privatized it and started charging exorbitant prices to the common folk, and damn near fomented a revolution. But the USA is rushing pell-mell for a similar crisis soon. Local floods and droughts come and go, but there is a real crunch coming. All over the world, corporations are moving to acquire power over the diminishing fresh water supply, and they will make the rest of us pay. Wait and see. Daughter #1 Penny, who now lives three thousand miles away, sent me a Father’s Day card that said: DAD–I’m an adult now! So for Father’s Day, I’ve decided to tell you all the things I kept from you over the years… (1) When I was 6, I XXXX on the XXXX. (2) I also XXXX with the XXXX! (3) In first grade, I XXXX the XXXX. (4) Remember that broken XXXX? Yep–me. (5) I’m also the one who XXXX the XXXX that time! But at the last moment I came to my senses! (The X’s are in lieu of words that have literally been cut out of the card, so that there are holes in it.) You can imagine my chagrin at learning all this at this late date. I thought she was the perfect child. And here is a newspaper item that made me react: it seems that there is a new medical problem with babies: they have flat heads. Since it was discovered that putting them to sleep on their tummies facilitates crib death, mothers have been dutifully putting them on their backs, resulting in flat backs of their heads. O, horror! So why doesn’t this bother me? Because I was laid to rest on my back in England, and the back of my head is flat. Soon I should have much company. I hope most of it becomes addicted to my novels. We flatheads must stick together. Which reminds me of the joke question in my day: “Do you prefer blondes or blackheads?” Such questions can be fun; also in my day Philadelphia had two baseball teams, the Phillies and the Athletics. So the question was “Are you a Phillies fan or an Athletic supporter?”

I am, through Jewel-Lye, 177,000 words through the first draft of Key to Chroma and it is moving well enough; I managed to write 61,000 words in that month. I might just barely complete the first draft by the end of AwGhost, if it continues to move well. Then it will have to rest; I have a Xanth novel with a contract deadline. In AwGhost I also hope to convert to the Linux operating system, also moving from MS Word to Corel’s Word Perfect, because that has a Linux version. I hoped to get local service for it, but the most local store won’t handle Linux. I’ll check other stores, and if they also wash out, I will have to mail-order a Linux system, so that when it doesn. t work I’ll have a real problem. Damn! That will probably slow me, at first, but I hope it is a positive experience. Readers have been supportive. So probably I’ll have a lot to say about that, next time. And who knows what else. As you can see from this present commentary, I don’t limit myself to funny fantasy. Readers reacted to just about every item in the last column, except, to my surprise, the one about Adora at the voyeur site; I expected someone to berate me for even mentioning it. Ah, well.

Just about every item in a column gets a reader response of some kind, and some get half a slew. Responses don’t necessarily match my expectations. For example, I thought there would be a number of angry reactions to my comments on rape, but there were few, and positive. On the other hand, there was Stephen Donaldson. Let’s start with that, with a subtitle. This will be a subtitled ramble.

It started when a reader asked me for a source of information about male rape, and I remembered a published item about Stephen Donaldson that related. A reader kindly put me on to the site, and mentioned that he was dead. Dismayed, I verified this, and gave a full report in the next column. Then came more reader responses, some sorry for the news, others doubting it. But when they checked the site, there it was. But then came reports of subsequent indications that Mr. Donaldson remained with us. The site www.eccker.org/johnf/donaldson.htm said that he appeared for an online chat session in The Palace on September 26, 1997. That would be tricky to do if he had died the year before. But I wasn’t certain, because a chat could have been postdated, and there isn’t actual physical contact. Then Internet is great for make believe. I have been chided for saying I haven’t appeared at a convention since 1994 when fans believe I have been at thus and so convention two years ago. Well, unless someone is impersonating me, that just isn’t so; I ought to know. I have also received letters of regret that I died, so I know that sort of information isn’t necessarily accurate either. Occasionally a writer will invent a personal history, to maintain his privacy; others simply use a pseudonym, as I do. Periodically rumors circulate that I am female; again not true. So I considered the information on this site carefully, looking for the truth. I noted that the only new book published since 1996 was Reeve the Just and other Tales, in 1999, evidently a collection of stories which probably were written years before; I’ve done collections too, and they can reach back decades. Several of his early novels were reissued in 1997, as might be done to wrap up a career that had ended. Several titles were listed without publication dates; apparently they had been planned but not written. Where were the new novels? Did Donaldson stop writing? Why? This seemed to indicate that his writing career had been cut off in 1996, perhaps confirming death.

Still the letters came, with other bits of information that became more convincing. Donaldson attended Dragon Con since that “death” someone had met him. Other readers said they thought there were two Donaldsons: the rape activist and the fantasy writer. Two! That had not occurred to me. Readers continued to zero in on the matter; where would I be without readers? One asked the proprietor of the rape site whether that Donaldson had written best-selling fantasy. The answer was a curt No. Another checked with his publisher: no, he wasn’t dead. Those were persuasive bits of information, and they continued. The two Donaldsons had different dates and places of birth, and went to different universities: Kent and Columbia. They were active in different places. So while I am not 100% sure, the balance of evidence indicates that there were two Donaldsons, and the fantasy writer survives. You can tell them apart by the initial: Stephen R Donaldson is ours. R may be taken mnemonically as standing for wRiter. That minces my conjecture about the reason for the supremely dark theme in his novels, that commences with an ugly rape in Lord Foul’s Bane. It also leaves unexplained the sudden cessation of new novels. Why was the distinction between the Donaldsons never clarified? So I am not certain this matter has yet run its full course.

I handle about as much mail, about as responsively, as any writer does, so I have to be efficient if I am to get my books written. I have a conscious policy of mirroring: if a reader approaches me politely, I answer politely; if a reader has a question, I answer it as well as I can; if a reader is hurting, I am sympathetic; and if a reader comes at me ugly, I respond in kind, sometimes using his own devices against him. Some missives are mixed, but generally there is a dominant category. In all cases I try to be brief without sacrificing clarity; I really don’t have time for long-winded debates with individual readers. I conclude this discussion of Donaldson with an illustrative email correspondence, used with permission of the correspondent. (Actually this didn’t count as any of the 132 letters I did in SapTimber, as my responses were brief penciled notes to HiPiers.) Others may contact him directly if they wish to; that way they won’t have to trust HiPiers to forward their messages. The information he provides should be helpful for those who wish to pursue Donaldson further, in this life or the next.

Hi Piers (or whomever reads this),
I’ve been a Piers Anthony fan since I read “A Spell for Chameleon” back in 1980, when I was eight years old. That makes what I’m about to say even more unpleasant to me.
In the latest “Hi Piers” column on HiPiers.com (AwGhost 2000), there are a number of inconsistent, misleading, or outright incorrect statements about fantasy author Stephen R. Donaldson. I’m writing now in the hopes that corrections will promptly be made so that other readers aren’t misled and believe things that aren’t so. I’m disappointed that Piers didn’t do some more research before making blanket statements such as the ones he made, as I truly thought he was a man of more consistency and character than that.
Here’s why I’m upset:
“Last column, I mentioned best-selling fantasy novelist Stephen Donaldson’s campaign to stop prisoner rapes … Stop Prisoner Rape is at www.spr.org and is still in operation. Stephen Donaldson was its president from 1988-96, and active on behalf of the cause, as a rape counselor, article writer, spokesman, and legal activist.” 
This is a true statement. However, fantasy author Stephen R. Donaldson is NOT the same person as the Stephen Donaldson who was the president of SPR from 1988 to 1996. Thus, Piers’ comments about Stephen R.’s possible motives for the violence and unpleasant scenes in his Thomas Covenant books are unfounded and untrue. This is unfair to Mr. Donaldson, particularly in light of the fact that many people take statements found on the Internet to be true regardless of their actual veracity.
More:
“Stephen Donaldson was gay. He was born Robert A Martin, Jr., and adopted the name Stephen Donaldson as a pseudonym for his involvement in the gay liberation movement.” 
This is true. Fantasy author Stephen R. Donaldson, however, was NOT born Robert A. Martin Jr.; his real name is Stephen Reeder Donaldson and he is the son of James R. Donaldson and Mary Ruth Reeder.
“In 1973 he participated in a peaceful Quaker … protest against the bombing of Cambodia. He was arrested–and over a two day period was gang-raped by prisoners approximately 60 times.”
Again, this is the wrong Donaldson. Fantasy author Stephen R. Donaldson never underwent this horrific experience. See below.
“… thereafter he was active in the issue of prisoner rape, until his death in 1996, of complications of AIDS contracted during that gang rape. He was 49.”
This alone should have been enough to raise eyebrows, as fantasy author Stephen R. Donaldson is alive and well. I met him at last year’s Dragon*Con and he was hale and hearty. Stephen “Donny” Donaldson, on the other hand, did in fact die on July 18, 1996. The press release from the ACLU upon his death can be found at http://www.aclu.org/news/n071996c.html .
There are many more inconsistencies that would have come to light and made the obvious mixup even more obvious if Piers (or his researchers) had done a bit more digging. All of this information is readily available; I obtained specifics in less than half an hour of searching this afternoon.
Links are provided at the end of this email).
For example:
Robert A. Martin Jr. was born on July 27th in Norfolk, VA; Stephen R. Donaldson was born on May 13th in Cleveland, OH.
Robert A. Martin Jr. served in the U.S. Navy and was discharged due to “homosexual behavior” Stephen R. Donaldson served two years as a conscientious objector doing hospital work in Akron during the Vietnam War and was not (to the best of my knowledge) in the armed forces at all.
Robert A. Martin Jr. earned a B.A. of political science at Columbia University and later studied religion as a graduate student there as well, while Stephen R. Donaldson attended the College of Wooster, OH, and received his M.A. in English from Kent University.
The violent rape which so changed Robert A. Martin Jr.’s life took place in 1973, a time during which Stephen R. Donaldson was working non-stop on the first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
And finally:
“So he had reason to write about rape and violation, in and out of his fantasy; he knew well whereof he wrote. In fact I think he even tried to understand the position of the rapist, making him the hero in his novels.”
This is a flat-out untruth. Although Stephen R. Donaldson may have had his own reasons for writing about violence and rape in his Thomas Covenant novels, implying that he was himself a victim of such attacks both slanders him and cheapens the situation of the late Robert A. Martin Jr. who actually was the victim of said attacks.
I’m disappointed in Piers for not finding out more about Stephen R. Donaldson before painting him with such broad strokes, and for not taking the brief time it would have required to do a bit of minor research. Even five minutes’ searching would have shown that Piers had the wrong man –and yet he didn’t spend those five minutes. Or, if he did, he ignored many obvious inconsistencies.
Here are several Web links with more information. This info is readily available in print but the Web links are easily located and less obscure.
Links to info about Stephen R. Donaldson:
http://www-theory.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Eaaa/SD.html
http://www.dragoncon.org/people/donalds.html
http://members.aol.com/WrldofFant/donald.html
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Stephen_Donaldson.htm
Links to info about Robert A. Martin Jr.:
http://www.igc.org/spr/docs/sdinfo.html (with many additional links)
http://www.aclu.org/library/donnyobt.html
http://www.aclu.org/news/n071996c.html

I hope Piers will apologize to Stephen R. Donaldson publicly for his erroneous statements and apologize, as well, to his readers, who have come to know him over the years as a man of ethics and a strong moral code.
Regards,
Phil Carter
disappointed Anthony fan of 20+ years

Thank you for your note. We have printed and forwarded it to Piers Anthony, and he gave us the following answer for you:
I don’t like your tone or your assumptions. I took on faith a published statement about the author Donaldson and the prison rape sequence; it never occurred to me that it was false or that there were two Donaldsons. You are about the tenth person to call that to my attention, and I do plan on publishing a correction. If you had taken five minutes to think about it, apart from your self-righteous attitude, you would have realized that there was no malign purpose here – in contrast to your own approach. You did not do what you arrogantly demand of me: consider alternatives.
Seajay,

Thank you in turn for your response, and to Piers for his. As for Piers’ “e;if I had taken five minutes to think about it”e; — I wrestled with this for quite a while before writing, not just five minutes, as Piers has consistently been someone who does his research and doesn’t make statements without being fully aware of the facts. I was disappointed, not angry, with him because (as I wrote in the previous note) he has shown himself over the years to be a man of high moral character and ethics. This particular column struck me as a complete departure from his usual approach to life.
As for “e;arrogant demand[s]”e;, I made none. The phrase I used was “e;hope”e;. “e;I HOPE that Piers will apologize … to Stephen R. Donaldson”e;; “e;in the HOPES that corrections will promptly be made”e;. I never threatened that I would stop buying Anthony novels, claimed that I would bad-mouth Piers unless a retraction was issued, or did anything of the sort. I still don’t plan to do anything of the sort. I thought, however, that Piers’ readers deserved an explanation for something so out of character from him — and Mr. Donaldson himself did as well, considering he was the victim of Piers’ (however unintended) assumptions.
As for “e;[my] own [malign] approach”e; — there was no malignance in my letter, only deep sorrow and disappointment in an author I have admired for many years. If Piers chose to interpret that differently, I’m sorry that he did, but I stand by what I wrote.
Lastly, I am glad to see that Piers will be printing a correction in the next newsletter. I have one final comment, and then perhaps Piers will see why I was so upset: how would you feel if you were Stephen R. Donaldson and one of your fellow writers (whom you had always dealt pleasantly with) made a statement like that about you on a public forum?
Regards,
Phil Carter

Thanks for your note. We will print it out and forward it to Piers Anthony. He appreciates hearing from you.
Piers Anthony asked us to add:
I spoke of “e;five minutes”e; because you had done that to me, not crediting the research I did on Stephen Donaldson. Didn’t like it, did you?
You may take your missive as not being arrogant, but again, if I had done all of it back to you, I believe you would have seen it differently. You were essentially accusing me of haste, carelessness and even lying. If you care even now to read what I said, you will see that I was not slandering Donaldson, but you were slandering me. You say that’s not malign? Do you think an impartial jury would agree?

Hi Seajay,
>Thanks for your note. We will print it out and forward it to Piers Anthony. He appreciates hearing from you.
I’m not exactly convinced of that based on his responses; however, I do appreciate his taking the time to read these missives in any case.
>Piers Anthony asked us to add:
>I spoke of “e;five minutes”e; because you had done that to me, not crediting the research I did on Stephen Donaldson. Didn’t like it, did you?
“e;Like it”e;? I didn’t care one way or the other about it. The only reason I addressed that at all was to correct Piers’ (seemingly) mistaken impression that I had fired off the original email immediately after reading the HiPiers column in question.
>You may take your missive as not being arrogant, but again, if I had done all of it back to you, I believe you would have seen it differently.
On the contrary. This seems to be where we differ on this matter. Were I in Piers’ situation, I would have been horrified that I (however inadvertently) labeled a bestselling author and casual acquaintance as a homosexual who sympathized with rapists. I have nothing against homosexuality myself, seeing it as perfectly normal, but the fact is that the general public is, in the vast majority, against it. As a writer and someone in the public eye, you are certainly aware of the public backlash every time you do or say something that offends someone. I’ll repeat: if you were in Stephen R. Donaldson’s place, how would you feel about this?
For that reason, were I in Piers’ situation, I would have promptly put up a correction on the same page in place of the original remarks. A line or two is all it would have taken — something to the effect of “e;Some of my alert readers have pointed out that Stephen R. Donaldson the fantasy writer is not the same person as the homosexual rights activist Stephen Donaldson who acted as the head of Stop Prisoner Rape. I’m sorry for any confusion this may have caused.”e; As for Piers’ opinions on why Stephen R. created a violent rapist as his protagonist in the Thomas Covenant Chronicles, those are his opinions, and he’s welcome to state them any way he chooses.

I, too, have made mistakes in my life — but I’m also not afraid to freely admit it when I do make mistakes, and do what I can to make up for the problems I caused when doing so. Whether Piers intended hurt or slander is irrelevant (and, for the record, I do NOT think it was intentional, merely a case of mistaken identity) — many people will see his statements as being hurtful and slanderous if they have the true facts. Why does he seem so reluctant to admit his mistakes? For that matter, what’s the delay in getting the correction up? More people see that column every day and get the wrong impression.
>If you care even now to read what I said, you will see that I was not slandering Donaldson, but you were slandering me. You say that’s not malign? Do you think an impartial jury would agree?
Yes, I do. You can check several Internet newsgroups and see that as a direct result of Piers’ column, many people are confused about Stephen R. Donaldson’s identity and whether he’s alive or dead. “e;rec.arts.sf-written”e; and “e;alt.fantasy”e; are two groups, for example; I posted the original missive which I sent Piers to those two groups in an effort to clear up some of the confusion. (His responses to me I have kept personal, of course).
I received seven brief personal replies (via email, not on the newsgroup) after posting that. Six people thanked me for clearing the matter up. Four of them thought I wouldn’t hear back from Piers, as his reaction to criticism and/or correction is well known. One thought I was being a bit hard on Piers, but agreed with me that a correction should be made; two expressed no opinion of the letter’s tone; and four thought I’d been too forgiving. All seven thought that I had been right to mail Piers and let him know.
I admit that a sample size of seven people is a small one, but when the opinion that I was right to email Piers is a unanimous one, and six of seven don’t think I was being malign, it seems to me that they, at least, got my point.
Again, thanks to Piers for taking the time to read these notes. I don’t need a response unless he specifically wishes to respond; in my estimation we have wasted enough time arguing over this matter already.

Regards,
Phil Carter

================================================
Phil Carter — artoo@bellsouth.net
http://personal.atl.bellsouth.net/~artoo
“e;Without music, life is a journey through a desert.”e;
— Pat Conroy

Defenestrating Windows

I have been getting ready to move from Windows and Word to Linux and Word Perfect. I could have ordered a complete Linux system from Tiger.com, but last time we got a system from them, it took us months and money to get it fully operative, because of conflicts between the parts. I didn’t want to go through that again, especially with an operating system that was new to me. So I wanted to get a completely functional system locally, with local service. Early this year I asked a local computer store (the one that finally fixed the Tiger system) about it, and the man said to check back with him in six months. So I worked on the 240,000 word first draft of Key to Chroma and queried again in six months–and he said no, they couldn’t help me with a Linux system. Sigh; I had anticipated a ready acquisition, and suddenly I was back on square one. So I contacted the local Linux organization: SLUG, for Suncoast Linux User’s Group, and asked whether there was a dealer close to me. They checked, and the closest was Tampa, which would cost me much of a day for each trip for purchase or service. I thanked them and said I’d see if I could find something closer. Then I started calling Inverness computer stores. One didn’t flinch at the word Linux, so I went there and ordered a system. They said they might have something in a day or so. After a week without word I called: oh yes, they were working on it, any day now. After another week I called again: yes, Real Soon Now. So I went in and put a hundred dollars down on it. Another week, and another. They had everything in but the motherboard; everything in but Linux; everything but Word Perfect. It has been six weeks now and still no system, but I expect it any day. Maybe. Meanwhile I have a novel, Xanth #26 Up in a Heaval, due on a deadline, so I had to start in on it on the old Windows system, with bad grace. It is harder to get away from Windows than I thought. Maybe next column, two months hence, I’ll have more of a report.

Ends & Odds

I don’t read for pleasure any more; that’s a consequence of being a workaholic. That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy reading, just that enjoyment is not my motive. But sometimes I do like what I read for business reason. An example is Push Not the River by James Martin, an Xlibris novel, a well written historical romance based on fact. The setting is Poland, 200 years ago, as that country is disappearing, consumed by its aggressive neighbors. The main characters are Anna and her sexy, scheming cousin Zofia, who are attracted to the same man. That may seem routine, but the twists of story and politics are interesting, and the finale is compelling. So I did enjoy the novel, and feel that this is an example of what the conventional publishing system shuts out. There is indeed excellent work out there that gets stifled by the closed-shop tendency of the system, and I hope Xlibris and the online publishers will find more of it. Those who suppose I exaggerate should read this novel and see.
This was predicted to be a pretty severe hurricane season. So much for prediction. For two months there wasn’t even a named storm, and there still hasn’t been a bad one hitting land. That could change at any time, but meanwhile we seemed to have dodged another seasonal bullet. One storm did come our way: Hurricane Gordon. It barely made hurricane force for a few hours before diminishing, and passed close by us with gusts of no more than 30 mph and about three inches of needed rain.
I wrote Jenny Elf’s Sammy Cat into Up in a Heaval, on the suggestion of a reader. Three days later the real Sammy Cat died in Mundania, age 17. Well, Sammy will be well taken care of in Xanth, I assured Jenny. And yes, she still plans to take college courses, when it can be arranged.
Meanwhile I have become a grandfather. Our daughter Penny had something to do with it. The stork brought her a ten and a half pound baby girl named Logan on SapTimber 23, 2000. Princess Ivy in Xanth was modeled after Penny as she grew up; when Ivy married, soon Penny did too, and when Ivy got triplet girls, Penny had to do something. But the stork wasn’t able to make it that far into Mundania with three, so settled for one big one. There’s a picture in the New Arrivals section.
Something I noted that shows yet again how far out of touch reviewers are. There can be a review on TV that turns interesting as it runs a clip from the movie, so I get curious about that movie; I might even want to see it. But no matter how long the review is, it never gives the title. That is given only at the beginning, before I’m paying attention. Movie ads, in contrast, give the title at the end, so that you know exactly what to look for. They know how to do it. But you’d think that in all the decades movies have existed, the reviewers would have caught on and made their reviews useful–if they wanted to.
I maintain my exercise regimen: jogging, biking, and archery. But the chain on my RowBike broke, and I just know it will be a hassle getting that fixed. I have a “e;Power Pull”e; device consisting of two elastic cords anchored to a handle that emulates drawing a bow; one of those cords snapped, reducing the effect. I have no trouble drawing the 60 pound compound bow, or using the left handed recurved bow I got from Dee-Lightful, so I should be okay. I remain pretty healthy for an old fogy.
Last time I mentioned trying to make belated corrections in Xone of Contention. It turned out that the editor had tried to reach the production department and they hadn’t answered him. So I sent in the corrections, and it is yet to be known whether they made it into the book. I repeat, this was really my fault for overlooking corrections when asked for them. It’s still a good novel, honest.
The controversial abortion pill RU 486 has at last been approved for American sale. I’m not commenting at the moment on the subject of abortion, which is a serious matter; I’m indulging in a naughty association. I have seen the letters RU before, when I served in the US Army, in the following formula: B 4 I 4 Q RU/18? The interpretation is “e;Before I fork you, are you over eighteen?”e;
I saw news of a study that showed that those who are most seriously religious have less depression than those who are moderately devout. But the dedicated atheists have the least depression. So where does that leave me, an agnostic? Right: depressed. Another study indicates that divorce of the parents has a negative effect on the children on into adulthood. I could have told them that, having been there. You think my ornery attitude came naturally?
We live in the forest, and try not to disturb the forest creatures. Some of them regard our house as their own. I mentioned the wasp nest on the door sill last time; that continues to grow. Our heads pass within inches as we pass through, and the closing of the door jostles the nest. Fortunately the wasps are tolerant. Now a spider has taken to spinning its nocturnal web there too, so at night we have to duck down to waist height to pass.
The Florida Suncoast is a backwoods area when it comes to wild parties, but it is catching up. Now the teen “e;Rave”e; parties are getting into more than ecstasy; the new pills are PMA, short for an unintelligible chemical, and it is killing people. Body temperature can rise to 108°F and death can occur in hours. I hope none of my readers are into that stuff; I hate losing readers.
And the Olympics. It’s what’s on TV, so I watch it some, but remain turned off by the bad calls. They set a vault horse too low, messing up vaulters; one medal contender was so shaken up she messed up her following event and was out of it. That can’t be undone. An error in officiating eliminated a Suncoast medal contender. A doctor gave a girl the wrong medicine, costing her her medal. Isn’t there a better way? But there were some highlights. The American men’s beach volleyball team was having a tough time, falling behind; they took a time-out, the official said they didn’t return to the court fast enough, and gave a point to the other side. That outraged both team and spectators, and thereafter the angry Americans made five fast points and won the match. Would the official have reconsidered his call if he had known that was going to happen? I was rooting for the Lithuanian basketball team; I have liked Lithuania since researching it for Isle of Woman. To have such a tiny nation stand up so well to the American championship team–but their last shot missed. In 10 meter women’s platform diving the lightly-regarded American entry was in 8th place, then 5th place, then scored well while the top divers all messed up, and suddenly she had the gold medal. I’m not familiar with Greco-Roman wrestling, which seemed like a belly bumping of behemoths, but it was interesting to see the unheralded American farm boy take the enduring Russian champion. I’m not much of a fan of horse jumping, despite its elegance, but was surprised to see a horse going for a medal balk thrice and wipe out. The rider was not pleased.
I received another ad for DNA PUBLICATIONS. I no longer read genre magazines–my taste runs to serious news and science magazines–but in the interest of the genre, mention it again: they publish ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE, ABORIGINAL SCIENCE FICTION, WEIRD TALES, FANTASTIC STORIES, and DREAMS OF DECADENCE. I don’t know whether these are as good as the magazines I grew up on, like ASTOUNDING SF, GALAXY, SPACE SF, STARTLING STORIES and such, but for the sake of new readers I hope they are. When I happened on the March 1947 issue of ASTOUNDING, most of a year after its publication, and started reading “e;The Equalizer”e; by Jack Williamson, it changed my life, as my career as a genre writer indicates. My dull and twisted life found marvelous new worlds, and that wonder remains with me fifty years later. Some time I’d like to edit an anthology of the great old stories that meant so much to me, that they not be entirely forgotten. But the scutwork of running down copies and rights would be beyond me.
I try to oblige requests for interviews, within reason. I did a small one for Valerie Hardin of THE WRITE CHARM at www.egroups.com/message/thewritecharm/25; readers of this column will already be familiar with its content.
Val Maurer introduced me to stumpwork, something I wasn’t familiar with. This does not refer to digging out dead trees; it’s a kind of needlework. She has done interpretations of scenes in my books. Look for her pretty designs at http://members.aol.com/maurerhouse/stumpwork.html.
Snail mail has its interest too. I correspond with Clifton Smith, secretary of the ONLOOKERS STAMP CLUB, PO BOX #2500, LINCOLN NEBRASKA 68542-0500. This is a prison group. I believe in rehabilitation, and this is a positive effort. They collect stamps, and don’t have much way to get them on their own. I have been sending used stamps from around the world, as I have correspondents in places like Canada, England, Germany, Australia, Singapore and scattered others. Anyone who would like an appreciative response can tear the used stamps off US or foreign letters and send them in. Stamps that seem ordinary to us may actually be rarities because of aspects only the specialists catch.
Some mail is frustrating. I received a nice snail letter from Meghan Denney in Austin Texas with some questions, but I didn’t answer because she had omitted her street address, making it undeliverable. I get more of this with email, when my answers bounce because of invalid addresses.
A reader put me onto a site for Dvorak keyboards. I use Dvorak, and this was interesting because it is hardwired at the keyboard, requiring nothing of the computer system. It enables the user to switch readily between Dvorak and QWERTY, and both layouts are marked on the keys. But alas it didn’t work out for me, because I use a modified Dvorak layout (actually the original Dvorak; the computer industry changed the punctuation, apparently just because it could), and theirs is limited to the standard computer layout. But other Dvorak users may want to check this out, at www.dvortyboards.com/.
There’s a new Xanth role playing game in town. Those interested can check http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/surprisesxanthrpg.
I’m mostly a gun-control nut, but my interest is not so much in guns as in personal safety. I don’t like the notion of any freak with a grudge against the world having free access to a weapon he can use to blow away the next innocent person he encounters. In nations with effective gun control there’s not a lot of such damage, but in America the statistics are horrendous. But it’s not a clear-cut case. For one thing, there are other weapons, and I don’t want to get knifed or clubbed either. In a world without weapons, the biggest and strongest man rules; that’s hardly ideal. Since America is awash with guns, what is the safest course? To have one or lack one? So far I think the evidence is that a person is safer without one. But I saw a newspaper article about the situation in Britain: not many guns there, but violent offenses are sharply up. Does the absence of guns cause crimes? No, it seems more likely that the problem is the absence of police. Still, the question remains unsettled.

I loveNew York

The details of my travel were as usual for me: at each intersection where I had to make a connection, there was no connection, but after three to fifteen minutes the connections were found and I got there and back. I got up at 2 AM Tuesday morning, SapTimber 5, exercised, had breakfast, and headed out to the Tampa Airport, Newark, and New York. I had my Impact Kerambit–the self-defense plastic “e;L”e; discussed in a prior column–in my pocket and had no trouble. Never had to use it, but I felt safer with it along, somewhat like a seat belt: I don’t want trouble, but if it comes I don’t want to be helpless. E-tickets make me nervous; it feels like traveling naked, but they were there for me. The weather was good and the flights each way were on time. Last time in the Newark airport I had been unable to find a phone that would let a traveler use it; this time phones were all over. But it’s a good thing I didn’t have to call, because it turned out that I had the wrong number for my party, and his cell phone battery had not been recharged, so I would not have reached him that way. Close call! I was met in Newark by the man I called Angel in a prior trip report: an angel investor, scouting out companies before the venture capitalists do, and either losing all the money put in, or getting it back many times over. In this instance I’m an angel investor too, and it is like riding a roller coaster across heaven and hell without knowing where it will stop. We were going for an Xlibris board meeting, both of us being directors. I won’t be going into any detail on that aspect, except to say that it now looks as if Xlibris will land in heaven: that is, as a successful company, perhaps the leader in its field, worldwide. What I know about running such a company is nil, but fortunately all I need to do is watch the competent chief executive officer handle it, approving his decisions. I have come to appreciate how important it is to have the right person for that job, and we do. Xlibris looks like a tiger, and the competition looks increasingly like something else. There are still articles in newspapers and magazines about self publishing that don’t mention Xlibris, or that pretend it is merely a minor aspect of print-on-demand, but they are not presenting reality. I believe I am in a position to know.
New York, I discovered, is a fabulous place. Angel drove us to the ferry, and we rode across atop the boat, seeing the city skyline including the Empire State Building. To me those buildings looked like closely-packed dominoes that might start falling if a good Florida hurricane ever blew at them. There was a bus connecting to the ferry station that took us to the vicinity of Hotel Sofitel where we were staying. I had never heard of it, but of course I have never heard of most of what’s out beyond my tree farm. Sofitel’s rooms feature bottles of Evian natural spring water: “e;Like Sofitel, an outstanding import from France.”e; My room was nice, with a fake red rose (actually I prefer fakes, because they don’t castrate pretty plants), photos of old New York, modern art, and an intriguing sketch of a nude woman on the bathroom wall. There were glass goblets rather than cups, and the shower was walled in by transparent glass. This strikes me as a good site for a honeymoon couple. The restaurant had French entrées, fortunately with English subtitles. I never cared much about France, but I liked this hotel.
Angel showed me New York. We took the subway south to the World Financial Center, and stopped for lunch somewhere in there–vegetarian entries were limited, but I had asparagus and goat cheese, and it was good. Then we walked the shore line, from which we could see the Statue of Liberty. The day was beautiful. There were fiberglass model cows, about four feet high, each painted differently, with plaques for the sponsors. They were bright and pretty and ubiquitous. One had a picture of the face of a lovely woman on its side; others had all manner of other decorations. One stood on hind feet to see out over the sea, and another I saw later in Grand Central Station lay on a couch. More fun. Puts me in mind of the poem about the purple cow: “e;I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one, but I can tell you anyhow, I’d rather see than be one.”e; Well, now I have seen one. Which in turn reminds me of a parody: “e;I never saw a vitamin, I never hope to see one, but I can tell you anyhow, I’d rather C than B1.”e; The shoreline was park-like, and indeed eventually expanded into a park where there was a demonstration going on: many people in yellow shirts. We went to inquire what it was all about, and learned it was the Falun Gong, which has been in the news because its leaders have been imprisoned and even tortured and killed in China. The participants were friendly and gave us literature. It is also called Falun Dafa, and has exercises and teachings to improve the inner self. I think of yoga. Why the Chinese authorities object to it isn’t obvious; perhaps they are intolerant of any halfway organized movement, seeing in it potential competition. I think of the Romans and early Christianity. China is officially atheist, and this may smack too much of religion. It seems to have started in 1992 and now has millions of practitioners around the world. Certainly the Chinese crackdown seems unwarranted, but it would not be safe to protest it there. So we see the protest in New York. Maybe publicity like this will encourage the Chinese government to reconsider the persecution.
There were people all over New York. I mean throngs out on the streets and walks, walking; whole families were jogging. Children were riding scooters and bicycles. Sometimes it seemed as if every third woman was wearing a snug black sweater that bounced strategically as she moved; if there are any ugly women in the city, they weren’t out that day. Every fourth man was talking on a cell phone, and teens had headsets. The detective movie image of the big cities would have it that criminals rule the streets, but I saw none of that; folk of every age and gender were out there, and all seemed friendly. Business suits mixed with informal dress, male and female. There were little booths on the sidewalks cooking and dispensing food, the odors of it spreading out like tentacles to draw people in. I understand that these mini-restaurants are strictly licensed. We took a taxi to China Town, where suddenly just about every person on the street was Chinese, the language was Chinese, the advertising signs were in Chinese symbols, and the stores had Chinese art and food. It certainly seemed like China. I wondered whether there could be an America Town in China, where everything is suddenly American. We eventually walked out of it, perhaps into Little Italy, then took the subway north to Central Park. This was yet another world of New York, with nice trees and shrubs, curving walks, and playgrounds. My prior image of Central Park derived from the news stories of crime after dark, “e;wilding,”e; women getting gang raped and beaten almost to death, drug sales and such. Again, I saw none of that; this was about as nice a place as a person would care to be. Maybe it changes at night, or maybe the news media aren’t much interested in reality. We went on to visit a huge toy store, where Angel showed me one of the products of the toy company he has invested in: “e;Phlat Ball”e; a ball made of plastic that can be squeezed flat, and after a moment suddenly goes round again, doubtless thrilling children in the process. We visited a food store in Greenwich Village that had all manner of cheeses and unusual foods. It offered free samples of a kind of health drink titled Fresh Samantha, named after the juiced vegetables a family made for their child Samantha in 1992; now it’s a business. The proprietress tells a cute story: she asked for a juicer instead of china as a wedding gift, but soon lost the juicer to the business. “e;Now I have no china and no juicer.”e; I liked the sample, so bought a pint bottle of the variety titled “e;Desperately Seeking C,”e; loaded with vitamins and antioxidants: my kind of drink. I also bought a 2/3 pound wedge of Jarlsberg cheese.
There was one episode that stands out in my memory. We were on the subway, but needed to make another subway connection, so followed a passage there. At one point there was a steep flight of stairs to another level. There was a woman just ahead of us with a little girl and a baby in a carriage. She looked at the stairs, then heaved up the carriage, baby and all, and plunged upward. I was surprised, but actually, what other way is there to get everything past such a barrier? I think she was lucky she didn’t throw out her back; it was obviously a struggle for her. She continued on ahead of us. Then she came to a similar stairway down, and I heard her exclaim with dismay. Going down with a load is harder than going up. At that point I stepped in, offering to help. I gave her my bag with the cheese and Fresh Samantha, then leaned down to put my arms carefully around the carriage. I picked it up slowly, so as not to alarm the baby, and moved cautiously down, step by step, making sure not to trip. I reached the bottom and set the carriage down gently. Then I took back my bag. The woman said “e;Strong man!”e; I hadn’t thought of it as any feat of strength; the whole thing must have weighed under fifty pounds. But actually I am in good physical condition for a retirement age man. I just didn’t want to let her struggle to get the works down those stairs, when I could so readily solve that problem. She called up the stairs “e;Sorry about that!”e; and then another man came lumbering down with another carriage. I think there must have been a dialogue, with the man’s wife telling him that if I made it safely down, his turn was next, so then he was stuck for it, and it was evidently more of a challenge for him than it had been for me. That was all there was to that, but two days later as I entered the Newark Airport there was another young woman, with a bag about as heavy as she was; she was struggling to heave it forward about three feet at a time. I offered to help, but she declined. I can appreciate why young women don’t want to accept favors from strange old men. But it made me wonder why one woman accepted and another declined. Was it that New York women are more sociable than Newark women, or was it that the first was black and the second white, or simply that the first had no real alternative?
Wednesday morning the phone rang once at 4, stopping my sleep. So I watched TV news, and a cartoon about an egg-less mother hen who adopted a turtle egg instead, and the problems the baby turtle had being snubbed by the chicks, until they fell in a pond and were drowning, and he rescued them. Then he had an honored position as a lifeguard. At 9 I went out to explore, verifying the location of the Bertelsmann Building so that I would be able to find my way there later, then walked north, looking for Grand Central Station. I couldn’t find it, though I did spy a huge interesting building that blocked off a street. The following day Angel clarified that that building was it, and showed me. Sure enough, inside was the huge terminal, and there were escalators leading to the lower levels where there were real live trains. I remember Grand Central Station from the 1940’s, a fabulous place. But alas, I had no train to take. Maybe some day they’ll have a board meeting on a train, and I’ll be able to board it there. Meanwhile, Wednesday, I pondered breakfast, and decided to stay home, as it were; I ate Granola bars I had brought, and some of the cheese, and the Fresh Samantha drink. And I finished writing the short story I had started while waiting in the Tampa Airport: “e;Commitment,”e; about an odd meeting of a teen punk and an 80 year old woman. Teresa Carrion of ELECTRIC BOOKWORM PUBLISHING had asked me for a story, and I had told her I had a notion, and might write it during the interstices of my upcoming business trip. So I did. I wrote novels in pencil for 17 years, then changed abruptly to computer 16 years ago, so the pencil languished; it was good to do it again. I completed the story, then typed and revised it when I returned, and it should appear in due course at the site of the publisher. I seldom write stories these days, because the story market is so erratic, but I like this one. Check for it at www.electric-bookworm.bigstep.com/. It’s the first short story I have written in years–I have had more novels published than stories–and the first to be done for an online publisher. Maybe it’s because my sister is named Teresa, like that of the proprietor, though her last name is not Carrion. Which reminds me of a joke another reader, Anna Bryant, sent: Two buzzards are boarding a flight, each with two dead raccoons. The flight attendant stops them and says “e;I’m sorry. Only one carrion per passenger.”e;
I also had a book along to read: Catastrophe by David Keys, whose thesis is that in the year 535 AD a massive volcanic eruption so affected the global climate that it changed history all over the world and perhaps ushered in the roots of modern times. Fascinating! I love history, and the title of my unfinished fifth GEODYSSEY novel is Climate of Change; you can bet this relates. That series is now on hold–loss of market–but I’ll continue to research as convenient, awaiting the time when readers get more interested in historical fiction than in fantasy, or when some fluke makes me famous enough to sell substance again instead of fluff. Critics who condemn me for the latter have no idea of the nature of the commercial market. If eventually I get tired of waiting I’ll finish it and self publish it at Xlibris.
I walked to the Bertelsmann Building for my 3PM appointment with the president of BALLANTINE BOOKS. I have had mixed relations with that publisher over the years. BALLANTINE published my first novel, Chthon, then cheated me and blacklisted me when I objected. Six years later Judy-Lynn del Rey was there, as part of new and honest management under RANDOM HOUSE, and lifted the blacklist, and I returned with the Xanth series, which made me a best-seller. But I left again a decade later when editor Lester del Rey started chopping out whole chapters or Author’s Notes. More recently the publisher became part of the Bertelsmann conglomerate, and that conglomerate supported Xlibris, helping make it viable. I really appreciate that support, because Xlibris is not so much a financial investment for me, as a way to make it possible for every writer to get published. So now I am considering whether it is time to try that part of the conglomerate again. We’ll see. It’s not as simple as just deciding to do it; in effect I have been married and divorced twice there, and I don’t like divorces.
Then at 6PM I met with Angel and the chief executive officer of Xlibris for dinner. We informally discussed the present and future of the company, which has grown astonishingly. Next morning we all went to the board of directors meeting, where things got more formal and detailed. Maybe there are directors and executives who sleep on the job; this certainly isn’t the case here. There’s a feeling of surfing on this huge killer wave, and it would not be expedient to get off it even if we wanted to. So far we seem to be okay. Thereafter Angel showed me Grand Central Station. Then I headed for Florida and home, getting there just before 8PM Thursday. I still hate to travel, but must admit that New York City has its appeals, and not just decorative cows.

But for those who aren’t up on politics, I’ll say that there were two major party candidates and several minor party candidates on the ballot. Al Gore won the rest of the nation in both popular and electoral votes, by narrow margins, leaving the decision up to Florida. Then the magic struck, and now we are struggling with magical concepts like butterfly ballots and hanging chads. The main issue is in Palm Beach County, where the ballot confused about 22,000 voters. George Bush was listed first, Al Gore second, and the others following. To vote for Bush, the voter had to punch out Chad #1. To vote for Gore he had to punch out not Chad #2 as you might think, but Chad #3. If this does not seem to make sense, remember the magic; Chad #2, also opposite Gore’s name, was for Buchanan on the opposite page: the other wing of the butterfly. Thus about 3,000 Gore voters mistakenly voted for Buchanan. 19,000 more realized their mistake, or thought the two chads were for Gore and Lieberman, so also punched out #3–and the authorities, rather than count them as intended, instead threw them out. This loss of votes was enough to tip the state to Bush instead of to Gore. That’s when the feces hit the fan. There have been ugly things, such as intimidating demonstrations against ballot counters, death threats, party members allowed to promote official absentee applications for their own party only, and a partisan official doing everything possible to guarantee success for her candidate. The question is whether the evident will of the voters should prevail, or the confusing ballot and thug tactics. I see it as like a bad call in a televised game: do the officials correct the call, or do they insist that once called, it must stand, though the video shows the error clearly? Usually they seem to prefer the bad call. But this is not a game; real consequences ride on the decision. We’ll see. We saw one bit of Internet humor that related: before the election a note said that due to an anticipated large voter turnout, the load would be divided, with Democrats voting on Tuesday, Republicans on Wednesday. I hope no one fell for that. An email provided a link to the Florida Election Recount: count the total the black dots for Al Gore and white dots for George Bush. Recount to confirm. It was an optical illusion, with black dots appearing only in peripheral vision. Those votes you know are there, but can’t quite nail.

On to lesser things. I have just updated the Internet Publishing survey, adding several ePublishers. Next time, FeBlueberry 2001, I’ll try to bite the bullet and do a complete review, looking up all the 100+ publishers and services. I do this as a service to my readers and hopeful writers in general, but as the list has grown it has become a burden, and I don’t expect to do full reviews often. I am glad when folk tell me that they find the survey useful, but I’m a writer rather than a surveyor, and I hate the days it takes from my writing.

I alternate exercise runs with recumbent bicycle rides, going out to pick up the morning newspapers, a 1.6 mile round trip. One morning on the way back I encountered a boar pig, maybe 200 pounds. I yelled at him, and he considered, then finally gave way. When I go out alone off the drive I like to carry a boar spear or other defensive weapon, but in this case I was on a newspaper run. That makes me nervous. But that’s not the only animal contact. One day we also found a red headed woodpecker in the pool enclosure. I opened the doors, but the poor thing kept flying into the screen, dropping to the floor, and lying there whimpering. Finally I picked him up in the butterfly net and took him outside, and in due course he recovered and flew away. I’d whimper too if every time I tried to get moving an invisible barrier knocked me down. Why does that remind me of the average hopeful writer’s lot? Also, remember that wasp nest on the doorsill? At its height it featured perhaps 20 wasps. Then the number diminished, down to three, and then none, and the nest was deserted. We didn’t see what happened; I conjecture that a wasp-eating bird came by and cleaned them out. Our miniature wasps disappeared similarly on a prior year, to my regret. Nature can be rough; our species has largely abolished the ever present threat of early death, but other creatures have not.

And several remembers: Remember Stephen Donaldson? There turned out to be two of that name, with the writer surviving. I finally had an email from him, confirming his existence.

Remember my long-awaited Linux system? The store could not make it send other than gibberish to the printer. At last they figured that out and I finally got it, after 11 weeks. I played some of its computer games, since they required only the mouse. My wife changed the keyboard to my Dvorak layout and it worked fine. Then she reset the system so it would stay–and thereafter the system loaded and locked, like a backwards firearm, completely unusable. Even for that it took five minutes to set up each time, and refused to turn off, forcing us to crash it. So I still have not used it. Fortunately I have other work to do on the old system. I finished writing and editing Heaval, and next will edit the quarter million word second ChroMagic novel Key to Chroma. But around the turn of the year I will need the new system. So far Linux is proving to be every bit as ornery and difficult as Windows, but I mean to tame it eventually.

Remember those corrections for Xone of Contention? I sent them in to the editor, and he sent them to the appropriate department, and they corrected–only those in the first 50 pages. They must have figured nobody would check beyond that. So it seems our efforts were for not much; the anonymous functionaries who do these things were not interested in making corrections. This is not the first time I have encountered this sort of thing in publishers. Readers ask whether anyone bothers to proofread published novels; they do, but the corrections are not necessarily made. Internet publishing has much to offer, if it will.

Remember that urban legend I fell for, about the cookies? So I dug out the Urban Legends book, Too Good to be True, and read it. I was amazed at how many other stories turned out to be legends. For example, the alligators in the New York City sewer system. Some time back, as I recall, H L Gold, former editor of GALAXY MAGAZINE, claimed to have started that story, and was sneering at the gullible folk who believed it. As it happened, I didn’t like Gold, ever since he told me not even to try to compete with established writers–most of whom I was later to pass by in success–so I challenged him in a fanzine, pointing out that L. Sprague de Camp had documented those alligators. And de Camp then wrote in, giving his source. The alligators may be a story, but that story was circulating before Gold spread it, so he did not start it. Still, I thought it was true, and am actually a bit sorry to find that it is not. And now L. Sprague de Camp, a grand old master of fantasy and historical fiction, is dead. Sigh.

My sister forwarded a five piece plastic puzzle: fit them together to make a square. Simple, right? I have a good eye for such things, and have always liked puzzles, but maybe I’m getting old; this one balked me. Finally I went to my library and looked up the answer in one of my puzzle books, and it was obvious in retrospect. So why couldn’t I see it before?

I take care of my mouth, but my teeth continue to give trouble. I have had something like a dozen root canals over the years, and two apicoectomies, one gum surgery, and assorted reconstruction and bridging. Remember, at one point they found a cracked root whose surfaces slid across each other when I chewed, like the San Andreas Fault only on a rather smaller scale. Still problems, so finally my dentist took the most affected teeth out entirely, leaving an empty space. And it worked: the nagging pain stopped and I am now chewing freely. Too bad I had to spend those thousands of dollars trying to save teeth that in the end were lost.

There was a sex case in Tampa involving a 40 year old woman and a 12 year old boy. No not what you may think; he raped her in the park. He was a big boy with an attitude, and she was a small woman with four small children. She finally got away and ran naked, her children following, to flag down a passing car. Is it my imagination, or are things getting worse? In my day, 12 year olds were victims rather than perpetrators.

Scooters are now the rage. But there is a danger I learned the hard way. No, not crashing into cars and such, though that is happening. Let me explain. I was given a scooter to use when I was as I remember about seven years old. I loved it, and scooted everywhere. Years later I was having some obscure physical problems. My father took me to see a chiropractor. He took one look at me, and fetched two scales, and bade me put one foot on each. I weighed 100 pounds: 60 on the left foot, 40 on the right. Because when I used the scooter, I had always pushed with my right foot, to the extent that it distorted the growth of my legs. My right leg was longer than my left, tilting me over to the left. I had to wear a corrective left shoe to tilt me back, evening the weight and getting my body level again. So I still think scooters are neat–there is a big-front-wheel scooter I’d love to use, but it costs about $250, which is too damn much–but whoever uses one needs to alternate feet regularly. I wonder how many of today’s kids do?

I don’t pay a lot of attention to TV commercials, but on occasion one gets my notice. Yes, the Victoria’s Secret ads, of course, but that’s different. Some are actually clever. There’s this one for a heavy duty car, a Jeep I believe, covered in mud. The people get out, and they are immaculately clean. Then the car shakes itself like a dog, flinging mud everywhere. At the end the car is shining clean, and the people and buildings are drenched in mud, not looking particularly happy. I love that ad.

Then there are the new TV programs. Two stand out in my mind: CSI because of the intriguing ways science is used to unriddle crime scenes, and Boston Public, for its devastating look at high school teaching. I was once a high school English teacher, and didn’t like it. I never encountered anything as extreme as what appears here, but I resonate. Some items are choice, such as the girl who resists being tested for drugs: “e;Want me to pee in a cup?” she asks the male administrator. “Want to watch?” It does not ignore the difficult realities of high school: students who fall for teachers, and vice versa. Cheating, sometimes on a grand scale. Bullying. Unrealistic dreams. The focus is mostly on the teachers and administrators as they try to deal with students relentlessly dedicated to mischief and parents who can be completely oblivious. Actually I relate in several ways. I was first a student, then a teacher, and finally a parent. At each stage, the other groups were idiots. Ah, perspective…

Last time I ran the address of the Onlooker Stamp Club, a prison group of stamp collectors. I mistyped the zip code. I have also been advised that though the club does not have a prison number, the person handling it does, and prisons are wont to bounce letters automatically if they lack prison numbers. So here it is again, complete: ONLOOKERS STAMP CLUB; SECRETARY: CLIFTON SMITH #46160; PO BOX 2500; LINCOLN NE 68542-2500. I heard from a couple of readers who planned to send some stamps; I hope they got through okay. Prison correspondence is notorious, with lonely women getting taken for money by unscrupulous male prisoners, and lonely men taken by theoretically sexy appreciative female prisoners. So send stamps and/or letters, nothing else. I have corresponded over the decades with a number of prisoners, male and female, and sometimes it has soured as I refused to budge on basic principles, and for years a fanzine condemned me for supposedly dropping correspondence with a prisoner whose letters the fanzine refused to publish. The hypocrites we shall always have with us. But apart from such pitfalls, this is a legitimate prison club, and your used stamps will be truly appreciated.

Prisons are not the only institutions that can get arrogant. I was once a state social worker, and of course my impressions differed with perspective. When I found I could not do a satisfactory job, considering the wrongheaded limitations of the state and desperation of the clients, I quit and become a writer instead, thus giving legions of critics reason to mourn. But this does give me some basis to form an opinion; I have been there. Here is the essence of a letter I sent to a social services office in small town Wisconsin: “Ana Margaret Volin is a long-time reader of mine and a writer in her own right who once came to interview me for an article. Our correspondence goes back a dozen years. I have been sorry to see her fall on hard times. Now I understand that she is on welfare and on assorted medications, some of which on occasion interfere with her functionality. I thought she was doing better recently, but then learned that she went shopping for some clothing, so as not to be cold this winter, and got in trouble for that. Apparently for that offense she was recommitted to court and stuck with a number of monetary charges in that connection. Can it really be that clothing is considered a luxury that a person is not allowed to have? This action seems wrongheaded at best and mindlessly punitive at worst. Will you clarify the rationale for me? I’d like to share it with my readers.” I did not receive a reply, so I am sharing my letter with my readers, keeping the relevant parties partially anonymous. I sent a copy to my correspondent, who said “I was committed to court before the clothes incident and also socked with a big legal (fine) before it. The rest was accurate.” She had been told that clothing was a luxury, but it seemed that buying lipstick was what triggered the punitive legal action. This is not social work the way I practiced it in my day; this strikes me as more like getting an incompetent editor who thinks that every verb should be modified by an adverb ending in “ly.” I think women are attractive with or without lipstick, but it is an aspect of their presentation and hardly cause for punitive court action. Meanwhile they continue to treat Ana as if she is a criminal on house arrest. She can’t go out to see a movie if that would prevent her from being present for one of her many pill appointments. The phone rang while she was in the bathroom, and she didn’t reach it in time; she got in trouble, because she is supposed to be right there to answer it. She could not even have an appointment in a doctor’s office if that meant she would miss a pill time. When she was in the hospital for seizures her roommate stole her clothing, but she was not allowed to take it back. She kept a diary, and that disappeared, perhaps taken as evidence against her. She has a regular counselor who understands her, but apparently they refused to let him see her in the hospital. She was doing okay on her medication, so they almost doubled the dosage, leading to complications. You know, if you subjected a perfectly healthy, normal person to such a routine, he would soon enough go crazy. Maybe that’s the point. Woe betide those who fall into the power of Little Caesar. She wrote a little poem whose full text I can’t run because I heard it only once over the phone, but the key line is “My king is always in check.” I find that marvelously evocative.

Sometimes I watch video movies while writing. As a workaholic I hate doing just one thing at a time, so often do two or three things at once. I have found that I can watch a movie on my video picture in the corner of my screen while writing, because it does not require full attention. I can’t read and watch video, because the two inputs conflict, but writing is output. There are reasonable limits, however; when I put on Totally Nude Aerobics my writing slows dramatically because peripheral vision and sound won’t do. I have to watch those bare pretty girls bending and bouncing; it’s like reading. But regular movies are fine. I have amassed a small collection of videos, and just ordered 20 more that I’ll watch gradually next year, ranging from Eyes Wide Shut to The Babysitter’s Seduction. Men in Black, Fantasia 2000, Being John Malkovich, Erotique, Felix the Cat Cartoon Compilation, Anne Get Your Gun–you get the idea. My taste is eclectic but leaning toward the cerebral, the fantastic, and the sexy. As if you didn’t already know that about me. But there were two from last year’s ordering spree that I hadn’t watched, because they were foreign movies with English subtitles: the three and a half hour Das Boot and two and a half hour Stalingrad. I would not be able to write while focusing on evanescent fine print at the base of the picture. When I finished Heaval I grabbed the chance to watch them both–and discovered that I had after all managed to get the English dubbed versions. I could have watched them before. But both were disappointments. The first is a famous submarine story, featuring a World War Two German U-boat, but once you’ve seen one such movie–and I have–you’ve pretty well seen them all. Go out to sea, torpedo a ship, wait anxiously for the depth bombs to hit or miss you. No romance, not much personal development. The second I got because I researched the siege of Stalingrad for Muse of Artand have a 50,000 word chapter on it there; it was arguably the turning point of the war, one of the most significant battles of our time. Ignorant Americans tend not to know about it because the fight wasn’t American; it was German vs. Russian. We think we were the most significant aspect of the war; a study of that siege could open some wide-shut eyes. But the movie itself seemed to have almost none of the momentous significance and irony of it; it followed a few German soldiers who deserted and finally died of exposure in the Russian winter. War is hell, and it shows it, but similar tragedies were happening all across the world; this was hardly unique to Stalingrad. They could have made a better movie from my chapter. So call me sour grapes. But it caught me up on videos, for the nonce.

I read Stephen King’s nonfiction book On Writing. He does go into some of the basics, and would-be writers can profit from that, but my main interest was in the personal bits. Such as how one of his baby-sitters would throw him down and laughingly fart in his face. He says that prepared him for the later responses of critics. I rather like the analogy. He describes the way he got put in the hospital by a careless driver; it was the kind of thing he could have written into a horror novel. He writes lucidly, but seems oblivious to the crudity of “whether or not” when “whether” is sufficient. He also says that a number of fantasy writers, myself included, are really trying to recreate hobbits, questing for the fantasy realm that Tolkien fashioned. I suppose with similar justice I could say that he is merely questing for the beloved horror of the smelly farts of childhood. We trivialize at our peril.

The physicists are closing in at last on the Higgs boson. This is perhaps the last of the elusive particles of physics. I’m a fan of the boson; years ago I told Jenny about it in a letter, then said that maybe she should give that Higgs boson she kept under her pillow to the scientists so they could study it. Oh, yes, she has one there; in fact, probably billions. They should be everywhere. The Higgs boson is supposed to be the source of the mass of everything else in the universe. I’m not clear why, but then a number of things confuse me about nuclear physics. I remember how Einstein explained that gravity was not so much a force as a way mass interacted. The analogy was of a huge rubbery sheet stretched out across the universe, and the stars and planets sit on it and make different sized dents according to their mass, distorting space itself. So other things tend to roll into those indentations not because of any attractive force, but because they just naturally slide downhill. Okay–so why, then, does there have to be a particle called the graviton to convey the force of gravity to those various objects? I thought we had just abolished the concept of gravitic force. The subatomic Higgs boson is another mystery: I always thought that mass was inherent in any object, be it a star or an atom. Why do we need a particle to bring mass to it? Suppose that boson goes astray; will that leave something without mass? Where is the universe’s storage room of mass that the boson carries to the other particles? So it seems like a lot of nonsense to me. But I’m not a nuclear physicist. At any rate, they have not been able to find a Higgs boson, until maybe just now. They are keeping a collider at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, open a while longer to verify what they think they saw: evidence of Higgs. So with luck and keen observation the Large Electron-Positron collider will nail the Higgs boson soon. (No, they’re not banging large electrons and positrons together; it’s the collider that is large.) There may a Nobel prize in it if they succeed.

They put Titanic on TV and we watched the last 2/3 of it. We saw the movie when it came out, and it was great; the TV reminded me of the craft with which this was put together. I admire good story craft. They give it verisimilitude, that seeming reality, by starting with the exploration of the sunken wreckage, and tie in an old woman who was there. Then they flash back to her lovely youth, interweaving a fine romance with an awful tragedy. The craft comes in that weaving; in the course of the foreground romance they manage to show just about every part of the ship, first in normal action, with its decks, restaurants, ballrooms, cabins, boiler rooms and all, then in gradual destruction as the water infiltrates. They are chased by the alienated boyfriend and his henchman so that they pass through many interesting sections and finally make love in a car being transported in the hold. One thing they excised in the TV version was the way the girl gave the pursuer the finger as they escaped down an elevator. I suppose the TV audience is too upscale to be assaulted by an image like that. Then as the ship sinks the young man is chained in a low stateroom, so the young woman has to find her way down there, through the surging water, to rescue him. It is harrowing, especially when she closes her eyes and whams the fire-ax down on the chain between his wrists. Another nice tour as they make their way back to the surface. She gets put on a lifeboat–then changes her mind and jumps off to rejoin boyfriend, and there is more chasing through flooded holds. Finally the ship cracks asunder and they are stranded awesomely on the rear fragment, before it sinks and they must brave the frigid water. This is a phenomenal tour, masked by the tension of the romance. And I’ll bet you folk out there never realized, until this moment. That’s craft.

We received a notice from a British outfit: hipiers.co.uk is now available for only £35.99 for two years registration. Thanks, no thanks; this regular HiPiers.com suffices, as it reaches England too. Of course piersanthony.com is not me, and neither is the old 800 HiPiers number, which was taken by a sex outfit, to my annoyance; I still get calls from appalled readers, but AT&T claims it can’t do anything about it. That’s an intercoursing shame. Eventually there will surely be legislation to oust squatters from established names. Meanwhile just keep in mind that right here is the only real me on the Web.

I got an email saying that the girl had read years ago that I don’t believe in God, but God loves me regardless. I guess I have to clarify this, too, periodically: I am politically independent and religiously agnostic. That means I don’t subscribe to any one party line, preferring to go for the best candidate, and that I don’t presume to be able to define the nature of God. I see little real evidence that a separate sentient all-powerful god exists, but can’t prove that he doesn’t, so I’m officially on the fence. If you define God as a man with a long while beard sitting on a cloud and rewarding only those who openly worship him, no, I don’t believe. If you define God as truth, justice, compassion, beauty, honor, and similarly uplifting concepts, then yes, I believe. But I see little evidence that most of those who subscribe to the great religions have that kind of belief. Not when they condemn all nonmembers of their particular sects to eternal damnation, or when they torture or kill those of other faiths. I never cared to join such a religion. So by their definition I am doomed, but I will continue to do what I feel is right as long as I live, and by the magic of an estate trust, for some time after. My activities here at HiPiers represent some of that. And yes, I believe Jesus Christ, Buddha, and other religious leaders would approve.

I don’t always get thanked for doing right. A reader sent me part of his manuscript for comment and advice. My advice was not to try to publish it in its present form, as it would embarrass him in print; it needed work. He responded that he presumed I was an established writer (he had never read anything of mine) but that he had 25 friends who thought it was great, and he hoped to have it made into a movie. I am obviously off his Christmas list. But that’s why I don’t like to critique amateur manuscripts; I feel obliged to tell the truth, and there is no kind way to tell a hopeful writer that his piece stinks. I don’t get my jollies from putting down dreams; I am a dreamer myself. You may wonder whether 25 friends can be wrong, and one ornery reader right. Yes, in this case. Here is the fact: your friends won’t tell you the truth, because they will lose your friendship if they do. Writers have notoriously thin skins; it comes with the territory of being sensitive enough to write. But when you come up against an editor, he will cut you down without compunction, if he even bothers to read your piece. A critic picks up where the editor leaves off; he does get his jollies that way. No, not all amateur fiction turns out negative; last time I mentioned James Martin’s Push Not the River, a fine historical novel that deserves publication. He is now checking with agents Xlibris put him on to, and I hope one of them has the sense to take on the novel. Even a good novel has a problem breaking through the ice.I actually look at Spam before ditching it, as I do junk mail. You never can tell. One came in NoRemember 27: The Hottest XXX Site Ever Created!!! You Have To See It To Believe It!!! FREE ENTRY HERE. etc. So I clicked the link–and got an error message: Does Not Have a DNS Entry. I remain bemused: why send out such ads if they can’t deliver? I was unlikely to be a paying customer, but I was curious what they thought was so hot.
I get constant requests for autographed pictures, and I generally oblige, but I do check to see whether given folk have had them before, because duplicates tend to turn up on eBay for sale. Some folk send repeated identical requests regardless of my response, and after a time I express my annoyance. In one case I asked what he had done with the prior picture: thrown it away? He replied that he wouldn’t want a picture from someone who had such a bad attitude. Uh-huh. No, I don’t take this as evidence that I have feces for readers; I doubt he was a reader. Others, in contrast, have sent heartfelt thanks. I wish I could tell which was which ahead of time.

Then in Jamboree I edited my 20 year old science fantasy novel Mute, for republication at Xlibris. It was 190,000 words, but cut for publication, so this will be the restored edition. I wrote an Author’s Note this time, and rather than discuss the novel here, I’ll append that Author’s Note as a postscript to this column. I’ll just say here that I loved revisiting that novel, and am glad to restore it to print. I also updated the Internet Publishing survey, adding about 50 entries. That took me 29 working hours; I tracked the time. More Internet publishers are popping up like toadstools, and I doubt I have a majority of them yet; I’m just doing what I can as I go along, helped by readers who provide corrections and additions. Finally I got into Linux. After five months the store finally had the system stable, and bit by bit I found out how to make aspects work. I still don’t have sound, but can address a floppy disk–that’s not intuitive, in Linux–and am able to go online. In fact much of the survey update I did on that system. So I do believe I will write my next novel on it, and then we’ll see. I expect the system to become more comfortable as I use it.

We also bought an adult tricycle. I have a good recumbent bicycle, and a RowBike, but my concern is that as I age I could start losing my balance, and I don’t want to give up cycling if that happens. So we have a Joy Rider, and compared to the others it’s a toy, but it does do the job. One doesn’t really ride it, one trundles it. The front wheel is only one foot in diameter, but suffices. The frame is like an elongated oval, with a section cut out, making it like the letter C. You step into that aperture and sit down; it is obviously meant to be convenient for infirm elderly folk. It has a big rear basket that should be handy for packages. So now I rotate between cycles as I fetch the newspapers or close the gate.

Daughter #1 Penny gave us a subscription to MOTHERING magazine, as she is now much into mothering. I like it. It makes the case against circumcising of non-Jewish babies, and I’m glad to see that case made. Why should a religious mutilation be routinely performed on babies not destined to join that religion? Why not let them grow up first, and choose it for themselves if that’s what they want? There is also the medical idiocy of doing it without anesthetic, on the theory that babies don’t feel pain. Really? Then why do they hold the baby up and spank it to make it cry, so that it draws its first breath? Of course babies feel pain, and now it is known that those subjected to it develop a greater sensitivity to it than those who aren’t; they have been traumatized. I can suggest the real motive behind involuntary unanesthetized circumcision: the point is the pain, to make a boy hurt sexually, punishment for the sinful urges he will later feel. It’s a pseudo-moral agenda, and of course it doesn’t work; circumcised boys are just as horny as uncut ones. The idea that the sexual urge is sinful is one of the abominations of certain religions. In some other parts of the world they do it worse to girls, trying to prevent them from ever getting any satisfaction from sex. Anyway, I wrote a letter to MOTHERING because it had an article on non-surgical treatments for fluid behind the eardrum: when it happened to Penny as a baby, one doctor was all set for surgical implantation of drainage tubes in the ear drum, but we got another opinion, and the second doctor suggested blowing balloons. So we tried that, and it worked, clearing her inner ear. A few months later the condition returned, and the balloons banished it again, and thereafter she had no further problem of that nature. I can hardly think of a more pleasant alternative to a less pleasant prospect, because children love balloons.So what about that US election decision? Al Gore won the nation by over half a million votes, and actually won Florida by up to 40,000, but they wouldn’t count either the over-votes (that nefarious butterfly ballot) or the under-votes (the hand recount), depriving him of the win. The US Supreme Court, having stopped a fair recount that was already in progress, then said there was no time for a recount and declared Bush the winner. This was a political rather than a legal decision; it seems that the majority wanted to perpetuate itself by putting in a Republican who had promised to appoint more conservatives, and was willing to cheat to do it. As many as four justices should have recused themselves for conflict of interest; they could hardly plead ignorance of that ethical requirement, but evidently lacked the honor. We are stuck with that fiat. I am a naturalised citizen, politically independent; I would feel uneasy being a Democrat, but at this point, downright pained being a Republican, because few if any of them at any level showed much integrity; all they cared about was winning, and the end justified the means. So is there a remedy, lest we go the route of Germany in the 1930’s? Yes, first a holding action: there should be no Supreme Court appointees confirmed until a legitimately elected president of either party holds the office. It is just about that simple in principle, if not in detail. Meanwhile there should be serious campaign finance reform, to stop candidates being bought by special interests. The Electoral College should be abolished, so that never again will the majority will of the voters be thwarted. And a uniform error-free voting procedure should be established, so that people’s votes are no longer trashed without their knowledge. Such measures could rescue our democracy from the oblivion that otherwise threatens. But any such reforms will be an uphill battle, because those who have illicit power will not readily let go of it, as we have seen.

Normally reviews don’t have much impact, and of course it became proper for reviewers and critics to pan Xanth when it became successful, so real readers tend to ignore such commentary. But in this period there was an exception. Emily Jenkins ran a Xanth review at the online magazine Salon.com Books titled “I was a captive of Xanth.” She says she first discovered Xanth in ninth grade and was hooked. (There is magic dust between the pages, that wafts out and instantly addicts the unwary reader to magic; that’s the hidden secret of the series success.) Thus she continued reading it despite the protests of her rational brain. “There are lots of naked bodies because all the Xanth books carry a frisson of naughtiness, which was no doubt an even larger part of their appeal to my teenage self than it is to my adult one.” Darn; she’s catching on; I hope no parents of teens read that commentary. As I like to put it, Xanth may be unsuitable for the parents of teens. She mentions the Jenny Elf origin, and visits this HiPiers site, concluding: “I believe reading can, and should, be fun. Who cares if it’s cheesy? I can return to Xanth as often as I like, and going there feels like coming home.” There is much to like in this commentary. Here’s the sequel: I received news of this article from agent, family, and readers. Salon must have an extremely broad circulation. It provided a link to HiPiers, and the week following the article the daily site hits jumped from 9525 to 14781. Thereafter they faded back to normal, which is now in the 9000-10,000 range. So Emily Jenkins sent me five thousand folk. Thank you, Emily.

Some readers send me electronic cards. That’s okay, except for two things: some require me to download “Flash” in order to see them. I tried to do that several times and wound up with wasted time, frustration, and no ability to make it work. So I won’t try to look at a Flash card again, or any other that requires a special download, and please don’t send me any more; your effort will be wasted. Second, some folk have no sense of proportion. One has been sending me two to six cards a day, clogging my email. I looked at the first; it was generic rather than personal. A week later I tried to look at another, but the card server was down. That’s wasting my time. The purpose of those cards seems to be to advertise the card outfit. I’m not amused.

My wife and I gave ourselves a new set of mobile phones for Christmas. We liked our old ones, which consisted of four with a common base, but they had two problems: we could not talk conference style on them, and they would not dial out if any light, TV, or computer was on in the house. So if, say, Xlibris called with important information for us as significant investors, one of us had to scramble for a wall phone. We prefer to be free to wander around the house when on long calls. And if I wanted to call my father, I had to take the phone out of the house to dial the number, then come back in once the connection was made. That was a nuisance. Still, I regretted letting those old phones go. I’m the only one I know who gets nostalgic for machines. I can’t stand to hear the plaintive beep-beep as a phone’s battery expires; the poor thing is dying. The old phones didn’t know that they weren’t quite adequate for our needs; they were doing the best they could. Well, the new ones are better; conferencing is easy, and they do dial out in the vicinity of other devices. They also have little computer-like windows so you can make your way to a list of saved numbers and dial one; that’s handy. I no longer have to look up my agent’s number each time. This may be old hat to others, but a novelty for me. I’m intrigued by the way they identify numbers: say you want to record Jerk’s number. First touch 5 once, for the J, then touch 3 twice, because E is the second letter there, then touch 7 thrice because R is the third letter, and then 5 twice for the K. That name labels the number. Neat. Still, there is that lingering guilt about the old phones now languishing in a coffin-like box.

One chore I had in Dismember: the lawyer who vetted the sequel to my autobiography, How Precious Was That While, got in touch about permissions for the Ligeia poems in Chapter 5. Ligeia, as you remember, is the joint pseudonym I gave to the whole class of suicidally depressive folk. Most are teen girls, but not all; some are adults and some are male. Some of their poems are savage, some are painful, some are thoughtful. I don’t much like free verse, but one of them, “I Knew To Be A Woman,” I think may be the finest poem I have encountered, though it is dreadful in the terrible beauty of its dark message. That’s by “Colene,” the pseudonym for those who suffered sexual abuse, as was the case with my character in the Mode series. But there are others that are hard hitting too. It may be that the most outstanding chapter in my autobiography is the one authored by others. But here is the problem: many of the authors were under the legal age of consent. This meant that though they were happy to have their material published, they could not give permission themselves; their parents or guardians had to do it. But in most cases their parents did not know about these poems, and could not be told. I mean, would you tell your parents that one of them was sexually abusing you, and ask for permission to publish your thoughts on this? Would you tell them that you were searching for a clean, efficient way to die? Where would that get you? I refused to violate their confidence; the parents would not be told. I would not identify the real people behind the pseudonyms unless they wished to reveal themselves. But the publisher was concerned about legal liability, understandably; I did not have legal permission to publish those poems, even though I had the permissions that counted: that of the authors. Of course that could be solved by deleting those poems. I didn’t want to do that either; those voices need to be heard. Well, time solved much of it; it took several years for the volume to find a publisher, and in that time most of the contributors had passed the age of consent. So now they could legally give permission. But in that time I had lost touch with most of them. Some might be dead; some just had moved on to other things. So I couldn’t reach them to get those renewed permissions. It was an irony. Well, eighteen hours of working time–yes, I track my time in the manner of a lawyer–got me the original permissions from the correspondence files now at the University of South Florida, and I wrote letters to those I could reach, and we summarized some, quoting only briefly in “fair use,” and some were after all of age when they gave the original permissions. So a number were lost, but more were saved, and it remains a hard-hitting chapter. But if any of you who contributed–you know who you are–and lost touch, if you see this, contact me now so that I can send you a copy of the book when it is published this July. You aren’t obliged to read the rest of it, but I want you to have your published poem, even if it happens to be one of those we had to abridge for legal reasons. Any that were abridged or eliminated I will run here on HiPiers in full, if their authors wish it.

A reader emailed me that I was in the new Almanac. Oh? So I checked, and lo, it was so: THE WORLD ALMANAC 2001, page 337, under “Writers of the Present.” I am listed. Not many genre writers are on that list. There’s Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, J K Rowling (Harry Potter), some borderline cases like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Kurt Vonnegut, and me. I’m not sure how I got in, as critics normally pretend I don’t exist; writing ability has nothing to do with it. Maybe I have a secret fan on the staff who slipped my name in when the authorities weren’t looking. I hope he doesn’t get in trouble for that.

I continue my exercise regime. Apart from thrice weekly jogging the 1.6 mile round trip to pick up the newspapers, and the cycling, there are my 8, 10, and 20 pound dumbbells, and there is the archery. I fire my right handed 60 pound pull compound bow at a range of 150 feet, and my left handed 30 pound pull reverse curve bow at 100 feet. They actually feel similar, because the compound bow has a let-off that means after drawing I can hold it at about 20 pounds, while the other has no lot-off, and indeed I draw it back farther, so probably get about 40 pounds that I have to hold while aiming. I keep crude score: +1 for each arrow I get in the one square foot center square or circle (the circle is about 13 inches in diameter, to have the same actual area as the square), and -1 for each arrow that misses the target entirely. I have several baffle targets above and to the sides, so I seldom now lose or damage an arrow, but only the center target counts. Originally I preferred the compound, because it was more accurate, ever at the longer range. I might get 5 in the center, and miss 2, for a score of +3. Then I’d do the same 12 arrows with the left, and they might be 2 centers and 3 misses for -1. It was especially bad on low arrows that plowed into the ground, and fluke right misses, when the arrow simply took off where I hadn’t aimed it. That drives me crazy. I mean, I have front and rear sights aligned with the arrow; how can it ignore that? But it sometimes does. Well, one day a year ago it was cold, so I was bundled up–and my arrows were forming perfect shot groups to the side of the target. We figured it out: the extra clothing was causing me to hold the bows farther out from my body, and my hands were twisting the bows. Thus when I loosed an arrow, the twist took effect and skewed its flight. So I learned to hold the bow very loosely, closing my hand carefully only as I fired, and that fixed that. Until this winter, when I was bundled up again, and the arrows missed again. I tried to avoid twisting, but it happened anyway. My record good score is +14 for 24 arrows, and my record bad score was -4. This time my right hand score was -7. Then my left hand score was 1-8 = -7. Total score: -14, breaking the record by 10. Hm. It was a challenge. So next time I went out bundled up the same way, and this time focused on my hand, making absolutely sure it didn’t twist. The arrows were back on track. Once I forgot, and the arrow missed. Left handed I didn’t forget, and missed none. So I cured it. But it takes constant vigilance, because that twisting is unconscious, and it doesn’t show–until the arrow is loosed. And yes, I used the metal detector to find the arrow I lost in that bad session; it had plowed into the ground under foliage. But about the jogging: when it is warm, as it normally is in Florida when the northerners keep their frigid winters up north where they belong, I run in shorts and T-shirt. When it is cold I run in a sweatsuit. We seldom see temperatures below freezing, until this winter; in Jamboree alone we had eight nights in the twenties. The sweatsuit sufficed, buttressed by a headsock and gloves, since I was generating heat at a good rate, except for one small aspect: the tip of my penis got painfully cold. I finally took a spare headsock and tucked it into my pants like the front of a loincloth, adding an insulating layer, and that did it; no further discomfort. Of course now I will be subject to remarks about exactly where I carry my brains, since that’s what a headsock normally protects.

The ultimate revenge of parents is when their know-it-all children grow up and have children of their own; then, as a poem puts it, “But with the coming of little feet, ten thousand million words to eat.” We suspect that Daughter #1 is already gaining some sustenance thereby. But there’s another aspect: When Penny was a baby, I kept records of her various accomplishments. That’s the sort of thing writers do. So now we have sent her the records of exactly what day she first sat up, walked, smiled. teethed, and all that, plus the complete list of her 500 word vocabulary at age 18 months. The average child, according to the book, speaks and understands 10 words at that age. That shows what an idiot the book is, especially when applied to a bright hyperactive child. I remember taking Penny outside to stand beside a hedge. “Do you see a hedge?” I inquired. She clapped her hand to her head. Oops, she had misunderstood the word. So I explained the distinction between Head and Hedge, and a few days later verified both in her vocabulary. Of course later when she hit school, as a hyperactive dyslexic, much of her early progress was threatened with destruction, and I waged what amounted to a sixteen year battle to prevent the schools from doing to her what they had done to me in my childhood. It helped that I had actually been a teacher myself, so I knew what was what. There are surely teachers who don’t remember Penny, but they remember her father. You may have noticed that I’m expressive and ornery, and while I don’t seek quarrels I’m actually a very bad person to cross, as several publishers discovered; I wanted my children to grow up to be nicer folk than I. I think I succeeded.

One day I found an old bit of mock-Germanic humor going through my mind; I encountered it when I was an electronic technician, circa 1960. It was the definition of the hydrogen bomb: “Das eargesplittinger Loudenboomer mit grosse Holingrund and alles kaput.” Two years of German almost washed me out of high school, but that isn’t it.

From time to time I ponder what it means to be human, and of course have never come across a perfect definition. What distinguishes mankind from animalkind? My standard conclusion is man’s art: no other creature cares whether something is beautiful or symmetrical or otherwise esthetic. Now other creature appreciates music, poetry, painting, sculpture, dance, or story-telling. (Well, maybe whales sing.) Wherever you find human beings, you find art. Even the dullest of us appreciates a good joke. Yes, I regard humor as an art, and it comes in everywhere. But is art all? Oh, of course man is the only speaking creature, with fully developed and intricately nuanced languages. Except that animals are more communicative than we may be aware, such as the way elephants send subsonic messages or whales make songs. So there may be other languages that we haven’t recognized. We also have the biggest brains in proportion to our size, and are the world’s smartest animals. But if we encountered a very smart ape, would it then be human? I’m not quite satisfied. Increasingly I have pondered another aspect: empathy. That is, to feel the feelings of others, to put ourselves emotionally in their places while knowing that we aren’t them. Animals typically don’t much care what happens to other animals, except for a mother with her offspring. Humans do. We wince when we learn of unkind deaths, and we can to a degree appreciate the suffering of some animals, especially if we have familiarity with them. Would you eat horsemeat? Dogmeat? Catmeat? How about a cow you had known? Humans typically have to close their minds to the horrors of the slaughterhouse, lest they feel too much. That’s empathy. I believe I suffer from this awareness more than most; that’s why I’m a vegetarian. I don’t like hurting plants either, so I have to close my mind to the natural lives and rights of vegetables. We have volunteer potatoes and squashes, sprouting from the remnants of our Christmas dinner, growing in our compost/garden patch; I cover them against the freezes lest they suffer. Our star jasmine plant grew too big to be covered; it has been severely damaged, and I hate that. I feel its pain, to a degree. Empathy. We all have it, a little or a lot. When a man kills another man we hate it, because it could have been one of us he brutalized, but then when he faces execution we are uncomfortable, because we think of facing such extinction ourselves. Perhaps conscience is a refinement of empathy. The Golden Rule may be empathy: do unto others what you wish they would do unto you. Compassion seems to be mainly empathy. So as I ponder my triad of values, Honor, Compassion, Realism, I wonder increasingly whether the middle word shouldn’t be Empathy. THE HUMANIST Jan/Feb 2001 issue quotes a dialogue relating to the Nuremberg trials: “What is evil?” “When someone shows no sign of empathy.” Maybe so. I will be pondering this more seriously soon.

I sometimes view videos in the corner of my computer screen as I write, and on occasion we go out with Daughter #2 Cheryl to see a movie. Most are unremarkable, but some are memorable. Instinct was a good video, the story of a mute prisoner and why he wouldn’t speak: he had been a scientist studying and living with the gentle gorillas, when they were slaughtered; he in turn slaughtered the killers, and was convicted of murder. I relate. Different for Girls is perhaps less well known; it’s a British movie about a male transvestite who takes the additional step of getting surgically altered to fully resemble a woman. A classmate who knew him as male later encounters him as female, and struggles as he realizes he is falling in love. Would you romance a pretty woman whom you had known as a boy? Sensitive and difficult, a movie that makes you think. And yes, a surgically transformed male can perform sex as a female; this too is clarified. Then there was Eyes Wide Shut, on the surface a simple story of a man in distress because his wife was once unfaithful, but marvelous in its execution. He sneaks into a private party where lovely women are nude except for facial masks, and all the men are masked. The others catch on, and he is in peril for his life until a woman volunteers to take his place. Next day is a news item: former beauty queen found dead. Hm. He makes up with his wife. The most recent movie we saw was Cast Away, which resembled a two hour commercial for FedEx but was a good show for all that. A FedEx official is in a FedEx plane that crashes in the Pacific, and spends four years surviving alone on an island. Talk of empathy; you feel his struggle, especially as that plane is going down. Then he is rescued, and finds that his fiancée, thinking he was dead, has married elsewhere. He must start anew. But I have one problem with it: he delivered a FedEx package to a woman, saying that it saved his life. It did? I didn’t pick up on that. He had opened and made ingenious use of a number of washed-up packages, such as using video tape to make rope and an ice skate to chop wood, but this one was never opened. If someone understands this aspect, let me know.

These days I write novels mainly because I like to write and love storytelling; I don’t actually need the money. Critics condemn me for writing Xanth, but that’s really all publishers want from me, and I like Xanth too. I do have trouble placing non-Xanth novels, but do manage on occasion. Reality Check is one; that’s about a house whose front door opens on a city street, and whose back door opens on an ancient forest that surrounds the house. When it missed traditional publishing, I put it on the Internet, and you can buy it at Xlibris. But contract negotiations are now in progress with a small traditional publisher, WRITE WAY, and it may see print this summer. Stay tuned. Similarly, my erotic novel Pornucopia should be electronically published by ELECTRIC BOOKWORM soon, so that curious adults need no longer be ripped off $150 for this dirty book. That bugged me. But if you are under 18, forget it; you can not obtain it honestly. They will also publish my X-rated Xanth short story, “Adult Conspiracy.” Meanwhile I expect to write my first novel on the Linux system: The Sopaths, an idea I had over a decade ago but didn’t develop because it was too awful a horror. I finally realized that I could blunt the horror and maybe make it writable, so I am ready to make the attempt. I have tried horror twice before, and each time turned somewhat aside: Shade of the Tree, which became science fiction, and Firefly, which became a sexual study. I just don’t seem to have the mind for straight horror; it bores me. “Sopath” is short for “sociopath”; it starts when the world runs out of souls, so that children start being born without souls, and therefor no consciences. No empathy. They are born sociopaths, and there are more and more of them. That may not sound like much, but this is potentially an utterly brutal story, if I can stay with it. There are levels and levels of horror, as was the case with the first Space Tyrant novel Refugee. Will it be salable? I’m not much concerned, because there is Xlibris and a hundred online publishers. Horrified editors will not be able to suppress or denature this one. If I can write it.

Artemiy Artemiev in Russia sent me some more of his music CDs. I can’t say I understand his music, but it seems like a good background for a space travel story, with long celestial notes and obscure elements. I can recommend it to those who have a taste for what is different. Check the website at www.electroshock.ru.

Sundays I take our big dog Obsidian for a walk through the forest. About seven eight years ago Daughter #1 Penny passed a store, and outside it was a box of puppies free to good homes. When she passed again later, one pup was left: they would take that one to the pound. So Penny took the puppy home. She hoped to place her with the seeing-eye or hearing-ear people, but they rejected her; too lively a dog, I think. But Penny already had two other dogs in the house, and a third was a burden. So it was Mother to the rescue, and Wife #1 Carol brought Obsidian to our house. She’s really a one woman dog; she growls if I approach my wife. But I become #1 on two occasions: when I am slicing cheese for a snack, and Sunday midday for the walk. We loop around the edge of our tree farm peninsula–it’s the shape of Xanth, by sheer coincidence–and see the sights and smell the smells. Obsidian is the most nose-oriented dog we’ve had; if there had been a smelling-nose outfit she would have been a prime candidate. The forest is full of smells, but that’s not all. There is deadwood all through the forest, because so many trees died in last year’s draught; some are standing deadwood, others are littering the forest floor. That makes me nervous, because summer is promised to be the worst fire season ever, locally; the drought resumed after a brief summer wetness. It actually rained all during the writing of this column, but we need not inches but feet of rainfall to abate the mischief. If a fire starts elsewhere and reaches our tree farm, there will be no stopping the carnage. We could lose our house. We used to be protected by the lake, but that’s gone, and fire could sweep across its basin. We’ll be watching apprehensively. Anyway, the newspaper published a comparison of dog ages to people ages, and I discovered that in dog years Obsidian is now as old as we are. No wonder she’s slowing down. I haven’t slowed down yet, but of course ogres are too stupid for that.

I’m a workaholic, but I try not to let it spoil my health, so on occasion I take a break playing one of the computer card games. We got a couple of new CDs for Christmas, and one of them had Mahjongg. We’d never played it before, but I tried it and found it a good game. I told my wife, and now she plays it regularly. The Linux system has it too, so sometimes I play it. On one level it’s stupid, as all you do is match up diverse little tiles, yet it is compelling. Meanwhile my wife discovered a variant called Gravity Tiles; that’s a fun game, and a challenge. You click to remove any two or more tiles that are adjacent with the same color, and the ones on top come clattering down to fill their places. The object is to get rid of all of them. She says it is not difficult with three colors, harder with four, and just about impossible with five.

I built up my library over the course of forty years, concentrating on research references for my GEODYSSEY series, which was to be the major writing project of my life. I have remarked before (and surely will again) on the idiot critics who blame writers for turning out superficial material, when this is the actual choice of publishers who care only about fast early sales. If you turned supposedly shallow writers loose to write what they truly wanted to, money no object, you’d see a rare flowering of original material. Kevin Anderson, for example, does a lot of high-commercial, low intellect work, but he showed me some of his serious writing and I saw how much more he has on his mind. But as long as writers have to eat and pay the rent, they must write for Caesar rather than God. I’m a bit too ornery to settle for that; I built up a fair stake writing for Caesar, then started in writing for God. Never mind that I’m agnostic; this is figurative. My literary clout and some hard-nosed packaging got four GEODYSSEY novels into print before that market was gone, so I did achieve part of my dream, though few critics take note; they are locked onto the Xanth-is-trash mantra, perhaps lacking the wit to read my serious novels. But this is about the library: I would drive myself crazy spending half an hour at a time looking for a reference I knew I had but couldn’t find amidst all the other books. So I set it up like the Library of Congress, labeling each book and entering it in a Cat.doc (I think of it as cat-dog) computer file. Now when I want a reference, I do a Find on it in the file, and that gives me the coding to find it on the shelf. But the system has to be maintained, and that’s a chore. I buy books and let them pile up a while, then bite the bullet and classify and shelve them. Theoretically each has the Library of Congress number in it, but many do not, and some have it wrong. So I have to do it myself, and some are really tricky to classify. Mathematical riddles: are they math, literature, or psychology? Today I’m not heavy on archaeology, anthropology, history, and the like, as I’m trying not to accumulate more volumes I probably won’t be able to use. Still, books come in like fan mail. Here is a sample of what I checked in, in Jamboree:

Kushiel’s Dart, by Jacqueline Carey, sent by the publisher in bound galley form, a magnificant fantasy novel I have commented on already. Its number is PS 220 C18. The PS 220 is the designation for American Literature, fantasy; the C is the first letter of the author’s name, and the 18 is the coding for the second letter of her name. That one was easy, because I check in a fair amount of fantasy.
Faith of the Fallen, by Terry Goodkind, 6th in The Sword of Truth series: PS 220 G75. Bound galley from the publisher.
Vladimir Nabokov–The American Years by Brian Boyd. Second volume in a huge biography: PS 3527 B80.
On Writing, by Stephen King: PS 3561 K51. More interesting for the personal bits, incliding his near-fatal accident, than for the basics of writing.
Secret Windows, by Stephen King: PS 3561 K51.
The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, by A. S. Byatt: PS 220 B99. This small 1994 collection of five stories looks interesting, which is why I bought it, and I may read it for pleasure after I catch up on the other stuff I am reading for business. I seldom read for pleasure.
A Haircut in Horse Town…and Other Great Car Talk Puzzlers, by Tom and Ray Magliozzi: QA 95 M13. That’s a fun program on public radio; even my mother, who had precious little interest in the mechanics of cars, liked it. They give the puzzle answers, too.
Masters of the Macabre, by (no author given): PS 222. That was a bonus book for an order. Maybe I’ll look at it when I’m writing The Sopaths, to study horror mood.
Model Trade Book Contract and Guide, by The Author’s Guild: PS 129 A98. It’s not really a book, but if I don’t classify it I’ll never find it when I want it, so I checked it in. It’s a fine guide.
Island of the Sequined Love Nun, by Christopher Moore: PS 3563 M77. It was for sale at remainder rate, and looked interesting, so I ordered it. It’s fun: the hero nearly castrates himself when he tries to have sex with a woman while flying, and crashes the plane in the process. But he finds another job flying, on an isolated Pacific isle, and then it gets interesting, and, yes, sexy. The cover shows an airplane’s mascot-picture, of a shapely nude young woman. This was “time off” reading.
Reflections on the Umpqua, by RSVP (Retired and Senior Volunteer Program), an Oregon local history group; Daughter #1 Penny sent it to acquaint us with her new homeland. It’s an anthology by their local writers. F 880 R90
Lizards in the Well, by RSVP: F 880 R90. Tales of the Umpqua.
101 UnUseless Japanese Inventions by Kenji Kaawakami: TT 100 K23. A gift.
The Magical Monarch of Mo, by L Frank Baum: PS 220 B19. A reader inquired about this book, not remembering the author, and I mentioned it in a column. Finally we found it at DOVER and bought it and several others, including Queen Zixi of Ix, The Sea Fairies, and American Fairy Tales, all by Baum. You thought all he did was OZ? I read Mo, and was surprised to discover that either I never read it before, as I thought I had, or I had completely forgotten it. It’s a collection of stories about various inhabitants of Mo, fantasy for children.
The Darwin Awards, by Wendy Northcutt: BF 431 N67. A compendium of the most stupid things idiots do, “commemorating those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it,” such as they guy who was killed by a Coke machine that fell on him as he was trying to tip a free soda out of it. A gift from Daughter #2 Cheryl; is she trying to tell me something? I don’t even drink Coke.

I check all my email, even the spam, just as I check junk mail the Post Orifice disgorges. Most gets short shrift. Multiple or chain letters are another category. I forward none of them, even if they threaten disastrously bad luck for that failure. Some are interesting. One was a poem, starting “I went to a party, Mum,” and describes how the girl was careful to follow all of Mum’s sage advice, but was struck by a drunk driver, and is dying. I am much with it in spirit; it is what happened to Jenny, my paralyzed correspondent. When will we take effective action to get these stewed rectums off the road? Another poem, from a different source, starts “Misty, My name is Misty,” and goes on to describe serious abuse, concluding “Tonight my daddy Murdered me.” It is an appeal to prevent child abuse. I relate to this too.

Then there’s the long ad for Hunza Diet Bread. It is supposed to make you absolutely healthy, and enable you to readily reduce weight: eat a slice and you cease to be hungry for several hours. Send $20 in cash to the address in Sweden for the recipe. I am skeptical, but if any readers have tried it, I’d be interested in their reports.

I object to rebates, because it seems to me that if a company really want to encourage sales, it should just reduce the price of whatever it is. But when something I want comes with a rebate, I feel the rebate should be honored. So it means that when the company tries to stiff me, I need to make a protest. Okay, we have done a fair amount of business with TigerDirect.com, cumulatively maybe $4,000 for computer and related, as it has good prices. This time we ordered two BlackoutBuster uninterrupted power supply boxes, with a $30 rebate. They said they would honor only one rebate. Okay, we could have made two separate orders, but I agreed to only one. The boxes came in NoRemember and are in use. The packing slip listed the rebate and it was initialed, but there was no information how to get it. Well, maybe they were mailing that stuff separately. It never came. Maybe it was automatic, needing no input from us? I gave it time, two and a half months. No rebate, and now the rebate period has ended. So I phoned, and got the press 1, press 2 litany and a series of recordings. So I noted the email address for queries about orders and sent an email detailing the problem, complete with date and order number. Of course they can ignore it. But I added one sentence that I recommend to others: “I will not do further business with TIGERDIRECT.COM until I receive my rebate.” That puts the ball in their court; they can stiff me once, but will not have another chance. They will lose more in my future business than they gain by stiffing me. I think this is the most feasible way to deal with this problem. It’s no bluff; I’ll simply toss their catalogs until they come through. I have given them fair notice. If everyone were to do similar to every outfit that offers rebates, I suspect reform would come. Rebates, if offered, should be automatic and prompt; I see no honest reason for requiring complicated paperwork and months for fulfillment, and you may have to make a federal case to get it even after that, and companies that do that should lose your business.

I write a monthly newsletter to family members and friends. I started it in 1963 when I was crowded for time and didn’t want to repeat myself to each individual person; instead I took time to say it well and, if possible, entertainingly, and made carbons. I still wrote individually if there were private business, but a general letter seemed sufficient for news that I had made my first story sale, that I was taking classes leading to a teaching certificate, that we had the flu, that one of our parakeets died, and so on. Thus the Family letter detailed the rise in my writing career, the arrival and tribulations of our children, my rage when neighborhood boys beat up my little girls–I went to the errant house and was minded to do to one boy’s father what his son and sycophants had done to my girls, and maybe it was just as well that the man retreated to his house instead of facing me, and then I called the police and lodged a charge, and you know, funny thing, those boys never touched my girls again–and other similarly dull minutiae of family existence. The letter list started with my father, mother, and sister, and gradually grew through the generations, and now it is a mail-merge letter to about 16 folk of three generations, including daughters, nephew/nieces, in-laws, former researcher and family–it’s amazing how many family ties there are. And no, I will not add Xanth fans to the list; you get your own newsletter, and this is it. What I know about mail-merge technology is not much; fortunately I have a wife to run my life, and she set it up. This time I needed to add a name, and I did it myself, as it was just a matter of filling in the address on the correct lines; even I should be capable of that. It had a space for designating the entry, I presumed so we’d know what was what for easy reference, so I filled in the first name there, as that’s how we think of her. Then when the letter printed out, that was what was filled in after “Dear ____,” the salutation. Oh–by sheer mischance I had done it right. But that made me wonder: suppose I had been adding the address of someone I didn’t like, like a book reviewer, and put my private designation, thinking it would never see daylight? I could unwittingly have mailed off a letter addressed to “Dear Blivet Brain.”

Remember how the lady doctor prescribed thyroid pills for me? Their effect seems small, but there are indications. I no longer think passingly of death when I get up in the morning, and in fact I think I have nudged from marginally depressive into the lower edge of normal. I hope that doesn’t destroy my career as a writer. Can a non-depressive make it as a writer? I also seem to be a little warmer. I used to need more blankets at night than my wife did; now I need less, and when I take my exercise jog I get warmer faster. My fatigue remains, but I think diminished by maybe 20%. So there must be something else wrong with me, causing the fatigue, but I haven’t yet found the pill for that. I don’t make a big thing of it, because when I first went to a doctor for my fatigue, and he couldn’t find its source, my insurance excluded coverage for all mental diseases. The arrogance of the medical profession is amazing: if they can’t identify it, the patient must be crazy.

Junk mail addressed to Anthony Piers: MEADVIEW MANSION CELEBRITY ESTATES, a real estate development exclusively for celebrities, near the Grand Canyon, with sunsets to die for and “no luminary affect” so that you can see the Milky Way at night. That would be nice, but they don’t seem to be educated enough to know the difference between “affect” and “effect.” I did not respond. The Ayn Rand Institute would like my support. Oh? How come it doesn’t make it all by its own heroic self, needing nothing from nobody else? Dr. Schulze’s SUMMER SURVIVAL MANUAL, with 911 herbal cures. Interesting number, that; makes me wonder what number you’ll need to call if a herb goes wrong. The pitch is to sell expensive bottles of pills. But the guy goes into his fractious childhood and life history, and he writes well, and I rather like his ornery attitude. So I’m not sending off for his newsletter or pills, but neither am I throwing away his literature; he comes across as another ogre. HUBBERT CENTER NEWSLETTER–every few months I receive one of those, about world oil supply and consumption. The author, L F Ivanhoe, really seems to know his business. When worse energy crises come, you can bet that this newsletter will have called the shots years in advance. And here’s a Spam: “Dear professional, You have been selected as a potential candidate for a free listing in the 2001 Edition of the International Executive Guild Registry…coveted honor” and a form to fill out. I didn’t answer. Another Spam: “Delicious. My friends and I are finger licking good. Come join us for some orgasmic good times. You’ll never be the same once we get our legs wrapped around you…” So of course I clicked the link. Error message: not found. What is it with these ads for nonexistent delights? And here is a spam scam: help this man in Ghana, Africa, to sneak 35 kilograms (I think that would be about 75 pounds) of gold dust across the border, and you’ll get a rich cut when that gold is sold. Don’t fall for this; if they get your banking information they’ll rip you off for whatever they can get from your account.

THE NATIONAL WRITERS UNION sent a newsletter, RIGHTS & WRONGS, with an article on urban myths relating to writing. #1 is mailing a copy of your piece to yourself and saving it unopened to secure ownership. The trouble with myth exploders is that they don’t necessarily know what’s what. That device is to establish a dated text, so if someone steals your work and claims he wrote it first, you can haul out your certified package and prove you wrote it a year before his date. Nonetheless, the NWU is a good outfit that all serious writers, published or unpublished, should join.

And some notices: I commented before on Jim Martin’s historical novel Push Not the River. He’d like you to know that it is available at http://www.xlibris.com/PushNotTheRiver.html. This is a historical novel about Poland that I think is worthy of traditional publication. Allen Hamilton would like to trade his hardcover copy of Zombie Lover for a paperback edition, as his collection is in paperback. He’s also looking for the game Companions of Xanth. His email address is Blackwolph@aol.com. And my URL has been added to “Famous SO and SO” at http://famous.soandso.com, so I am now officially numbered among the famous. Critics and regular readers of this column know better, of course.

And as I was about to edit this column, came one more email from a young woman advising me that my fictional women need not be bound to toilets for a natural function; they don’t have to squat to pee, but can use a urinal, and there’s an online site to tell them how. So I peeked into that ladies’ room, and here is my report, as a public service: check RESTROOMS OF THE FUTURE at www.restrooms.org/, and read their literature. If you are too embarrassed to visit such a site, then I, being beyond shame, will clarify the pees and queues of it for you here. Say you’re a woman traveling in jeans, changing airplanes, ready to burst, have just five minutes to spare in the terminal, and the ladies’ room is backed up six deep while no one’s even using the men’s room. Life and terminals are unfair; you’ve always known that. Now you can fight back. Pretend you’re a boy, walk boldly into the men’s room, and use a urinal. With luck no one will ever see you, and in any event, you never take down your pants. There are two methods: one is the use of a six inch long (penis size, surely by no coincidence) device called a Travel Mate that is essentially a tube opening and shaped at one end to mesh with female anatomy. Think of an oxygen mask that conforms to your face; this is a similar principle, a bit lower down. Open your fly, clear aside whatever you’re wearing under, apply the device, and pee. No fuss, no muss, no mess. Finish, zip up, rinse the spent device and put it away for the next airport. You could do this in a forest, too, so no stray animals could see your bared bottom. If you don’t care to spend four bucks dollars for the device, use the Finger Assist method. That’s essentially making a V with two fingers to spread and lift the labia so you can get a clear shot at the target. You don’t have to lower your jeans, but you had better know what you’re doing. It is strongly recommended that you do try this at home first; practice makes perfect. 70% of women are able to use this method, giving themselves the finger, while virtually any can use the tube device. The site has a nice picture of a woman standing beside a man, using the adjacent urinal, he looking somewhat askance, she looking smug. I suspect he’s about to have trouble completing his own business, ironically; she’s an attractive woman. There are several endorsements by women, who have their own variants of the technique. This should go far toward equalizing one of the nuttier bastions of gender discrimination: pee cans. If not, well, piss on it.

I had just finished editing this column when I saw a newspaper item: Gordon R. Dickson died at age 77. My relationship with him was mixed. He was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) when a technical complication prevented my 1969 novel Macroscope from getting on the Nebula Award ballot, and he agreed that it should have been on but refused to allow write-in votes. The later SFWA Nebula anthology commented on the nominees and added praise for my novel, in effect recognizing that a major contender had been denied. He was also president when I made a query about a publisher cheating me, but he did nothing while I got blacklisted partly through SFWA action, and I had to get a lawyer to make my case. That caused me to drop SFWA, and I remain alienated from it thirty years later. So you might think I would hate Gordon Dickson. No, I knew him as a good writer and a decent man, and we got along okay. He did what he thought was right at the time, admitting his mistakes, and I think that had he been able to reverse time and play both cases through again, he would have taken different courses. It can be much easier to distinguish right from wrong retrospectively, after all the facts have come out, than it is when in the throes of the storm. Dickson stood up for writers and tried to help them, and his initiatives helped me, and he was kind to me personally. I watched with dismay as alcoholism took its slow toll on him, blunting and perhaps destroying a writer with enormous potential. He is best known for the Dorsai! series and for an award-winning fantasy novel, The Dragon and the George. There too we related indirectly: his novel won the British Fantasy award for 1976, and my A Spell for Chameleon with the same publisher won it for 1977. But it took him, I think, sixteen years to do a sequel, while in that time I averaged a Xanth novel a year and became a best seller, passing him by in commercial success. If only he had followed up his opportunity! Which is not to say that Dorsai! was incidental; I regard it as some of the finest writing the science fiction genre has seen, with action and spirit, and aspects of it had a profound emotional impact on me. And so I say a regretful farewell to Gordon Dickson; he was a flawed near-giant I am glad to have known.

And here appended is the Mute Author’s Note. That novel is not yet at Xlibris, but in due course should be; I thought this might be of general interest even if you don’t plan to read the book.

Author’s Note

I wrote Mute in 1979, after selling it to AVON BOOKS on the basis of a summary. It was published in 1981, and went out of print in 1994 after something like eight printings. It was my psi-powers novel, and at the time I wondered whether it was not too close in nature to Xanth, with each person having a psi talent instead of a magic talent. But it really is a different kind of fiction, far more brutal, with serious constraints on the psi. I consider it to be science fantasy, with space ships, galactic colonization by mankind, and a planet-sized computer, but the psi aspect so wild as not to be seriously believable. I enjoyed writing it, and enjoyed editing it for this republication. Psi is fun, and is indeed much like magic.

The publisher liked the novel, but wanted 20,000 to 25,000 words cut. This sort of thing is common in publishing, where length is more important than content, and there is little the average writer can do about it. If he balks, he may lose publication entirely. The early adult novels of Robert H Heinlein, arguably the finest write the science fiction genre has seen, were cut; decades later his wife had them republished, restored. Thus I got to reread novels like Stranger in a Strange Land and The Puppet Masters in their original versions, and I feel that they should never have been cut. But until he got famous, and thus had the clout to stop it, Heinlein was subject to editorial dictates too. I understand that Jack Vance’s big novel Big Planet was severely cut, but I don’t think that one ever got restored. I’m sure there are many others. I call it Procrustean Publishing, from the Greek legend of Procrustus, who made travelers fit his bed the hard way, but either stretching them out or by cutting off the excess. Seldom does either person or novel really benefit from such treatment, regardless what Procrustus might think.

So I had to cut Mute, to my regret, lest the publisher do it for me, such as by lopping off the last 25,000 words. I took out 20,000 words, reducing it to 170,000, by removing Knot’s return to his enclave at the beginning of Part II, up to where he hid in the closet in the Solar Power station on Planet Macho. Also part of his escape from the lobos, including one of my favorite passing scenes, that of the machine that dug and set fence posts in one stage, and the false lead in the mod-mute enclave where the breeding prospect for Thea Mermaid turned out to be gay. All this was painful, because I felt it was better to have a proper introduction to the society of Planet Macho before running afoul of it, and the fencepost machine was part of my best single day of writing, when I managed to write 6,000 words in pencil. Later with the computer I managed a bigger day on a Xanth novel, but since a normal day is 3,000 words, this was quite a feat of penciling. We had been setting posts, you see, for fences to contain our daughters’ horses, so this was big in my mind at the time, and I would have loved to have the service of such a machine. So the published novel was more jammed than it should have been, and of course a reviewer tagged it for that, blaming the author instead of the publisher. Caught between dictatorial editors and heartless reviewers, neither of which necessarily know or care much about effective story telling, writers get stuck for a lot that isn’t their fault.

There are over a hundred characters in the novel, and one of the challenges of writing is coming up with original names for so many people and creatures. I try to move around the alphabet, so as not to have several character beginning with A or B or whatever. Late in the novel I needed a name in the H part of the alphabet, and considered Harlan. But there is a well known genre writer named Harlan Ellison; would readers take it to connect to him? I decided that if I let existing folk limit my free selection of names, soon enough I’d have no names left. Harlan was the right name for this character, so I named him that. And sure enough, a reviewer claimed I was taking off on Ellison. Well, I wasn’t; Harlan is a baby in this novel, but was slated to be the main character, twenty years later, in the sequel novel, and no shame for anyone to associate with if so inclined.

Ah, yes, that sequel. I can’t find my original notes on it, and in any event doubt I’ll ever write it. But from memory, here is what it was to be: Moot, as in something being of no further account, impractical, doubtful. Yes, like the psi powers of other folk in the presence of Harlan, who can damp any of them out. Between novels, after Mute, Knot marries Finesse, and they have daughters. So it is twenty year old Harlan who goes instead to meet Thea’s normal daughter, as Knot and Thea had agreed. But it’s one hell of a trip, because there are all manner of complications in this restless galaxy, and all of his formidable anti-psi ability is needed. Probably the dark force lopsi is trying to stop him, because his quest will somehow prejudice its case. He is accompanied by two small animals–I wonder how he got that notion?–whose psi abilities help greatly. Hermine Weasel and Mit Hermit Crab, unfortunately, have not lived twenty more years, having lesser lifespans, so can’t participate. I had very nice animals–and can’t remember them, to my frustration. Harlan will surely win through and find happiness with the lovely girl after changing the power balance in the galaxy. That’s one phenomenal novel I won’t be writing; now you know.

Since Mute was written five years before I computerized, there was no electronic file. So my wife scanned in the original carbon of the manuscript. What a bitch! I mean the job, not my wife; the carbon was fuzzy and the interpreter got all manner of weird effects, like different sizEs and fonts, skipped material, and odd symbøl$ in 1iëu of lett£rß. She struggled with it day by day, quitting when the frustration level got too high, and starting again another day. Thus she made it easy for me to edit, as I did not have to wrestle with those effects. Still, some slipped through. At one point Knot encountered a phalanx of elegant fighting cooks. Intriguing as that mental picture was, I nevertheless corrected it to fighting cocks.

I also edited out quite a number of surplus dashes and exclamation points, corrected misplaced “only” and fixed awkward parenthetical construction. It is possible to drift into bad habits without realizing, and I have done it. So when I get the chance, with the clearer perspective of time, I fix them. That perspective was enhanced by a juxtaposition of reading events. Late in the year 2000 I edited the 26th Xanth novel Up in a Heaval, then edited the quarter million word ChroMagic series novel Key to Chroma, then in early 2001 read for blurbing the excellent 300,000 word fantasy novel Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey, and then edited Mute. Thus I got to compare two of my own current fantasy novels, one potent fantasy by a new writer, and one of my own twenty year old novels. And you know what? I conclude that I remain more or less at the same writing level, neither improving nor fading. That will do.

I noted familiar Anthony themes, such as concern for the environment and the welfare of the other creatures of a planet, not just mankind. It is no accident that in this novel animals have psi powers too, and even insects, and seek parity with man. I didn’t get to plants (though I do in that ChroMagic novel), but they will surely figure into the sequel. My concern with honor shows; Knot is a great liar and manipulator when he needs to be, to the telepathic weasel’s delight (Naughty man!), but he is true to his word and to his own. Finesse is a pretty woman, but not just an empty skirt. You will not find anyone quite like these characters elsewhere; they are unique to this novel, and alive in their own particular fashions. That’s the way I like it.

So it was a good experience, returning to this novel after two decades, and I’m sorry to leave it again. I hope my readers find it worthwhile too.

Then something surprising happened. I joined SLUG in my mundane identity, as my business there was strictly computer, but a member was a fan of mine, a former correspondent, and she recognized me. She is Andrea Jones, and her husband Tim Jones is a Tampa Bay Linux professional. You can find him at http://www.linuxtampa.com/. He sets up Linux systems for companies. Their private dialogue, as I picture it, must have been something like this: She, challengingly: “Piers Anthony needs help setting up his Linux system. You are going to do it for him.” He, cravenly: “Yes, dear.” So within a week they were here. Andrea practices origami; no, that’s not an obscene act, it’s fancy paper folding. She had sent me a box of amazing paper shapes years ago. As a child I loved paper folding, but my expertise was limited to paper planes, water bombs, poppers, cootie-catchers and the like. This is grade school stuff, while hers is more like college level. Her box contained a cube, a fish, a multi-pointed shape, one of those thingamajigs with panels that flip end over end to the bottom, a three dimensional hexa-flexagon that makes new patterns with each flip, like a kaleidoscope, and a cube of 8 little cubes that flexes similarly; you really have to see and handle one of these devices to appreciate their marvels. So while Tim worked on my computer, Andrea made me more paper shapes: a much bigger multi-point, a flexagon, a bird, and a huge decorative spike ball. And by the time the day was done, I had loaded Andrea down with copies of my books, and Tim had rendered my system usable, even downloading StarOffice and a word processor called Hancom Word. Now I was able to receive and send email, my sound worked, I had an icon to click to address the floppy drive, and I had word processors to try. But he said I needed more memory. In my day, 250 K was a lot of memory; this system had 64 M–that’s over 500 times as much–but it wasn’t necessarily enough. So I took the unit to the local store and got the memory upgraded to 192K.

Now commenced my exploration of programs. The Netscape mail program has nice features and some real pains. I discovered that when I compose an email message, I can’t print it out (I print out all mail, so I know who said what when; then when I hear from folk months later, I can look up the correspondence and pretend to remember them), and I can’t use my normal overstrike typing mode, only insert mode, and when I use the arrow keys to move through its menus, it disappears without warning or saving. Ouch; I can never do a letter exactly the same way twice. So I’ll be looking for a new mail handler; maybe long-time users of Netscape like retyping from scratch without even a printout to go by, but I don’t. I also don’t like having to send my letter before I can call it up as past history and then print it out, when it is too late to correct whenever stupid thing I said by accident. And I don’t like the way I can’t reliably confirm that it has been sent; sometimes it doesn’t reach its addressee, and I don’t know where the foul-up was. Maybe I’m too choosy, but I’ll look for a program suitable for garden variety users like me, making necessary features easy, rather than for those who like to live dangerously.

But the big deal is the word processors. I tried StarOffice, and it looked interesting, with a full suite including what we need. But its opening display was bewildering, and whatever I clicked to invoke made it lock up the system, so that I had to crash Linux to get out of it, and wait for the five minute long rebuilding operation. Sometimes StarOffice crashed at the first click, and sometimes it lasted an hour, if I didn’t get into any of the menus. Since I thought I would like it if only it remained constant, because while it ran it had nice features, I sent off for the disk. That was nice, because it had the whole suite including a database, and had both Windows and Linux versions. So my wife tried it on her Windows system while I tried it on my Linux system. But for her it pulled tricks it hadn’t for me; it was stable, but it liked to run off the screen so that necessary command buttons could not be reached, and sizing the files onscreen was a hassle. Meanwhile my Linux version–locked up, same as before. So scratch StarOffice; as I said, I’m not amused that such a lapse has not been fixed. I can get that sort of treatment at Macrohard, after all, with that illegal-operation and crash-without-saving bit.

So I explored Hancom Word. Hancom turned out to be a big Korean software company making programs in Chinese, Japanese, and English. The program is intuitive; for example, if you want to put page numbers in the upper right corner of your document, you merely click the model image there and it’s done. Its internal language is alien, but it can read and write MS Word files, for compatibility. But when I tried to put a header on, it let me do it, but then there was no way out of the header, so I had to save and close the file, and then it also closed the word processor–and didn’t actually save the file, or else hid it where I couldn’t find it. That’s a no-no. It also pied two of my keys. I use a modified Dvorak keyboard, actually it’s the original Dvorak layout from before the computer industry changed the punctuation around, apparently just because it could. So I have to change it back, and that’s almost always a hassle. It was those two changed-back keys it pied, depriving me of my colon and semicolon. I need them, so can’t use this word processor if that isn’t fixed. Well, I tried, and discovered that this is a really powerful program, because it has multiple keyboard layouts, including Chinese symbols, Hebrew, and ghod knows what else. Even Dvorak, but it’s the computer version. Once it sets in a keyboard, it doesn’t change, even if I change from Dvorak to Qwerty in Linux. I called up two instances of Hancom, one in Dvorak and one in Qwerty, simultaneously, no problem. Wow! But I couldn’t change its Dvorak to mine. I found by accident (it wouldn’t tell me where) how to make up a complete new keyboard, and made up my layout from scratch, titled it, and clicked the SAVE button–and it flashed a message saying it couldn’t delete the file. What? I tried again, with the same result: its SAVE button is a delete button, and so is its only other button, CANCEL. That’s pretty damn ornery. But then I realized that this is a demonstrator model, that probably has its obscure features omitted, because you have to buy the full version to use it permanently. Probably those features work in the real program, including the header. If that is the case, it’s a damn nice program, one I could live with. But the disk version of StarOffice did not fix its problems, so I can’t be sure about Hancom.

Meanwhile I had Applix on order on disk. This has a full suite also, with everything we want, and I like the evident attitude of the company sponsors. It just might be the one for me. But at this writing, two and a half weeks after ordering, it hasn’t arrived. The computer age has not necessarily brought swiftness. Stay tuned for a report next time.

So what do I think of Linux overall? I think I will like it, if I ever get a reliable word processor and mail handler. I played its card games and Mahjongg, and they’re all right if not as good as those for Windows systems. I tried Snake Race, and the instructions made it seem simple, you must eat all the apples before the snake does, but they give no hint how you eat an apple, and no buttons work, and the picture extends off the screen where you can’t go and refuses to be re-sized. Maybe the necessary controls are offscreen. Once again my sense of humor must be impaired, because I am not amused. But this is unfortunately typical of my experience with Linux: not enough instruction, and what there is doesn’t necessarily work. This is not my idea of user-friendly. So if you are not a computer geek, you are probably best advised to stay clear unless you like frustration.

So what else is new? A reader suggested that I check the website www.skyboom.com/hellionthemovie, as it seemed to contain material taken from my Incarnations of Immortality series. Yes indeed; the proposed movie Hellion took my series title, and had an opening situation in which a man about to suicide instead kills Death, and then must assume the office of Death. The other major Incarnations are there too. The actual story line differs, but it does seem that the starting point was my series. Now you can’t copyright an idea, but since my agent is currently marketing On a Pale Horse as a prospective movie, too heavy a borrowing from it without permission is mischief if not outright piracy. So my agent’s lawyer sent the proprietor, Sean David Morton, a stiffly worded letter requesting that he cease and desist. Well, Mr. Morton turned out to be recalcitrant. He said that any similarity was entirely coincidental, and this has no resemblance to my work, no matter how derivative my work might be. Did I have a copyright on Death? He continued with thick sarcasm and belittling of my imagination. But he did say he would remove the reference to “Incarnations of Immortality.” Well, now. This man seems to be spoiling for a fight. So who is this smoking anus? Well, as it happens, there is an expose about him done by Royce J Myers, editor of www.UFOWATCHDOG.COM, under the heading UFO DIRTBAG OF THE MONTH. In the course of a four part, 25 page detailed write-up he presents Sean Morton as a “Shameless Psychic and Prophecy of Lies.” It targets and shoots down Morton’s exaggerated claims one by one. No he didn’t graduate with honors from Stanford, or from the Julliard School, or the London academy of Music, or the British University of Cairo, Egypt, which school doesn’t exist. No he didn’t work with Gene Roddenberry to make the basis of STAR TREK. No he didn’t ghost write the book NUTRITION: THE CANCER ANSWER. And no, his UFO claims are not to be believed. But I will say this: the man evidently does have an imagination, just not a clear notion of the distinction between fiction and truth. I seem to be a late entry in his tally of unauthorized borrowings. I think I don’t much like him.

Let’s go to something more positive: the Nobel prize winning physicist Richard P Feynman. My reader Ben Madore recommended the book Surely You’re joking, Mr. Feynman. He thought I would like it, and like Mr. Feynman. He’s right; I do. Feynman tells of his life with marvelous modesty and humor that somehow don’t quite mask the fact of his genius. He tells how he was curious about radios as a child, so started repairing them, sometimes finding the fix by sheer accident and developing a reputation. Similarly as an adult he was curious about padlocks and safes, and learned how to crack them. Once he made a demonstration on a safe, knowing the job could take up to eight hours, but by a fluke he cracked the combination in minutes and really wowed the others. Blind disbelief bothered him, which relates to the title. Once he got into an argument whether urine ran out of people by gravity, so he demonstrated that he could pee while standing on his head. He also got into a literal fight at a urinal in a tough bar, and barely made it out intact. As a professor at Cornell he looked so young that sophomore girls were encouraging him, thinking him to be a freshman. Once as a graduate student at Princeton he was working on a problem in physics, and the professor decided he should give a technical talk on the subject. Then he learned that several eminent scientists had decided to attend that talk: Henry Norris Russell, a famous astronomer of his day, Johnny Von Neumann, the greatest mathematician of the day, Professor Pauli, a very famous physicist from Switzerland, and Albert Einstein. This was daunting. They did attend, and had comments on it, and Feynman got through okay. But you know that despite his modesty, these folk would not have been interested had he not had an astonishing amount on the ball.

Last column I commented on www.restrooms.org/, wherein women learn to urinate while standing in jeans. Perhaps in reaction to that, a reader advised me of another female site. This is the Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health, at www.mum.org. There’s a huge amount of information here, much of it humorous. There’s a list of terms for menstruation, such as “Are you seeing red?” “Bloody Mary,” “Closed for Maintenance,” “Curse,” “Flow,” “It’s raining down south,” and “Surfing the Crimson Wave.” The full list is about 400 terms long, covering the world. The jokes are something else. There is a warning for the faint of heart who may be offended, followed by the first joke: What did the maxi pad say to the fart? “You are the wind beneath my wings…” I had to check with my wife about the anatomy of a sanitary napkin to assimilate that; it seems they have folds called wings. (This is a public service announcement for other ignorant men.) A joke heard in a school cafeteria shared by ten year olds: What is the definition of a period? A waste of fucking time. Okay, they aren’t all that raw, and there’s about 50 pages of them, so go to the site for the full show; this is merely a review. How can you tell when a blonde secretary has her period? She has a tampon behind her ear and can’t find her pen. I send dumb blonde jokes to my blonde daughter, and she sends dumb blond jokes to me. (Note the distinction: blonde is female, blond is male.) Some get classical, as in Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”: “Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror cracked from side to side; ‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried The Lady of Shalott.” A woman who has just had a mammogram, her poor breasts mercilessly squeezed, concludes that the machine must have been designed by a man. “I’d like to stick his balls in there, And see how they come out!” Then there’s the one about the middle-aged woman who reported to her gynecologist her strange symptoms: one day pennies plinked into the toilet water, and another time nickels, then dimes, and finally quarters. He reassured her that she was simply going through the change. Let’s finish with a savage poem by an angry woman, concluding “Don’t call me a girl, A babe or a chick. I am a WOMAN, Get it, you prick?”

We are on a squintillion mailing lists, and have to practice severe triage when selecting those to which we contribute. Let me mention just one here: Amnesty International, at www.amnestyusa.org. The focus on man’s inhumanity to man. Folk like to think that the modern world is more civilized than medieval times, but the fact is torture continues unabated. It’s a supremely ugly story. If you are interested in human rights, this is one excellent place to check. Another is The Hunger Site, at www.thehungersite.com, whose purpose is to eliminate world hunger. Check the site for information on it and on related hunger organizations. Here in America it is too easy to forget that much of the world has a problem not of obesity, but of starvation.

I am a thorough skeptic about the supernatural. I write about magic, I don’t believe it. But I try to keep an open mind, knowing that there are mysteries science has not yet fathomed. A recent (February 17, 2001) issue of SCIENCE NEWS had an interesting article that relates. One day a neurologist had an illuminating experience, an expansion of his awareness akin to spiritual enlightenment. That got him interested in the subject, so he explored it and later wrote a book, Zen and the Brain by James H. Austin. One of the problems about such illuminations is that they are incomprehensible to those who haven’t experienced them. I think of parallels: how do you describe color to a blind man? How do you describe love to one who considers it to be a mere glandular phenomenon? There are indeed things one must experience in order to truly grasp. Another book, Varieties of Anomalous Experience goes into altered states of consciousness, near-death incidents, alien-abduction reports, and other anomalous events. In one experiment a group of people were given a hallucinogenic drug, psilocybin, and another given a placebo; they didn’t know who got what. Those who got the drug had experiences resembling those of classic mystics, such as a feeling of oneness with God. Thereafter, for 25 years, the drugged group had many more positive changes in their attitudes and behavior. Okay, I find this significant: religious revelation can be duplicated by a drug. That doesn’t mean that the religious type is invalid, but it does suggest that it is a phenomenon of the brain.

A reader sent me a link to a site for an article the Washington Post published, exploring the issue of copyrights and libraries. There’s an inherent conflict here: copyrights protect the authors of literary material, so that they can be paid for their efforts and not starve. Libraries exist to spread information to all. So which side should prevail? Now with the Internet and electronic publishing, the issue is sharpening. Should library patrons have free access to all information, or should writers get paid for downloads? I support libraries generally, but in this particular matter my interest is with the writers. If writers can’t earn their living, they will have to stop writing, and culture will be the worse for it. But many folk can’t afford to pay for much, and there is value in the free dissemination of information. So what is the answer? I’m not sure, but for the nonce I remain with the writers: let them be paid, and after a reasonable time, their material can enter the public domain. Those who are satisfied to share their material without charge are welcome to do so, as I’m doing here at HiPiers. But I can afford to do this only because I do get paid for most of my novels.

I have mentioned that with our video-freak daughter in town, we now see movies. In this period we saw 13 Days, which brought back memories. It’s weird to think that what was current events for me is now history for my readers. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in fact I was then, because of a snafu in paperwork, in the Army Ready Reserve, so if the USA had invaded Cuba I would have been recalled to active duty. That makes it personal. I remember the blockade, with the Russian ship steaming right up to the point–and then the Russians blinked. I remember Adlai Stevenson saying “I’ll wait until hell freezes over!” about as dramatic a moment as the UN has seen. But I don’t think the movie covered something that irritated me: Bertrand Russell sending public messages praising Nikita Khreschev for his peacemaking and condemning John Kennedy. He may have been a great philosopher, but he had that one 180° bass ackwards. We also saw Crouching tiger, Hidden Dragon, said to be the finest martial arts movie ever made. That’s probably true, though it isn’t saying much, and it still could not resist outright fantasy, such as warriors flying, or unmuscled girls beating back stout warriors. If the movie industry ever wants to make a martial arts movie that is both exciting and accurate, it should try adapting the central sequence of my collaboration with Roberto Fuentes, Kiai!, which I am in the process of returning to print via Xlibris. I am now going through the sequel novels, then will send them all in in a batch. It was a good collaboration, because I know how to write and Roberto was once the judo champion of Cuba, before Castro took over and he fled the country; he knows martial arts.

Which reminds me also of TV: my favorite new program is Boston Public, with its hard hitting revelation of what high school is actually like. I was once a high school teacher, and was glad to retire to writing. But I admit to being grudgingly intrigued by Survivor 2, rooting for the Ogre Tribe of course, even if they did misspell it, and sorry the pretty vegetarian girl Kimmi got booted. But you know, the way one guy got eliminated on the basis of a lie about him sneaking in beef jerky–that stank. One of the unfortunate strengths of that show is that it shows human motives in their ugliness, along with some rather nice female flesh.

Idiocies of publishers dept.: My Xanth novel Vale of the Vole was published in Russian as “Valley of the Vole,” with the cover from Harpy Thyme. Reminds me of the time the foreign edition of another of my novels was published with the cover of a Philip José Farmer novel. Farmer didn’t believe that, so I sent him a copy. It bears repeating: I do regard editors, like critics, as a different and inferior breed. It’s a shame that writers have to put up with either. When I checked the copyedited manuscript for my sequel autobiography, How Precious Was That While, I saw that the copy editor had rendered every number into written prose, even six figure numbers. In my day the idiots contented themselves with doing that only to numbers under 10, so would report a baseball score as 11-nine; evidently the madness has expanded. It’s in computers too; when I tried a grammar checker, it even challenged the date because it wasn’t written out. Computer spell checks are worthwhile, but I won’t touch grammar check, as it comes across as truly idiotic. Of course I was once an English teacher, so may be overly sensitive about such nonsense.

We live on our tree farm, and nature is all around us. Carrol and Lina Wren have set up their nest in the old target box I left on the portico and are now sitting on five eggs. We like wrens; they are indefatigable bug catchers and bold little birds. Jean Owl visited our pool enclosure again; we opened that portals so she could find her way out. That pool has long since returned to nature, serving as a reservoir for watering plants during the drought, but the bad cold siege in Jamboree seems to have killed off the tadpoles. That’s too bad, because with Lake Tsoda Popka having been dried out by the drought, our pool was the only refuge in this vicinity for frogs. We still do have the cute little green tree frogs, and our pool will soon enough be repopulated, but I hate wholesale death. We did get rain in Marsh, fittingly, almost eight inches, making it the wettest in some time, nicely abating the fire hazard for the moment, but our water table remains several feet low. For some time parts of Lake Ogre Chobee and the Half Baked Bog were burning, because it’s like peat underground, and couldn’t be put out. Our tree farm is a tinderbox, so this was nervous business–and may be again if the drought resumes. We keep the bird paths full, and they do get patronized. Our garbage-burial garden is doing fine; this year we have potatoes and squash, from Christmas dinner. I covered the tiny shoots carefully during the freeze, but of about 25 initial squashes, only 5 survived, and one of those was a close call; I had to help it get out of its seed shell, but it lost its initial leaves anyway, but finally managed to hang on. Now they are all blooming, with yellow flowers a generous three inches across. They send out tendrils to latch on to whatever is handy, such as the chicken wire I put out to try to stop the armadillo from digging them out. Those tendrils then coil like springs, making flexible connections. I never thought of squash as a climbing plant, but now I’m seeing it in action. And to think: all this would never have happened, had our garbage disposal unit not broken down. Incidental nature can have pleasant surprises.

We have also been seeing more of the area during our weekly dog walks. I take Obsidian Dog out on the leash–yes, even in the forest, because otherwise she would follow her nose to a rattlesnake or alligator. She’s a big dog, but those creatures need to be left alone. Usually we follow the path around inside our tree farm, through the oaks and pines, but with the lakebed dry we’ve explored it recently. There’s a tractor tread trail through its center; we followed it about a mile north, but it seem to have no end. We followed it south, and it curved west and then north again, too far for us to reach its end, if it has one. It’s a whole different world out there, open plains where once there was water.

I squeeze in some reading too, mostly business rather than pleasure. I had to tell one publisher I couldn’t blurb a novel because its style was not up to snuff. I turned off another devout reader by telling him truth about his writing. I don’t get my jollies from hurting feelings, but sometimes the choice is between honesty and empathy, and I have to tell the truth. It’s why I normally decline to read reader fiction; it is too often a thankless task. That may explain why critics can be such turds: it’s a survival mode, and decent folk wash out of that business because of the distress. Sometimes I get an angry letter from a fan who has seen one of my novels trashed, but the fact is, this is part of the territory, and even a bad review is better than none. The worst dirt is done by those who blacklist worthy books by refusing ever to mention them, because they have some illicit grudge against the author or the genre. So I am caught on both sides of it, trashing and being trashed. I liken it to being out on the ocean in a small boat when a storm comes up: you’re likely to have a problem whatever you do. But let me mention some special cases that aren’t negative. One is The Cythian Stone an epublisher sent me. It moves well, it’s interesting, but it’s a novella at best, not a novel. It won an award; okay, it’s their money. Another is Graham the Gargoyle by Brian Clopper; this is, I think, a self-published physical book, but it works; it’s for young readers, as the little gargoyle struggles through family, school, and tormenting by the local bully to finally win through. I recommend this for ten year olds, who will relate. Then there’s LIFE: CREATE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE, by God, published by Vantage. I have little use for Vantage, a notorious old-time subsidy publisher, but that’s irrelevant. This is a book but not a novel; it’s more like a game. It starts “In the beginning was the word, and the word was” followed by a list of 34 words. One of them is BANG! For that we must see niche #97. There we find SCIENTIST and 37 more choices. Let’s take the last one, “None of the above.” That takes us to niche #103, which has only one choice: Go to niche #1. So you start over; that’s your penalty for not choosing any of the above. I suspect a group of readers could have fun taking turns following routes, maybe with prizes for the longest trail, or maybe penalties for washing out, as in strip poker. There are several appended essays; a random sampling produced “God will not be fooled by people who obey His law in the expectation of enjoying Heaven or avoiding Hell. To hell with expectations.” I like that. I’m agnostic, with no expectation of reward or punishment in any afterlife. Indeed, if there is a God, I suspect he would be disgusted with those who praise Him because they want personal gain. This is like the corruption of politics by money; the quid pro quo destroys ethics. So this book is more than a game. The last book I read was Zuralia Dreaming by Alfred Tella, for blurbing. In this one, as in my collaboration with Julie Brady, Dream a Little Dream, some people are dream creators, able to craft real worlds from their dreams, and then to enter them. I’m a sucker for this kind of fiction, despite my belief that dreams are nothing of the sort. Tella’s character travels to a series of islands in the dreamed world, experiencing odd things, such as one whose people are nice or nasty depending on which head is on their god-statue. He falls in love with a woman on another island. Yes, he cantake her home with him. If he thwarts the evil dream-consuming enemy. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all could make our dreams come true?

So what else is new? When I shopped for Linux software, one of the dealers was TIGER. Forget it; Tiger stiffed me on a rebate and stonewalled my query and I will not buy there again. Let’s review some other spot negatives: I had a query from a reader: “What is your stand on the 2000 vs. 2001 issue?” I answered “I hold that the onset of 2000 was the turn of the millennium, because this is the way it is normally done; when a person has his 20th birthday, he has lived a full 20 years. Yes, they made a mistake by not assigning a year 0. But they started the count several hundred years late anyway; no need to perpetuate the error indefinitely. Jesus wasn’t born then anyway; he was born about four years before. So there’s no getting it straight; at least we can count straight now.” He responded “Your attitude is dishonest and I am glad to know what you are really like.” Then there are those who take issue with my comment on the recent presidential election, wherein the man who won the popular vote in the nation and in Florida (except that not all the votes were counted) was denied the office because his opponent had more friends on the Supreme Court. One even claimed, at length, citing statutes, that the recount and the Florida supreme court’s involvement were illegal. He said “Yet, nobody seems to have any interest in pursuing this violation,” though he indicated there should be a 15-year sentence for it. I find this perspective interesting, and the logic somewhat specious. I believe the verdict of history will not be kind to the Supreme Court’s decision. And no, I don’t care to argue the case endlessly with those who come at me with blatantly closed minds, though I have a fair file of material to make my case in detail. Perhaps an analogy will help clarify my view: say a police officer arrests a driver for speeding, and the man was speeding, but protests that this is not justice. How can he possibly have a case? Well, he was the tenth driver traveling at that speed on that highway, but the officer let the others pass without challenge. They were white; this was the first black driver. So this is selective, applied only to a particular classification of driver. This is something other than justice. The selective attitude of those who justify the Supreme Court’s decision, and their seeming indifference to fundamental fairness, goes far to invalidate their case. And a response on circumcision, pointing me to an article that shows that circumcised Moslems didn’t get AIDS, but they have no idea why. I suspect it was a small study, and that those men were not indulging much in extramarital relations. I still don’t like the idea of mutilating innocent babies, male or female. It’s worse with females, where it is done.

One emailer has a fascinating handle: Turdy. No, he did not come across that way and his name is really Andy; he had a regular suggestion that I should write a book about one of the other Xanths. My answer is that other Xanths are the realms of the Gourd, the disappearing Isles, and the moons of Ida. Folk who come to Xanth from various sections of the Mundane world see the Xanth peninsula as resembling Florida, or Italy, or Korea, or elsewhere, but that’s just their perception; it’s all the same Xanth. A reader responded on the Hunza Diet Bread recipe, with a different slant: in a week she had received 50 bounced messages about Hunza Bread. She hadn’t sent any such messages, and these surely represented only the small percentage that bounced. Who knows how many were sent in her name? This suggests that the whole thing is a scam. She enclosed a recipe from the web, which seems quite ordinary. I remain a skeptic. I am also still receiving notes from readers who tried to call the old HIPIERS 800 number, that was reassigned to a porno outfit. One said “I am MAD AS HELL. How irresponsible for you and your publisher to print this number in the book and not see to it that it remained linked to you…” She’s having my books removed from the library. Sigh; this is an example of what AT&T;’s cavalier attitude is costing me. I lose readers because of something I can’t control. I really can’t blame her, but the physical HiPiers was suffering losses of $50,000 a year and we just couldn’t keep it going any longer.

And the weather: the newspaper give the nation’s highest and lowest temperatures each day, for stupid ogres like me who care. But they aren’t necessarily correct. For example, on FeBlueberry 20, 2001, the national high was Ft. Myers, Florida, 83°. But on the same page it showed several sites on our Suncoast as higher: 84° at Spring Hill, 85° at Zephyrhills and Tarpon Springs, 89° at Indian Rocks Beach, and 91° at Largo. Apparently this is like the election: they pick and choose which ones to count and declare them the winners without much regard for reality.

I interviewed at another chat room, Lyric. It was all right, and there were some questions I hadn’t encountered before, like who was my favorite novel collaborator. I had to ponder that, as I like most of my collaborators, and concluded perhaps JoAnne Taeusch of The Secret of Spring and Alfred Tella of The Willing Spirit. They strike me as nice people with nice novels. But I had my usual difficulty reaching the site, because things did not appear where they were supposed to. I showed my wife the screen, to make sure I wasn’t missing something: the key button described in the instructions simply wasn’t there. I went round and round, and in the end it took me 25 minutes, but I did finally get there somehow. What is there about chat rooms that makes them so hard to reach? Doesn’t anybody actually test their routes to make sure they work? Why not give an interviewee an ad hoc direct link?

Let’s conclude with something intriguing: Jasmine Elf sent me a list of phobias from www.uselessknowledge.com/: 19 pages of them, from ablutophobia, the fear of bathing, to zoophobia, the fear of animals. There must be some use I can make of this, though ogres are too stupid to fear any of them. Well, maybe the bathing.

Our garbage garden continues, producing small potatoes and full sized squash. About 25 squash plants came up from seeds, but there was a rapid winnowing because of frost, and only six survived, but they have done well enough. Why does this remind me of aspiring writers and publishing? Now they are dying back; I think the Florida heat is too much for them. We harvested 5 squash ranging from six ounces to a pound. I’m a vegetarian because I don’t like to hurt animals, but I also don’t like to hurt plants; I like it when we eat something meant to be eaten, like fruit (a squash is a fruit in this respect), and then help the seeds to renew the cycle. We are cooperating with nature.

Then there’s the drought. We had good rain in Marsh, but then the dryness socked back in, pushing Florida drought records, and now there is 60,000 acre fire in north Florida and smaller ones elsewhere. We get their smoke. We fear fire on our tree farm; the drought has killed so many trees that the forest has become a tinderbox with much deadwood both standing and fallen. We had been protected, because our property is a peninsula in Lake Tsoda Popka, three quarters surrounded by water. But now that water is gone, and the peat will burn. One idiot with a careless illegal campfire, one strike of lightning, one damned arsonist, and we’re in dire trouble. I have learned a real respect for drought, in recent years; it’s quiet, but it’s a killer. We economize on personal water; we salvage what waste water we can to dump on our grass and shrubs, and dip from the pool, which has become a cistern, in addition. Rain fills it, and between rains it lasts a good long time. We don’t flush toilets for liquids, only solids, and the cold water we have to run before the hot water reaches the tap we save in jugs that we use to replenish the bird baths. And the birds do appreciate that; we now provide the only reliable water in this square mile, and we get the small birds and the big birds: owls, hawks, the piliated woodpecker, even a giant wild turkey hen who takes dust baths and drinks from the water bath. When we get rain, we don’t see the big birds for a few days. No, we haven’t seen any harpies or rocs. Yet. But if the drought gets worse…

Speaking of birds: Remember the Bird Maiden? She’s a character in the Arabian Night’s fantasy I adapted, Hasan, a princess who can don a feather suit and fly away. When I heard from a correspondent who cared for injured raptors–birds of prey–and released them back to the wild, I dubbed her the Bird Maiden, and mentioned her in the Author’s Note in a later edition of ,Hasan. Well, she put on her wings, so to speak, and flew to Germany where she married her “Hasan,” more or less per the novel’s story. Now she has brought her family back to America, and I received a fan letter from her 12/13 year old daughter, who had of course read Hasan. How time flies! I suggested to her that since her mother was the Bird Maiden, the daughter must be a chick.

And speaking of chicks: Carroll and Lina Wren nested in the old target box I had never disposed of, produced five eggs, and all of them hatched into chicks who soon grew up and flew away. The complete cycle was about two months. Last year they nested in our pool enclosure, and one of the chicks drowned in the pool; ouch! But now they are setting up for their second nesting of the season, back in the pool enclosure. Sigh. They are bold little birds, and we like them, but that pool is dangerous to chicks. We have put stray bits of furniture around the site so that the dog can’t reach it, but we’ll be nervous when the chicks take flight. If I see one fall in the pool, I’ll rescue it with a net, but these things typically happen when we aren’t watching.

So what am I doing these days as a writer? I’ve been editing old novels, such as Mute and the collaborative Jason Striker martial arts series. The sixth novel in that series was never completed, because a new editor came in and cut off the series. This is what new editors do; they kill off all the progeny of the old editors so that all the slots are taken by their own choices, and to hell with the welfare of the publishers, writers, or readers. It’s a temporary fiefdom. In this case there was more to the story; as a science fiction fan the man had written a review implying a racist motive in my fiction, and I called him the ass he was, and then he became a pro editor and blacklisted me for years. See my comment above about wrongdoers exposed. Until he lost his job because he hadn’t been able to develop best selling authors like Piers Anthony. Yes, I was named by the one who fired him, who did not know about the blacklisting. Delicious irony. But the damage he did remained. So now I have typed that half-novel and summary into the computer, and that, too, will be published at Xlibris, in due course, together with other unpublished collaborative projects I did with Roberto Fuentes. I plan to keep going until all my old novels are available again. The only one I haven’t planned to put into print is my first, The Unstilled World, because it is not up to snuff, and out of the blue collaborator Ron Leming asked to look at that, with an eye to reworking it his way. So I sent him some of it, and we’ll see. Years ago I reworked part of it myself, and that became the first part of Battle Circle. My writing projects are like my children; I never really forget them. A story I had not been able to sell in 25 years became the first chapter of my collaboration with Philip Jóse Farmer, The Caterpillar’s Question; that’s an example. So my advice to those who have tried to crack the paying market and failed is don’t give up, just wait a while, and see what you can do with those pieces years later.

Actually, I am putting some original novels at Xlibris too, like Volk and Realty Check, when I can’t get them published traditionally. Well, now Reality Check is getting traditionally published, by small press WRITE WAY; I think that’s scheduled for SapTimber in paperback. So I’m taking it off at Xlibris; publishers don’t like that kind of competition. And here’s something else publishers don’t like, and I agree with them: some turd pirated eighteen of my Xanth novels and posted them on the Internet. Harlan Ellison has been having trouble with Internet pirating of his stories; I contributed to his legal fund, because this is a fight that needs to be fought and he should not have to bear the burden alone. So now it has become my business in a more personal way. I never much liked the Napster-enabled thefts of music, and sure enough, written fiction is the next target. Readers have told me that another site is pirating the BATTLE CIRCLE novels, but all it gives us is error messages to we can’t verify. Still, I appreciate such reports from readers; they represent my spy corps, protecting me from some dastardly deeds. Meanwhile, any who want to contribute to the Ellison effort can make checks payable to “Law Office of M Christine Valada” and mail to Kick Internet Piracy, PO Box 55935, Sherman Oaks CA 91413. For those who protest that taking such material isn’t wrong because it isn’t resold, I suggest you try that line of reasoning on your local grocery store when you steal and eat its produce, or on your friendly car dealer when you sneak a vehicle out for a joyride that wrecks it. Writers, like other workers, earn their living by what they produce, and if their market is gutted by those who take it without paying, they will go broke and have to turn to ditch digging or hog farming instead. Don’t destroy the livelihood of artists, musicians, or writers merely because the Internet makes it easier to steal their efforts. Some day you may be a writer; it behooves you to help that market to continue. If you don’t like to pay for things, USE THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.

And I wrote a 13,000 word sample and summary of a children’s novel, Tortoise Reform, because publishers said they wanted children’s material from me. In my experience, if there’s one thing an editor will bounce, is what he sees when a writer shows him exactly what he asked for. But I decided to give it a try, and we’ll see. This novel features five Florida animals and a ten year old girl who is isolated from her family. So what makes it fantasy? It’s that the animals are telepathic, and teach it to the girl. The title character is Gopher Tortoise, who lives in the burrow he dug, and shares it with several other animals including an owl. This is the way it is in Florida; gopher tortoises really do live underground, and share with other creatures. They are what is called a keystone species, one that enables many others to survive. But in the neighboring realm, it is the animals who are smart and the human beings who are dull beasts of burden. The animals are amazed and not thrilled to discover a realm where the natural order is inverted, and humans are smart. The girl, being sensible, rather prefers the telepathic animals to human beings. Wouldn’t you? With telepathy there is complete understanding without deceit; the little owl will ride companionably on her shoulder, chatting mentally. The indigo snake associates similarly, and the armadillo and rabbit. Burrow mates are like family; a predator does not prey on a burrow mate, and will protect him from other predators. They look out for each other, each contributing his skills to the group. Contrast that with the way we non-telepathic humans treat each other and animals. Yes, I suppose there is an environmental and social aspect here; I regard it as better for children than the mindless violence they see in other fiction. So maybe it will bounce.

And speaking of fantasy, I read a novel by a known writer, to be published under a pen name. As with me and my frivolous fantasy, he doesn’t want to be purely typed by his commercial material, so he does some more substantial books too, which of course publishers resist. This one is serious historical biographical science fantasy, Nemo, about a close friend of Jules Verne who has the adventures Verne could only dream and write about. So it is Nemo who discovers the land of dinosaurs inside our globe, who makes a historic balloon flight across Africa, and who builds a sub-marine (a ship that actually goes under the water, would you believe) and travels, let me strain my memory, something like twenty thousand leagues under the sea. How Verne envies him! It doesn’t help that they both love the same woman, but she loves only Captain Nemo. Nemo will be published next Jamboree.

My wife was tested and found to have high blood pressure, so had to go on medication to lower it. So she bought a sphygmomanometer, which is the proper six bit name for a blood pressure tester. You know, the kind where you wrap a band around your upper arm, and pump up air pressure until it cuts off your circulation, then let the air slowly leak out while it records the pressures when your blood starts flowing, Systolic, and relaxes, Diastolic. High and low. So I, being a curious character, tried it on my arm. We have been learning about blood pressure. It seems that when a person is young and healthy, at age 20, his pressure is normally around 120/80, high and low. But as he ages his blood vessels stiffen up and get clogged, and his normally pressure rises to 140/90 at age 65. If it’s higher, beware; it is said that high blood pressure has no symptoms, unless you count sudden death as a symptom. My wife runs about 145/95, but then the medication drops each by about 10, putting her back in the normal range. So what about me? I’m 66, going on 67. Well, my typical readings are 115/65, with a pulse rate in the 60’s. Right–I’m off scale low for my age. It does vary; when I tried it right after running a mile an a half, it was about 150/70, pulse 99, and when I’m getting sleepy from reading it is more like 105/55, pulse 55. I do lead a healthy life, with diet and exercise and a generally low-stress profession, but probably it’s just that I’m a low-pressure type. So now you know: ogres have low blood pressure. It’s all the others they encounter who have high pressure. Can’t think why. But of course ogres are not noted for their wit.

Last year I commented on the iodine test I had read about. Paint a swatch of 2% iodine on your arm, and if it remains visible less than 24 hours, you’re short of iodine and your body is absorbing it. Iodine is needed by the thyroid glad, which relates to metabolism, possibly accounting for my chronic fatigue. I tried it, and my stain was gone in under six hours. So I went to the doctor, in the process acquiring a new primary physician, and my blood did test low on thyroid stimulating hormone, so now I’m on medication for that. The effect was slight but beneficial; I seem to have a little more energy, and am no longer depressive. But my fatigue remains. So now, a year later, I’m trying the iodine test again, painting a swatch on my arm every morning. I suspect this business is nonsense, but it’s easy to do, and in the off chance it could help me, worth trying. Well, I’ve been more than swatching three weeks now, and discovered that the time does extend–but only if I paint the same place each time. When I paint a new place, it fades as fast as ever. When I overlapped an old place by 50%, the new section faded rapidly, leaving the old place with a half circle stain. So it’s the local skin that gets saturated, not the body as a whole. Also, exercise speeds it up; I can lose the swatch in one hour on a running day. There has been no slowing of new-territory stains, and I have felt no systemic effects. So I think it is nonsense, but will keep trying. If anyone else tries the iodine regime, I’d be interested in hearing about your results.

Which reminds me deviously of politics. No, I’m not going to hash over the last election yet again. It’s that I lived in the state of Vermont, the Green Mountain State, in my youth, and have always respected its cleanness and beauty; it has traditionally had superior politicians, compared to the jerks some other states produce. Now Vermont has done it again: the decision of its Republican senator to go independent has thrown controlling power in the Senate to the Democrats and doomed much of President Bush’s agenda, especially with respect to packing the Supreme Court with lunatic fringe conservatives. Amazing. I wonder whether W and the prior Senate leadership now wish they hadn’t openly snubbed Senator Jeffords and ignored his preferences? Nah. It is said that pride goeth before a fall; I think that’s a mistranslation, and that it is arrogance that goes before a fall. There is a lesson that politicians need to learn: it is dangerous to try to push around a senator; like an ogre, he may push back, and you will feel the impact.

A number of readers wrote in to explain the movie Cast Away to me. What was interesting was that they had different explanations. Here’s the one I think is most accurate: one FedEx package had a design of wings on it, and that symbolism impressed our hero, who would have loved to fly from that isle. So he did not open it, but saved it, and replicated the design on the cave wall, and later on his makeshift sail boat. When he finally did escape, he returned that package to its sender, whom he will likely marry in due course. Meanwhile we saw another movie, The Mummy Returns. Sure it was junk, but my kind of junk, with phenomenal and continuous effects; I don’t think I have seen a movie with more. The plot was so convoluted and complicated as to become meaningless; it was like riding a roller coaster through a horror house, seeing the action without comprehending its meaning, if there was any. Movie makers don’t seem to understand why a story should have a plot and theme; they seem to regard those as inessential ornaments. If writers ruled the world, movies would have clearer story lines, and stand improved. But for reasons that escape me, God did not see fit to let writers rule the world. Maybe God should watch more movies, to see the need.

The rear tire on my RowBike sprang a slow leak, so I took if off and patched it. The rubber cement had evaporated over the years, so what looked like a full tube had become all air and a bit of jelly. I used that, uncertain whether it would work, and was in luck: now the tire takes a week to soften, instead of a day. So I dug out my old foot-pedal bicycle pump and use it to inflate the tire once a week. I’m satisfied that in my dotage I have not entirely lost one skill of youth, patching a tire. When World War Three destroys civilization, that skill may serve me well.

When proofreading the galleys for How Precious Was that While I saw a comment: “What is the nature of ultimate reality? Self does not exist.” It was an offhand remark, not intended seriously, but now I wonder. Maybe it’s true. I regard self as like a candle flame; each burning candle seems individual, but without the flame it is dead matter; it’s the flame that makes it functional. And that flame typically comes from elsewhere–a match, a firebrand, another candle, a lightning strike, whatever. Think of the fire as the animation, life, and the candle as the substance, the body. Maybe the flame is the soul. Yet one match can light several candles, so the fire is not unique; it’s just a process. So if it is the self, it has no individuality; it’s the same as the flames of all the other candles, or of a cigarette lighter, or a forest fire; the fuel makes all the difference, but the fuel is just matter. So in the sense of being individual, distinct, unique, meaningful–all the things we value in ourselves–self really does not exist. Merely the illusion of it. Is this ultimate reality? I hesitate to decide, lest I softly and silently fade away.

My wife and I are getting on in years; Jejune 23 will be our 45th anniversary. In Mayhem she and Daughter #2 Cheryl the newspaper woman had birthdays, so we all went out for dinner at the local Pizza Hut. We obviously lack the imagination for serious celebration. I took the one plate salad bar and piled on lettuce, tomato, potato salad, onion rings and such. Then there was no place left for chocolate pudding, so I piled that on top. With the one plate special you can’t go back for dessert; you have to do it in one swell foop. So now I can report that raw onion covered with chocolate pudding is edible. Try it, you might like it too. Maybe we can start a new gastronomic trend: ogre food.

I discourage visits by readers, because there are more of them than I can accommodate, but I’ll mention one: Red, from the Philippines. I was glad to see her, and not just because she’s one cute girl. I have corresponded with Red and her twin sister Zai for years, and passed the Filipino stamps on to my stamp collecting prisoner. In my ogreish ignorance I tend to imagine the Philippines as a global backwater, but Red speaks English as well as I do and is knowledgeable about the world. She brought me many little gifts, which she did not have to do, such as native cloth, a model Jeepney vehicle, and a journal whose native paper pages smell of asphalt. I’m not sure I want to spoil it by actually writing in it. Maybe I’ll just smell the paper and think of her. No, she doesn’t smell of asphalt.

Now the continuing Linux story. Remember, each word processor I tried had some problem, such as pieing my keyboard or locking up the system, and without a word processor I’m nowhere. So Tim Jones the Linux man came back to the rescue, with wife Andrea, my fan, she of the incredibly convoluted paper folding. One day she may fold a paper spaceship and fly to Venus. My main hope at that point was Applix, but its setup screen went off my screen so I couldn’t fill in the forms, and I didn’t know how to make it fit, so couldn’t install it. Of course it would be easy for Tim to accomplish; balky programs don’t balk when they feel a master’s touch. All he needed to do was resize the screen. Well, this time the system blundered, sort of like Senate Republicans, and gave him a hard time. In fact when he resized the screen it locked up repeatedly so he couldn’t get anywhere. Obviously it thought I was still at the helm. It certainly chose the wrong time to misbehave. Tim pondered, and concluded that there was a bad video card. So he called the local computer store, and then took the card out, and the store exchanged it for a different make of card, no questions asked. He put that in, and sure enough, the lockups were gone; the genie had been bottled. Applix installed, no problem. On intuition, I tried calling up StarOffice, the lockup champion–and it too had been muzzled, and no longer locked up. That meant that I could give it a real try, too. And Tim also installed KDE2, which unlike the KDE1 I had had has its own word processor. So now I had three (3) word processors to try. From drought to flood, just like that.

So I tried all three. Linux enables multiple Desktops, so I set up one word processor per desktop and jumped back and forth between them, comparing features. And I discovered that Applix and KDE’s Words were midgets compared to the StarOffice Writer. For example, all three programs claim to provide the number of words in a document, the word-count, but Applix’s isn’t there and KDE’s doesn’t work. Writer has it and does it write, I mean right, except for one peculiarity: you have to make a special request to get the number of lines in a document. Pages, paragraphs, characters, words you can have, but lines you must ask for. Since commercial fiction is calculated by lines, that puts me to extra nuisance. Still, you can do it. KDE has a speller, but it simply flashes on and off the screen without doing anything; you can’t actually use it. I seldom cease to be bemused by programs that the proprietors have obviously never tried to use themselves before shipping them out; you’d think a user test would be mandatory. Writer is also the only one that offers the overstrike option. I, as a converted manual typewriter user, normally use overstrike mode; I never heard of this business of typing a letter and having all the letters beyond it move out of the way, and don’t quite trust it. Sometimes they push all the way off the screen, heading for who knows what horrendous fate. Writer was also the only one that offered the date/time feature; I normally date my material as I go, and I hit the time button each time I make a frequent entry in my ongoing personal journal, or when the phone rings, so I know how long I have been wrested away from my work. So again, if I wanted that, Writer was the only one. Another feature I use is the glossary, also called autotext; you know, the feature that enables you to type one word or even one letter, and it puts a whole sentence or paragraph on. KDE doesn’t have it. Applix has it, and it works, but there is no shortcut to use it; you have to stair-step each time through the menu. Writer has it with shortcuts. In fact, Writer gives evidence of having been broken in by real-life users, which helps a lot. So when I toted up the scores based on five sample functions, KDE had 0, Applix had 2, and StarOffice Writer had 5. I had found my word processor where I least expected it. Thus my eighth word processor, and my fourth operating system. (I had 3 word processors on CP/M, 2 on DOS, 1 on Windows, and here on Linux I tried WordPerfect before StarOffice. I count only the ones I actually used for a month or more, and wrote novel text on.)

But like a marriage, all was not necessarily well after the wedding. On Mayhem 1 I officially moved to Linux and Writer, writing Tortoise Reform. You don’t really know a marriage partner until you’ve shared the bathroom and heard him/her snore, and you don’t know a word processor until you have done some significant writing with it. We are in Daylight Saving Time now, so I advanced the Linux clock an hour. It doesn’t hold; each session it reverts to the old hour and minute, and I have to set it again to get accurate time. KDE SEEMS TO BE AN INTERFACE, between Linux and the application, so I go through it to make changes. With KDE1 I HAVE MY CHOICE OF SCREEN SAVERS, BUT IT Doesn’t allow my monitor to “sleep” when there is a long pause, so that nice power-saving feature is lost. KDE2 goes it one better, denying me both saver and sleep; it teasingly lists screen savers, and you can choose among them, but I have found no way to actually activate one; it Does not give you that choice. That’s Like the “Oh, you mean you want the wheels with that new car?” comment by the salesman. Yes, I do expect the wheels with it. KDE2 also lacks the KPPP DIALER I USE TO FETCH MY EMAIL WITH, SO TO GET EMAIL or go online I HAVE TO SHUT DOWN KDE2 AND START UP old KDE1. KDE2 may have some nice features, but I can’t use it, because its programers have shut down those features I need. I sometimes wonder whether programmers actually have brains. Writer has nice macro capacity with key assignments, which is not mentioned in the manual, not even in the index (maybe that programmer was out to lunch when they wrote the manual?) and I like it. But it doesn’t hold either. It says you can save your settings, and I try, but they don’t save, and I have to reset them each session. That’s a nuisance. In addition, while writing this column, Writer somehow got locked on “no capitals”; I went to the dialogue box and reset it, but it automatically reverts to that, preventing me from having any capitals at all, and no apparent way to fix it. So parts of this column are uncapitilized when they should be, because the program refused to let me capitalize, as you can see with the text above. That gets old in a hurry. Also while writing this column I called up Writer, set my macros–and when I invoked the date, I got a message that the program had committed an irrecoverable error and would be shut down. And then it shut down, and I had to start over. You know, I didn’t need to leave MS Word to get that kind of treatment. Also while on this column, I finished my day, invoked the Linux logout/shutdown process–and it locked up, and I had to crash it to shut down. That meant a five minute reconstitution next morning. So Linux isn’t better than Windows in this respect. SOS = Same Old Shit. Maybe they’re farming it out to the same programmers. In addition, Writer appears to have no paragraph to paragraph cursor jump; where MS Word has that, Writer has the switch-paragraph-places command. So when I try to travel to the next paragraph, when editing, instead I scramble my paragraphs. That’s disconcerting and perhaps dangerous. A column like this is more or less random anyway, but a novel is quite another matter. Evidently this program was not crafted for serious paragraph-oriented writers. I like to have color; with Windows and Word I have a purple background with green print, that prints out black and white. (There seems to be no color in the bleak world of publishers.) But when I print from Writer, that background color prints as a shade of gray, obscuring my text. So I have to use straight dull black and white onscreen, which makes me feel as if I am in an empty house. And printing is a real chore. I can’t print at all with straight Linux now; I switched out to my good monitor and printer, and Linux insists on printing the first half of each page on the bottom half of the page, and skipping the rest, so I have a series of half pages of text or email. Maybe I’m too choosy, but I find that unsatisfactory. StarOffice has its own printing setup, bypassing Linux (I think I have a notion why) and it works–but it takes more than one minute a page, and if I have too full a page it overflows and prints the last few lines a minute later on the bottom of the following sheet. I don’t think my publishers would like that type of manuscript. My printer normally does ten pages a minute, so it is hobbled to one tenth speed. I am faced with the prospect of an all-day printing for a novel, instead of an hour. I think StarOffice is sending a picture rather than type to the printer, and that takes more time. But all I use is type. I found no option to change it; like Windows, it knows what you really need, and denies you that. So when I printed out 50+ pages of Tortoise I had to translate it to Word, copy it to disk, take disk to my other system and run it off at speed with Windows. I don’t think StarOffice is being smart about this; how long will it take the average user to realize that he might as well do the whole thing on Word/Windows?

So I have Miss Universe in bed, as it were, but I am discovering warts on her bottom. She does perform in her fashion, but I am not quite satisfied. At the moment I am busy getting this column done, but next month I’ll see about checking the StarOffice web site and asking some (pointed) questions. If they have suitable answers, fine, I’ll fix the problems, because I do like StarOffice/Writer when I’m not resetting macros, traveling between paragraphs, or printing. For one thing, it (and the other Linux word processors) shows me the “saved” status of my files; when I wrote to Macrohard long ago I said I saw no legitimate reason to conceal that information from the user. (There’s plenty else they conceal; it’s their nature. You think you have privacy? If you only knew…) The company did not answer, which was at least consistent. But if StarOffice says in effect tough turds, you’ll print our way or none, I will have to do some serious thinking about my options, despite the considerable time, effort, and money I have put into my conversion to Linux. I do have a business to run; I’m not into Linux for the joy of solving random puzzles or spending all day slaving over a hot printer. I need a program that works without hassle and conforms to my needs, rather than requiring me to conform to its whimsies. Meanwhile, my advice to those who are considering dumping Windows in favor of Linux is don’t do it yet; it’s not ready for serious users. Microsoft may be an old bitch, but she damn well knows how to run the household, and even Miss Universe can’t make it on mere sex appeal.

So what else is new for this grumpy old ogre? Ends and odds. Daughter #1 Penny sent us four potted azaleas. There were bare stems, but soon they flowered beautifully. Then three of them put out leaves, but one did not. Is it delayed, or dead? We fear the worst. No, I don’t think it died because I breathed on it.

I had an interesting question from Beverly Kemp, a freshman at the University of Texas. Her paper concerned the atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and her question was if Ms O’Hair or any atheist accepts God’s forgiveness the second before she dies, will she go to heaven? Her class was equally divided, with some saying that Ms O’Hair’s getting prayer thrown out of our schools meant she would be denied heaven regardless, so Beverly wrote to me. Here is my answer: “Now this is interesting: you are writing to an agnostic to ask whether a reformed atheist would go to heaven. As an agnostic I am officially neutral on internal matters of religion–that is, the doctrines or beliefs of any of the world’s religions–but not neutral on external matters, such as whether there should be separation of church and state. I feel that any person should believe as he or she wishes, and all religions are similarly valid on their own terms, but that there should be no state sanctioned religion. I feel that Madalyn O’Hair was correct in challenging prayer in the schools, and the US court system agreed. One thing many Christians, including half your class, do not seem to realize is that the USA is not a Christian nation; it is a nation the majority of whose citizens happen to be Christians. That’s a vital distinction. The majority of citizens also happen to be female, but neither is this a female nation. There are limits on the power of the majority; it must not try to force the minority to become identical to the majority. (How would you like America without men?) So if she accepted God the instant before she was murdered, did she go to heaven? Yes, if it exists. She did what she felt was right all her life, and God would understand and appreciate that, and know that her conversion was honest, and would accept her. Jesus preached forgiveness, not punishment. But I doubt that she did change her mind at the end.”

And how many non-forgiving “Christians” are going to curse me for that reasonable statement? There will surely be a follow-up report next time. In a related connection, I received one of those million copy distribution emails presenting a supposedly true religious story: An atheist professor at USC (that implies Southern California) had a course whose whole purpose was to prove that God couldn’t exist. His students were afraid to argue with him because of his reputation and logic. The finale was when he dropped a piece of chalk to the floor, saying that if God existed, he could prevent the chalk from breaking. Each year the chalk did break. Until after 20 years a student had the nerve to stand up, because he still believed in God. The professor called him a fool and dropped the chalk–which rolled down his pants, off his shoe, and did not break. The professor ran away and the student took over the class and spoke of God and Jesus. The story ends saying the reader has 2 choices: delete the email, or pass it along to others, encouraging their faith. No; I have never been one for accepting artificially defined either/or choices; truth is normally a shade of gray or a section of a continuum. I present another option, as an agnostic, pointing out that if God exists, he surely has better things to do than perform at the behest of an arrogant professor, in the manner of a trained dog. The chalk normally falls and breaks because it follows the rules of the universe that God made. That is not disproof of God, but vindication of his law. Satan would be the one to break those rules, not God. So the chalk proves nothing other than the foolishness of the professor, and the students who believe him. The jury is still out on God. So this is a fake message. It reminds me of another that I object to: a father offered his sons, upon graduation, a choice of two gifts. One was a fancy new car, the other a Bible. Each son took the car, except the last, who being of religious bent, took the Bible. Then when he opened it, he found the pages interleaved with thousand dollar bills, worth far more in all than the car. My objection is that this suggests that it was worth taking the Bible FOR THE MONEY. That’s not much of a vindication of faith. And who is to say that there’s not a Bible in the car’s glove compartment? Or that the other sons did not already have Bibles, so did not need another? I’m agnostic, but I have a small collection of Bibles and other holy books. The Book of Mormon, for example, can make fascinating reading, and the Koran. The whole story falls apart when examined, and I suspect that the Pope himself would object to this story for much the same reason I do. A person of faith does not have to be deficient in logic, nor does he need money to justify his belief. Or a miracle.

The Spring 2001 issue of AMERICAN WRITER, the journal of the National Writers Union, NWU, has an article by Greg Raver Lampman. He remarks that not even successful mid-list authors make a living wage today. Even if their books are on sale at superstores, there is no real promotion, so they languish. Many authors maintain web sites advertising their books. HiPiers.com is technically such a site, though I regard it more as a service to my readers than an effort to make them buy my titles. When a customer wants to buy a book, he can click on an order button and find himself at Amazon.com where he can purchase it. Not at HiPiers; we made it a point not to tie in that way. But elsewhere, yes. But when that happens, the author gets little if anything from the sale. If the author tries to sell his/her own books, the expenses of credit card business and such may make for a loss. I have been that route; I lost a lot. So NWU is presenting the notion of an author’s co-op, where an order for a book is handled by the co-op for the author, who gets a significant share of the sale. That would be a vast improvement for the author. So this is a notion worth pursuing, and if it gets anywhere, I may join.

My mail is a two-faced thing. On the one hand I resent the time it takes from my writing; if any successful writer takes more time for his fan mail than I do, I’d be surprised. On the other, individual letters and correspondents can be a delight. For example, there’s Lisa, a young, sometimes depressive mother, who sends me old fashioned pin-up cards, a series of lovely young women whose skirts somehow accidentally get lifted to show their excellent thighs and sometimes even (blush) panties. One showed a girl whose picnic lunch had spilled catsup on her dress, and as she lifted it to inspect the damage she showed her marvelous legs. Another had a girl at a construction site, and a sky hook had caught on the back of her skirt, hauling it up. One was boarding a bus, and her panties had fallen around her ankles while the wind blew up her skirt, astounding the driver; how was she going to pick up her dropped purse, when she had a bag of groceries to hold? Those shapely young women get into the darndest picklements. During this column one arrived showing girl in yellow dress, evidently practicing archery (in high heels, yet); while she is pulling one arrow from the target, another arrow has somehow caught on her dress, drawing her skirt up past her bottom, exposing the world’s finest legs. This may set off some feminists, who seem to think that sexual interest is demeaning to women, but I love such pictures. There’s Dawn, who sent her picture of a centaur filly, with fantasy’s most outstanding breasts and a lovely flowing head of hair. Other readers have notified me of the pirating of my novels on the Internet, providing enough information so that my agent’s lawyer can get on the case. And of course there’s the constant “egoboo” with readers claiming that I am the finest writer who ever existed. They may exaggerate the case slightly, but I can live with it. And once in a while a cri-tic sneaks in. Once I was asked to describe the things I would take with me if I knew I would be stranded on a deserted isle; one of the things was to be something no use whatsoever. I pondered, then filled in “a critic.” For all that in real life, serious criticism is a noble and necessary trade; I just hate to see it spoiled by those who have mindless spot agendas that masquerade as legitimate criticism. Those are the ones I’m really condemning.

A company gave me a trial subscription to YAHOO! magazine. It wasn’t bad, with a lot of information for Internet denizens, but I am really not one of those, so finally I dropped it. But it did have one excellent article on Internet pornography, which made a significant point: we are now amidst an involuntary experiment to discover whether exposure to highly erotic material really can damage young folk. Because it is available on the Internet in quantity and quality never before experienced, and children have easy access. So they are seeing it in living animated color, as much as they want. So if it rots their little minds, we should know fairly soon. I suspect that their nature will not change; they will merely be better informed. I never thought well of the Adult Conspiracy to Keep Interesting Things from Children, which is why I parody it in Xanth. But it is true that if a person learns a language young, he learns it well, and it is much harder for him to learn it as an adult, when his brain has more or less set. So there is a window of opportunity that is real. So what about sex? If he learns it young, will his understanding of it be qualitatively different? Is that good or ill? I don’t know, and would like to. There is some evidence that early sexual experience can warp a person; I have heard from a number of young women who had sex forced on them as children, and they are marked by it for life. Some of their startling poems are in How Precious Was that While. But is that because they were raped, or because early sex is inherently damaging? What is the difference between seeing it onscreen in full detail, and actually experiencing it? Between voluntary and forced? Perhaps we will have answers at last.

NEW SCIENTIST had an article dear to my heart. For generations the “experts” have claimed that airplanes fly because the tops of their wings are rounded, so that they air has farther to travel, therefore exerts less pressure, and in effect sucks the plane upward. That’s known as the Bernoulli principle. That always seemed like nonsense to me, because the moving wing has to push that air out of the way, and that should push the curved surface down, in contrast to its flat underside. And in fact airplanes can fly upside down. When I built a model plane I got the wings on upside down, and it still flew. So I knew all along that experts didn’t know anything. Now David Anderson in NEW SCIENTIST says the same thing. Check in the issue for May 5, 2001. An airplane flies because its angled wings plane against the air, pushing the air down and the craft up. I understand there’s even a picture showing a cloud section depressed behind an airplane, evidence of the effect. That’s why it’s called an air-plane, for shift’s sake.

When we moved to backwoods Florida, in the 1970’s, we had ideas for economical living. Unfortunately a rascally contractor and state laws messed much of that up. We did set up solar hot water heating, and used a wood burning stove, using dry deadwood on the property. A copper coil in the stovepipe helped heat our water, and passive solar design and a nocturnal window fan blowing out, not in, helped cool the house. But state law prevented our using a composting toilet, and our desire for a low-water flush toilet was ignored, as was our specification for thick insulation. We had to have the roof redone, making it tern-coated stainless steel, that would last for eternity. We sued the contractor and put him out of business, but the house was only part of what it should have been. Well now another environmentalistic couple is doing it, building a truly modern house, not far from the University of Florida at Gainesville. They seem to have thought of everything except the stovepipe coil, and maybe I missed that, as I didn’t explore every detail of their comprehensive web site. They save water in a cistern, and generate their own solar electricity, and by damn they have the composting toilet. Maybe the law changed in the interim, or their county has different laws. Also a greenhouse. They are even vegetarians. I like these folk, never having met them. Check their site at www.phys.ufl.edu/~liz/home.html. Actually the University of Florida at Gainesville, which has a reputation as a party school, does do some good work; we worked with them on the archaeological excavation of Tatham Mound, which led to my novel of that title, and now they seem to have a breakthrough on solar refrigeration. The sun is too hot, here in backwoods Florida, and food needs cooling so as not to spoil, so they are putting the two together. They use the Rankine, or steam cycle, and the absorption-refrigeration cycle. The one heats water to make steam that drives a turbine and produces electricity. The other heats pressurized ammonia past its boiling point, generating ammonia steam. The ammonia vapor drives a turbine and falls in temperature until cold enough to make ice. Thus refrigeration or air conditioning. Thus power and coolth from the sun–ideally free. Check it at www.napa.ufl.edu/2001news/solar.htm. The future is coming.

The March 2001 issue of DISCOVER has an article on Dark Energy. It seems that even Dark Matter can’t account for the full universe; two thirds of it must be Dark Energy. And they conclude that if there is energy in a vacuum–and surely there is, because I said it in a prior column–it must have a repulsive effect. Thus it makes the universe expand, on the large scale. Fascinating.

Now there is the question whether children in child care become aggressive, disobedient, and defiant. A survey seems to show this. But wait; the early years of my own life were spent in child care, that is, with a British nanny. And I became–the ogre. So maybe there’s a case. But I suspect that further study will show that it is bad child care that makes bad children; good care will make good ones.

One of my endless subscriptions is to CENSORSHIP NEWS, put out by the national Coalition Against Censorship. I hate censorship, perhaps because I’m the kind of free thinking, panty-peeking writer censors salivate to suppress. Well, it says that now there is a web site for teens who need information about sex. I believe in sex education. Visit www.goaskalice.columbia.edu. Also www.sxetc.org, supported by Rutgers University Network for Family Life Education. So if you’re a teen who always wanted to violate the Adult Conspiracy, but didn’t know how, there is where you can go. Don’t tell your parents I told you.

I take private exposés with a grain of salt. But some make me nervous. At www.justiceforjamie.com/ it tells a horrendous story. It seems that in 1994 six year old Jamie had a slight case of cerebral palsy. She needed to have two extra front baby teeth removed, one of which was impacted, so she was scheduled for oral surgery. She was told she would be put to sleep and would not feel it. The surgeon was an hour late, and Jamie became increasingly upset. The doctor said the parents were upsetting the child and banished them. (As the father, three decades ago, of a very sensitive learning-disabled child, this bothers me. My daughter needed my support, not my absence, and sometimes was mistreated when I was not there. I learned to distrust those who wanted to deprive her of her main protection.) Frightened, Jamie was crying. The doctor pinched her nose, covered her mouth, and told her that if she didn’t stop crying, maybe she didn’t need to breathe. This action was, it seems, violent enough to pop the blood vessels around her eyes. Then he grabbed her face so strongly as to leave bruises down the side of it. There was also a knot on her forehead, as if he hit her. At any rate she was traumatized, and thereafter her problems became much worse. The doctor stonewalled the parents’ questions, and they filed a complaint with the dental board. This became a years-long odyssey that still is not resolved. Okay, as I said, I don’t know the truth here, but my experience with my child inclines me to believe it. I was still fighting battles against injustice for my child through college. She made it, and went on into adulthood and marriage, but I think that she would have had a rougher time of it had there not been an ogre in her corner to scare back abusers. Check the site and form your own opinion. Of course they want money, but of course you are not obligated.

Someone sent me a checklist of symptoms of gaming addiction. You might be a gamer if: losing your dice bag would be a serious financial blow. If you could paper your bathroom with different versions of just ONE character. If you talk about your characters as if they are real people. Oops, I do that, and I’m not even a gamer. I’m a writer. Anyway, if you suspect you might be a gamer, check this out at–oops again, there’s no site. It’s a forwarded email.

Daniel Garcia notified me about his message board, inviting me to participate. I said I prefer to contribute to my own site, here. But I did look at the site, http://pub63.ezboard.com/bluna83999, and can recommend it to those of you who might like to participate. It has stories and things, and “The Flame Pit” for comments, including a discussion group “Things I Hate.” Seems ideal for those of you with peeves.

Correspondent and aspiring writer MaryLee Boyance passed along a “Writer” joke: The writer died, and got to choose between heaven and hell. She decided to check them out first. In hell she sat row on row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop, constantly whipped with thorny lashes. So she checked heaven, and there was a similar scene. “But this is just as bad a hell,” she protested. “No it’s not,” was the response. “Here, your work gets published.”

Another reader, Mishawn, sent me an interesting list of dates and their corresponding trees. You check your birthday and discover your tree. For example, my birthday has the poplar tree. Does that mean I’m poplar with my readers? The writeup says it signifies artistic nature, uncertainty, lack of courage, animosity–um, I’m not sure I like where this is going. My wife’s birthday has the ash tree. That reminds me of a joke I think I won’t tell my wife: a little tree asked his dad what kind of tree he was. His dad said “Well, I’m not sure, son, but I can tell you this: your mother was the finest piece of ash in the forest.” There doesn’t seem to be a web site for this list, so I can’t share it with you. Anyway, Daughter #1’s tree is the Rowan. I didn’t recognize that, so I looked it up, and learned that it is also called the Mountain Ash (now there’s a family connection: wife is Ash, daughter Mountain Ash) with orange or red berries. I was then looking for a name for a lead character in Tortoise Reform, so I named her Rowan.

I heard from artist Rezo Kaishauri, and rechecked his site, www.geocities.com/goodcoin. His paintings are striking, including some anatomically correct ones–you know, uncastrated male nudity–and monsters and weird seeming sex. So those interested in pretty pictures, some of which will annoy maiden aunts or censors, may visit this gallery.

Andrea Jones forwarded a list of statements, such as “Dyslexics have more fnu.” That reminds me of the dyslexic agnostic insomniac, who stays awake all night wondering whether there is a Dog. Sample other statements: “Clones are people, two.” “Entropy isn’t what it used to be.” “COLE’S LAW: Thinly sliced cabbage.” “My reality check just bounced.” “Energizer bunny arrested, charged with battery.” “Boycott shampoo–demand REAL poo!”

My wife and I will have our 45th anniversary this month (JeJune), and we allowed ourselves a small advance celebration by buying a new set of watches. We already have good watches, so this is a splurge. They are pretty squared-off German TROIKA watches which also show the month, date, day of the week, and 24 hour time. One day is much like another for me, as I stay home and work continuously, so this should help me keep track. My watch is blue, hers green. They have soft rubber wrist bands, which I presume are cheap, but actually are comfortable; we’ll see how they stand up.

And Marisol, who runs one of the Piers Anthony fan sites (see our links section), relayed a NEW YORK TIMES article, whose essence is that after five years of astonishing growth, online book sales are flagging. Amazon.com and others are leveling off, with their share of the total book market about seven per cent. It is possible that the enormous growth of the Internet is slowing. The online book cut-price sales are passing, too. As internet bargains fade, so do sales. So we seem to be at a turning point.

Which seems to be a good point for this column to fade, too. I keep trying to write shorter columns, and not succeeding well; this one is over 10,000 words. Sigh. So let’s conclude with a word from our Web Mistress: she has been getting queries from readers who wish to jazz up our dowdy web site. Let’s set this straight: this is a text oriented site, with just a few illustrations so that it doesn’t take too long to load. The main pain, uh, feature, is the information about my novels, such as the Xanth character database, and assistance for aspiring writers, such as the Internet Publishing survey, and my bimonthly irascible remarks here in this HiPiers column. For flashing lights and fancy animations, visit the sites of other writers. This one is locked in the twentieth century, easy to get around, specializing in information rather than special effects. Believe it or not, there are those who appreciate that. We do get about ten thousand hits a day.

I made one public appearance in this period: a panel on “Imagining Tomorrow,” part of the YESTERDAY’S TOMORROWS exhibit sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, in Inverness on Jewel-Lye 14, 2001. The local newspapers did a fine job of publicizing the event, but let’s face it: this is backwoods country, and the auditorium had an audience of about 60, hardly a blowout. The other panelists were Dan Scanlan of THE FLORIDA TIMES-UNION newspaper in Jacksonville, and Rick Wilber of the University of South Florida, a published author in his own right. I think we jibed nicely, having different viewpoints that complemented each other; the others spoke well and were well informed, and the audience got involved. Now I’ll give just my part of it, for the benefit of Anthony completists, writing from the same stained note card I used at the program. Here is what I said, approximately:

This morning I was making notes, when a mosquito buzzed my ear. I slapped my head, and got it–but it had also gotten me, and blood spattered. A drop fell on my note card; I tried to wipe it away, but it just smeared. Rather than do it over, I’m using it, and you will just have to accept my assurance that I did NOT sweat blood while preparing for this program.

When I was thirteen, I was waiting in my mother’s office for her to finish so we could go home. I had nothing to do, so I picked up a magazine that was lying around and began reading. That changed my life. It was the March 1947 issue of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, and it ushered me into a genre that I was never to leave. The first story was “The Equalizer,” by Jack Williamson, which told the story of a space ship returning to Earth years or decades later, because of time dilation. The Moon Base was deserted, and they wondered what had happened, so they were very cautious about approaching Earth itself. There was no one there to greet them, and it turned out that the planet had reverted to what seemed like a primitive culture. A way had been discovered to tap unlimited energy from space, using no more than a bit of twisted wire, so no one had to work any more, and folk were devoted to hobbies. Finally the ship’s crew joined them, and the captain was proud to make a cuckoo clock that worked. So this was really a prediction of a future when high technology would be passé, and a gentler culture would come to be. Has it come to pass? No, and I think not likely.

Another story was “Child’s Play” by William Tenn, wherein a man received a build-a-man kit that could be used to make people. The instructions invited the users to twin themselves or their girlfriends and have a lot of fun. So he tried it cautiously, following the instructions to make a clone of himself. Then an inspector came from the future: there had been a mistake, this part of space/time was not approved for this kit, and he had to take it back. “But I’ve already used it,” the man protested, showing the twin. The inspector said he would have to disassemble the copy to recover the materials. He proceeded to do that–taking apart the original man by mistake. The twin watched and did not protest. This story was a prediction of human cloning, and I think we are now in that process, so I’d call this a successful prediction.

Another story was “Little Lost Robot” by Isaac Asimov, wherein a humanoid robot of a new design had some self-will. The authorities decided to destroy it, as a self willed machine can be dangerous, so it hid in a rather effective way: among physically identical robots of the old style. They knew it was there, because there was one extra, but not which one it was. They finally used its own extra wiring against it, causing it to reveal itself by using an ability the other robots lacked. I regard this as a prediction of machine consciousness. Has that come to pass? Not yet, but I think it’s getting close, so I’d call this half a point. Current movies like Bicentennial Man and AI address it: when we make a conscious, feeling machine, what do we owe it?

So I think this one issue of the magazine had some hits and some misses, as does the genre. Of course this was some time back; few of the men in this audience existed in 1947, and none of the women; I can tell by looking at them. [Small appreciative murmur by some older women, I think.] But I think it’s a fair sampling. Of course there are some well known examples. When a story describing an atomic bomb was scheduled to appear in an early 1940’s issue of ASTOUNDING SF, the FBI visited the editor, John W. Campbell, because they thought there had been a leak about the Manhattan Project; the story was uncannily accurate. There hadn’t been a leak, and the editor convinced them that pulling the story would confirm that something was going on; it was better to let it run, so everyone would know it was fiction. There were numerous stories of the hazards of radiation, things like healthy babies having two heads, which I think exaggerated the case. And space travel, of course, though much of it was faster-than-light, which I think is not going to happen. On the other hand, science fiction missed the Internet.

I’m a science fiction and fantasy writer myself. Have I made any good predictions? Well, it will take time to check them out. In Macroscope I predicted that Planet Neptune’s moon Triton would have a moon of its own, a moon of a moon. [Here Rick Wilber lifted his copy of Macroscope.] If when there is a close up of that region there turns out to be such a moon, that will be one for me. More immediately, an economic prediction: America’s budget surplus doesn’t exist; it will turn out to be illusion. And in Shame of Man I describe the true nature of dreams: they are not predictions of the future or psychological windows to the soul, but part of the process of cataloguing memories. I once worked as a file clerk, and I discovered that cross referencing and filing so that any given document can be found again when needed is not a simple business. All day the human brain is taking in information; it won’t arrange itself, it has to be sorted and filed. So the brain uses its down-time at night, when new material is not coming in, to view each impression, decide how the person feels about it, for feeling is the essence of life, and file it appropriately. Science has not yet caught on to this, but is getting closer; when a scientist figures it out and wins the Nobel Prize for it, then I’ll point out that I had it first, in print. Then they’ll have to throw it all away, because I’m just a fantasy writer. [Bit of laughter.]

End of talk, and the program continued with the other talks and interactive discussion. Before and after the program I talked with members of the audience and autographed copies of my books. I showed off my copy of How Precious Was That While. In short, it was a typical public event. I don’t do many of these because I don’t like to travel and don’t like to take the time. It’s not shyness; I conquered stage fright decades ago, and enjoy relating to an audience. If I could matter-transmit directly from my house to a public stage, without the intervention of jammer traffic, missed connections, canceled flights, restaurants that return a blank stare at the word “vegetarian,” and the other joys of travel, I’d do more of it. Maybe virtual reality will soon make it possible to sit in my study and appear to be before a convention audience, interacting seemingly completely. So there’s another prediction for the future, perhaps.

We saw a couple of movies, and I watched some videos. Our movie-freak daughter was busy at her job, so lost some days off, and if she doesn’t drag us out, we tend to stay home, as my wife is no keener on going out than I am. We’re pretty dull folk. But we did see Pearl Harborand liked it. Yes, it’s not history to me; I was seven years old when it happened. I saw a reference in print to the “silly” romance; I thought it was a standard romance with a nice twist, helping to make a historical event interesting. Then we saw AI, and liked it too, though for my taste it could have been improved by better integration of the disparate elements. I could tell Spielberg how to do that, but I doubt he’d listen. The first part was an almost dull boy and mother story, then suddenly shifting to almost inchoate hell, then shifting to a vain quest for acceptance. Within that was the nagging impression that the beloved mother was not worthy of the dedicated child, and that some of the machines were better people than some of the living humans. One scene in particular got to me: there was a nanny robot who tried to comfort the boy, as was her nature. When she was taken out to be publicly and brutally melted down, she saw the boy and smiled reassuringly at him. I trust I am not the only one to be affected by that, as the movie maker intended, but there is more. I actually had a nanny in England, who was my mother figure; my abrupt and permanent separation from her was the first significant trauma of my life, and I’m not over it yet. I suspect that her excellent care in my early years provided me the basis to survive the ugly intervening time before college, marriage, family, and success in writing restored joy to my life.

Perhaps the outstanding video was Twelve Angry Men, the story of the deliberation of a typically ignorant and sometimes bigoted jury in a murder trial. As fate would have it, soon thereafter we saw a virtual rip-off of that in an episode of Touched By an Angel. Regardless, it’s amazing how effective a story without romance, sex, adventure, or significant threat can be. But mostly I watch the sexy ones that don’t interest my wife. I saw The Sensuous Nurse, starring Ursula Andress, and she was about the only thing worth watching; bad acting ruined it, for my taste. Erotique was much better: four stories by female directors, of women in sexual situations, well done, good acting and some eye-opening concepts. One story was about a woman who worked at a phone-sex outfit, who wanted to make one of those fanciful notions come true. Another was about two lesbians who decided to bring a man into their sexplay, to get more of an edge. He turned out to be something of a lout, so as he entered one woman, the other rammed a dildo up his posterior. Served him right. Feminists who retain an interest in sex should like these stories. Quality soft porn. Cherry 2000, about a future where men can have lovely lady robots who serve their need for constant adoration and sex, but the protagonist’s femme gets shorted out, so he goes on a wild quest to get another robot of the same model, but gets sidetracked by a (oh the shame of it) live woman. My kind of junk. Candy–I read the book when it came out, decades ago, so was curious about the movie. This has excellent acting by big names, and a pretty luscious innocent heroine. It’s a savage parody of everything. Actually I could have used a bit less parody and more luscious girl; I get these things for incidental diversion while doing chores like writing this column. Erotic Survivor is also a parody, of the Survivor TV show; the trouble is, the tasks are just like the TV in their stupidity, and there is a whole lot of hot lesbian sex that isn’t really relevant. If you like buxom bare bodies–and I do–this has them galore, but my taste runs more to heterosexual interactions. Private Lessons, in contrast, is a well acted and steamingly sexy story of a woman’s interest in her chauffeur; I’ll watch that one again. I also got the first season’s episodes of Sex and the City; we don’t have cable (I have already remarked on being literally in the back woods) so hadn’t seen this. I find I rather like it: well acted, pretty women, surprising situations, and a good deal of sex. In one scene, man and woman were amidst sex when he got a phone call from the woman he really had a thing for: she was interested. So he hung up and explained to his partner. She asked “You’re breaking up with me–while you’re still inside me?” Lovely! This series seems to tackle everything from conventional to far out, including aspects seldom mentioned. For example, after satisfying sex, they were lying in bed when she let some gas slip audibly. Mortified, she hid under the sheets, and he remarked that it would smell even worse there. It went on to address the issue of how women are supposed to have no natural functions, being utterly pristine; to let a fart in a man’s presence is unforgivable. That’s ludicrous, of course, yet as a man I don’t like to hear a woman fart. We are all captive of our cultural conditioning. Another sequence tackles the tacit restrictive sexual attitude of the Catholic religion: sex may be necessary, but it’s dirty. I believe I’ll buy the second season’s offerings. But perhaps the best one was Color of Night with Bruce Willis as a psychiatrist who takes over a murdered associate’s encounter group. It’s a nice adventure mystery impurgated with 15 extra minutes of phenomenal sex. Something for everyone.

Some of you may have noticed that HiPiers.com was down for a few days. We were getting 10,000 hits a day, then it dropped precipitously, then bounced back up again. So what happened? No, I didn’t die and leave the world a better place. It seems that our server Mindspring had some sort of conflict with the outfit that verifies identities, so they did not admit that the site existed, though it did, and no one except spammers could get through. We lost about a week, being one of several thousand sites to be affected. This is like war: it’s the innocent civilians who mostly get hurt.

A reader wrote to correct me: in Xanth a basilisk is a lizard. He said it’s really a snake. He was mistaken; basilisks have legs, and snakes don’t. Regardless, in Xanth a creature is as I define it, whatever its nature elsewhere. If I say Chlorine is a woman rather than a chemical, or a night mare is a horse bearing bad dreams, or panties freak out men, that’s the way it is, in Xanth.

From time to time I mention dentistry. That’s because I have more of it than just about anyone I know, despite taking better care of my teeth than most. I wish I could be done with it, but it continues. After a series of fillings, crowns, root canals, reconstruction, apicoectomies, and extractions, as each tooth evokes the maximum possible discomfort and expense on its way out–I’m not kidding when I say you could put a kid through college for the money that has gone into my mouth, and I’d rather spend it that way–I have lost the last four teeth on my lower right side. That leaves the upper four with nothing to chew against, making them useless. Well, I got talked into having three implants. These are as I understand it metallic structures resembling teeth, set directly into the bone. It’s a bit like driving pylons down into the muck to support a bridge. Then they’ll have to be surfaced by my regular dentist: pylons with crowns. But this should enable me to chew again on that side. It’s not cheap; the operation costs about $4,000, and then the regular dental charges for the crowns will be on top of that. But they should last the rest of my life. I’ll be truly annoyed if I die before getting sufficient service from them. I’m scheduled for that surgery early in AwGhost, about the time this column sees light. I may have a fuller report next time.

You may have heard about these Nigerian scams. Essentially, they are emails saying that an official of the former Nigerian government has access to about twenty million dollars, and has to sneak it out of the country, and will give you ten per cent if you let him use your bank account to transfer the money out. Don’t fall for it; it’s a swindle. Now they are proliferating; we have started saving them up, and have a pile of about ten different ones now, awaiting notification of the Post Orifice authorities.

I understand that a number of newspapers cut back on book reviews–and the readers hardly missed them. Interesting. Maybe if reviews were always accurate and fair, and covered books readers might be interested in, it would be a different story.

Last time I commented how at one point I got locked into no-caps text. Well, when the column ran, those sections instead came out as ALL CAPS. Perversity of the inanimate. You mean no one noticed?

Meanwhile, my struggle with Linux et al continues. I finally found out how to make the StarOffice Writer hold my defaults: they have to be done in the Root user; then they hold for my Piers user. No help from the manual there. I found out how to have it make the print print black despite showing color print onscreen, and how to have it not print the color background on the screen. So now each of my files has a different background, and some have different colors of print. That makes it much more compatible; I didn’t like working in a black and white realm, having a more colorful personality; I don’t even like the black/white thinking of conservatives. But the printing remained slow. I signed up for the StarOffice online interaction, listing my occupation as “retired” because there was no entry for writing or the arts–a significant omission, I think–they have not heard of writers?–and posted my question–and it sat there for weeks with no answer. Well, could I load StarOffice in the Windows half of my system and try printing from there? But I could not get into Windows; that menu no longer appeared. My wife rummaged in the Caldera manual and discovered a program called Webmin that might help. But the manual’s instructions for summoning Webmin didn’t work. I finally figured it out and marked a correction in the manual; evidently the manual folk hadn’t actually tried their own instructions. Well, it did enable me to reset the hour so that it would stick, and we set the Windows window for “Forever” but that didn’t do it. Until I tried typing “Windows” on that Forever screen–then at last I got there. I loaded StarOffice, and transferred a sample file–and Lo! It printed at speed. But a computer never yields a feature without taking something away: Windows operated at about one tenth speed, so that it took ten seconds or more for each menu to show, and up to five minutes for StarOffice to load. The result was that it took me over half an hour to print out my files that way–a couple minutes for the printing, the rest of the time waiting for programs and menus to load. Every so often StarOffice would simply lock up in the windows side, too. So that was not a perfect answer. Meanwhile, as I worked in the Linux StarOffice, I kept finding features I liked. Such as the discontinuous select feature. It’s called ADD, and with it you can select some text, then move to another part of your document and select another part, and another, and so on, without losing any. Then you can change, copy, or delete them all in one swell foop. I like that. I found that Writer has a Revision mode, called Changes, and it’s better than MS Word’s, because it gives you a menu with all changes listed, and you can select any you want for copying, deletion, acceptance, or rejection, singly or in concert. Since when I revise I normally have scores of spot revisions to copy, this is better than using Word’s Spike feature, which assumes you want to destroy your source document in order to copy from it. I’d like to see into the head of the idiot at Macrohard who programmed that one; it must be solid vacuum. And I made spot macros to override Writer’s dangerous features, such as putting the paragraph-switch function on the move-curser-to next-or-last-paragraph keys. Why they don’t let you travel paragraph by paragraph I don’t know; it’s a real nuisance. And I learned more about Linux file handling, so that now I can do it with surety rather than nervousness. I also like the Linux “Desktops”; I have six, labeled Email, Smile, Frown, Desk, Files, and Writer, each with a different wallpaper background. So I just move to the applicable desktop when I have something to do, such as checking for email or backing up my files. So overall I have come to like the StarOffice Writer and Linux in general, and am comfortable with them; I have no desire to return to MS Word, though I still have it for correspondence. Still, that printing problem. So my wife and I tried to redefine the printer listing–and it pied the Linux printing entirely, printing out endless blank sheets regardless of the input. Tried to put it back the way it was, but once pied, it refuses to ameliorate. It may require a complete re-installation to clear the problem. Which means at the end of each day I must allow about 45 minutes to back up my files, change to Windows, copy those files from the backup disk, load StarOffice, and print them out before StarOffice locks up. It works, but it’s not fun. So I gave up and called the computer store, which went through all that when it originally got me the system. We’ll deliver the system and printer there just before traveling for a week to see our baby granddaughter, trusting that will be enough time to get things working again.

Summary: I like the StarOffice Writer, and Linux is okay, but they still aren’t ready for the average user. Nerds who think that a computer system isn’t supposed to work out of the box are never going to persuade those of us who have lives apart from computers to keep up with, and jobs to do. If I get my printing back, I’ll be satisfied, but it has been a flirtation with hell getting to the green pastures. My current novel, Tortoise Reform, has been proceeding slowly because of all this distraction. Of course that’s the point: by the time I complete a novel on it, I really know a system. It took only one chapter to turn me off WordPerfect, but now I believe I am on track with Writer.

We live in the lightning capital of the USA, but that abated with the long drought. Instead we had to fear fire. Now the wet weather is back, and that helps, but we have become the state sinkhole capital. The drought lowered the water table, and water and limestone leached out, leaving subterranean cavities. Then the water returned, making the ground above spongy. In due course it gives way and a new sinkhole forms, swallowing whatever is over it, like a tree or house. More fun. Our tree farm has had a number of slow sink holes, but we think our house is built on more stable sand. Maybe.

I generally print out only the first two pages of the weekly HiPiers stats–how many hits we have per day, and where from. But one day I forgot to limit it, and so got all 38 pages. But checking those we learned some things, such as that about half our hits are repeats within HiPiers, as a person travels around within the site. So we actually get about 5,000 visitors a day. Okay. I presume they are mostly different visitors each day, so that suggests about 150,000 a month. That seems like a pretty good attendance. I’d like to have that many book sales a month. Per title.

Are older writers getting discriminated against? I’m 66, going on 67, so this concerns me; novels are accumulating unpublished despite queries from readers. An article in the AARP BULLETIN (I think of it as “Burp Bulletin”) suggests that this is the case. There is a class action lawsuit in progress. But you know, writers can and do use pseudonyms, so can pretend to be younger than they are, and this is enabling some to sell despite such discrimination. At any rate, age is inevitable, if death does not come young, so the younger writers who are getting the older writers’ business will get shafted in their turn. I think the quality of the writing should be the main criterion, and the interest of the readers, not the age of the writer. Who cares what the age is, if the writing pleases you? So we’ll see. I don’t think it’s age in my case, so much as publisher legend that all readers want from me is Xanth. Publishers as a class are stupid; as with a mob, they are duller than any of the people that make them up. I plan to give each new novel a couple years or so trying the traditional market, then see about Internet publication, so that readers can judge whether my work remains worthy.

I heard from the absolutely Weird Bookshelf, an independent online bookstore, which tells me it can get copies of my new books for readers. We’ll put it on our links page. It lists the 100 best Fantasy novels. No need to ask whether any of mine are there; mine are never on such lists, regardless of their merit. But readers might be interested in what is there, to appreciate my general point about the taste of critics and awards voters. # 1 fantasy novel is listed as Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, part of the Gormenghast trilogy. I believe my wife and I tried to read this decades ago and found it too mind-numbly dull to get into, but I don’t remember for sure. Maybe some contemporary reader can try it and let me know. #2 is The Book of Ptath by A E Van Vogt. I’m not familiar with that one, but he could do interesting writing when he chose, such as Slan. Um, I see now that these are arranged chronologically, the oldest first, so maybe these aren’t the top ones. But my point about the relation of such lists to popular fantasy remains; mine are readable and entertaining, and have thoughts that go beyond the routine, as my readers appreciate, so seem to be excluded from “best” lists. Do I seem like a bad sport? I surely am; I don’t believe in whatever obscure exclusive agendas the critics have. I believe that any list of “best” genre novels should include what readers will most appreciate. Few lists seem to.

An outraged reader sent me a link to www.bonsaikitten.com/. The question is whether this is a hoax; if not, outrage is justified. It describes growing kittens in shaped glass bricks to make them develop into cubic form. Check it for yourself. If it’s intended as humor, I am not amused. Killing animals is not the only way to abuse them.

The Authors Guild sent press releases announcing the writers’ victory in salvaging electronic rights for the authors, who have been getting ripped off by publishers without payment. What the Guild does not say as that it seems to have sat mostly on its hands while Jonathan Tasini of the National Writer’s Union filed the suit, taking the considerable financial brunt of the legal expenses. I contributed to that effort, so was posted along the way; taking a legal case to the Supreme Court is not cheap. Later the Guild filed an amicus brief supporting the suit, and now that it has been won, the Guild is getting into legal action itself. That’s fine; I just wish it had taken action when the Writer’s Union was fighting in the bloody trenches, instead of waiting until it was relatively safe. My stance remains that if you join just one writer’s organization, make it the NWU. It has the guts the others seem to lack.

I don’t know haw many newspapers carry the Sunday Mark Trail comic, but it is worth reading. When our local ST PETERSBURG TIMES needs more Sunday ad space, that’s the comic it deletes, evidently caring no more about quality than any other publisher does. I saved out one for personal reason: it’s about cork and cork trees. When I was in Spain, traveling to Portugal in 1940 on the way to America at age 5, we stopped near the border to admire and touch a cork tree there. I never forgot. I also remember a conservative’s hilarious description of modern bathing suits: two Band-Aids and a cork.

Another Tampa Florida news item: a man had been assaulted and robbed, but the police had not been much help, so he emailed a city council member, who replied that he should call the police chief. Well, he tried, but the chief didn’t take direct calls, so couldn’t be reached. So that man write back to the city council: “Test drive your info before you give it out.” I relate to that; so many products, especially relating to computers, obviously were never actually tried by the folk who produce them. And after another brief exchange he got back a barrage: “With an attitude like yours, you DESERVED to be assaulted and robbed!” followed by 23 exclamation points. Ah, how truly it has been said: power tends to corrupt. But of course city hall always did need cleaning up, at any city anywhere.

I continue with my exercise program, and am pretty spry for a guy at the two thirds of a century mark. But I still make stupid mistakes. I was doing my archery, firing with the compound bow at 150 feet, and had hit the center twice and missed no the target times with my first six arrows. Then the seventh arrow dropped to the ground as the bow dry-fired, making a sound like a gunshot. It had fired my peepsight instead of the arrow! It’s hard enough to hit the target with that sight; without it I would be begging for lost arrows galore. So I took the bow in to the shop, and learned that I had not kept a key bar tight, the one that holds the back loop of the string clear of the arrow. It had been chafing against the string, and surely causing mischief. I’ll watch that in future. They fixed it, but then I had to zero in the bow again, because the sights were off. I had to undo one of the repairs to get the range right, unfortunately, but finally did get oriented, and now can hit the target again. You’d think a bow would be too simple for me to foul up; you’d think wrong.

Actually I get a fair amount of exercise just keeping our drive clear. One night my wife drove out with our dog Obsidian to put the biweekly garbage in the can where the garbage truck can get it, but was balked: five dead pine trees, victims of the drought, had blown down across the drive. So I went out with them to clear the trees, in the dark of night with the car headlights illuminating the region. Two were small stuff, readily tossed aside; two required heavy lifting, and one was so shrouded in vines that it made a wall across the drive. I clipped away the vines, sawed away a sapling that was bent in a U shape by the fallen tree, and found a trunk way beyond my means to move. I had to fetch the ax and five foot crowbar, and chop through it and pry the two sections around to either side of the road. Overall the job was an hour, but the drive was clear. Just part of the fun of running a tree farm in a drought. At least we didn’t get a big sink hole.

Meanwhile, what am I reading? Mostly magazines. Article in NEW SCIENTIST: play time may be as important for children in school as study time. Not for exercise, not for skills, but for intelligence. It seems that’s where they expand their brains, which then serve them for the rest of their lives. Not physical play so much as social play. That may be why the typical nerd has so much trouble relating to others; he never played, so never expanded the social aspects of his brain. So this trend in education toward all study and no play is unhealthy. I find this a fascinating hypothesis, and I suspect it is correct. Consider computers: it is the games rather than the spreadsheets or word processors that demand the most of them. Surely for people too.

Another article in NEW SCIENTIST–it’s my favorite magazine–explores the possible connection between the immune system and depression. Too active an immune system may cause inflammation that affects the brain, leading to unkind complications including depression. Since depression seems to be one of the burgeoning maladies of our time, perhaps the basis for alcoholism, drug abuse, compulsive gambling, suicide and who knows what else–this is my conjecture rather than the article’s–this could be a truly significant insight. I’d love to have the answer for depression, not for me so much as for some of my readers. And for aspiring writers everywhere.

MOTHERING magazine has an article on Fluoride: it seems that systematic supplementation is more likely to damage children’s teeth than to prevent cavities, but the dental professionals are reluctant to admit making a mistake.

CO-OP AMERICA QUARTERLY tackles sweatshops, making the case that they are not a necessary stage in the development of a country, that they don’t make life better for poor people, that corporations don’t have to exploit workers to meet consumer demands for low prices, and that corporations can too track where their goods come from. Sustained consumer pressure can make a difference, and progress is being made.

RESIST addresses a seldom-advertised problem: discrimination within groups protesting discrimination. For example, there are over 50 national organizations for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender folk, but only two persons of color at the helm of an organization that is not race/ethnic specific. Which is a careful way of saying that racism exists in gay organizations. They are trying to present homosexuality as white, clean, and middle class, when actually it cuts across all classes, colors, and genders. Why should the great unwashed public stop discriminating against gays, when they discriminate themselves?

DISCOVER has an article on neutrinos. They have tiny mass and don’t interact will with ordinary things; in fact they streak almost at the speed of light in a straight line through atoms, nuclei, people, mountains, planets, and stars, heading for the edge of the universe without stopping to smell the flowers. The ultimate snobs. So why should we care? Because they outweigh all the stars and galaxies in the universe, and may make up one fifth of Dark Matter. I’m a Dark Matter fan; I really want to know its nature. I’d love to have a ball of it to toss from hand to hand. So if the neutrino is part of it, I’m interested. So just what is a neutrino? Well, back in 1930 they measured the before and after energy of a neutron as it decayed into a proton and an electron, and they didn’t match. The proton and electron did not stack up quite as much as the original neutron. Something was missing. So they decided there must be another particle, undetected, and called it the neutrino, a little neutron fragment. Sort of like breaking a boulder into a rock and a hard place, and realizing that a flying grain of sand was lost. But did it really exist, or was it a figment of bad measurement? Big debate, but now, decades later, the consensus is that it does exist, and they are starting to trap neutrinos and analyze them. They are weird, changeable creatures, elusive in nature as well as substance. But if they make up as much stuff as all of the visible universe, it is probably best to learn something about them. Which reminds me of a question I have: if they are now studying the faint background radiation afterglow of the formation of the universe, why hasn’t that light long since departed? It shouldn’t just hang around waiting for us to examine it.

And a newspaper article in the food section describes a fungus called Quorn (pronounced “corn”) that is being used as a meat substitute in Europe. It is low-fat and tastes exactly like whatever you want it to, sort of like the shmoo in the old L’il Abner comic. As a vegetarian who avoids meat for its unkind origin, not its taste, I like this notion, but it’s not approved for America. But soon it may be, and then we’ll see it in quantity, for dieters as well as vegetarians, and surely as cheap filling for expensive meat entries. More power to it.

I try to read at least one book a month. It’s not that I don’t like reading, but that I am a slow reader and there’s a lot to keep up with. This time it was Enchanted Realms, edited by James Richey, my collaborator on Quest for the Fallen Star. This is an anthology of fantasy stories by different writers, self published at Xlibris. So how are these shorter pieces that didn’t make it to traditional print? In between. They have good ideas, often well enough developed, but there are lapses of syntax and imperfect treatment. So I can see why these didn’t make it, yet neither are they washouts. I recommend it for those who aren’t fussy readers. If you like new slants on vampires, spirit invocations, romance–there’s even one where a woman wins a faerie music contest with a kazoo.

Last column I commented on those dropped-panty cards, so reader Rachel put me on to a site that contains a whole series of similar pictures, with commentary. Check it at www.lileks.com/institute/index.html. The commentary thinks it’s ludicrous to suppose that a luscious young woman’s panties would drop down like that in a public place; elastic wouldn’t let go that suddenly. But if the elastic stretched, so she tightened the panties with a pin, and then the pin slipped, it could happen, couldn’t it? At least in fond imagination. Reminds me of a remark a naughty-minded grandmother relayed to me: “Panties aren’t the best thing there is, just next to it.”

We prepared carefully for our first trip out of state in three years. We’re senior citizens now, and our youthful aversion to traveling has matured into senior aversion. But Daughter #1 P gave increasingly firm hints that if we wanted to meet Granddaughter #1 L before she was a teen we’d better get our posteriors in gear. So Daughter #2 agreed to house-sit and dog-sit for us, and we caught up on all mail and chores, delivered my balky Linux system to the shop for work during our absence, and the taxi service picked us up at 2 PM Thursday 7-26-2001. We took the new toll-way extension that has been making its way north from Tampa over the years, and it was blessedly uncrowded, with a nice paved bicycle path paralleling it. Then the bike path detached itself and took off into the wilderness, who knows where; I know of no one who has taken that path who has ever returned. (Of course that sentence would still be accurate if the last four words were omitted.) Maybe it leads to a little house made of candy where a nice old woman has a fine oven to show off to plump children. I’m not sure our children quite believed that when I told them the story decades ago, though I could show them the book where it appeared. We had anticipated bad weather to clog the highway, so were early, and sneaked into the airport just before Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, the meanest of storms, caught on that we were out. Thus we were an hour and three quarters early for our flight, which was better than being late. I had magazines along, NEW SCIENTIST and LIBERAL OPINION WEEK, and a big fantasy novel to read for blurbing, Kushiel’s Chosen, by Jacqueline Carey, sequel to her excellent Kushiel’s Dart. I always bring along reading material so that the stupid mundane world can’t throw away gobs of my time for nothing. Had I but known…

Our bags were all within carryon tolerance, but our flight was UNTIED (whatever), notorious for arbitrarily changing size restrictions. Sure enough, the woman at the counter took one look at my wheeled suitcase and banned it, and we had to check it. And sure enough, as we boarded the plane, others were bringing similar and larger bags on with them. I suppose it depends which clerk you encounter, and how much air rage you evince. Having said that, I must also say that the baggage space over our seats was not filled before we got there by goblins who boarded out of turn, neither going nor returning. So I must grudgingly approve the airline’s policy of restricting carryon baggage. They had our vegetarian orders straight, going and returning, good meals, and the headphones for the movie were free. The movie was Delivering Milo, about a boy who doesn’t want to be born; it’s a heavenly problem persuading him, as he tours our rather imperfect planet and society. Fracto Cloud, having caught on that we were traveling, pursued, and surrounded Denver, forcing our flight to go around and come in late from the other side. Fortunately the connecting flight was similarly delayed, so we didn’t miss it; Fracto miscalculated on that. An hour late we resumed flight, and this time there was ample leg room. Of course we were on the rear seat next to the emergency exit, with a six foot deep space before us; still, it was nice. Being back there was interesting; we saw how they wheeled in the supplies through the rear side door as big metal cubes which then opened out into tiers of food, stacked adjacent to the toilet chamber. On occasion some fell on the floor, and was of course picked up; why waste good food? No, they didn’t put it in the same hopper; I think it was disposed of. The attendants worked constantly; it is obviously no sinecure. I happened to cough just as the stewardess got splashed by a falling drink; she thought I was laughing, and told me off. I kept my mouth shut; I did think it was funny. I was also amused by the words NO STEP on the wing; obviously ogres built that plane. Ogres get around.

In due course we arrived in Oregon, a state with towns like Bend, Burns, and Drain, more evidence of ogres, who describe things rather directly. Also Merlin, Murphy, Wonder, showing imagination, and a county named Morrow; those who travel to Morrow never get there to Day. We rented our car, a compact Pontific, and searched for our motel, which wasn’t there. After driving back and forth a while we pored over the map: it was just OFF the road, with no sign at the turn. But of course this is Mundania, where they don’t believe in signs or other magic. It was okay once we found it, and there was already a message from P: stay put, they were coming to Eugene in the morning anyway. Their friend C had just had heart surgery, and they would visit him in the hospital, and another day bring him home for care. So we met them for brunch at a health food restaurant, and met Granddaughter L, a cute baby at ten months age. L wasted no time charming folk at the restaurant, as she lives to explore the world. In the hospital waiting room P risked leaving L with us while she and son-in-law J went up to visit C. That became a little adventure, because the moment L saw them leave she headed on all fours for the elevator. I followed cautiously; L had known me only an hour or so, and I wasn’t sure just how much guff she would accept from me. Fortunately she got distracted by the scene, and curved around until she found an empty wheelchair with all manner of handholds on the wheels. She drew herself up to survey the situation, quickly charming the hospital personnel. The thing is, L is a home-birthed, breast-fed, attachment-parented baby who gets a lot of attention and sleeps with her parents. In my day the official baby books were against much of this; I seriously doubted those books’ wisdom, and discovered much that Dr. Spock evidently had never learned about babies. Our daughter picked up where we left off, and the result is a very large, active, healthy, and positive baby who will surely make waves of her own in due course. After using up the wheelchair she proceeded to the check-in desk. I gambled (a) that L would accept my help, and (b) that the folk of the desk would be receptive, and carefully lifted L to the top of the desk. It worked; baby and ladies were mutually intrigued. We were still charming folk when J returned and took her back. So my first session with L was a success; I had almost forgotten, in the course of 30 years, how much fun a baby can be. My wife, W, would get her turns later; for now she merely knitted in grandmotherly fashion, keeping an eye on the situation. That’s what grandmothers do.

Thereafter we let the family be and drove south through some truly lovely scenery to the West Bestern (or whatever) motel near the farm and checked in. Nice room, king size bed, table with two chairs, refrigerator, iron, coffeemaker, and very good Continental breakfast at the office. If we ever travel there again, we’ll stay at the same place. It’s at a truck stop, and that’s a separate sort of community tacitly isolated from through-traffic and the riff-raff, with its own mini-mall including grocery store and department store, and any services truckers might need, such as a phone bank, TV room, gaming machines, Laundromat, and public shower, 24 hours a day. That makes it pretty nice for other folk too; it seems that wedding parties come there. No sense getting married where you might get bored in the night. I made a mental note: the days when truck stops were dirty alleys seem to be gone; I’ll look for a truck stop next time I have to spend the night on the road, even if I’m not getting married. And the trucks were there in force, coming and going at all hours of the day, most of them 18 wheelers, but some 22 or even 26 wheelers, with three or four axles at the tail ends. Also tandems and triplets, legal in Oregon, and ones that resemble giant praying mantises. One truck even had a folded airplane on it. Huge beasties.

Then J, P, & L led us–the car tag says DOULA–to their farm. This is five acres set into a wooded hillside, the house hidden behind Douglas fir trees. They have goats, sheep, chickens, and two emus, which are big birds like ostriches, only less so. The sheep are special: Jacob sheep, with four or more horns. Two grow up, two down, and they are handsome beasts. I never thought much of sheep compared to goats; goats say “maaa” and are alert and smart, while sheep say “baaa” and just want to follow the leader. But the Jacob sheep is goat-like, having some independence of mind. Maybe the extra horns provide superior anchorage for the brain. It seems in nature emus prey on sheep and other animals; when they try to go after the lambs, the adults make use of those formidable horns to convey a message, and thereafter the emus are better mannered. So it’s not hard times in the country, down on Penny’s Farm, if you’re a sheep. J took me hiking up the steep back slope, though copious poison oak; we were both cautious about that. That five acres is surely somewhat more, if measured on the slant. The house has a porch overlooking the pasture, girt about with flowers; hummingbirds come to the hummingbird feeder, and for the first time I saw one perch instead of hovering. Then supper, with home-brewed ale J made; he’s a chemist, working for a private company that tests the public water supply, so he knows how to make good ale. L was indefatigable, interested in everything, curious about us old folk.

We returned to the motel and turned in at 9 PM, which was midnight Florida time. And of course woke up on home time: 4 AM for me, 7 AM home. I made notes, read, and pondered jet lag; at least I hadn’t awakened at 5 home time, this time. When we went to the farm, we learned that L had vomited four times in the night; maybe the cucumber? Because L is breast fed, P has to limit her own diet, as it passes through and can give the baby colic. So cucumbers were now off P’s diet. J was thinking of taking down several dead trees in the pasture, before they fell on an animal. He’s never used a chain saw, but I have had a good deal of experience, mainly from our decade using a wood stove, so it seemed to be a good time. I relayed what I had learned: go for the biggest, most powerful saw you can swing; it feels much lighter as it cuts through hard wood like seeming butter. But treat it like the dangerous implement it is; like a computer, it can do a lot of damage in a hurry if you mess up. He could rent one for a dollar an inch a day, for a bar anywhere from nine to 54 inches long. That’s dirt cheap compared to city rental. Meanwhile we all went to Eugene again, checking on C and delivering a goat kid to a buyer. We ate at a Saturday festival, then toured it. All manner of things on sale, all of the made or found by the seller: decorative items made from cans, clothing, wood carvings, jugs, mugs, jewelry, art tiles, sculpture, rings, earrings, necklaces, hats, “fresh picked rainbows” made of flowing silken threads, crockery, psychic readings, soap, purses, wallets, pictures, candles, skirts made from old neckties, ceramic piggy banks, colored stones, hemp yarn, honey, berries, garden produce, patterned “spinners” that were disks that flashed out patterns when spun–more, but my memory and notes fail me. We concluded the day back at the farm, discussing Project WomonCare, (the second O is a female symbol) that helps expectant mothers in a number of ways, such as providing midwives, doulas, and special services. P is a doula, one who helps a woman through her pregnancy; if you are pregnant and have no idea what’s going on, get a doula and relax. Then we returned to the motel.

And mischief. W set her handbag down on the bed and said “Where is the car key?” We checked; she had removed it from the car, but it wasn’t in her purse, or the ground, in the room, or anywhere. It had simply vanished in those few seconds between car and room. We analyzed and concluded that the key must have fallen from her purse when she reached to the back seat to retrieve her hat, and landed out of sight in a fluke accident. This was frustrating as anything; we were locked out, and our remaining luggage was in the car. So she called Aphid, the car rental agency, to see whether they had a duplicate key, and got a run-around, with connections not being made, numbers not answering. Aphid, easy to deal with before, did not seem to be trying harder now. Then next morning, Sunday, the motel director suggested a towing service; he knew one five minutes away. The man came, wedged the window to the side, shone a light down, and used a bent wire to hook open the door. Sure enough, under the driver’s seat was the key. We were back in business.

W wasn’t feeling well (can’t think why), so she skipped breakfast, but I had some, and finished off the goat’s milk they had given us. Then the farm contingent arrived, and we joined them in the van for a trip to the Pacific shore. I sat beside L, who slept in her backwards-facing car seat. And I started feeling low. I have not been carsick in maybe five decades, but it seemed I was working up to it now. That messed up my reading. Indeed, in due course I had to grab L’s plastic beach bucket and heave a bellyful of yellow goo into it. Then we stopped at a roadside rest stop with a privy, and I jetted a gutful of mudwater into it. That was more than carsickness! J did not feel good either, but I had the worst case of what may have touched all of us–remember L’s nocturnal heaves?–in varying degrees. It seemed like the 24 hour grippe, but for me that was merely the first stage; it was another day before I could eat significantly, and three more before I could do so without caution. For a while I lived on Gatorade, each sip swished in my mouth for a minute so that it would not hit my stomach cold and undiluted. Then yogurt. No more goat milk; I’m sure it was innocent, but it was the last thing I had taken before the illness, which cast a dark shadow on my taste for it, for all that I was raised on goat milk. I spent 24 hours in pajamas, mostly sleeping. In all I had seven sieges of vomiting, averaging seven heaves, each accompanied by more pure liquid diarrhea. The color gradually changed from yellow to orange to black with specks; in fact the final set of heaves and jets looked identical, make of that what you will. I was tempted to subtitle this section “49 Heaves.” I also suffered weakness, so that at one point I walked at the rate of maybe half a mile an hour, and chills and fevers, sometimes simultaneously: sweaty body, freezing feet. It rather blotted out the central part of our visit. At least, because the others had felt some of it too, they knew I wasn’t faking. Well, I hope they knew.

Aside from that, how was the visit? Good enough. Between emissions I saw the Pacific dunes, and I hope they forgive me for adding organic matter to their substance. The approach was scenic, as the road, river, and railroad tracks threaded their way between mountains. One eatery sign said ROAD KILL GRILL. Just as well I wasn’t hungry. There was light rain, and it was cool. Even in July, Oregon was running to lows of 50°F or below, highs in the 70’s or 80’s. We had brought jackets, which helped. When we returned to the motel I didn’t even read, which is one indication of illness. At one point W sat in the chair beside the bed, in her panties, her bare legs up on the bed toward me, and I wasn’t much interested in looking. That’s a phenomenal indication of illness. Monday she did laundry while I snoozed. By evening I recovered enough to watch some TV, where there was an interesting feature on demolishing city buildings without damaging adjacent structures. They sort of implode, and a cloud of dust rises to conceal the rubble. I felt like one of those buildings. In the night I had a long weird dream, concluding with my receipt of a package containing something for me to autograph. It turned out to be a Mickey Mouse plaque. “If they want me to sign Mickey, I’ll sign Mickey,” I said as I woke. That day as we drove to the farm we saw a deer on the road, unconcerned about moving off, and often there are geese settled by the side. Their nonchalant attitude says much about the care local drivers take. We met their friend C, now out of the hospital, and he and I compared notes. It seemed that we felt similar, physically, for rather different causes, each of us being weak and uncomfortable, but improving. His situation was complicated by his pain medication, which wasn’t quite right, but naturally there was a runaround about changing it so that there would not be bad side effects. I thought doctors were catching on to the need for proper pain management, but apparently the word has not filtered all the way to the field. Then the others went off while I remained alone on the farm, resuming my reading. In the afternoon C and I accompanied P to the garden to harvest vegetables for dinner; I wound up holding L, and it’s amazing how heavy 23 pounds of active baby can feel when a person is coming off an illness. Then we reviewed two volumes of birth and baby pictures; I can’t say I am accustomed to seeing my daughter and her daughter both naked, but as I have remarked elsewhere, I regarded myself as the most liberal member of my wider family before P came on the scene. She leaves me in the dust. I wonder whether L will in due course eclipse her similarly?

Wednesday was AwGhost 1th, a nice day, and I felt a bit better. We went to a restaurant for breakfast, and I was able to eat much of it. Then we joined L and company in the van, and I returned L’s beach bucket, which we had washed out. This day we drove to Roseburg. The River Umpqua followed us, and sometimes there were young trees growing out of the steep slopes at right angles to the ground, not the horizon. We stopped at Winchester Dam, which has a salmon fish bypass structured like a jigsaw puzzle; fortunately all the fish have to do to find their way is swim against the current. From the road the dam looked to be only about six feet high, but when we followed the 98 steps down to it, it grew to more like 15 feet. Dams do that. The steady sound of rushing water lent a feeling of power. There are windows in the bypass labyrinth, under the water, where we could admire the swirling liquid and the fish. One handsome two foot long brute turned out to be a Coho Silver Salmon. We learned that the rainbow trout is the same as the steelhead, but it doesn’t migrate. So if you meet a fish, and are in doubt, ask it whether it travels. There is an ongoing fish count, and the numbers are improving as environmental efforts reverse some of the damage done by our heedless forebears.

Then on to Roseburg, which spreads across the steepest slopes it can find, making me nervous about brakes. There are trees throughout, but the houses can be set so close together that one might lean out one window and kiss one’s friend’s girlfriend next door in another window. There are little STOP plaques in the centers of intersections. Elsewhere signs let you turn right without stopping at stop signs, which is convenient. We stopped in at WomonCare, where P works when she can, and of course L charmed the ladies. She was one of the biggest babies on their chart. P is a bit militant about those who claim that vegetarians or breast feeders can’t have big healthy babies; it is obviously untrue. She is not alone; a bumper sticker on a car in their lot said DO NOT MEDDLE IN THE AFFAIRS OF DRAGONS, FOR YOU ARE CRUNCHY AND GOOD WITH KETCHUP.

Back at the farm, we played the video adaptation we had made of our old movie film of P at L’s present age, just as she started walking. P had a fancy head of blonding curls. “Our baby had more hair than yours does,” I teased P. She didn’t reply; could she have been jealous? Actually L’s hair is nice enough, just not as long. Surprising how much younger the peripheral characters looked then, such as W and me. I was sorry we weren’t able to get the chain saw and take down those big dead trees, but the illness blotted that out along with the fancier meals. Many pictures of the three generations were taken, L generally at center stage. Then it was time for us to go; sorrow is such sweet parting. It seems to have been a good visit despite the illness, and we did get to know L.

The journey home was uneventful, and we made it by 6 PM, 3 PM Oregon time, to be welcomed by Obsidian Dog. Florida was a steam bath, Tropical Storm Barry was dawdling in the Gulf, mosquitoes hovered in clouds, and rain threatened. There was a pile of 8 days’ newspapers to catch up on, plus a week’s worth of snail mail. I downloaded 165 HiPiers emails, and 35 more by the time I caught up on those, and learned that premiere science fiction writer Poul Anderson had died at the turn of the month. I knew him personally, and liked him, and thought he was a great writer, and loved his novel Unman and another about super intelligence; this was unkind news. There were piles of statements from publishers to check in and run through our accounts, complicated contracts to review and sign, and 120 folios of Realty Check to autograph yesterday. I had made it through only 130 of 580 pages in Cushiel, my reading having been slowed by the illness, and now there was a new nigh five pound manuscript also demanding reading for blurbing. My exercise dumbbells had gained weight, my bows had become about 5 pounds harder to pull, and the drive had gotten longer for my running. I phoned the shop, and learned that my Linux computer system, taken there nine days before so that it could be fixed during my absence, had not yet been started on. Thus this trip report had to be done on my old Windows system, grrr. I was coming up on my 67th birthday, to be followed in two days by $4000 worth of dental surgery. Welcome to Mundania!

I hear from some readers that their eyes sort of glaze over when I talk about my ongoing computer experience. Okay, you folk, glaze on to the next paragraph, when maybe I’ll say something undull. I completed my children’s novel Tortoise Reform on Linux with StarOffice Writer, finally getting up to my normal writing velocity of 3,000 words a day. Then I started in on Xanth #27, Cube Route , and moved at speed on that. So Linux is working for me. I continue to discover handy spot features, like how to bookmark directories, and that facilitates my writing. I am in touch with a couple of Linux geeks who are clueing me in on what is available to further improve the situation, such as a Windows-emulator within Linux that may enable me to print at speed without leaving Linux. Why the hell Linux doesn’t let a printer print properly I don’t know; I had enough of that user-be-damned attitude from Macrohard. But maybe that will improve. So my verdict remains that Linux has potential, but those who are serious about their business should not get into Linux yet, because there is still too much hassle.

We got what I think of as a toilet seat cushion. That is, it is shaped like half a bagel, the idea being that it is less fatiguing to sit if the center lacks support. So far I haven’t found that it makes a lot of difference. Which reminds me: I saw a printed ad showing a bottom. It turned out to be for a new kind of toilet paper, a pre-moistened wipe. I might try it; one of my pet peeves is toilet paper that falls apart while being used. (I picture someone dashing from the privy to shake hands with you thereafter; O joy.) Then I saw ads on TV, showing one tight posterior after another, evidently the same product. TV restrictions must be loosening further, which I think is a good thing. I remember years ago watching part of a Miss America or Universe pageant, discovering just how dull they can make pretty girls be, and saw that in the bathing suit section they would not show the rear view. When a girl turned around, a blob of dark color formed at her butt, as if she were farting, and expanded to cover her posterior so that the TV audience could not see it. I’m not sure whether girls are not supposed to have buttocks, or that particular anatomy is considered too dirty for the delicate shell-pink eyes of the TV audience, or a fully shaped bottom is just too sexy for a family show. The fact of the matter is that if a man spies a woman in nature, he looks at her face, breasts, or rear, depending on which way she is facing, and judges her appeal by their quality. That’s why there’s such a market for face lifts, breast implants, and liposuction. So the anti-sex censors do their best to conceal those attributes, the process reaching its extreme in countries like Afghanistan where women are not allowed to show anything. I wonder what those censors think of American TV?

Which leads to the news of the hour, the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings. I have reference to it in my “Adventures in Surrealism” talk, which is appended to this column. I was about to head off to start my day’s work at 9AM when my wife said there was smoke at the World Trade Center, and I paused to watch, as I suspect millions of others did. I thought maybe there had been a short circuit that ignited curtains, and they had opened windows to let the smoke out, which is generally a stupid thing to do as it just lets in more air to feed the flames. Then an airplane slammed into the second tower, and we realized that this was no fluke accident; this was deliberate. Thereafter its just got worse; I had never dreamed that a skyscraper could be brought down by a fire in its upper section. Thus the terrorists’ effort succeeded probably beyond their wildest dreams, first making giant smokestacks of the buildings, then turning them to rubble right there on camera. It was appalling. I can’t say I liked the Arabs dancing in the street for joy that thousands of innocent people had been brutally killed, though I understand that was mostly an artifact of irresponsible media: they showed dancing from an earlier occasion and pretended it was current. It seems that the suicide-bombers believed they would find themselves in heaven, surrounded by virgins. I think it would be fitting if those virgins turn out to be real dolls: no access, if you get my drift, so that they will remain virginal forever. Maybe clothed in impenetrable burqas. Neither did I like the way fundamentalist Christian religious leaders tried to blame it on gays, lesbians, feminists, and the defenders of civil rights, applying all their pet hates to it, saying it was God’s punishment. Okay, here is this liberal agnostic’s answer. Listen, you jerks: if God set out to punish folk that way, the first ones he’d go after would be bigots like you, for taking his name in vain. Those bombings were done by your ideological cousins, the religious zealots. Jesus Christ preached tolerance and love, yea, even for prostitutes. You dirty his name, and should be ashamed.

Meanwhile I received an ad for THE AMERICAN SENTINEL, which strikes me as a rightist rag. It says that liberal elitists are steering America straight into the maw of a race war; that white liberals and their fellow travelers in the media, like ABC, CBS, and NBC, are responsible for it. It even criticizes Rush Limbaugh for being too timid in exposing this. (Maybe Rush is turning a deaf ear?) Talk of tunnel vision! What the hell does it think the rightists are doing? Preaching tolerance and love?

So what is my take on it? That rich successful America is the envy of the rest of the world, and that those who lack our benefits hate us for them and want to destroy us. So they use any means to do it, and finally found an effective one. You almost have to admire the terrible beauty of hijacking American planes to destroy American buildings. But just as a rat that chomps the tail of a tiger will soon wish he hadn’t, and all rats will suffer, so will the perpetrators of this disaster come to regret it. That doesn’t excuse our carelessness in letting it happen; there have been warnings. A quarter century ago my collaborator Roberto Fuentes and I tried to warn of the threat of terrorism in our book Bio of a Terrorist, but we couldn’t even find a publisher for it. (But an excerpt is in the third martial arts volume, just now being processed at Xlibris, so soon any readers who are interested can catch up on all those collaborations, Jason Striker and stories.) The nation of Israel faces terrorism on a daily basis; did we really think America was immune? So yes, Osama bin Laden needs to be routed out, and perhaps some good will come of this when the Taliban’s power is destroyed and the women of Afghanistan are freed from that tyranny, but it will be like cutting off the head of a hydra: many more will grow in its place. So this will indeed be a long war, and perhaps it will never really end. We have not started well, with a new administration that seemed systematically to alienate the rest of the world with a series of arrogant moves, while dissipating whatever budgetary surplus there may have been, so that now our friends are wary of us and our resources are diminished right when we need both most. We have a country where the bosses make five hundred times as much money as the lowest paid workers of their companies, and the disparity becomes more extreme when the exploitative nature of international trade is considered. I think of the French Revolution, when the peasants finally rose up and slaughtered the royal rulers, and fear that we could be heading for something similar. Spot acts of terrorism may be only the beginning. Not that I like such revolution; I think of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “France: an Ode”: “The Sensual and the dark rebel in vain,/ Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game/ They burst their manacles and wear the name/ Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain!”

The bombings were followed by a more local phenomenon: Tropical Storm Gabrielle formed in the Gulf of Mexico and crossed central Florida, dumping over seven and a half inches of rain on our tree farm and bringing a number of pine trees down across our long drive. The preceding drought had killed them, and the storm felled them. So I was out chopping and prying and shoving, clearing the drive so my wife could drive into town. But we did need the rain.

Now for a five thousand year old scandal: remember Otzi, the Ice Man? He was a character in my historical novel Hope of Earth, where his daughter married one of my characters. He decoyed raiders up the mountain so that his daughter could escape, and was never seen again until a glacier released him in modern times. I had thought he escaped the raiders but succumbed to fatigue and cold. Not so, it turns out; it seems he was murdered. They found a flint arrowhead in his left shoulder. So he didn’t escape; they shot him down and left him there. At least the mystery of how he died has been resolved. I’m sorry for his daughter, though; she took his disappearance hard.

I get sentimental about odd things. When we had this house built, we got some turf put around it, so we have a small lawn amidst the forest. Parts of it have not done well, finding either too much or too little sunlight, while some of the cast-off fragments managed to take root elsewhere and prosper. Okay, we let it spread, and now our best lawn is where it chose to be. There may be a lesson of life there. But it tends to encroach on the drive, where it gets run over. So finally I took a square foot of turf from the drive and moved it to a spot where we could use some more grass. I watered it and watched over it, and now it is expanding outward. Is it any better than the rest of the turf? Surely not, but I value it because I moved it. It is myturf.

Robert Rimmer died. He was the author of The Harrad Experiment, which was a bestseller and made into a movie, presaging coed dorms in real life, and of my favorite The Rebellion of Yale Marratt. When I mentioned that latter in an interview, Bob Rimmer got in touch with me, and we exchanged books. His latest was The Love-Ed Solution, self published by iUniverse, which I said I’d order and read. But I have never done any monetary business on the Internet, and was wary, so didn’t get around to it for much of a year. Then my daughter, who is more at home online–it’s that generational difference–ordered it for me. So finally I had it–just in time for his demise. Sigh. So I read it, and have some comment here. The volume is 492 pages, but the last 50 pages are supplementary and bibliographic material. It is a nicely published edition, with a sexy and relevant cover, showing bare boys (rear view) and girls in bikini panties, nicely breasted. It is told in the form of journal entries by a number of characters, and really, there isn’t much story, just exploration of the Rimmer thesis of free sex as the salvation of modern society. Rimmer lived a partner-swapping life with another couple, and ceaselessly advocated that or corporate marriage in his books. I regard him as a one-string banjo; he is very good on that string, but you don’t get a lot of variety. So if you like the idea of coed dormitories where boys and girls do have sex, this is it. The girls are as eager as the boys, all are attractive, none are possessive or jealous; the idea is that free sex defuses human tensions and bigotries and frees young minds for more imaginative studies, their creative talents unleashed. Eliminate society’s hang-ups about sex, and near-genius can emerge. It’s a nice notion, but I suspect it wouldn’t work as well as he thinks; the dark side of the human nature is always there. There are some nice coed, nude basketball and baseball games, where male must guard female and vice versa, and a girl doesn’t hesitate to block with plush bare bottom to the crotch, distracting the men long enough for the girl to get the ball. Classic terms are used for sex scenes, like the jade stem and jade gate, but there is no doubt about what is entering what. Apart from that, the book is a wide ranging essay on economics, politics, movie making, religion, taxation, whatever; as I said, Rimmer is good at what he does. I recommend this as the thinking person’s sex novel. Why conventional publishers wouldn’t touch it I don’t know; I guess they thought it wouldn’t sell enough copies.

As I let the world know, I don’t much like the way conventional publishers treat writers, so I support Internet publishing and self publishing. But just as my ideologically motivated change from Macrohard to Linux was more trouble that it would be worth for anyone not strongly motivated, the business of self publishing has its hassles. I had 9 books at Xlibris; I am now in the process of adding 7 more, in four volumes. That is, the six book collaborative martial arts series is being done in three volumes, for novels 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6. The 6th is actually half an unpublished novel plus stories and parts of other collaborative projects. It took time to assemble this material, because the papers went back a quarter century and were scattered, and I needed to coordinate with my ailing collaborator Roberto Fuentes. The worst case was my solo novel Mute, because the published edition of 1981 was cut by 20,000 words, and to restore it we had to work from the fuzzy original carbon copy of the manuscript. My wife scanned it, and said it was a horror, because the scanner made endless wild guesses about words that the human eye had no trouble with. So she edited it, correcting it, then turned over the disk to me, and I edited it, and now it is just over 190,000 words with an Author’s Note I ran in a prior HiPiers column. The yellowing copies of the 1970’s martial arts novels were not joys to scan either, and the 6th volume required the assembly of material that ranged from neatly typed, to yellow carbon sheets, to penciled notes. So a good deal of time went into this collection of retreads. When we finally had them ready I checked with Xlibris. NOW UNDERSTAND, my wife and I own about ten per cent of Xlibris, but I make it a point to get down in the trenches and discover its reality from the underside, so I can make a relevant report from the viewpoint of a writer. Also, ogres are not known for their intelligence. Thus I am not the easiest client to deal with, as I suspect more than one of their personnel has muttered. My prior contact person was no longer with the company, so I checked with his replacement, and learned that she was no longer there. I did get some help from the man who guided me through the royalty reports on my prior novels, another hassle. They now report and pay online, a problem for those of us who do not do monetary business online, and their reports are confusing and not printer friendly. To get relevant figures you have to go to the end of the presented statements and click, and a whole new array appears, and then you have to click the PRINTER FRIENDLY button so you can print it. Were I not an Xlibris investor, I would suspect that the company was trying to hide the figures. I mean, why not have the relevant figures on first, and have them already printer-friendly? I think they are constantly trying to improve, refine, and clarify their statements, and are suffering the confusions that relate to new work. What seems great to an accountant or programmer may be hopelessly obscure to a real person. Xlibris is honestly run, and its aggravations are unintentional. Anyway, when I contacted the company with preliminary questions on my new batch of books, I learned that it now has a size limit, and all my projected volumes were over it. Did I have to take them to the competition? I inquired with just the hint of a bit of an edge. I can see the headline: XLIBRIS BOUNCES BOOKS BY BOARD MEMBER, WHO FLEES TO COMPETITION. No, no, the accounts man said quickly; my 190,000 word novel was 10,000 words over their limit, but they could reduce the font size half a point and make it fit. I had wanted to do the martial arts books in two volumes of three each, but I compromised, putting two to a volume, and that brought them within size tolerance. But the literature also said the files should be MS Word, but no True Type allowed. Listen (idiot!), MS Word is mostly True Type. (The exclamation in parentheses was implied, not actually delivered.) The accounts man said to ignore that stricture and send the stuff in. So I did, and they seemed to have no trouble with it. So my advice to new writers coming to Xlibris is that your initial contact person may not give you accurate information; if what you are told doesn’t make sense, ask another person. So I sent in a CD disk with the 7 books in 4 files, True Type, and payment for for volumes in the “advanced” program. (The titles of their programs seem to be changing without notice; this was the second from the bottom of their four levels, $500 per book.) Within a month came two galleys as attachments to email: Mute and Volume I. I waited a few days, but nothing more came, so I queried: my cover letter said, 4, and 4 were on the disk, and I sent in 4 forms, and I paid for 4: did something get lost? Came the immediate reply, no they were in the works, and the two remaining volumes were attached. Moral: keep an eye on it, lest something slip through a crack. Now I didn’t take the time to read over half a million words again, I just paged through the galleys and sampled the text, after figuring out how to get them on screen. The instructions said to right click, but it didn’t work, so I tried left click, and it worked: that sort of thing. I do get the impression that some folk don’t actually try the buttons they recommend, but it is possible that my system is as perverse as I am, and does things differently. I did find some errors, here and there a typo of mine faithfully transcribed, but also Xlibris-introduced problems. For example, Volumes II and IV had the same identification number at the foot of every page. If they tried to print from those, one volume would be superimposed on the other. Some of my bold text wasn’t in bold, and some regular text was in italics. Sometimes extraneous material appeared in the middle of a page. My wife is nervous: if I caught that just paging through, what might I catch if I actually read it? But that’s why I randomly sampled, like a biopsy: if that section is okay, probably the rest is. So if there are horrendous errors in the published volumes, sigh, I should have proofread. They have forms on which to list the corrections; you can’t mark the galleys directly. This doesn’t work perfectly for multiple books; the forms are identical, and apparently one was superimposed on another, so we had only one form for the first two books. The fourth book didn’t come with a form, so we unzipped it again, and the program balked: it was not possible. So we had to copy a form from one of the others. Thereafter we put a separate title on each form, so they couldn’t disappear. The form says to put the book’s identification number prominently on the form–but there is no place to put it. Why, I inquired in that dull ogre tone, don’t they put a blank for it: FILL IN YOUR (DAMNED) MANUSCRIPT NUMBER HERE? I haven’t received a response. Maybe it was too stupid a question to deserve an answer. The forms were balky, and often refused to accept the required page numbers for corrections; I had to try two or three times, and then it would jam in an extra line, which I would have to delete. So they need to get some real people into the Xlibris office to use those forms, and then maybe they’ll make them user friendly. But the process is like a computer program: once you have struggled with it long enough to learn its booby traps, it becomes tolerable. Of course I know that next time I have novels to process, they will have changed everything, and I’ll have to start from square one with new procedures and new misinformation. At least the novels are in the pipeline, and should be available at Xlibris in due course. So now my total there will be 16 books in 13 volumes, on the way to 50 as I gain on my out-of-print backlog. Well, 15 maybe, because I withdrew Realty Check, which now has small press traditional publication. And my advice to writers is to maybe try it with one book at a time, and pay attention, because not all the powers that be at Xlibris are.

Which is not to say that I like traditional publishers better. I received contracts for 5 more Xanths, #27-31, and bounced them because the publisher had “forgotten” to include the license. A license means that in time I can recover the rights to my work even if it remains in print, as Xanth does. So those contracts are being reworked, and we’ll see. Meanwhile no publisher has expressed interest in my wild fantasy ChroMagic series, or the 6th Space Tyrant novel The Iron Maiden, or my World War Two novel Volk, or my children’s book Tortoise Reform. But that last is only now being marketed; I wrote it because two editors said I should do a children’s book or series, so I did it. In my experience, the thing an editor is most likely to bounce is what he asked for, and this has bounced once, but its marketing history is still young. Some readers are amazed when they learn that my work still gets bounced, as they want to read it. The fact is, about all publishers want from me is Xanth; if they get it, they want nothing else, and if they don’t get it, they want nothing else. So they won’t even read most other projects. And you thought that publishers cared about what readers might want? No, they have tunnel vision, and there is no light in their tunnels. I’m giving my agent time to market the various novels, and if they don’t make it, then I’ll start putting new ones on at Xlibris or one of the online publishers. Which is of course the point of my support of both online and self publishing: they uncork the creative bottle, and undercut the restrictive oligarchy that is traditional publishing. There is a revolution in the making. Now anyone can get published, if not widely. The real money and power remain in the hands of the old line physical-print publishers, and that establishment will not rapidly be overthrown, but the process is starting.

I received an email from Karen Wiesner: would I like a review copy of her book ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 2002 edition? I said okay, but warned her that she risked another public lecturing if she didn’t distinguish between vanity publishing and assisted self publishing. I had found the prior edition to be excellent, with the single huge caveat that she refused to list self-publishing facilities like Xlibris or iUniverse, and thus excluded what may be the most relevant aspect of online publishing. She does now distinguish them, but still refuses to list the self publishers, so she gets the lecture anyway. You see, a regular online publisher may publish five books a month–it varies widely–and sell ten or fifty copies of a given book. That’s fine; this is the infancy of the medium, not its maturity. I don’t know the figures for other self publishers, but Xlibris has published as many as 500 books in a month, and sells an average of 100 copies per book. Regular Internet publishers may invest five to fifty thousand dollars setting up their establishments; Xlibris invested more than ten million dollars. I assume other “selfs” have similar statistics. Regular online publishers seem to average one acceptance for every ten to fifty submissions. That suggests that if only one per cent of writers ever get published traditionally, the regular Internet publishers may (or may not) be ten times as good: ten per cent. What about the other ninety per cent? They come to Xlibris and similar; it’s the court of last resort. So it may be that the self publishers are already dominating Internet publishing in terms of financial commitment and number of authors and copies sold, and to leave them out means that the needs of ninety per cent of writers are being ignored. So ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING (EP) is an excellent reference, as I say in my entry on it in the Services section of my ongoing Internet Publishing survey, and I do recommend it to anyone interested in publishing a book; the general advice is good, there is a listing of publishers that includes many I haven’t yet caught up with, and there’s a huge section on marketing that is amazing in its imagination. If you’re serious about Internet publishing, check this book. But also check my survey, for what EP should include but doesn’t, such as the self publishers and the names of publishers to avoid. The author knows there are bad ones, so she doesn’t list them, but that’s not enough; how does a newcomer know whether an unlisted publisher is bad or merely too new to have made the cut? Let me make one other point, about that 90% of writers: chances are that they don’t make it because they simply aren’t sharp enough as writers. But every writer is below standard when he starts; it takes time to get there, as it does for anything else. He needs the experience of writing, marketing, and getting feedback from readers so he can improve. The regular publishers are interested in quality, not a writer’s learning experience, and who can blame them? They need to have appreciative readers, or they’ll lose their business. But that puts the beginning writer, or the one who learns slowly, in a tough position: he can’t get the experience he needs until he is good enough not to need it. That’s why it took me eight years of serious writing and marketing to make my first story sale, and twelve to sell my first novel. Publishers treated me with the arrogant disdain reserved for the riffraff, and critics still do. Only dogged persistence and some eventual breaks got me there. Should every writer have to go through that? I don’t think so. Especially since ninety per cent will never get there. Yet when you cut a ninety per cent writer, does he not bleed? Hasn’t his heart and soul gone into his book as much as that of a ten percenter? What about the family historian, or the person who has special thoughts he would like to share before he dies, or a collection of cute tales for his children? Must he be denied because some editor doesn’t think such a book would sell enough copies to make money for the publisher? Internet publishers are as bad in this respect as traditional print publishers; they have to be. This is where the self publishers are vital: they don’t demand sales appeal or quality as defined by an editor, only a manuscript and a nominal payment. EP excludes any outfit that charges the author, as if money is an evil, when in fact all publishers are in the end governed by money; they don’t charge the author up-front, they do it by take-it-or-leave-it contracts that can defraud the author of most of the compensation for his work. In fact a number of the Internet publishers have gone out of business without paying their authors anything, leaving the books’ rights entangled. How good a deal is that for the writer, compared to self publishing? The selfs do pay royalties, and books that sell well earn back their fees and can make money for the authors. Remember, I am not talking about the vanity or subsidy (which term reminds me of soap bubbles: they pop, leaving nothing) publishers, which charge huge fees for little performance; I’m talking about self publishing facilities, that charge as little a $100 or as much as a couple thousand dollars, depending on services desired. So let’s not condemn those few who are honest about costs, while promoting those who hide the costs; the situation is more complicated than that. Xlibris, for one, takes no rights, so any writer there who finds a good offer elsewhere can take it without even telling Xlibris; he has full control in a way he does not with any regular publisher. In that sense, self publishing can be superior to regular publishing. Is it worth $200 to put your book out there while retaining control, just in case a major opportunity opens up later? The point of self publishing is not quality, though editors are notorious for their biases and mistakes; it is about giving everyone a chance, rather than just the ten per cent elite. The quality is bound to be low–but I believe that out of this morass will in time come tomorrow’s great authors. Because the self publishers give them the chance the regular publishers, both traditional and Internet, do not. When EP finally recognizes this–maybe in a subsequent edition?–it will be a book that truly serves its market, rather than just ten per cent of it.

Last time I mentioned the Nigerian scam, in which an official asks you to provide your bank account information so he can deposit anywhere from twelve to a hundred and fifty million dollars there, and he’ll give you as much as a third of it. If you receive such a solicitation, don’t respond; you won’t get the money, and you could even lose your life. They try to get you to go to Nigeria to complete the transaction, then hold you for ransom. The scam has been going on for more than four years. We have been faithfully nonresponding, but they keep coming in; the count now stands at 24 and counting. Three are duplicates and three relate to the same person, Dr. Mrs. Miram Amacha, widow of General Abacha who died while head of state, but still, it shows the nature of this thing. Consider: the email of 8-14-2001 was from the woman’s medical doctor and confidante, and offered 30% of $75 million. The one for 9-25 was from the lady herself, offering not a specific percentage, but “immense compensation” to be worked out with her lawyer. The one for 9-29 is from Mrs. Abacha again, offering 30% of $50 million. So the figures vary even from the same person. Of the other offers, the smallest is 10% of $14 million, and the largest is 35% of $152 million. One is a straight solicitation for money.

Another that has to be a scam is home grown: it says that Intel and AOL are considering a merger, and Microsoft for a beta test will pay each person who forwards this email $203.15, and more if those others forward it too. The email is mostly about how others have tried it and been paid. This is the formula for a good luck chain letter: forward it and you win a lottery, don’t forward it and your dog dies; it has been around the world seven times and has existed since the pyramids, etc., and a number of specific examples of good and ill luck following handling of the letter that of course could not have been in the original letter. Or the one that tells you to mail a dollar to the top name on the list, and in a few day’s you’ll receive thousands of dollars in the mail. They are all variants of the pyramid scheme, which assumes that there’s always a greater fool beyond and that there is no limit, in defiance of reality. Ask yourself: when has any huge corporation cared what the peons think about it? When has it ever paid out instead of taking in? What’s to stop every peon from emailing out a million copies and claiming two hundred and three million dollars? Just how big a fool are you?

Enough of foolishness. I read a newspaper report that in Copenhagen, Denmark, a nursing home for old folk shows them pornographic movies and magazines and will even bring in prostitutes. It’s cheaper, healthier, and easier to use than other types of medication. They don’t feel that folk should be denied sex just because they are old. Wow! Why don’t they do that in America?

I said that if any of the authors of the poems that were cut in How Precious Was That Whilewished, I’d run their full poems here. Here, by such request, is one:

I copied that from my original Precious file. I think it is much better whole, and I’m sorry I had to excerpt it in the book. Maybe I can get it restored for the paperback edition, when, now that I have current, legal, permission. Meanwhile, the author has a Web site, so anyone who wants to get in touch can find her at www.geocities.com/mandine728. One interesting thing is that the author did not send me the poem; her twin sister Abby did. I suspect she was just as much affected by their separation as Mandy. Later I met them both, and yes, I could not tell them apart.

In my panel discussion last time I mentioned that science fiction had not predicted the Internet. Erin Schram wrote to correct me: a story titled “A Logic Named Joe” by Murray Leinster published in 1946 described a future network of information and communication called the tank. All you had to do was punch in what you wanted to know, and it would have the answer. You could ask for your friend’s station and be connected. It could also do math for you, or keep books, and act as a consulting chemist, physicist, astronomer, with lovelorn advice thrown in. That does sound like the Internet.

I get notes of appreciation for my ongoing survey of Internet publishing; aspiring writers do find it useful. Some publishers notify me of their existence, and I check their sites and add them. I try to be fair and relevant. It remains an informal and hardly definitive listing. I don’t recommend one publisher over another because I’d have to do business with every one of them to truly know them; I just say what looks good and what doesn’t. I am not an expert on the subject, just an ornery writer with considerable experience in dealing with conventional publishers, and some with online outfits. My main asset, as I see it, is that experience and the fact that I don’t need any of these publishers, so can’t be cowed into silence if I see something objectionable. Even so, there can be unpleasantness. I received a query from a man whose several-page email consisted mainly of published reviews of his poetry and an interview. He mentioned that his work had similar components to the work of William Faulkner. Did I know any guide for someone whose work was as serious and intense as his? I refrained from saying what I think of Faulkner, or whether a writer today should try emulate him, and addressed what I took to be his question: “I am no expert on poetry, though I believe there is not much of a paying market for it in America. I am not sure whether any of the Internet publishers listed in my survey at Hipiers.com will do for you; you’ll have to check them for yourself.” This went out under the usual HiPiers statement: “Thank you for your note. We have printed and forwarded it to Piers Anthony, and he gave us the following answer for you:” When you have to read 300 emails a month in addition to regular correspondence and writing a novel on a schedule, you try to be efficient, and I do. So that was a penciled note, not counting as a letter. Came the response: he thought whoever had looked at his email had done so in a cursory way. It wasn’t poetry he had asked about, but his new novel. The rest of the email was a repeat of some of the review material he had sent before. This began to annoy me; I don’t like giving personal attention to such obviously impersonal mailings. This time I replied, with a deliberately firmer tone: “Yours was one of 200 emails I had to move through on my return from a week from home. What you showed was comment on your poetry, with only incidental mention of your novels. You gave no evidence of knowing who I am or what I do for a living, and if you are not interested in checking the listing I suggested, I doubt I can help you.” The thing is, you don’t ask a bricklayer about a heart condition; I like to think that those who ask my advice do so because they know something of me and respect my opinion. This guy seemed to neither know nor respect; he was treating me like a hired flunky. Came the next response: he thought that basic decency would have caused me to give his correspondence a moment of thought. He did not believe that my staff had printed out his letter and given it to me; in fact he found the idea quite ridiculous. He thought maybe my ego wasn’t exactly aligned with reality; the thing was just too ludicrous. He’d look for publishers on his own. The rest of his three page email consisted of yet more review material. Well, I think he’ll have to get there on his own, with an attitude like that, which, perhaps not coincidentally, does parallel Faulkner’s, except that Faulker had no interest in reviews. This time I did not answer.

On the other hand, I got a query from a person writing a paper about Total Recall, wondering why I got no credit for the book in the movie. I did a full letter in response–and it bounced. NOT ACCEPTING MAIL FROM THIS SENDER. Gee, thanks for wasting my time. But for the rest of you: this was a novelization, written from the movie script, rather than an original novel. So they didn’t owe me credit.

I received a six page flyer from the Center for Inquiry: Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? Three day conference in Atlanta, $149. Thanks, no thanks; I already know they are compatible only if practiced by moderates, not extremists. I have already commented in this column on the actions and words of extremists. Perhaps coincidentally, I received a SPAM ad for BODYGUARD SERVICES INTERNATIONAL. I think I’ll pass that one up, too.

I was asked to give a talk at Central Florida Community College on the subject of Surrealism. Attendance was free; this was an educational or public service event. That means a small audience. I don’t like to travel, but this was in-county, so I agreed. The problem was to address the subject without boring my audience, many of whose members might come simply to see a successful writer, regardless of the subject. So I said something about myself and my work, then moved into the surrealistic frontiers as I see them, hoping that my sense of wonder about them would inspire others, then returned to a bit more about my writings, hoping that compromise sufficed. They had two musicians playing for the first half hour, and refreshments. There were about 50 people, some coming late and some leaving early. After the talk I fielded questions, and there were several about aspects of my fiction, none about surrealism. Ah well, I tried. Here is the text of the talk, which I paraphrased extemporaneously for the most part; it’s easier to relate to an audience when you’re focusing on it rather than reading a text.

First, let’s check the dictionary definition of the term: to be surreal is to have the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; something unreal, fantastic, bizarre. The word “surrealism” was coined in 1917 from super-realism, then taken over by artistic or literary movements, stressing subconscious or irrational aspects, exploitation of chance effects, and the creation of mysterious symbols. I will not be addressing art or literature here; you will get that with subsequent speakers in this series. That may surprise you, since I make my living in the arts. I am known as a fantasy writer. Actually I have written and published more than that: science fiction, martial arts, historical, autobiographical. I am interested in just about everything. It is true that the fantastic interests me, but so does reality, and I make it a point to know the difference between them. And I think that reality can sometimes stretch the mind. It can become surreal.

Consider the last American presidential election, hung up for more than a month because of the contested Florida tally, concluding with a selection by the Supreme Court. That was surreal to me. Consider the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center. First the smoke about one building, making it resemble a giant smokestack. Then the airplane crashing into the other building, making a ball of flame. Then we knew it was not a fluke, an accident, but deliberate. Then one building collapsing, disintegrating from the top down. Then the other, and seeing people on the street fleeing, with a monstrous cloud of dust like the eruption of a volcano roiling between the buildings and closing on them. Later came other pictures, such as one of the side of one of the buildings, with four people in the air, on their way down; they had jumped rather than be burned to death. I understand that there was a couple who jumped together, a man and a woman, holding hands as they fell. That’s tenderly painful. Yet this was not a monster movie; it was real. In fact it was surreal.

So I’ll tell you about the fantastic fiction I write, but also about the ways that the exploration of the nature of mankind and the universe become surreal. I’m not thinking of the artistic mode of surrealism, which is not something I really understand, but of aspects of reality that can stretch the mind and seem unearthly.

My main fantasy setting is the Land of Xanth, which looks just like Florida, only with magic and puns. Xanth is largely made of puns. Babies aren’t born there, they are delivered by the stork, and the method of signaling the stork for a delivery is a major part of the Adult Conspiracy to Keep Interesting Things from Children. The place names are recognizable but more literal: there’s big Lake Ogre Chobee in the south, and on the northern border is the Ogre fen Ogre Swamp. You see, the ogres travel between them. Ogres are special creatures; they are justifiably proud of their stupidity. There’s a story behind that: at the outset of my career I was accused of being an ogre at conventions, when I had never even been to a convention. Later when I did attend conventions, I never acted like an ogre, but that and other stories persisted, especially as I became more successful. So I made an ogre the hero of a novel, titled Ogre, Ogre, and that became my first national bestseller. So now I’m known in the genre as the Ogre, and it’s no insult; ogres aren’t so bad when you get to know them. In the land of Xanth you can always tell when you enter ogre country: the trunks of trees have been twisted into pretzel shapes, and young dragons have learned fear. There’s a story of the time when a horde of goblins attacked an ogre. Some goblins got their heads rammed through knotholes in trees, others wound up in orbit around the moon, and the rest weren’t so fortunate. You know, I tend to think of critics as goblins. I was once asked what I would take with me to a desert island–what books, what things, and so on. It was specified that I also had to take something of no use whatsoever. I said “A critic.” In Xanth they are obnoxious little bugs that find fault with everything. Cri-ticks, related to the bugs you pick off your dog. But in dreary Mundania, which is this realm, the only way to handle a cri-tick is to ignore it no matter how much it sucks. Anyway, I was discussing geography: closer in, there is the With-a-Cookee river, by whose banks many kinds of cookies grow, and Lake Tsoda Popka, with many flavors of tsoda. There is the Crystal River, which of course consists of tumbling crystals. And on the other side of Xanth is Lake Wails– W A I L S–where the wailing monster runs across the water leaving little footprints on the surface. These are the prints of wails. There is the very friendly Kiss Mee River; then the Demon Corps of Engineers came and pulled it straight, so that the nicely curved S’s became straight L’s and it was the Kill Mee River, ruining the surrounding area. Finally they had to put the curves back in, restoring it. I wonder whether anything like that could happen in Florida? Most places have related stories, but I trust you get the idea: Xanth is not to be taken very seriously. I even use the Xanth Ogre Months in my correspondence; this is OctOgre 4.

So what does this have to do with surrealism? Well, apart from being fantastic, there is a certain serious relevance of this wild frivolous fantasy. First it is true that man does not live by bread alone, or by serious labor alone; he needs a break on occasion, and Xanth is one such break. It tends to transport the reader into its own realm, like a pleasant dream–and of course there are night mares that gallop through the night, bringing bad dreams to deserving sleepers, and day mares who bring good day dreams to good folk. Some readers have told me that crazy Xanth is their only link to sanity. Others have described how it distracted them from unpleasantness, such as the discomfort of chemotherapy for cancer. One cancer victim sets an annual target: to live until she can read the next Xanth novel. In one case I was asked to write a letter to a Xanth reader, a girl who was in a coma after being struck by a drunk driver. My first letter did bring her out of her coma, and later my first year of letters to her were published as Letters to Jenny. They discuss Xanth, of course, and Jenny Elf became a leading character there. So this was a case in which Xanth brought a reader back into reality. Others who are seriously depressed say that Xanth is about the only thing that cheers them. I have heard from many suicidally depressed teens; I take them seriously when they tell me how they need those laughs. Of course that can backfire; one girl told me Xanth got her in trouble when she laughed out loud in the back a chemistry class. Thus Xanth gets into chemistry, and of course there are love springs there that generate chemistry of another kind, sometimes embarrassing. And geology: there is Mount Pinatuba, that periodically goes Ooom-pa! and blows out so much dust into the sky that it cools all Xanth by one degree. Also, Xanth may have taught more children to read than I ever did when I was a teacher. You see, with Xanth students discover for the first time that reading can be fun. That inspires them to read more, and with that practice they improve until they can enjoy reading other things. Thus frivolous is serious, in an almost surrealist inversion. Xanth may never win accolades as literature, and yet I think it is fair to ask just what the purpose of literature is. If it is to amuse, educate, divert, and comfort, then Xanth may after all be literature.

But let’s consider the real universe. For some time there has been debate about its origin. The Bible says the earth was without form and void until God created the world in six days. Astronomers are less certain. At one time they thought it might be a Steady State universe, with matter and energy appearing from nothing, forming all of the planets, stars, and galaxies we know, and disappearing into nothing when their term was done. Others thought it originated in a cosmic explosion, the Big Bang. Which was correct? The proof would be in greater information: the Steady State universe would look the same throughout, while the Big Bang universe would be smaller in times past. As telescopes got better, astronomers were able to see farther into space–and lo, there was a change, and the Big Bang won out. Today they are seeing about nine tenths of the way back to the origin, and getting closer all the time. There was one very interesting development: when the big orbiting Hubble Telescope came online, they picked a tiny spot of sky that was clear of obstructions and oriented on that. You see, our Earth is part of the Solar System, which in turn is part of the Milky Way Galaxy with two hundred billion stars, itself part of the local cluster of galaxies. They get in the way when you want to see beyond the immediate vicinity. So this one clear region in the Big Dipper constellation was a keyhole, no larger than a grain of rice held at arm’s length: a place to peek out into deep empty space and see what wasn’t there. The Hubble scope looked for ten days into that empty speck of sky, turning up the magnification, snapping pictures–and found fifteen hundred assorted galaxies of every variety. It wasn’t empty at all! All in this one tiny essentially random coring of the universe, called the Hubble Deep Field. What might we see, if we could look out in all directions? I find that mind-blowing. Reality is surreal in its magnitude.

That’s hardly the only aspect of astronomy that surpasses understanding. The stars we see are bright balls of fire, but there are some we can’t see. The process is not well understood, but in essence they become so massive and dense that they collapse into pinpoints with gravity so strong that nothing can escape–not even light itself. Thus they are called black holes, and if you ever happen to be in the neighborhood of one, don’t get closer than what is called the event horizon, the point where light can’t make it out. If you put your finger through that spot, it would be sucked in so hard that it would disintegrate into atoms and never be seen again. You probably wouldn’t like that. Time itself is supposed to change in a black hole, stretching out infinitely. The physics of a black hole is surreal.

Then there’s Dark Matter. This is perhaps the most mind-bending concept of all. All of the planets, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and whatnot we see may be only a tenth of what there is. I don’t mean that we lack keyholes to see the rest, though that is true; I mean that if we could see every star in the universe, we’d still be seeing only a tiny fraction of its mass. The rest is Dark Matter and Dark Energy. If we tried to touch it, we wouldn’t feel it. We can’t detect it at all. The fact is we are close enough to touch it, and are probably doing so–without knowing it. It’s like an invisible ghost; you can’t see it, you can’t feel it, but you know it’s there. How do we know this? Through physics. Think of the whiplash effect: a group of skaters link hands, whirl around it a big circle, and snap the end in. What is a slow turning of the wheel outside becomes rapid inside. Skaters use the same effect to spin in place, by starting a slow turn with arms extended, then drawing them in so that the momentum makes them rotate dizzyingly. Well, galaxies are like big spinning spirals, and you’d figure that those stars that wind in to the center will be traveling at breakneck speed. Galaxies, including our own, are really disks of stars being drawn into the black holes at their centers, which gives a notion of our eventual fate: we’ll be squished into invisible specks. That makes me feel a bit uneasy. Of course this will take a few billion years, so we don’t need to hide in the storm cellars yet. But here’s the thing: the stars in the center are not whirling much faster than the ones at the edge. Galaxies are in fact spinning like huge dinner plates, all of a piece. How can that be? Either we don’t know as much about gravity as we think we do, or there is more mass out there holding the plates in place. About ten times as much as we can see or detect. Except by the gravitational effect. That is Dark Matter: it does have gravity. So we know it is there, but we don’t know what it is. It may be what are termed MACHOS or WIMPS–assorted fast-flying particles that don’t like to interact with ordinary matter, so zip right through it undetected. I think WIMP is an acronym for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. Millions of them may be passing through us every second. Each one would not have much gravity, but there are so many, that like grains of sand, they can make mountains, and have gravity that holds galaxies together. Or maybe it is something else entirely. Maybe alternate universes that overlap ours, encompassing all our alternatives. We don’t know. Astronomers hope to map Dark Matter by analyzing the patterns of gravity, and maybe one day we’ll see its shape, if it has a shape. You never can tell, with a ghost. Meanwhile, it is surreal reality.

There is more, far too much for me or anyone to cover here; this is just a keyhole view of the subject. But I wanted to touch on one other mind-stretching aspect: a new theory of the origin of the universe. You see, the Big Bang leaves several questions unanswered. Where did it come from? How could all this substance suddenly appear from nothing and expand so explosively? Because it seems it isn’t slowing; the expansion is getting faster as it goes. What laws of physics can account for this? This new theory suggests that it is on ongoing collision. Originally, it suggests, there were a number of parallel universes, each without form and void, existing indefinitely, separated by the fifth dimension. You know, three physical dimensions and time, plus one we can’t quite define. Then a membrane, called a brane B R A N E peeled off one, slid across, collided with another, and bounced back. Just a minor scraping and abrasion; they probably happen all the time and are hardly noticed. Imagine a pane of glass banging into another, the energy radiating stress fractures. It is those stress fractures that formed our universe, the expansion being the result of the contact rather than generating from nothing. The other pane, or brane, is gone, but once glass starts fracturing it will run its course regardless. What had been nice clear nothing was now marred by expanding fractures, and the pattern evolved into what we see now as our universe. It’s not done yet; it won’t stop until the whole thing has been ruined, like shattered glass. We should be ashamed; we owe our existence to that shattering, and think it is magnificent. But also mind-boggling, if this theory is right. Surreal.

Now, as we contemplate the ongoing disaster that is our genesis, we wonder whether there are other planets like ours. Well, there surely are. The telescopes are finding them. First just the biggest ones, so that it seemed that other stellar systems had only planets several times the size of Jupiter. Now they are getting better definition, and find smaller ones, and I believe in time they will discover that there are many more bits and pieces of rubble like planet Earth than there are handsome giants like Jupiter and Saturn. So there are indeed other earth-like worlds. But what about life? Are we alone in the universe? I doubt it, and of course science fiction endlessly conjectures what alien life forms and civilizations there may be. No, I don’t believe that we have been visited by aliens, or that women have been abducted and raped by alien creatures. Space is immense, and alien cultures surely have better things to do than spend thousands of years traveling through space to molest some innocent girl. Why would they even want to? The human form would likely be as appealing to an alien as a giant sick scorpion would be to us. My vision of life is different. Think of an infection. It starts small, but feeds on its host, and takes over if it can. It happened here on Earth, and though repeated bashings by meteors and solar flares have cauterized it, that infection persists, and now has overrun the world and is seeking to spread to other worlds. Ouch! A similar process has surely happened elsewhere. It is not likely that we will ever meet them physically; as I suggested, it might take a thousand years for a space ship to travel to the nearest other world supporting life, and that might be on the level of lichen rather than civilization. Just as well, because if we could find other advanced life forms, they could find us, and they well might exterminate us so as to plunder our world without interference. Just as we ourselves are doing with the creatures of the shrinking remaining wilderness, and the ocean. So I don’t long for alien contact, I bless the balky universe that keeps up apart. It’s a matter of survival. Does that seem like a surreal attitude?

But let’s consider some of the elements of our own being. Human beings are highly successful; we dominate the world. Other creatures have prospered by being highly procreative, like mosquitoes, or large, like the dinosaurs. We do it by being smart. There is nothing else in the animal kingdom to match the human brain. Actually there’s nothing else to match the cooling ability of our bare skin; we sweat to keep our overdeveloped brain cool. There is also little else to match our sexual attributes; man has just about the biggest penis relative to his size, and woman has the biggest breasts. We are among the few animals that indulge sexually all the time, rather than only in limited seasons. That’s because sex has become a social mechanism, not merely a procreative one. There are those who would consider that surreal. But my interest here is less in our odd body than in our mind. We are conscious, and I know why: it takes less gray matter to make a conscious choice between alternatives than it does to preselect all possible outcomes. But what is consciousness? What is its mechanism? What turns it on? I know I am conscious, you know you are conscious, but where is the seat of consciousness? We can’t quite pinpoint it. It is a fascinating mystery. Scientists and philosophers have searched for it for centuries, without much success. How can we be so sure of something that we can’t explain or identify? This seems surreal to me. I bought books on the subject, searching for the answer, and discovered that the experts didn’t know the answer either. Finally I found it: I believe the secret of consciousness lies in feedback circuitry. For example, an image does not go directly from the eye to the brain–never mind that some say the eye is part of the brain–it goes through a series of circuits that curve back on themselves, looping before they deliver that image to the main brain. This may seem inefficient and pointless, but it’s not. The brain is watching the eye as it sees, and hearing the ear as it hears, and feeling the fingers as they feel. It is thinking about itself as it thinks. Here is the essence of consciousness: observing itself in action. Thus we seem to be what we see, and what we hear and feel; we seem to become part of it as we are aware of it. This is empathy, a foundation of our understanding. Thus we come to understand our environment, and ourselves, to a degree. Yet as I try to think about myself thinking about myself, I discover a certain feeling of confusion, and soon it becomes surreal.

A vital support to our consciousness is memory. We can’t do anything with anything if we don’t remember what it is and how it works. So we have extremely sophisticated mechanism for memory. This is one of my pet theories, that I have spoken of and written about before; in fact I have it in one of my historical novels, the way our minds select and store memories. I spent three years working in industry, before I was a novelist, as a file clerk. I discovered that papers do not file themselves; they must be sorted, classified, cross-referenced, and properly placed. There is nothing so lost as a misfiled document! So what about the human mind? How does it file memories? The processing has to be done, because if all memories were simply thrown into a mental tub, randomly, it would be impossible to retrieve them efficiently when needed. Yet we are not aware of such processing. When does it happen? My answer is that this is what dreams are. All day impressions come in and are placed in temporary storage, the equivalent of a computer’s memory. They need to be sorted and moved to the hard disk. Most of them are incidental and repetitive, not worth saving, but a decision on each has to be made, lest the substance be thrown out with the trash. If something happens before they are processed, they are lost. That’s why a drunk may have no memory of the night before, or an accident victim no memory of the accident: those temporary impressions never got processed. But in the ordinary course they do get processed, in the person’s downtime: at night, during sleep, when few impressions are coming in. The powerful brain, which is the hardware, can invoke the mind, which is the software, to address the day’s backlog. But how does it decide? One key is how you feel about something. We are what we feel; without feeling we would be machines. So the mind needs to bring out each impression and consider it, consciously, turn it about, fathom what it relates to, tie it in with existing memories, and file it where it belongs. That’s where the cross referencing comes in: if a man sees a red ball in the street, that means little by itself, but the color may relate to the dress his wife wore the first time he saw her dancing, and its shape to the globe of the balloon he found in the cemetery as a child; these are associations that are important to him, love and death. They give that ball meaning that is unique to that individual. The new memory becomes part of a comprehensive network, and thereafter it can readily be found by several avenues of thought. This process is dreaming: the conscious mind calling up and considering the day’s events and exploring their associations. But the process itself must not become a memory, because that would lead to an endless recursive sequence; remembering the remembering of a memory. That’s why dreams are normally forgotten. We all have many more dreams than we remember; that’s the way it has to be. Those we do remember may seem disjointed and confusing; that’s because they are mere fragments of a complicated process we don’t remember. So while one of the definitions of surrealism is “dreamlike,” I see dreams as meaningless fragments when taken out of context. We try to make sense of them, but they aren’t quite real, so are surreal. In any event we don’t need dreams for surrealism; the nuances of reality are more than enough.

I mentioned computers as a crude analogy of the human brain. Scientists tend to pooh-pooh this, saying there is no comparison between the two, but I find it useful. A question in science fiction is whether there will ever be machine intelligence or computer consciousness, and the consensus of scientists seems to be that there won’t be. They feel that there must be life before there can be feeling and consciousness. I disagree; I think that when they discover how to make the right feedback circuits, machines will be conscious. Humanoid robots are popular in science fiction, and I have used them myself. Male readers like the notion of lady robots that can not be distinguished from real women except for attitude: they are as beautiful as art can make them, and endlessly obliging. And yes, there are male robots who exist to make living women happy, taking out the garbage without nagging or complaint and completely mood compliant. Or otherwise: a reader once suggested a mother-in-law robot who would be endlessly critical of son or daughter’s spouse, saving the real mother in law the trouble. But machine consciousness raises the question of how long it will be before these robots start thinking for themselves, and wondering why they obey these erratic fleshly creatures who have such messy processes of ingestion and elimination, when they could do so much better on their own. So I am wary of that utopia; I fear it would be surreal in a dangerous sense.

But computers at the simpler level have their own quirks and challenges. I jumped from writing my novels in pencil and typing on a manual typewriter to the surreal realm of the computer in 1984, the CP/M operating system. I likened that to a building with fifteen floors and a basement; all the machinery was in the basement, while different people or families or offices could occupy particular floors. But CP/M was on the way out, and in due course I moved to DOS, which I likened to a network of paths, and each person had his own address in that garden. Then on to Windows, which had its myriad functions stored in little bottles called icons, and when you invoked one, out would come its genie and do the job, or perhaps torpedo it instead. But in time I got tired of obeying the inconvenient whims of a corporation I parody in my fantasy as Macrohard Doors, and moved to an open source system called Linux. Open source means that no one controls it, and it is free. I didn’t do it to save money, I did it for the freedom. But learning a new operating system is never simple, and it has taken me a year to get comfortable with it and its programs. Much of my time on the computer has seemed weird, and its extension to the formation of the Internet has been surrealistic. The idea of being able to contact someone anywhere else in the world, instantly, with pictures, still stretches my mind somewhat. I see the Internet as a huge bazaar with millions of shops opening onto the avenue that is my computer screen; I think I could window-shop forever without seeing them all. And of course the surreal Internet echoes the real world, with viruses attacking the unwary shopper, and perpetual intrusive advertising: SPAM. It’s a fabulous and sometimes dangerous realm. I rather like it. I have a site of my own there called Hipiers. That derives from the old 800 number I used to have, patterned on my first name preceded by the numbers 44, which we translated into Hi. That 800 number has now been taken over by a porno outfit, to my annoyance, so my young readers get a surprising solicitation; when we complained, AT&T; gave us a runaround. HiPiers moved to the Web, and you can find me there at www.hipiers.com. You know how most Internet addresses start with www dot and end with dot com; just put Hi Piers in the middle. I will post a copy of this talk there, in another week or so, so if you are curious what I said while you were sleeping, check there.

I am a writer of speculative fiction, and I do try to stretch the boundaries of reality for my readers. Perhaps the most common comment I receive from them is that they find themselves actually in my worlds, sharing the adventures of the characters there. It becomes a new and more comfortable reality for them, this surreality. That was the way it was for me when I was a child; I did not really like my life, so escaped to the better world of fiction, and now I am glad to do it for others. You might say that I never really left fiction; I just moved from a reader of it to a writer of it. I do feel that escape from dreary or painful reality is sometimes necessary. Even my most frivolous fantasy is not frivolous in that sense, as I mentioned earlier. But my output is limited by the decisions of publishers, whose interest is in money rather than imagination. Let me tell you a bit about what I have written that has not gotten published. I have a series of huge fantasy novels called ChroMagic: chro as in chroma, or color, magic as in magic. The setting is a world covered with active volcanoes, and each volcano erupts a different color of magic, making a surrounding chroma-zone. The people who live near a blue volcano gradually absorb the blue, and turn blue themselves, hair, skin, eyes, everything. They can do blue magic: flying, conjuring, transforming things, reading minds, all the things that magic enables. The people who live near a red volcano turn red and do red magic, and so one through all the colors. Most of them agree that all magic is equal, but most are wary of the white volcanoes, where the people are white and do white magic, otherwise called science. They are also wary of the black volcanoes, because they are reversed: instead of blowing out, they suck in. They are black holes. The black magic folk can do the regular kinds of magic, but when an in-ruption comes, they hunker down in storm cellars. When people travel, they leave their home chroma zones, and can no longer do magic, which makes them helpless against the dwellers of the chroma they visit, and in the regions between chroma zones. So they usually travel in protected caravans, or at least in pairs. When an unrelated man and woman need to travel between chroma, they invoke the convention of “no fault.” That means they will act in the manner of a married couple; he will hunt for food for her, she will sew his buttons, and of course they will have sex. When they reach their destination, they separate with no further obligation, and their spouses will not question this. No fault relationships. Some people like to travel a lot; I’m not sure why. If the social aspect seems as strange to you as the colorful setting, well, its surreal. The first novel is titled Key to Havoc, featuring a wild man named Havoc who is abducted and made king of the planet. He is furious, but he will be executed for treason if he doesn’t perform well. So we have a very smart, very angry king. It’s quite a story that you may never get to read, in the surreal world of publishing. I have already written the second novel; as I mentioned, ogres are stupid.

I also have a projected children’s series, of a rather different nature, with no sex and very little violence, featuring a realm where small animals are smart and telepathic, and human beings are dull. So the animals govern, and the humans serve as beasts of burden. The first novel is titled Tortoise Reform, featuring an unreformed Florida gopher tortoise who burrows too deep and comes out into a truly surreal world, where animals are dull and humans are smart. He encounters a lonely ten year old human girl there and teaches her telepathy, and later takes her back to his own world. She likes it better than her own world, and not just because of the telepathy. But the humans of this world are planning to build a giant mall right where the tunnel between realms is, so that they will unknowingly obliterate the connection. So the child and the telepathic animals have to try to stop that, without revealing their natures, because they realize that they would quickly be confined in laboratories for study if the smart humans knew they were telepathic. There is an environmental slant, as I hope to make threatened species like the indigo snake, who is another character, and the burrowing owl, familiar and sympathetic to children. This novel is currently being marketed to publishers who said they wanted children’s books from me; in my experience when you give an editor exactly what he asks for, he’ll reject it. It has already been rejected once. But we’ll see.

I think that realism and surrealism are as you see them; the one becomes the other when it is unfamiliar or made strange in some manner. I love exploring the boundaries, and I hope you have liked exploring them with me, for this hour.

NEW SCIENTIST for July 28 2001 has an article titled “Raising a Stink.” It says that the average human adult farts roughly ten times a day. (Elsewhere I have heard it is 14 times a day. I suppose it depends on the grandeur of the emissions.) The genders emit with similar frequency, and 99% is made up of five odorless gases. So how come the fart’s odious or odorous reputation? One Michael Levitt believes he has found the answer. He had the flatus of 16 healthy men and women who ate 200 grams of pinto beans analyzed, and concludes that hydrogen sulfide is the main culprit in smelly farts. Now you might think that fart research is a waste of effort, but it seems that because these gases are combustible, there have been a number of fatal explosions during operations on the gut. Now they know to purge gas as well as solids when setting up for surgery. What a way to die: from an exploding fart. I doubt that the surgeon appreciates such an in-your-face episode much either. A 1999 newspaper clipping tells of the top movies featuring flatulence. #1 is the 1974 movie Blazing Saddles, wherein cowpokes feast on baked beans and let fly. And a report on the annual Ig Noble science awards had one for the man who invented the “under-ease” airtight underwear that forces foul-smelling flatulence through a replaceable charcoal filter. Problem solved. Which reminds me: I mentioned those TV ads showing bottoms, advertising wet wipes. Okay, we got some and tried them. My wife didn’t go for them, but I did. It’s like washing instead of scraping, and I do feel cleaner. No, you don’t have to kiss my ass; your lips might be dirty. The fancy dispenser is intriguing; I had been on a flat package before, but this is on a roll.

A perhaps related article in the October 27 issue is on alternative toilets. The largest single use of water in the typical western household is flushing the toilet, and there’s a global fresh water shortage, so an alternative is needed. A good one is the composting toilet. You have to toss in some straw or sawdust to cover your contribution, and once a month or so you have to knock the top off the cone of feces that forms, lest it rise until it pokes out of the hole, making an unpleasant experience for the unwary sitter. That reminds me of my youth in the backwoods, where privies were used, and such cones did rise awesomely to seat-level. It also reminds me of a joke: Two mischievous boys got hold of some dynamite, so they thought it would be a good joke to blow up the privy. They planted the dynamite in it, then retreated somewhat to set it off. Just then old Grandpa toddled out of the house and entered the privy. Better yet; they set it off. Boom! The privy sailed up, flipped over 360 degrees in the air, and landed neatly back on its foundation. While the boys stood gaping, the door opened and Grandpa toddled out. He saw them, and said “Hi, boys! Good thing I didn’t let that one in the house!”

A recent Dear Abby column had a letter from an atheist: “I believe that with death, we cease to exist. Therefore, while we are here on Earth it is our job to treat each other and ourselves with care and do as little damage as possible.” I’m agnostic rather than atheist, but I agree. Maybe related: Letter in the ST PETERSBURG TIMES January 27, 2001: Stephanie Chiariello inquires why we use sex to measure a leader’s morality, and asks whether the Christian right has become so pro-gun, pro capital punishment, pro segregation, and so pro-greed that it hides behind a shield of sexual “morality” so that we won’t notice how un-Christian it has become, satisfying the bigotry and greed of the few instead of meeting the basic needs of the many? That strikes me as an excellent question.

Column by Norman Solomon I read in LIBERAL OPINION WEEK blows the whistle on Internet search engines: companies pay to get their ads ranked high, so when you search, you are really find ads rather than what you are looking for. That may explain why when I did a search for Piers Anthony this HiPiers.com site was not one of the top entries. We need a search engine that answers to the need of the user rather than being corrupted by payoffs. If someone out there knows of one, let me know. Maybe we need an impartial rating service for search engines, so folk can avoid the de facto spam.

Article in the April 1999 DISCOVER magazine: the asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago may have made our planet beautiful for a time, by heaving billions of tons of debris into orbit where it formed a Saturn-like ring. The shadow of that ring would have changed the climate where it passed, complicating life’s existence. Times were rough in the old days.

A 1999 column by Norman Solomon discusses aspects of Mark Twain most Americans never meet. He was outspoken on social justice and foreign policy. He commented on slavery, which existed in America then, and abolitionists were despised and insulted. “Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.” When the Philippines came under American power, he suggested a new flag for that province: “Just your usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.” And he said “None but the dead are permitted to speak truth.” But not too loudly.

In 1999 there was a report of an oddity in space confounding astronomers: a point of light like nothing seen before, with a completely unfamiliar spectrum. A new kind of quasar? Mysteries like this fascinate me.

Column by Thomas Sowell in the TAMPA TRIBUNE in 1998 makes a point: he receives mail from the public ranging from fan to hate, as any public figure does. I think I spend more time each year on mail than on any novel. What bugs Sowell is the letter from some teen who writes because his school class has assigned a paper in the form of writing to someone to express an opinion. This makes the kid think that his opinion ought to be taken seriously by others merely because it exists. For example one wrote that General Douglas MacArthur overestimated the casualties that would have resulted from an invasion of Japan in World War II, so dropped the Atomic bombs instead. The kid has had no military training, but he’s second-guessing the commander of that operation who was ranked among the great military minds in history. I appreciate Sowell’s point, having received my share of arrogantly ignorant letters. But I think I disagree. We have freedom of thought and speech in America, and that includes freedom of ignorant thought and speech. I am ignorant about hosts of things, but freely express my opinions here. Last column I took off on Jerry Falwell, calling him a bigot. He has spent his life in God’s service as he sees it, and I haven’t paid much attention to him, so how can I reject his philosophy? Well, that’s the thing about freedom: I have as much right to my opinion as he has to his, knowledge and faith apart. Let the ignorant express their opinions; they’ll be flattened soon enough if they are wrong. Therein may be the real education of them. I have learned more from those who disagree with me than from those who agree. Sometimes, on rare occasions, the other side even turns out to be right.

August 29, 1999 article in the ST PETE TIMES on workplace stars: a study indicates that they aren’t born, they are made. They aren’t generally smarter than average performers, or harder workers, or more creative, or better at brown-nosing the boss; they don’t take bigger risks, and they aren’t born leaders. Overall they are not more talented. So what accounts for their success? It turns out to be that they work differently. Their strategies include taking initiative, networking, gaining multiple perspectives on problems, being good followers and good leaders, and being savvy about organizational politics. They develop a network of “knowledge experts” who can help them troubleshoot problems or do their jobs better. And they see projects or problems through the eyes of others, including customers, competitors, coworkers, and bosses. This provides depth of perspective and leads to better solutions to problems. They manage themselves similarly, looking for new opportunities. Okay, I’m intrigued by this analysis, which I think is crediting empathy for success, and it describes the way I work as a writer; I am big on empathy and relate well to my readers. But I think it misses one significant aspect: luck. What’s the difference between a best-selling writer and an unsold writer? The bestseller will be quick to explain that he is the best writer, but that’s not necessarily the case; some phenomenal writers never get anywhere and some average ones hit the jackpot. The bestseller is the one who has the luck to encounter a good agent, a good editor, a savvy publisher, and perfect timing. I can give an example from my own experience: I wanted to work with a particular editor whose job I had admired in the genre magazines. He was now with a book publisher, doing their fantasy. So I wrote a fantasy novel to show him. I wrote it well, and he edited it well, and the publisher promoted it well, and in time it sold more than a million paperback copies and won an award. That was the first Xanth novel. Thereafter my agent parlayed it into excellent terms for the following novels and I did well financially. All of us were competent, but the key here is that we happened to do our things just when fantasy was about to launch from the cellar of sales to bestseller status. We all rode that escalator up, but we hadn’t seen it coming. Other writers as competent as I am didn’t happen to catch it, and did not achieve that success. So luck was the extra factor. Other writers have caught other escalators and done better than I; I don’t think they are better writers, just luckier. Similarly I doubt that superior workers in other areas always rise high; some just happen to be in the right spot at the right time. Competence does count; some get good breaks but lack the ability to make the most of them. Competence, empathy, and luck–there’s the ticket. Today, with the same competence and empathy, but lacking the luck, I am heading reluctantly into has-been territory.

I am hardly the only writer who has had trouble with traditional publishing. In 1997 Norman Spinrad, known for the savage Bug Jack Barron, issued an Internet cry for help. I responded with a column about Spinrad, who come on the publishing scene about the same time I did. Neil Schulman also responded with a promo for his Pulpless.com, an Internet publisher I wound up financing. I lost a hundred grand when it failed, but I did it for principle, not profit, and am sorry it didn’t work out. The old correspondence showed up as part of my filing cleanup. Today there are many Internet publishers, as my Internet Publishing section shows, and they serve a necessary function, though some are crashing.

Newspaper article in April 1999 on a seagoing city. A Sarasota, Florida, engineer plans to build the largest ship in the world and transform it into a city of 50,000 that will sail around the globe every two years. Freedom Ship is a six billion dollar project. Today’s largest ships run a bit over 1,000 feet in length; this one will be over 4,000 feet. That’s about four fifths of a mile. It will be 25 stories high. Norman Nixon is raising venture capital for it. It will have condominiums priced from under $200,000 to over $7 million. I’m almost tempted, if it comes to be, if I have the money, if I live long enough. If no terrorists target it. But I’m not sure I want to leave my tree farm; I doubt there’ll be many pine trees, wild deer, or gopher tortoises aboard that ship.

I don’t like abortions, and I doubt anyone else does; my overwhelming preference is birth control. But this is not to argue that case, which I will do at length if challenged. It is to note an item in THE ECONOMIST in August 1999, which appeared widely elsewhere too. In 1973 Wade v Roe legalized abortion in the United States, and there have been many abortions since then, together with bombings of clinics and murders of doctors. Now it seems that the recent downturn in the American crime rate is because many unwanted babies were not born. An unwanted baby is a prime candidate for a miserable life and eventual criminality. So those criminals are being eliminated by abortion. That’s a shocker, but the statistics seem to show it. Talk of an ill wind!

August 1999 clipping from the CITRUS CHRONICLE (it picks up on some good material, maybe because my daughter works there) and from the larger newspapers: Analysis of pollen and plant images place the Shroud of Turin before the 8th century. For those who came on the scene yesterday, the Shroud of Turin was believed to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. It even had the faint figure of a man outlined on its surface, as if divine radiation had imprinted the picture. I don’t believe Jesus was divine, but I do believe he was a mortal man who meant well, so got put away by those in power. Regardless, if his shroud survived to the present, that would be significant. So I followed that case. THE SKETICAL INQUIRER ran an article debunking it, and that caused me to let that subscription lapse. The thing is, I want to know the truth about things, whatever it is. The Catholic Church, which does accept the supernatural, maintained an objective attitude; its interest was to protect the Shroud from destruction, but also to ascertain whether it was valid. When dating technology advanced to the point where a tiny sample would suffice, the Church allowed a sample to be taken. It indicated that the Shroud was not old enough to have been used by Jesus, and was made circa 1300. Okay, so it wasn’t the original Shroud. So why was I turned off by the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, which said that? Because it was my impression that there was no way that magazine would have granted the validity of the Shroud; it had come to debunk, and it was going to debunk. Its mind was made up in advance. In contrast the Catholic Church was open, ready to accept the evidence either way. I am not and will never be a Catholic, but in my mind the Church won this one. I tried to explain this to the editor of FREE INQUIRY, a leading Humanist magazine and a smart man, but don’t think I got through to him. (There is a Humanist connection to SKEPTICAL INQUIRER.) I have no present belief in the supernatural, but if at some point it is demonstrated to exist, then I will accept it. When I say I am agnostic, I mean it: my mind is not locked. So if this reopens the case of the Shroud, I will continue to observe with interest. The new evidence suggests that the pollen in the Shroud does come from the region where Jesus was buried. Of course it could be Jesus’ shroud, but that would not prove that Jesus was divine, only that he died.

1999 article on a group of four thirteen year old Tampa girls performing song and dance as the PYT troupe: Pretty Young Things. Suddenly they got nationally popular and were going on tours. It seems that folk like to see young girls bouncing around. That was two years ago; by this time they must be 15 and fading, the appeal of their innocence expended. I could be wrong.

Another 1999 item, about humor. It turns out it is serious stuff. I knew that, having a certain reputation as a humorist. Mark Twain is quoted: “The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.” I knew that too. It is said that a prerequisite for humor is a painful childhood. Yes; I’ve been there and done that. It is said that humorists are the third oldest profession in the world, behind prostitutes and accordion players. I didn’t know that, though I like accordion music; I thought story-telling was the second oldest profession. I can’t comment on prostitutes, as I don’t know any. Meanwhile my bittersweet outlook is surely evident in this column.

Ad I received in 1999: Lax-Optics, “the Miracle Lensless Spectacles.” It seems they have opaque lenses with myriad pinholes, and gazing through these corrects vision. I’m curious, but not curious enough to risk $59 for a pair.

1999 again, this time in PARADE, the Sunday supplement: there were those who claimed that speed on the highway does not kill, stupid drivers do. So the speed limits rose in a number of states. Now the evidence is coming in: in the 24 states that raised their speed limits, deaths rose 15%. In 7 states that did not change their limits, there was no rise in deaths. I understand that there are studies that indicate a similar rise where guns are distributed more freely, though the gun nuts do their best to blow that away. There seems to be studies on both sides of the gun issue, and I’d really like to know the truth.

Another article, this one by Robyn Blumner of the ST PETE TIMES, says that violence is not begotten in children by violent movies, music, and video games. Children are able to distinguish between fact and fiction early. It is the amount of actual violence they have seen or endured that correlates most directly with anti-social behavior. I presume this means that violent printed fiction has similar null-effect. That’s important to me; I want to entertain my young readers but not to warp them. Every so often a minister will chide me about such things as including sexual references in my fiction, pointing out that children read it. I have rejected such cautions, but if it turned out that fiction does make children violent or sexually abusive or damages them in other ways, I’d have a crisis of conscience. So far I believe fiction is innocent of such effects.

All the foregoing has been from my sorting of clippings, and there’s half a passel remaining. So I’ll postpone the rest for another column, and get on with my regular material, which is similar, only more recent.

The results are in from the comprehensive Florida recount of the 2000 election ballots, and sure enough, the state did go for Al Gore, even excluding the votes he lost because of the notorious Butterfly Ballot and the semi-systematic exclusion of black voters. The recount of the spot counties would have confirmed George W Bush, so ironically the Supreme Court could have had its way without openly cheating, had it just stayed clear. But what should have counted was the complete state vote, including those that were thrown out because they both checked Gore or Bush and wrote the same name in below. There was no doubt of voter intent, but they were trashed on a technicality. Those who say it’s over, forget it already, are evidently not interested in an accurate count; they just want their man in. Well, they have him in, but the Presidency is tainted, as is the Supreme Court. I still have seen no statement by any Republican expressing dismay over the illicit nature of the win, or saying that the man who got the most votes should have had the office. I judge the party by that; it does indeed seem to put greed and power ahead of principle or decency. I doubt I am the only one who will remember.

I graduated from Westtown Friends School in 1952. It is a Quaker school, and we attended two Friends’ Meetings a week there, and had classes on Quakerism, and it was forbidden to play cards, even Canasta or Bridge or Solitaire. There was a Boy’s side of the school, and a girl’s side, and normally neither gender was permitted across the line on penalty of expulsion. This system did help prepare me for later life in the US Army, ironically. It was a good school, but I think not good enough. For one thing, as the smallest member of my class, male or female, I learned what bullying was all about, while the school administration was oblivious. As I grew, and fought, and became a tougher contender, the bullying stopped, but I did not respect the system. As a poor boy I found I could not afford the equipment that the rich kids could, and so was obliquely squeezed out of sports I might have done well in–and the administration was oblivious. As a fellow traveler of nerds–I wasn’t a nerd myself, having trouble keeping the scholastic pace (in my day there was no dyslexia, only bad performance)–I was part of the out crowd, while the favor went to those of the in-crowd clique. When I discovered joy in higher math, I was instead required to take languages, Latin and German. Not only did this come close to flunking me out–I was a dunce at languages–it put me hopelessly behind in math, destroying what might have been a future career. And the administration was oblivious. With other avenues blocked out, I eventually became a writer, and though it was surely my best possible employment, I don’t feel I owe much of my success to the school. The school solicits me for money; I don’t contribute. Now it wants me to attend my 50th class reunion and share grateful joy for the old school. I doubt I will. And I doubt the administration understands.

Macrohard has come out with what I understand is its first truly stable operating system, XP, which herds the user into ever more home-company products or services. Coincidentally I read a book that has been on my shelf for nigh 40 years, The Big Ball of Wax, by Shepherd Mead. That’s a tale of the future as seen back then, where big business has taken over the world and everything is commercialized in the name of a dandy mechanism for “feelie” experience, XP. XP stands for ExPerience, and in the novel you are truly in the story, whatever its nature, including sexual. In the novel, the average man is hopelessly captive to the corporation. I see a pattern here. I wonder how many will balk at entering this corral? Meanwhile I’m in Linux, watching developments on the open source front.

Neil Schulman sent me his short novel Escape From Heaven via email. The protagonist dies in an accident, and is surprised to find himself in Heaven, since he’s an atheist. He is even more surprised to discover that he’s a clone of God. And he just loves the luscious angels who help him orient. This is a fast-moving interesting story with surprising developments as Good and Evil face their final struggle. I suspect this will be a contender for the Libertarian Prometheus Award.

Meanwhile I completed Xanth #27, Cube Route. A magic trilogy is three cubed, of course. Next year I’ll start of the second magic trilogy. The novel is about a rather plain young woman named Cube who travels a complicated route to achieve beauty. She wants beauty so she can get a man and live happily ever after, of course. I’m privately pleased with a sequence wherein she occupies the body of an outstandingly beautiful Mundane woman who is nevertheless suicidal. It seems that physical beauty doesn’t necessarily bring happiness. But the lack of it does not bring joy.

We saw a movie, Monsters, Inc. It was fun. The main characters were monsters I’ll call Eyeball and Ogre, whose business it is to open doors into the rooms of children and make them scream. There are hundreds of doors, each one opening onto a different child’s room. That’s such a great explanation for how monsters get there without the adults knowing. Now we know. We haven’t yet seen Harry Potter, because our movie-freak daughter the newspaperwoman has been kept busy at work. My wife and I don’t go out unless dragged, so if she doesn’t drag us, we wait. But I did put in a video order, and once I got my novel done I watched them. I’m a typical man; I like science fiction, fantasy, pretty girls, adventure, and sexy stuff, so that’s what I order. The trouble is, I also like quality and craftsmanship. So I keep ordering sexy adventures and being disappointed because they aren’t well enough done. I never learn. So I watched a Baywatch video movie, an adventure on the Alaskan coast, with pretty girls galore, but it was as if they were all clones of dressmakers’ mannequins. No real character. Then I watched Woman of Desire with Bo Derek, expecting much flesh and little story, but it was the other way around, with some excellent acting and not a lot of flesh. Ah, well. Then Romance, a subtitled erotic French movie about a young woman whose boyfriend lost his passion for her, so she has affairs with other men. That may sound cheap, but it’s not; it’s a sensitive study, and sexy as hell. Then Tales of Erotica, which are pretty good; one’s about a woman who is intrigued by a painting and hungry for sex, and she finally finds her way into the painting and lies on a bud there, waiting for the potent man. Another is about a man who gets a special motorcycle that turns into a passionate nude woman, with whom he has sex while riding. But when he gives a regular girl a ride, the motorcycle gets jealous and throws them off. The girl, unaware, rides the motorcycle to get help for the injured man–and now it becomes a virile naked man. She is delighted. It’s my kind of junk. Then Pitch Black, a sci-fi horror that’s actually pretty compelling; I liked it, and liked the original monsters. No men in monkey suits here. Then Heavenly Creatures, about two New Zealand teen girls who imagine their own fantasy realm, but it’s no light fluff; they wind up killing one of their mothers when they are to be separated. It’s based on a true murder case, a shocker. Then The Last Prostitute, wherein two boys seek out a fabulous prostitute they have heard about, but she is now retired and running a horse farm. So they work with the horses. No secret is made of the woman’s past; when the boys ask what she gave a rich man in exchange for the fine horse he gave her, she said “Hummingbird round the lingam.” The boys draw a blank; they do not understand the terminology, as she had known would be the case. I think I could figure it out if I tried, though it’s not something I ever experienced. It’s a fine story, well done, and what little sex there is, is off-stage. And My Neighbor Totoro, Japanamation with dubbed English, a gift from a reader, perhaps the best children’s monster story ever. I saw it years ago in the Japanese version, and loved it, and the English just makes it better. A father and his two daughters, ages maybe ten and five, move to a haunted house in the country, but the magic creatures and monsters are friendly, and they have marvelous adventures. So the videos I saw weren’t quite what I expected, but were worthwhile anyway. That may be a decent analogy of life, too.

Which reminds me of television. I watch it in the evening while eating supper and reading news or science magazines, so it doesn’t get much attention unless it’s good. Best new program: “The Guardian.” ” CSI” continues good, and “West Wing,” and “JAG.” “Boston Public” seems to be turning into a soap opera, going the same route as “Ally McBeal,” which I understand is produced by the same outfit. Too bad; those were winners, but are fading. And of course there’s “Survivor,” our guilty pleasure.

Minor matters: we have a Turk’s Cap hibiscus plant. Normal hibiscus flowers open out in assorted appealing colors; there are many varieties. But this variety blossoms closed; the petals stay together like tight little skirts. We had the plant for a couple of years in a pot, protecting it from the winter freezes, but it lacked enough soil and its stems died. So we transplanted it outside, and it flourished–but almost every winter it gets frozen back to the ground. It’s the stress between security and freedom; security can stifle, but freedom can destroy. But each year it sends new sprouts up from the roots, starting over. Now it is flowering again. At first there was just one red skirt, then ten, then twenty and on, building up. The past week there have been 150, peaking at 180. I think it will decline, as more flowers will drop than bud new, but it’s quite a sight. We also have a small Christmas Cactus. We had it in a pot on the pool enclosure floor while we figured out where to plant it, but when we were ready, it had sent roots out and anchored to the floor. So we took away the pot and left the plant where it was. Since then it has done just fine without soil, and now is blossoming beautifully, with about 15 buds waiting for their turns. It’s obviously a survivor.

A couple years back I put something in the garden square where we bury our garbage and have potatoes, squash, and tomatoes come up from the leavings. I wasn’t sure this one would sprout–I forget what it was–so I marked the place by putting several little white stones at two places on the border. Where perpendiculars from those stones intersected was the site. Nothing ever sprouted, but those stones remain. They have become an end in themselves, two groups of five each. Creatures in the night knock them off, and I replace them. Is there a point? I don’t know. I just get sentimental about small things, even stones.

There was a meteor shower one Sunday morning, and I did go out for about ten minutes and counted 15. Another day I was cycling out to close our gate for the night, and encountered a pack of pigs: three big black ones, two medium brown ones, seven piglets. Sigh; we don’t want pigs on our tree farm; they destroy it for other animals. But they keep coming.

Al-Najjar is back in prison. He was confined for three an a half years on secret evidence, until a judge finally freed him when the government seemed to have no case. He was out for a year, then suddenly arrested again. No new evidence; they said it was because he had overstayed his student visa about twenty years ago, and they want to deport him, though his three children are American and there’s no place to send him. I understand about half a million students overstay their visas, and the government ignores them; why are they so hot after this one? Why don’t they enforce the law evenly? They actually are keeping him in solitary confinement, though he is charged with no crime other than being here. Yes, he is from the mid-east, but had no connection we know of to the recent terrorism. It smells like a vendetta.

Remember my two prior reports on the Nigeria scam? They keep on coming. In these two months there were fourteen more. They are starting to branch out; two are from the Congo. Three are same person with the same offer, sent different times. There are also some straight solicitations from that region.

NEW SCIENTIST has an article on the fifth dimension that could explain Dark Matter: this dimension way be folded over and over, like a stored bedsheet, bringing parts of our four dimensional universe close to each other. Thus a galaxy that is a billion light years away, looking along the flat sheet, may be only a hundred million light years distant if you look across the folds, and its gravity crosses those folds to affect us. We can’t see it, we can’t feel it, but we feel its gravity and call it Dark Matter.

A recent theory on why so many people in the world hate America is that they actually are reacting to “modernity.” They are settled in their set way and don’t want change, while America is the symbol of rapid change. Israel is on outpost of modernity in a region that prefers the old ways, so is hated. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, I’m with the moderns, where there is better freedom and equality among people, especially for women. I don’t think much of any religion that has has a tacit tenet the suppression of women.

Article in the fall 2001 issue of FREE INQUIRY magazine titled “Can Agnosticism Improve American Public Life?” Americans generally won’t vote for a candidate who does not profess to believe in God. Yet the most intellectually honest person is likely to have theological doubts. It asks “Can we persist in electing only those who are unwilling to be forthright on the most important question of all our lives and then expect honesty from them on other matters?” The major reason I did not join any religion, despite having a religious upbringing, was that I saw no genuine moral enlightenment in religion. I seek truth in all things, and try for decency, and see too much bigotry and indecency among those who profess to be deeply religious. Religion did not meet my moral standards. I haven’t changed my mind. Meanwhile FREE INQUIRY is a hard-hitting magazine; an ad for it lists articles it has run, such as “The Sins of Mother Teresa” who had a dark side; “Can Science Prove that Prayer Works?” the answer, as I remember, being that it does not work when objectively tested; “Morality Requires God… Or Does It?” and of course it doesn’t. Look at the God-fearing Taliban, or agnostics like me who do care about right and wrong.

I am on the solicitation list for countless organizations. All of them claim to be special, needing my money to go to them rather than to some other organization. I have been well into donor fatigue for decades, because a contribution does not satisfy them, it marks me for doubled solicitations. Charities can get greedy too. Now we contribute on an annual basis to selected charities, and if they solicit us more often they risk being removed from our selection. If they hassle me by phone for plus-$100 gifts I cut them off. That’s why I no longer contribute to the American Friends Service Committee, though I once worked for them and I know they do good work, or Common Cause, though I was once on their local board of directors. I have drawn a line, and I enforce it. But some are more poignant than others. I did not contribute to a recent solicitation by AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, because we have already done so this year, but I relay their present message: the global abuse of women. In many parts of the world they torture and kill women in the name of “honor” when the women have done nothing we would consider ill. It’s really enforcement of virtual slavery of women by men. Consider the Taliban, again; they are merely an extreme form of a widespread attitude. Elsewhere women are abducted and forced into prostitution. Women are tortured and sexually abused in prison. Women are mutilated in the genitals in the name of chastity. Amnesty International tracks such abuses, among others, and reports on them, and tries to do something about them. Their Web site is www.amnestyusa.org.

Another worthy outfit is PROJECT VOTE SMART at www.vote-smart.org. They research the backgrounds and records of candidates for public office on a nonpartisan basis and provide the information to voters so they can make informed choices. It’s good work. They need donations, volunteers, and a wider public awareness of their effort.

Article in NEW SCIENTIST on memory: those of us who have trouble remembering names or where we put something–are we losing it? Not necessarily. The brain does not merely remember, it forgets. The process of forgetting may be as important as the process of remembering. When I did my sorting, the problem was not just classifying for filing (remembering), but deciding what to throw out (forgetting). The two operate in tandem. Remembering everything is no good. The article tells of Solomon Shereshevski, a celebrated mnemonist. (Mneme = mind, memory.) He performed feats of memory for paying audiences. He could look at strings of dozens of numbers on a blackboard, and recite them accurately months or years later, forwards or backwards. I believe it was eidetic memory; he could see the numbers like a picture, and read them off that mental blackboard. But so much of his brain was taken with that, that it was short on actual thinking ability. There’s only so much brain in the skull, and if too much is taken for storage, there’s less for calculating. The man wasn’t smart enough to hold down a regular job, so he had to make money being a memory freak. He lacked the forgetting mechanism. There’s more: it seems that those people who remember crises excessively tend to have longer episodes of depression. They may have post traumatic stress disorder. They can’t let it go. And more: remembering in too much detail may prevent a person from seeing the larger pattern. One advantage of having a sloppy memory is being able to take creative leaps. To be original. And I find I don’t mind having a sloppy memory so much after all.

I always thought that my social/political/religious makeup was pretty much one of a kind, ornery independent liberal agnostic. But in the past decade I have found that it matches Humanism almost perfectly. (www.americanhumanist.org.) I have to stretch to find anything I really disagree with humanists about. I don’t read their magazine THE HUMANIST carefully, because I don’t need to study what I already believe; I prefer to focus on what’s new or different, always learning. But it’s a good magazine. The November/December issue has an article on theocracy, a form of government in which God is recognized as the supreme civil ruler, basically rule by priests, as in Iran. The article warns that Republicans are trying to break down the constitutional separation of church and state, heading for this type of government in the USA. They are aligning with the Catholics and some Protestant organizations. “One might say that the Republican Party has, for all practical purposes, become the Catholic Party in the united States, pursuing the Roman Catholic church’s agenda.” I find this frightening. Fortunately many Catholics are not captive of the right wing, and neither are many Protestants, Jews, Muslims, humanists, and others. How long, it asks, will these others tolerate “the political drift toward theocracy such as pro-life–particularly when millions around the world are dying due to Vatican and Republican refusal to permit the use of contraceptives to prevent the spread of AIDS and other family planning services to control unwieldy population growth? In effect, the slogan pro-life is camouflage for a culture of death and patriarchal rule.” Damn well told. I suspect that some of those who preach patriotism and push “strict constructionist” interpretation of the Constitution are in fact fundamentally un-American. They don’t believe in real freedom for people to be different. Their agenda is to convert the USA into a theocracy like Iran or the dissipating Taliban regime, only one run by them. They were willing to cheat to put their man in office, and now they are taking the next step. Civil liberties are already taking a beating. We’d better see that they don’t succeed in establishing a theocracy here, because it is much harder to get rid of that than to prevent it.

Our Web mistress, Seema, recently visited China. That’s why the OctOgre column was delayed a bit; she wasn’t back yet. Now she has pictures of that trip on her Web site, and you can see them at www.seema-designs.com/china/.

Newspaper article October 2, 2001, by William Raspberry, pointing out that the seeds of terrorism are nourished in the fertile ground of despair. Convince people that they have nothing to lose, that they are doomed to poverty and powerlessness, and terrorism will come. So the best way to war against terrorism is to broaden the base of freedom and prosperity. Another article, by Thomas Friedman, November 28, says the real foe is totalitarianism (intolerant one-party government). In World War Two and the Cold War we fought to defeat secular totalitarianism–Nazism and Communism–but that World War Three will be against religious totalitarianism. Biblical faiths–Judaism, Christianity, Islam–tend to believe that they have the exclusive truth, and they try to destroy all other faiths. In America we believe that there is no one right faith, merely different kinds of faith, each with its merits or demerits. So the Islamic extremists tried to strike against tolerant America, and are starting to reap the harvest of our response.

NEW SCIENTIST had an article September 15 by Brian Aldiss, the author of the story on which the movie AI was based. Can human consciousness ever be programmed into a machine? He doubts it. He says that our brains are better designed to fantasize than to think logically. We love storytelling, while for logic and reason we have to go to school. Brains are far more than computers; intelligence can’t exist without consciousness. Feeling, I believe he believes (he doesn’t quite say), is integral to consciousness. He feels that feeling can’t be duplicated unless flesh is duplicated. So there can’t be actual mechanical consciousness. Okay, there’s a case to be made, but I disagree. I regard consciousness as a sophisticated feedback circuit, and I believe that if we can understand and duplicate that circuit, we can bring consciousness to a machine. With the pace of current advances, I hope to see it in my lifetime. US NEWS & WORLD REPORT, November 12, 2001 issue, has an article titled “Mind in a Mirror” about mapping morality, awareness, and self in the brain. Scientists use magnetic resonance to track where the blood flow goes as people think about certain subjects. It turns out that even when people think they are making rational judgments, their emotions may actually be driving the outcome. This also shows the power of empathy. When people think about themselves in certain situations, the same neural circuits light up as when they actually are in those situations. A policeman can in effect put himself into the mind of a thief. That’s empathy, and I think it is a vital key to the nature of the human mind. Animals have little empathy, humans have a lot, and it gives us enormous power. But the article cautions that as yet we know little; the brain is like an orchestra, with many individual instruments contributing to the total effect. So making a machine mind may be pretty clumsy at first; identifying the instruments isn’t the same as making them harmonize.

The newsletter of the NATIONAL WRITERS UNION is American Writer. In the Fall 2001 issue is a letter from Clare Hanrahan, who is serving six months in a federal prison camp for nonviolent dissent at Fort Benning, Georgia, relating to the notorious School of the Americas (SOA), where they teach torture and terrorism. The school’s name has been recently changed, but not its nature. She would like to hear from fellow writers, but I think readers who applaud her stand might like to write too. I wrote to her, and here is her address: Clare Hanrahan, 90285-020, Box A, Alderson, WV 24910. Information about the SOA Watch is at www.soaw.org.

I received an email from Jay Lobley about Type 1 diabetes–that’s the rough kind. They are trying islet transplants, and these enable patients to get off insulin shots. But they have to take anti-rejection pills, so it’s not a perfect cure. They want to get the word out that there is progress, and it could save many people from “the silent killer.” You can reach him at sjlobl@bellatlantic.net.

I’m a significant stockholder in Xlibris, the self publishing facility, and also have a number of my books there. Thus I have two perspectives. There has been anger at Xlibris because it is now charging more to sell larger books; as a board member I know that it can’t afford to lose money on books so must price them so there is a profit for company and author. But as a writer I dread what it will cost me to buy copies of my books for collaborators and agent to market. I also am annoyed at the publishing process; their requirements are sometimes contradictory, as I discussed last column. They sent only two of the four books I had paid for, so I had to query to get the others, and got the tables of contents repeatedly fouled up; it seemed they couldn’t make a correction without adding another error. The galley correction forms were balky and confusing. For example they said to be sure to put the novel number on–but there was no place on the form for it. One galley had the wrong galley number, which could have resulted in the wrong novel being printed under the right title. And their accounts were maddening until my wife and I struggled through to make sense of them so I could do accurate cost accounting, to tell which novel’s royalties pay back its initial fees. I finally sent off an irate letter pointing out where their figures do not match what they paid me. It’s a nuisance, and it needs to be fixed, but I’m not sure I can get through to their personnel. I also don’t like being forced to set up an Internet money account in order to get my royalties; they piled up for four months until I tackled that. Still, Xlibris is doing the job, and writers are not getting shafted the way they are at some Internet publishers. So I do recommend it, with reservations.

I have a Vision recumbent bike, a RowBike, and a JoyRider adult trike that I use to ride out to fetch in the newspapers or close the gate when I’m not jogging there; it’s all part of my exercise regime, that also includes the dumbbells for the arms. The problem with pneumatic tires is that they go flat; I prefer solid ones, but they are hard to come by. The rear tire of the RowBike went flat, so I patched it, but the patch didn’t hold, and finally we got a self-sealing replacement inner tube. And it went flat even faster. I filled it again, and it held; must have been a catch in the valve. But then the Vision front tire went flat, and again the patch didn’t hold–in fact it started peeling off before I even inflated the tube. Maybe the rubber cement folk haven’t caught on to the nature of recent tubes. So we got another self-sealing tube–and it went flat in a day. Filled it, flat again. Filled it again–and it held. My theory is that the self-sealing aspect takes a while to flow to the holes they make them with. Meanwhile the little front tire of the trike has a slow leak. Sigh. And a spot reference: I mentioned problem with memory. For this paragraph I couldn’t remember the name of the dingus where you fill the tire, that little tube thing where you pump the air in. So I went to my Reverse Dictionary, hoping it would have a diagram of a tire with that dingus named. Hell, it didn’t even list “tire.” So I tried the READER’S DIGEST REVERSE DICTIONARY, a bigger book. It had “tire” but not that. So I tried the RANDOM HOUSE dictionary: no luck. Webster’s, ditto. Then my old Funk & Wagnalls 1913 dictionary I got second hand for my tenth birthday, in 1944–and it had it! Valve! So I didn’t have to go to my OED, Oxford English Dictionary. Understand, these are all huge definitive dictionaries, and I use them constantly. I’m a writer, after all. It’s good to have my childhood companion come through for me again, even if it hasn’t kept up with newfangled terms like parsec or Internet.

After the WTC bombings the mosquito planes were grounded, and the mosquitoes took control of the air in noxious clouds. Then at last they flew the planes over, spraying, and suddenly the mosquitoes were gone. It was wonderful. But gradually they built up again, and now they form clouds again, but the planes haven’t come. Too bad. I guess the mosquitoes have to get so thick you can’t breathe before the authorities act.

Do you ever wonder where clouds originate or where birds go? I have the answers. Clouds form in the field just northwest of our tree farm, and slowly rise as they cross our trees; I can generally see the angle of their bottom inclination in the mornings. I don’t know about other birds, but the nearly extinct Whooping Cranes come here to Citrus County, Florida. They have been trained to follow a small airplane that looks like a bird, and have been flying from Wisconsin to Florida a bit every day when the weather is fair. They will winter in Citrus County, and return north in the spring. Bird hunters not welcome; over-hunting is one reason why the birds are so few. In fact, to paraphrase someone, I point the finger in the face and say “you helped this happen.”

A reader called my attention to www.literotica.com, where a subdivision publishes XXXanth stories. These are erotic items featuring Xanth characters, but it is obvious that I am not their author. Just as well.

HiPiers receives about ten emails a day, excluding spam. All are acknowledged, if they have valid return addresses, and many receive personal answers from me. But it’s a nuisance when we get long downloads that tie up the system, and often they aren’t useful to us anyway. Please don’t send MP3 attachments; they take time, we don’t have the software to handle them, and distrust attachments anyway, for fear of viruses.

Each Dismember I get Christmas cards. They are a problem. No, I don’t have any philosophical objection to them; we celebrate the standard holidays like anyone else. It’s that I don’t know how to respond. I don’t want to write a letter response to a mass-mailed card, and I don’t want to ignore them. For a time I made up cards of my own and sent them to anyone who sent me a card, but that was cumbersome and many of mine were late, because they were sent after the other cards. So I guess I’m back to not responding, except via this note: thanks for your cards, folks, and I hope you understand.

Next column will be FeBlueberry, along with the thorough update of the Internet Publishing survey–a chore I hardly relish.

There is a reader who sends Jenny and me little gifts every Christmas, such as a nice wall calendar and a THE FAR SIDE daily calendar I have on my desk. This time he also sent two Japanimation videos. One was the excellent My Neighbor Totoro, which I reported on last time; the other was Kiki’s Delivery Service, which we thought could not be in the same class, but by darn, it did turn out to be. The scenes are absolutely beautiful, just about every one a work of art, and the story of a 13 year old witch who looks ten setting out to make her way in the modern world is delightful. There’s no sex, no violence other than when she gets caught in a storm and crashes her flying broom into a tree, upsetting the birds. It’s just a nice story, the kind that is quite suitable for children and their parents, that nevertheless is interesting throughout. A pleasant surprise.

So what else did I see? The Harry Potter movie, which was good if not great. Also Shrek on video, also good; I do admit to being partial to nice-ogre movies. Fellowship of the Ring, also good but not great. One sequence was with what they called a cave troll, which I believe is their adaptation of a barrow wight in the book. But it was obviously an ogre. Remember, I had just seen Shrek, so I knew. Despite that error, I’ll watch the sequels. For one thing, the success of the Potter and Ring movies seems to be generating an awareness in the dim minds of movie moguls that fantasy is popular; my agent reported that he had five queries about Xanth in a single day. But it’s On a Pale Horse that got the movie option. Understand, an option is merely the right to make the movie in a given time; most options are not exercised, and even when they are, the movie doesn’t necessarily occur. But it’s a start. So while I would never say in public that I think my novels are better than the ones they are making movies from, I’m all for those movies, because they stir the pot and I have a lot of fantasy in that pot. We also saw Beloved on TV, a fascinatingly strange one.

KMart went bankrupt. Too bad; we like the local store. It’s still open, same as usual, but I think is not restocking, and there are things on sale. So we took a look at their video selection (you thought I had changed the subject?) and I’m a sucker for sales. I found Six Days, Seven Nightsfor $9.99. I remember in 1998 we saw a movie, and they gave out a mini-pamphlet with descriptions of forthcoming movies, and that was one, and it intrigued me. Virile man marooned on Pacific jungle isle with luscious girl for a week–can’t think why it didn’t interest my wife or daughter. So we didn’t see it then. So I snapped up the video; wife and daughters may run my life, but they can’t stop me from watching a video on my own time, snort-snort. It’s a standard adventure, well enough done, and I did enjoy it, even though she never shows as much cleavage as she does on the jacket. And I spied an unfamiliar one, Antitrust, for $6.34: genius teen boy gets a hi-tech computer job, then gets suspicious of the boss-man’s tactics, and his life complicated by two pretty girls. Probably junk, but for that price worth a gamble. And it was okay, standard but well enough done. I’m not insulting movies when I call them standard; there are few really original plots–I ought to know, as a commercial novelist–so the question becomes how well they are done. I’d call this a satisfactory diversion, and I don’t know why it was on cut-rate sale.

Finally, as I was writing this column, we saw The Count of Monte Cristo, and you know, for a 150 year old story it stands up well, even if “Cristo” does make me think of hydrogenated vegetable oil. I understand that critics of the day sneered at the author, presumably because he wrote readable stories; I know that scene well. I found the prison sequence rather long, yet it did make sense in terms of the story, providing the man the chance to learn all he lacked. Some elements turned out too pat, but overall it was dramatic and moving. Still, how could he spend 17 years in a dark hole, with nothing but a daily ration of slops and whatever rats he caught to eat, and emerge in perfect health? How come he had fire whenever he wanted it? I also wish that movie directors would learn to differentiate characters better; there were three dark-haired men I couldn’t tell apart, all significant roles, and that confused me throughout the movie.

Okay, the ogre has been positive; now let’s get to the negatives. I have been deluged by requests for overseas autographed pictures, mostly from Germany, by folk who I doubt read my novels. Neither do they read my columns here. When an Internet foul-up took HiPiers.comoff for a week, those requests kept right on coming in. So they have a list elsewhere, and they just send off by email to demand one, two or three pictures at a time from anyone with an address, at my expense. When I send a picture, chances are a month later I’ll receive an identical request from the same person, and another, and another. They don’t pay any attention to what they have, they are blindly set on acquisition. Sometimes the pictures turn up for sale on eBay. I’m tired of it. So this is my official notice, which they won’t see but that I feel obliged to post, that it is over. I will not send any more pictures overseas. For a while we’ll answer the requests with a canned paragraph saying that; eventually we’ll just ignore them. I’ll continue to honor on-continent requests that give some evidence of being from actual readers, as opposed to pure collectors who don’t know anything about me. I think that’s reasonable.

Most of the email I get is positive, but some isn’t. One person peppered me with questions. I’d answer half a dozen, and immediately he was back with more, and more and more. It was evident this was a game to him, to occupy my time; he was playing gotcha rather than really wanting to know. One was about a character in the Dastard: why wasn’t he in the Characters database at HiPiers? I had the usual pile of mail to handle, and I’d never get it done efficiently if I broke off to get into the database and the novel, so I said maybe the characters of that novel hadn’t yet been added to the database. I have complete casts of characters for every novel, for my own use, but they don’t get added online until after the novels are published. I have written them through #27 Cube Route, and Dastard is #24; I wasn’t sure where the update was. Came back the response: why had I lied about it? That did it; I told him not to send any more questions. There followed an “anonymous” missive which I quote exactly: “You believe 2000 was the start of the 21st century and 3rd millennium. Fuck off and die you asshole. Lying sack of shit you motherfucker.” No point in responding; I suspect he’s already in enough trouble for defacing the wall of his middle school library. Another case was privately painful: a reader asked me to send a picture to her friend, who was a big fan of mine. I sent it. He sent me a note of thanks. I acknowledged, addressing the couple of points he had, and went on to the rest of that day’s pile of mail. And learned later from the first correspondent that the second had concluded that my response was routine, was hurt, and may no longer be my fan. So I would have kept a fan had I never sent him a picture or answered his letter. That’s what bothers me; I see other writers who tacitly shit on their fans without losing them; I try to be responsive to the extent limited time allows, and sometimes it costs me. Are some fans like masochists, wanting to be mistreated? Then there was the one who accused me of racism because I didn’t have black characters in my fiction. Here is a quote from her letter: “His stereotyping helps to perpetuate ignorance in a community of readers and thereby supports the current ignorance that creates and supports prejudice and racism and hate groups.” I responded naming Macroscope, Tarot, Race Against Time, and my GEODYSSEY series, all of which have black main characters sympathetically portrayed, as my real readers know, as well as Zombie Loverand Xone of Contention in Xanth, with Breanna of the Black Wave. Did that satisfy her? Nope, just more rage. This type of critic seldom cares to bother with reality. I had a similar run-in several years ago with the leader of a Gypsy group who accused the Incarnations series of similar evil against Gypsies. When I wrote up a detailed article pointing out that a Gypsy became an Aspect of an Incarnation, hardly a negative portrayal, it was rejected unopened, stamped OFFENSIVE TO GYPSIES. The guy was a bigot–that is, one who blindly and intolerantly clings to a limited belief. You think minorities can’t be as bigoted as majorities? Think again. Bigotry is not a color or culture, it’s a state of mind. And some minority folk seem determined to shit on their friends.

Contrast the attitude of Elizabeth Barnett at Denelian@columbus.rr.com, whose statement follows; welcome to email her directly about her statement.

Religious Freedom vs. Personal Rights

We in the U.S. have enjoyed this position of looking down on the rest of the world. Now we have the opportunity to look past our noses and right one of the most pervasive wrongs I can think of: Religious intolerance.

I am not speaking of Islamic vs. Christian vs. Pagan, but something more deeply seated. I am speaking of the hate crimes so many religions commit against their own members; hate crimes based on the corruption of religious texts, religious ideals and the meaning of Humanity. Women in the Middle East are being mutilated or being stoned to death as punishment for things beyond their control; small boys are being taught that their mothers and sisters are evil.

I am also speaking of the willful ignorance most Americans have for this situation. Please research, listen and then write to your Congress (wo)man, the U.N. or volunteer with amnesty International… Do something for the thousands abused by their own faith.

I do not mean to “convert the heretical Muslims”; I mean for everyone to know the truth of this beautiful religion, and its abuse by those who wish only to keep power. Mohammed never intended these things, he spoke against them, stating that daughters were as loved as sons in the eyes of Allah. The people of Islam should embrace this ideal, as should we all.

Now a bit of promotion. I generally don’t say much about my own books here, as that information is available elsewhere on this site. I have looked at some other writer’s sites, and confess I am turned of by those that seem to be dedicated to pushing sales of their latest books. It’s their right, of course; it’s just not my way. My wife and I have spent a fair amount of time getting my older titles back into print via Xlibris.com. She scans and proofs them, then I proofread them too and add Author’s Notes. Then we tackle the study in aggravation that is the Xlibris publication process. They fouled up a table of contents, listing every page number twice; when I got them to correct that, they fixed it but then did it to a different volume, at which point I had either to pay to correct their error and wait months, or accept it wrong. I accepted it, but am not pleased. When they claimed they didn’t have my address, after just sending proof copies to it, and argued the case when I pointed that out, I finally sent a copy of the correspondence to John Feldcamp, the Xlibris CEO so he would know what was happening in the trenches. As a major investor and board member I can do that and get a response, but normally I prefer to plow through on my own. The thing is, I want Xlibris to be writer-friendly, and when it isn’t I may try to do something about it, lest it lose the business of those who aren’tlocked in to its success. Anyway, last year we went through ten books, starting with Mute, my 190,000 word restored psi-powers science fantasy novel. I added an Author’s Note, which I ran here several columns ago, wherein I remarked that I couldn’t find my notes for the sequel, Moot. Well, cleaning up my study later, I found them–and lost them again. But this time there was a happy ending: I had put them in a second folder, which I had forgotten. I found it, a 2,000 word summary dated January 1986. So if I ever do decide to write it, I’ll have a good start. Why would I want to? Well, if a studio decided to make a major movie of Mute, and was set to do another, I’d consider it. Movie execs may come across as idiots, but they come bearing barrels of money. I am one of the few writers who is not a hypocrite about money; I do write for money, but not only for money, and if shove came to push I’d stack my commercial fiction against some artsy fartsy efforts the critics like. Then the five collaborations with Roberto Fuentes, the Jason Striker martial arts novels, and a sixth one, new: that is, never before published. It consists of the half of the sixth novel that was abandoned when we lost our market to a hostile editor, plus a collection of our assorted shorter pieces, published and unpublished. That was my last published book of 2001 and my 120th career title. To save expense for me and the readers, I put them into three volumes of two books each. Going through them after a quarter century I found them almost like new material, and I like these violent, sexy, and culturally diverse novels. Roberto, the former judo champion of Cuba, had an encyclopedic knowledge of martial arts and Latin American cultures, and I knew how to write; we made a good team. Those are available now via Xlibris. Then we tackled two collaborations with Robert E Margroff, The Ring and The E.S.P. Worm, published 30 years ago, and both still read well for my taste and will be appearing soon now. I had remembered Worm as fun but not deep; this time I was impressed by its humor and depth. As for Ring: I got a shock when I proofread the sentence “He looked at the mechanical anus overhead.” Some spot research satisfied me that it was a typo for “mechanical arms.” Scanners can play odd tricks. It makes me wonder what a mechanical anus might do; there could be a story there. Metallic turds? And another new one: the sixth Bio of a Space Tyrant novel, The Iron Maiden. That’s the same story through the eyes of the Tyrant’s sister Spirit, who loved him in more than the familial sense, and who was the backbone of his administration. So a good deal of it is a retelling of the first five novels, with Spirit’s personal parts included. I don’t like repeating myself, but I couldn’t omit material that Spirit was intimately concerned with. Those who have not read the prior series and are curious can read this one and get an excellent notion whether they care to tackle the others, which are also at Xlibris now. I suspect I’ll receive some comments about the level of sexuality. Maiden represents my 121st published book, my first of 2001, when it appears soon after this column. I am now in a dialogue with Xlibris to see if it will expand its word limit to accommodate my new ChroMagic fantasy series, which runs a quarter million words per novel. When traditional publishers pass me by, I mean to self publish. Every writer who believes in his/her work should. The arts have been hostage to the whims of arrogant and often ignorant editors far too long.

We ordered a seat cushion shaped like half a bagel, circular with a hole in the center, the theory being that sitting is more comfortable if the center is unbound. I tried it and didn’t detect much difference. Then I tried it upside down, and it works better. This is surely ammunition for my critics. You know, a half-assed cushion.

We watch the TV program “Ed.” At first it was because there wasn’t anything else decent on at that time, but it grew on us. Recently Ed faced a question about a person’s debt to the needs of the less fortunate: Should you sell your $150 watch and use a $50 watch instead, and donate $100 to charity? A simple question, but not necessarily a simple principle when you explore the ramifications. I could expound on it for some time, but prefer to leave that for others. Meanwhile I’m on five eighths of a myriad of charity solicitation lists, but I donate to only a few, trying to make it count when I do.

I try to read at least a book a month. I understand that the majority of folk never read a book after high school, and those who do read, read much more than one a month. But I’m a slow reader, the legacy of what might have been called dyslexia had it existed in my day–remember, I’m the one who took three years to get through first grade because I couldn’t readily read–and reading tends to put me to sleep. It’s not that it bores me, it’s that it relaxes me. Also, I have a fraction of a squintillion subscriptions to excellent magazines that I struggle to keep up with, and mail arriving on an endless conveyor belt, and the biggest obstacle: I LOVE TO WRITE, so hate to take time from it to read. So I have to make time to read, and my writing suffers, shooting hurt glances at me. But I did read two books in Dismember and one in Jamboree. The third was proofing The Iron Maiden, already covered. The first was Losing Julia, by Jonathan Hull. The author bio said he spent ten years with TIME magazine, so I expected facile fiction, that being what that magazine was known for in my day. (Yes, I know it’s called a news magazine.) I wasn’t disappointed; the writing is beautiful and perceptive, and this is one of those literary novels that’s a pleasure to read. Many aren’t; in fact a fair guide to readability is to avoid what critics praise. The story is of a manuscript found at a grave, the journal of a man whose buddy was killed in World War I, who came to know the buddy’s girlfriend Julia via her letters, and later looked her up and loved her. But he was married, so it couldn’t last, and he spent the rest of his life missing her. That may sound dull, but the book isn’t. It is told in three time frames, shifting constantly between them: at war with the buddy, relating to the girlfriend a decade later, and remembering it all as an old man. I think it would have helped to have better identification of the three frames, but after a time I got used to it. Some of the incidental bits are lovely in their poignance, such as when a batch of military mail got rained on before being delivered to the soldiers, and one letter was in answer to a man’s proposal of marriage, but the rain had washed out the ink. Here are others: “Funny, but when I enlisted it never occurred to me that war would be so monstrously inconvenient, so that not one single thing was easy except getting killed.” “I’m starting to think that sadness is organic; that sad people are cursed with more insight than others.” “It’s quite funny, really: several billion people all feigning immortality, as though they each have some secret exemption.” “When you are young you demand ecstasy; when you are old you settle for anything short of agony.” I’m old enough and aware enough to relate. I read it because I am considering whether to fictionalize my father’s life; there are unusual aspects, and the ironies of my own genesis abound. This helps me see what works and what doesn’t. I have a high opinion of my ability as a writer, but I doubt I can match the elegance of Losing Julia. I recommend it to readers possessing wit and sensitivity.

The second book, my 20th for the year, was Kintumbanis The Last Wizard by Paula La Sala. She’s British born and lives in Florida and is in my age range, so I can relate. I met her when I was book signing at BOOKS A MILLION, and she gave me a copy of her novel. I made no promises, because self-published books–this one’s at FIRSTPUBLISH–can range from good to awful, and this one was huge, about a third of a million words. But I soon found that it was worthy. Sure there are typos and trace grammatical faults, but through I am the most critical reader I know, I’m not a critic. That means I notice but I don’t use a typo as a pretext to trash a good book. The story is of Kintumbanis, taking him from childhood in the 11th century to death centuries later, focusing on a series of episodes as he learns his craft, travels, and rights wrongs. As a young man he falls in love with another trainee in magic, but a jealous rival rapes and kills her, and blames Kintumbanis. Bereft of his love, Kintumbanis never marries. But many others do, and he helps them when he can. His life is really a framework for a series of adventures and spot romances of others, making this an easy book to read in stages. I recommend it for diversionary reading; the episodes are varied, with many kinds of magic and the characters are not all cast from the same mold. You can get into Kintumbanis’ world and stay there in comfort. I feel it should have been publishable the traditional way, had it fallen on the right desk at the right time. Getting published is a crapshoot even when your book is worthy.

I check everything that comes in, including junk mail; sometimes there’s interest there. An example is the Sinatra Health Report. I think some of Dr. Sinatra’s notions are looney, such as the notion that Vitamin C can be the opposite of an antioxidant, but one item caught my attention. He has a graph showing the decline of the responsiveness of a person’s nervous system. He says you can readily test yours. If you are right handed, stand on your left foot. Then close your eyes. How long can you keep your balance? A young person can do it 30 seconds or more, but an old person may last only 5 seconds. Okay, I’m in the latter range, so I tried it–and lasted 5 seconds. Repeated efforts gave me a best time of 15 seconds, but it was a struggle. So there’s a test that works.

They are announcing a cure for the common cold. What baloney! This new treatment claims to shorten a cold by one day. That’s a long way from a cure. Meanwhile, much of the medical profession continues to ignore the best treatment for a cold: Vitamin C. A doctor once said to me “If Vitamin C cured your cold, you didn’t have a cold.” I suspect he’s still getting colds, while I haven’t had one in years. You do have to know how to use it, and it isn’t 100% effective, but it does work. On colds, not the flu. So I’d modify that doctor’s statement: if you think you have a cold and Vitamin C doesn’t stop it, you don’t have a cold, you have the flu. I believe the medical industry is in hock to the pharmaceutical industry, and if Vitamin C were widely used, the fake nostrums currently selling well would dive and companies would lose money. So they pretend it doesn’t work, and won’t even sponsor proper tests on it, and ignore the ones that have been done. I have a simple test for a health newsletter: if it says Vitamin C doesn’t work, dump it, because it is beholden to a principle other than your health.

We got a virus that Vitamin C couldn’t touch: the computer kind. It sent out random bits of text from the bowels of past correspondence to random past correspondents, carrying the virus along. We queried the one who had received it from, who queried back another step, and got an answer: it was one that neither McAfee nor Norton could detect, and here was how to fix it. We followed the steps, eliminated the criminal file, and relayed the instructions to others. And got back word that we had fallen for a hoax. We checked, and it was true. The hoax makes you delete a key Windows file for handling long file names, making you do the dastardly work of a virus. Fortunately we don’t use long file names. And we did still have the virus. When we moved the mouse cursor to an icon, the icon jumped away, shoving aside other icons. We had McAfee, but it didn’t do the job. We tried using Norton online, but the moment it identified the virus, the virus cut off the connection. So we bought Norton at a local store and installed it, and this time it abolished the virus, one called “W32.magistr.39921@mm”. Now Norton updates itself weekly online, and we have not had further virii. Meanwhile, I recommend the Hoaxbusters site, at http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBMalCode.shtml. The one we fell for was SULFNBK.EXE.

Last time I mentioned the business of search engines that deliver paid ads rather than real information. I had two thirds of a slew of responses, and they overwhelmingly recommended Google as an honest search engine. I believe them. But some mentioned other ones with favor, so I list them here also in the spirit of public service. I haven’t tried any of them, but trust the judgment of my readers; they are bound to be good ones. www.google.com; www.dogpile.com“All results, no mess;” www.about.com; www.searchlores.org concerns itself with issues of efficient searching of the Internet; www.alltheweb.com; www.demoz.org; www.wisenut.com; www.copernic.com that you have to download; www.excite.com. Meanwhile I received a SPAM ad from TrafficMagnet.net offering to get me listed on more search engines and increase the traffic here. Thanks, no thanks; I disapprove, and anyway HiPiers is now averaging about 11,000 hits per day. My readers can evidently find me when they want to.

Remember Nigeria? Two columns ago I mentioned this rip-off, in which you are asked to make your bank account information available so that tens of millions of dollars can be transferred into it, and you get a cut of maybe twenty percent, or several million for yourself. At first there were 10, then 14 more, then another 14, and now there are 25 more. So they are actually increasing as they go, each one slightly different.

Last time I had a peripheral reference to gun nuts. There are nuts of all kinds, religious, political, and others galore; I’m a health nut. Right: I got a response that directed me to the site of the National Rifle Association, NRA. Okay, let’s tackle this one head-on. This is not a new issue for me; I debated it at a convention a decade or so ago, and I know J. Neil Schulman personally, the author of more than one book about the subject. He satisfied me that the USA Constitution really does protect the right to own guns. That means anyone can have a gun, though nobody has to. The thing is, I am interested in the truth in all things, and I really would like to know whether a gun in the house would make me safer. There are statistics galore, but the truth is opaque. The anti-gun nuts say that the gun is 43 times as likely to hurt a friend or family member as a criminal. Well, the NRA material goes after that, saying that of those 43, 37 are suicides. Now that’s a different matter; I believe in a person’s right to choose whether to live or die, and a gun is one sure fast way to do it if that’s your inclination. No need to hassle your doctor for a deadly pill, or to join the Hemlock society; it’s the original do-it-yourself device. On that matter I stand with the NRA: it’s a legitimate function of a gun.

So that leaves 6 to 1, another figure often bandied about. Still, would you care to own a dog that was six times as likely to bite you as an intruder? Would you care to swallow a pill six times as likely to hurt you as help you? As far as I’m concerned, a gun should be more likely to help you than hurt you, or it is not worthwhile. Okay, the NRA says that accidents, where one family member kills another, are only 2% of fatal firearms cases, or one for every 90,000 defensive gun uses. Does that mean that a gun is 90,000 times as likely to help you as hurt you? I think not, partial statistics are treacherous. For one thing there’s a significant statistic that I could not find mentioned in this long discussion. That is the gun homicide rate in countries that do or don’t have serious gun control. I don’t have figures to read from at the moment, but am sure there will be among my readers some anti-gun nuts who will be happy to provide them. From flawed memory, then: several countries in Europe have something like ten to a hundred gun fatalities a year, while America has something like 10,000 a year. A mind-blowing differential, take that as you will. For the NRA not to mention that, even to refute it, suggests guilt; they don’t want it to come to mind at all. I know some countries like Switzerland have guns required in many or all households, yet their statistics are low, so it isn’t just the presence or absence of a gun, it is the responsible use of it. In America any fool can get a gun and blast away at associates or strangers, and some do. That’s rare in more responsible countries. Of course guns aren’t the only killers, so the overall homicide rates need to be compared; it may be that in America guns do what knives do elsewhere, in similar numbers. Also, some safety rules are stupid; you’re supposed to keep your gun locked up unloaded, and the ammunition locked up elsewhere. So when an intruder comes in to rape your daughter and make off with your worldly goods, you have to run around unlocking things and putting them together. You’ll be dead long before you can do that. So the only effective gun is a dangerous one: loaded and handy. What you need is a safety, so it can’t go off by accident. And you need training, so you’ll hit what you aim at. I got it in the US Army long ago; you can get it from the NRA. I also think that every gun should be registered, so that when a body is found with a bullet in it, the authorities will soon know from what gun that bullet came, and who owns it, and no bullshit about losing it last week. You own a gun, you are responsible. I don’t think the NRA endorses that; I’ll be happy to have a clarification.

Here is what I want: a way to put together the opposing statistics to achieve a common denominator, so that the truth can be ascertained. It is obvious that each side uses selective statistics, so that the antis don’t mention suicide and the pros don’t mention Europe. I want figures both sides can agree on, that when digested indicate the answer to the original question: are you safer with or without a gun? Existing statistics, once reconciled, may not provide a full answer, because if they indicate that you are safer with a gun, so then every person buys a gun and goes armed at all times, what’s to stop the robbers from shooting from ambush? So it might be safer now, when most folk don’t carry guns, but not in the future, when most do. Still, it should be possible to come to some ballpark opinion. We get into a murky region when conjecturing what folk might do in the future, but that’s my area: speculative fiction. Since it is obvious that I don’t completely trust either camp, I’ll assimilate any statistics offered and draw my own conclusion, publicly in this column. I’m assuming that there will be some relevant feedback from both sides. I can’t be the only person interested in reality rather than hype.

I’ve mentioned our garbage garden, that started when our kitchen sink grinder broke and I started burying kitchen garbage in the square out back. Well, it came up this winter in potatoes, squash, and a single tomato plant. Then came a week of freezing, as low as 24°F. That’s outrageous for central Florida. So we tried to protect the garden by putting cardboard boxes and old bedsheets around and over it. That worked reasonably well; the more adventurous squash vines got nipped back along with their starting squashes, and a couple of tips of the tomato plant, but the potatoes did fine. Now we have harvested 5 plum tomatoes, lost 3 to bugs, and have 39 still growing. We bought some PVC pipe to make a framework to better support the sheets. The moment we did that, Florida went into record hot winter weather. But come another freeze, we’ll see.

One evening I saw a spider web in the upper left corner of my eye. That turned out to be literal; it was inside my eye. Next morning I saw cute little lightning jags in the same region. I peered out the window to locate the storm, but again, they were inside. No pain, just flashes. My wife says it must be a detachment. That is, some of the inner surface of the eye flakes off and interferes with the vision. It happened to her last year. In a few days the effect subsided. I must be getting old. It is issues I prefer to view with detachment, not eyeballs.

I have piles of magazine articles and clippings to comment on, but am determined to wrap this up at decent length this one time, so they will have to wait until I have less to say. Let me conclude with several incidentals. I had a bad day: a long-awaited contract had finally come, and I looked at it–and never saw it again. We conjecture that it slid into the pile of junk mail being discarded and wound up in the garbage. We drove out to check the garbage before it was taken, but for once the truck was on time, and it was gone. I called my agent, apologetically, and he was very nice about it, and got me a replacement contract. It remains embarrassing. One frustration with my Linux system, which I generally like, is that my mouse cursor sometimes wanders. I use a touch-pad rather than a mouse or trackball, but the drift occurs, so that sometimes by the time I click it’s on the wrong site. That can be dangerous. And I saw a TV feature about the Naked News, www.nakednews.com, wherein a comely announcer gradually removes her clothing while delivering the routine news, until she stands completely bare. That’s my kind of news! So I looked it up on the Internet, and it told me to check in as a first timer, but when I clicked the bar it ignored me; I couldn’t register. Maybe my Linux system lacks the necessary drivers to make it function. Darn. Here I’ve struggled to reach age 67 so as to have credit as a dirty old man so I can gaze at clean young women, and I’m balked. And the naughty power company Enron has been much in the news. If you had mentioned that name to me a year ago, I would have said “En Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology?” But I think they are different entities. For Christmas Daughter #1 Penny the farm girl sent me 8 quarts of assorted soy milk: natural flavor, chocolate, vanilla, fruity. I’m drinking them one cup at a time for snacks. I’m all for soy as a substitute for milk and meat. About 6 years ago we got two Austin Air filters; one’s downstairs, the other in my study. They last 5 years, but then the carbon gets clogged, and we had to turn them off. But then we found the replacement filters in a catalog, so got them, and now we have clean air again. A reader sent me a Borges idea paraphrased by Barth paraphrased by the reader: “Human beings are the mechanisms by which dreams infect reality.” I agree, and I’m doing all I can to encourage the process. John S. Pappas would like it known that his web site http://johnnypnews.com provides the top stories from most major newspapers as well as links to the big nets sites, presented in a concise manner. So if you’re fed up with all my opinionations, you know where you can go for the hard stuff. I received an email from Behzad Gholamvand farbod_dolamand@parsonline.net requesting $15,000 to help him make a movie about an Afghanian refugee in Iran. I didn’t contribute. Got another saying that the federal Government is about to charge five cents for every email sent. I don’t believe it, but if I did, I might approve, as it would cut down on the junk mail. Another solicitation was from SUSPENSE FILMS seeking $1-10 million investors and $65 million investors for the film Doomsday Kiss. I didn’t invest. I must be a real stick in the mud. I’ll watch the movie if they make it.

And our webmistress wants it known that any emails she gets relating to me she sends on to HiPiers; you won’t get a more direct connection by trying to bypass HiPiers.com. We receive a number of emails from readers who suspect that their communications never reach me personally; they’re wrong. With an exception: don’t send me “Flash” cards, because I can’t read them. We have Flash installed, but it doesn’t work.

Last time I remarked that I am the most critical reader I know–and a couple of readers had a ball pointing out that there was a typo in that statement. Growr. First, my explanation for typos is that they grow on the page after the proofreading; second, I was talking about assessment of literary qualities, artistry, syntax, and such. So there, you turd-brains. (But it remains embarrassing as hell. I’m sot supposed to be annoyed back.)

Bad news for the “gold” dollar coin: first year they issued a billion, second year under a tenth as many, and it is expected to drop to about 3% of the original issue. So it’s not working well. So what’s my interest? I’m so glad you asked. The first imitation American dollar coin effort was the Anthony Dollar. But was handled by bureaucrats who clearly didn’t know what they were doing. They made it the size and color of a quarter-dollar, so folk figured that was all it was worth and ignored it. The truth is it wasn’t worth even that; the base metals in it may have hardly been worth two cents. Also, it had the picture of Susan Anthony on it, whose countenance someone less kind than I might liken to that of an ogress. (I guess Anthony isogre country.) So there was no inducement to handle it. Okay, so this time they made it look gold (except that its base metal soon tarnishes to brass color, a true indication of its value), and they put a pretty face on it: Sacagawea, the American Indian maiden who helped the Lewis & Clark expedition. They don’t know what she really looked like, and anyway she was already pregnant, but still, the picture is pretty. So what happened? The coin is bombing out just like the other one. So maybe all the hindsight reasons for the Anthony’s failure were specious, and the critics didn’t know anything. That works for me; after all, its true for Anthony novels criticism too. Here’s a fact: if the US government really wants the dollar coin to be used, it will have to stop printing paper dollars.

A study indicates that the more time kids watch TV, the more violent they become. There’s been a suspicion for decades, because America is one of the most violent of first-world countries, and may watch the most TV, which is jam-packed with violence. I think that’s because the prudes here try to ban healthy sexuality from TV; you can’t even see bare breasts here, as you can elsewhere. So the programmers go to the other cheap source of thrills: violence. Naturally it doesn’t occur to them to have superior programming; that would require brains. My bet is that if every act of violence shown on TV were replaced by an act of sex, not only would there be twice as much TV watching, there’d be half as much violence. Why do I suspect that the Religious Right would not go for this? However, it must be stressed that correlation does not necessarily prove cause and effect; if it did, and you had ten per cent of the population with red hair and ten per cent left handed, red hair would cause left handedness. It could be that violent kids come mainly from neglectful homes, and part of that neglect is to use the TV as entertainer and baby-sitter; there might be nothing but cooking classes on it and the kids would still get violent. In fact they might be worse, if that’s all they had to watch.

Perhaps related subject: PETA–People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a hard-nosed activist organization–wants to run an ad showing the Virgin Mary nursing the Baby Jesus, and the Catholic Church objects. Maybe the Church has a point; after all, Mary probably went to the local Acme Supermarket and bought formula, rather than use her breasts for their natural purpose.

I saw an interview with the British actress why played Queen Elizabeth and won an award for it in the movie Shakespeare in Love. They asked her whether the Queen really had a sense of humor. She said yes: once a courtier farted when bowing to the queen, and was so embarrassed that he stayed away for five years. When he finally returned, hoping his indiscretion had been forgotten, the Queen reassured him “We have forgotten farts.” Wasn’t that nice of her?

An anonymous teen girl named Penny wanted an autograph, and I told her to send me her snail address. Then, remembering that in fan circles the word “address” may be rendered as “addy,” I remarked that the snail address might be compacted as “snaddy.” She found that hilarious, and told me to mention it in my column. So here it is. Have I coined a great new term that will overtake the world by storm, or has it been in use for decades and I didn’t know it? And I autographed the picture “To Penny–who showed me her snaddy.” Let her try to explain that to her parents.

I went to the doctor for a routine check, and she said I’d lost ten pounds and was concerned. You see, I’ve always been lean and like it that way, though I have had to amass a small collection of cushions for my chairs, lacking any natural padding there. I stand five feet ten and a half inches in my socks, and weighed 141 pounds in my clothing. I normally weigh 145 bare. I said their scale must be off, because I’m perfectly healthy. So they tried another scale, and it said the same. When I got home I tried our scales–and they said the same. I have lost weight. Then I remembered: I’ve been on a soft diet almost eight months, waiting for my tooth implants to set and be crowned. That will happen soon, but meanwhile I’ve been off things like nuts, snacking instead on those little cans of balanced-diet nutritive goop. Evidently they don’t add up as much, and so I’ve been slowly losing without knowing it. But soon I should return to a normal diet, and then I should be okay. Assuming that that’s it. That had better be it. Um, about those cushions: I recently got a set of two identical squared-off foam efforts. One was comfortably soft, but the other was like a block of wood. Identical? There may be a quality control problem there.

Last time I mentioned the lightning jags and spider webs in my left eyeball. Two knowledgeable readers wrote to advise me to get my thin posterior the bleep into an eye doctor’s office, because such innocent seeming symptoms could be preludes to losing one’s sight. I didn’t even finish reading the first email; I grabbed the phone and called my ophthalmologist, and his office said come on in. So I did, and he checked me: it’s a detachment, not a separation, and not serious–but the only way to be sure is by doing what I did, and having it checked by a professional. A detachment is when part of the inner lining of the eyeball comes loose and hangs there, like a flap of a Band-Aid; a separation is when it comes all the way loose and floats in the vitreous humor (nothing funny about it) of the eyeball. So I’m okay, thanks to my readers, who take good care of me. I should outlive those other writers who have no dialogue with their readers.

I’m a workaholic, or more properly a writaholic; I write constantly because that’s what I’m made of; if you took writing away from me I’d fade out and drift away in the wind like a fragment of used toilet paper. But I try to be a smart ‘holic; I did my best to prevent it from interfering with my family life or my health. I not only exercise regularly, I indulge in diversions such as going to see the movies with my daughter the video freak, and computer games. I even look for old games I remember. The trouble is, I tend to indulge in games with the same compulsive intensity as I write, and can spend too much time at it. So be it; it’s my nature. I saw a disc ULTIMATE SOLITAIRE, and hoped it would have the two card games I remember from childhood that seem to have disappeared from the world: Accordion and Crazy Quilt. And lo: it did have Accordion, with the correct rules of play. But it’s a Windows based game, so I don’t have it on my Linux system. Still, I played some games of Accordion on our correspondence system, which remains Windows, and will play more. I also checked some of their other squintillion games, and found a new one titled Number Ten that’s fun, and and old one, Aces Up, that has a better variation, making it more dynamically playable. So actually I’ve played other games on it more than Accordion, but never fear, I’ll get there. For those who aren’t familiar with this card game, you deal out cards in a line from the left, and match cards toward the left by suit or number, either the next card to the left or the fourth card, counting the card to the right as the first. You keep piling matching cards, the object being to finish with them all in a single pile to the left. You can get runs of nonplayable cards, followed by one that enables you to pile up several, so the line expands and shrinks like an accordion. It’s a great game, difficult to win; I think I won it something like three times in my life, playing it a lot with real cards. I mainly try for the fewest number of piles remaining at the end; under half a dozen is good.

I was reading a big novel–I’ll get to that in two and a half moments–and got sleepy, because not only am I a slow reader–that has to do with my heritage as on ogre–but reading puts me to sleep. So I needed something to stir me up, waking me so I could continue reading. So I checked the Linux computer games. One of them, “Snake Race,” has never worked for me; the snake just slithers around ignoring me, until the GAME OVER sign flashes. Yes I read the instructions; they don’t say how to actually make the game respond. So I tried the next one, Sokoban. I see some heads in the audience nodding; they know what’s coming. This game was invented in Japan in the early 80’s and won a computer game contest there. “Sokoban” means “warehouse keeper” in Japanese, and you can play it with the arrow keys. The setting is a warehouse, with crates scattered around. The little warehouse keeper has to push the crates to where they belong, the tiles marked on the floor. He can only push, he can’t pull. That means there has to be a spot open ahead of the crate to push it to, and a spot behind it for the keeper to stand. That may sound simple, but the warehouse isn’t necessary one big chamber; it may be a complex of chambers with narrow passages, many of which are blocked by crates. Push a crate into a wall and you may be stuck, because there’s no place open on the other side. Sometimes you can push it from the side, however. Sometimes the storage region is hard to get into, and crates tend to jam. I played the game, and it wasn’t that difficult, but when I won, another layout appeared, Level 2. So I played that. They got more difficult; Level 6 had me stymied for some time, and when they got into the teens–Level 13 up–they could be monsters. Sometimes you can seal your loss in the first move, by pushing an obvious crate temptingly set up for you; sometimes you have to move crates out of the storage chamber, saving them until later. I tried to limit my playing, but some days I got locked in and played for two hours or more. The upshot was that this was a drag on my working time for about six weeks, during which I solved all 50 Levels in the course of a cumulative 35 hours playing time. It’s just about perfect as a game, easy to understand, hard to win, and you have to do some heavy figuring out to get there. Some configurations are reminiscent of chess in their deviousness. Amazing how complicated pushing crates can be! At last I was free, and could resuming writing my novel at speed. Until I discovered Shisen-Sho, which uses Mahjongg tiles in a different way. Another good game.

Now about that book I was reading. This has a history, so bear with me. One of my readers, Eric Labuda, emailed me, mentioning that he was also a fan of the work of the late John Brunner. That rang a little bell in my cranium, and I wrote back that I knew Brunner and admired his science fiction. He was born in Oxford County, England, the same region I was born, about six weeks after me. No, we didn’t know each other as children; my folks went to Spain to do relief work, where later my father was arrested and expelled by the Franco dictatorship there, and we came to America on the last passenger boat out as World War Two raged in Europe. The ship was the Excalibur, of King Arthur fame, and a former king of England was on that voyage. So I became American, while Brunner remained British, and we didn’t meet until 1966. At this point I had just sold my first novel, not yet published, and he had sold 40 novels and was well known while I was unknown. But my day was to come, while his faded, and today I am well known while he is largely forgotten. That has more to do with the luck of publishing than with ability, for he was a fine writer. In the late 1970’s I was forging ahead with fantasy on my way to the best seller lists, while he spent five years on a single novel, The Great Steamship Race. When it was published, it sank, and with it much of his career. So that was the point I passed him in success, and I was curious about that novel. Well, the Brunner fan checked the Internet and did what I was too dull to do: he located copies of the novel for sale. He bought a couple, sent me one, and I traded him a couple of my books for it. And settled down to read it.

The Great Steamship Race is a huge novel, a third of a million words long, almost triple the length of a Xanth novel. It’s historical, about a fictional race between steamships on the Mississippi river in 1870. It has a huge cast of characters, and it is clear that Brunner did his research on the subject; you can just about learn how to operate a paddlewheel steamship. It’s well written, albeit with a few typos and trace errors. It’s a grand story, and should have been a mainstream success. So why did it fail? I suspect it was because it took so long for him to write it that he lost his editor, leaving no one to push for things like decent promotion and printings, and his reputation had faded in that interim. So the publisher just put it out there without support. Publishers do that; there’s a case now with a book Stupid White Men by Michael Moore becoming #1 on the nonfiction hardcover list, with its publisher dragged kicking and screaming along, seeming to want it to fail. Readers of my autobiographies and columns know how it is; publishers can be such shits. So there it is: Steamboat is a great reading experience, perhaps marking the effective end of the career of an excellent genre writer. Parnassus rewards funny fantasy rather than serious history; don’t I know it. But I mourn for Brunner’s loss; he deserved better.

I also read Hukata by Michael Weatherford, a nice alien crash landing science fiction novel now trying the market. He’s putting his books on his site as shareware, with true self publishing, at http://users.codenet.net/mweather/mybooks.htm, and Everything in its Path by Steve Alcorn, a children’s novel of two ten year old girls, one American in the 1920’s, the other American Indian before the white man invaded. Their lives are parallel as both face the threat of a deadly flash flood that, yes, carries everything in its path. This one is of traditional publishable quality, if the author can only get a competent agent despite a system that shuts out new writers. As genre writer Robert Moore Williams remarked once, the big pigs have their snouts in the trough, and they’re not about to let the piglets in for the swill. Some time back I read Robert W. Woods’ Adventures of Scott Nolan, which as I remember was the story of a family with a telepathic dog. I put him on to Xlibris and he published it there, but it seems to have had zero sales, being unknown and not hitting up family and friends to buy copies. That’s sad; it’s a decent story. Take a look at it at www.Xlibris.com and see. I think the problem is that there are more good novels than there are publishers for them, so good works are squeezed out by funny fantasy or whatever. I don’t like the system, despite having profited by it; I had the luck to win its roulette, but would rather have done it on pure merit. I wish every writer could do it on pure merit.

Which brings me to my first break. Some editors are better than others. I had the luck to try a short fantasy story on the magazine FANTISTIC when editor Cele Goldsmith was there. She was that seeming rarity, an editor who did her job competently. As a result she was the one who put a number of significant genre writers first into print, like Roger Zelazny, Harlan Ellison, Ursula Le Guin, Thomas Disch, Ben Bova, John Jakes–and Piers Anthony. Like first love, a writer’s first sale is special, and she was mine. She was only a year older than I, and was killed in a car accident in Jamboree 2002. FANTASTIC was a trashy magazine before and after her time, but I like to think that it was a good one then.

Last time I used the term “Japanimation.” Someone told me it’s offensive; the correct term is “Anime.” Oh? It was standard in my day, and I don’t see why the revisionists should condemn it. Anime is fine too. I remember when someone cautioned me for using the term “Gypsy,” calling it offensive; it’s supposed to be “Romany.” But it was the term the Gypsies themselves gave; they claimed to be from Egypt, which they weren’t, and thus were Egypt-sies. The Politically Correct language Nazis are ever with us; I regard Political Correction as censorship.

As I mention every so often, I arch for exercise. I use my 60 pound draw weight compound bow right handed at 150 feet, and my left handed reverse curve bow at 100 feet, and sort of match them against each other to see which does better on a given day. They’re fairly even. Over the years I have gradually improved my accuracy, mainly by eliminating target misses. On rare occasions I manage to fire all 24 arrows without missing the target at all; that’s a “perfect” session. In Marsh I managed to have two perfect sessions in a row. Could I make three? My 12 right handed shots were okay; then the first left handed one veered right and thunked into the baffle target there. Bleep! But then I checked more closely and discovered that while the point was in the other target, the shaft had passed through the edge of the central target, and remained caught by its light plastic webbing. My rule is that if the arrow remains stuck in any part of the main target, it’s not a miss; if it bounces off the target and falls elsewhere, or if it bounces on the ground and lodges in the target, it is a miss. So technically this was not a miss, and I finished the third perfect session. Next session it did bounce off the top of the target and was a miss. In fact it went Thunk and disappeared; It had passed between the main target and the baffle target set above it without disturbing either. I looked all over and couldn’t find it, even with my trusty metal detector. Bugged by this I went out again next day and finally did find it, buried in the ground under thick brush about fifty feet beyond the target. If there’s a way through the targets, my arrows will find it, and hide perfectly. Thus my brave little adventures in determined dufferdom.

We watched the Olympics on TV. Olympic judging is like publishing or campaign financing: insidiously corrupt in ways that everyone suspects but are hard to prove. This time it got too obvious and they had to do something to clean it up at least cosmetically. I was struck by the parallel to the US Supreme Court at the last presidential election: 9 judges, one of whom was a woman who had a private ax to grind and shifted the result 5-4. At least they halfway fixed it, in the Olympics. Meanwhile I remain bemused by an event that is nominally competitive or artistic, judges notwithstanding, but actually appeals to baser instincts. Observe how firm-thighed female skaters are put into short skirts and tight panties, and raise their legs high and turn carefully around so that every member of the audience can see the nether crevice. If it is that important to see it, why don’t the men wear similarly revealing costumes? I don’t object; I like seeing well filled panties, and don’t even look at the men. But is it art?

One day as I was checking our Garbage Garden–we’ve harvested some red potatoes, and more than 40 tomatoes now, and more are growing, and other plants are coming up, in that marvel that is the endless recycling of nature–our dog Obsidian was avidly sniffing under a copse of trees. Suddenly there was a “Coo! Coo! Coo!” and I realized that she had caught something. It sounded like a bird. I hauled the dog into the house and checked. It was a baby bunny! I never heard one speak before. It seemed to be all right. I piled brush and wire around the copse to barricade it against the dog so that the bunnies would have a briar patch to retreat to. We’re not too keen on having a family of rabbits prospering right next to our garden, but hope they’ll move elsewhere now that they know that there’s a big dog on the prowl.

Speaking of plants: generally speaking, I like them. But what we call thorn plants are invading our forest; they have sturdy long thorns all along, so to brush past one is to get painfully stuck. They’re a weed tree, from somewhere else, and spring back with new shoots like a hydra when clipped to the ground; the only way to be rid on one is to dig it out. So around the house I do that. But I make sure I recognize a plant before removing it. There was one my wife thought was a thorn tree, but I felt no thorns, so left it, pending verification. We finally put in half an hour with the tree books and identified it: it’s a possumhaw, or deciduous holly, or winterberry–yes, it has three popular names. It’s a variety of holly, and in time will be a small tree, possibly 30 feet tall, and the only one we have seen in our vicinity. So it pays to be cautious; we’ll gain a nice little tree.

Publishers return “dead” manuscripts after they are done with them, so I can add them to my collection of papers at the University of South Florida. I don’t know whether I’m the best documented writer extant, but it’s possible; I date and save everything, and in due course it is institutionalized. My papers are voluminous; at the time I donated the first batch to USF it was appraised at between half and one million dollars and was the largest such gift in the history of the University. No, I don’t get any tax break for it; I do it because I feel it is right to do, plus I need the space. Thus I recently received the original manuscripts for The Dastard and How Precious Was That While back. What made me take note was that they are both marked “Foul Production Ms.” I know publishers treat writers with contempt, but to call our literary aspirations foul productions is a bit blunt. It sounds like a euphemism for shit.

I heard recently on 60 Minutes that half a million Americans die in pain every year, because the medical establishment won’t let effective pain killers be used. They’re afraid someone might get addicted, just before he croaks. What a crock!

I like music. I never made it as any sort of musician, other than amateur group singing folk songs, but as a child I memorized all the sings I liked. Then once between college semesters, circa 1955-6 I typed all their words out from memory so I would always have them. I still have that list, on yellowing half-sheets of paper, 84 songs. The first is “Cowboy’s Lament,” the second is “To the Woodland,” and so on, in order not of preference but of what would fit on a page, a long one matched with a short one. Now I use them on occasion in my fiction, especially in the sexy ChroMagic fantasy series, set on a magic planet colonized from Earth a thousand years before; the songs are among the lingering memories of the old world, carried on from generation to generation. Tour groups travel from village to village, and sing and act out the songs for the village children in round theater. For example they do “Barbara Allen” with the announcer singing the story, the male singer acting the dying Sweet William, and the female singer being hard-hearted Barbara Allen, who later dies of regret. “And death is printed on his face, and o’er his heart is stealing…” “Sweet William died for me today; I’ll die for him tomorrow.” The children are overcome by the sorrow of it, and the adults rehearse fond memories of their first exposure to it. I believe it would be effective played out like that. Of course publishers have no interest in this series, which is one reason you don’t see this sort of thing in print, but in time I’ll find a way to make it available. I’m working on Xlibris to expand its word limit on books, because each novel is 250,000 words long. Those old folk songs just animate me, and I sing them often enough to myself, silently in my mind. I suppose I should transfer that list to the computer before it crumbles away.

I get endless solicitations, not limited to the standard registered charities. There’s not one that’s for a bad cause. A high school band wants to buy new uniforms, a mother wants key surgery for her baby, a college student wants to pay off her debts so she can make a new start, a prisoner wants money for incidentals that aren’t provided, a library wants to buy new books, and so on. But here’s the rub: it’s in effect a pyramid scheme. The classic pyramid is where one person solicits several others for, say, a dollar each, and each of them send their dollars and add their names to the list and send out more letters, expecting to get much mere back in due course. But the scheme depends on an ever larger layer of new prospects–known as “the greater fool”–and soon there will not be enough people in the world to form that layer. The only ones who profit are those who start it, collect money from others, and don’t pay any out. That’s why it’s a scam. Okay, now here we have this community library needing new books. If every library in every community sent out similar solicitations, everyone would be sending money back and forth, and no one would be richer–except those that accepted without giving. It pays to cheat. That’s why it’s still a scam; it’s mathematically neutral for honest folk. Each one feels that it is more deserving than the rest, but I believe they should take care of it locally. Why doesn’t the school provide uniforms for its band? Why doesn’t the county provide money for the county library? Why isn’t there medical insurance to cover all mothers’ babies? So I pick and choose my charities carefully, generally skipping those that even if valid really represent the failure of local communities.

I have the dictionary habit. My collection of dictionaries is laid out for regular use, and I may go several times a day to check words. I discovered recently that “Auxiliary” is pronounced og ZIL ya ree. To me, og is for ogres; I pronounce it awk, but maybe that’s for the birds. Evidently I’m illiterate, not even speaking proper Ogrish.

A reader sent his framed print of the cover art for On a Pale Horse for autographing. I jammed the screwdriver into my thumb getting the print out of the frame so I could sign it, but that’s life. What do you know: the billboards that are blank on the published cover are illustrated ads for Hell in the original art. Evidently the publisher censored it. I’ve always been rather proud of Hell’s ad campaign in that novel, such as the picture of a lovely model with the two cute little devils, D & D, standing by; the male is lifting the model’s skirt so as to peek under, and the message is YOU WON’T SEE THAT IN HEAVEN. I suspect more women go to Heaven and more men go to Hell, considering their interests.

I sent off an order for a bunch of videos–and a month later, nothing. I assume the Post Orifice lost it, which means I lose out on the 25% off sale they had. Sigh. We did watch Nightfall from a prior order. That’s Isaac Asimov’s most famous story. But the movie itself is junky. Too bad. Movie makers always think they can improve on the original, and that arrogance is one reason we don’t have better movies. Now Xanth is being considered; I’m interested because of the barrels of money movie folk seem to have, knowing that what emerges at the theater may have little resemblance to the original. Still, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings seem to be trying to follow the originals, and those movies are doing well, so maybe…

We went to see The Time Machine, which does not seem very close to my distant memory of the original but is nevertheless a decent show, and Ice Age, which is really a children’s story, but okay. The ones I anticipate, however, are the Star Wars episodes. Sure they’re junky in terms of common sense, but it’s my kind of junk, magnificent junk.

I read the weekly Ask Marilyn column in PARADE, though I see little evidence that it’s actually written by someone of really superior intellect. On occasions she makes duffer’s errors, but usually corrects them subsequently when readers write in. When she came out with misinformation about the great 3,200 mile long Chinese Wall I sent in a correction citing my source, and she ignored it. For the rest of you: there is not and never was a 3,200 long continuous Chinese Wall; it was a patchwork of links with alternating military forces. That one reason it can’t be seen from a satellite: it isn’t there. Well, this time she had a reader’s description of a tribe with complicated names; the challenge was to figure out which ones were the single women, married women, single men, and married men. I figured it out: 7 letter names were male, 8 letter names were female. Single folk ended in vowels, married folk with consonants. But Marilyn got it wrong, saying that when folk married the first or last few letters of their names changed positions. Maybe–but how is it possible to know that, unless you know what their original positions were? It’s nonsense. More likely they just changed the endings.

I read magazines galore while eating supper and watching TV: news, science, nature, opinion. They are constantly getting ahead of me, especially when something good is on TV, like “The Education of Max Bickford” or “First Monday.” The problem is, they are good magazines, and they keep getting better. One magazine I thought I could finish off quickly: NATURAL HISTORY for April 2002. I mean what’s in a nature magazine except pretty pictures of unsullied forests, lakes, mountains? Famous last words. Sure it has pictures. It also has an article on “String Theory” saying that the South American forest people’s tradition of spinning fibers goes back at least 28,000 years. That’s eyeball popping. Coincidentally, they also have a long article about the development of the eye; seems that genes get borrowed between species, so that each species does not have to evolve the whole eye itself. That, too, is amazing. Also an article on special spots in the Earth-Moon gravitational system, forces in balance. Article on group living of South Africa’s Cape Buffalo, said to be one of the most dangerous animals, partly because the herd will come to the rescue of an attacked member. An article on a diverse collection paintings of exotic creatures a man made three centuries ago. Article on how the common house mouse originated in the steppes of Asia and made its way to America in the course of thousands of generations. And a special report on the concept of Intelligent Design: the old Creation vs. Evolution debate. What struck me here is that the Creationists are not necessarily ignorant louts; some of their arguments can make you think. I’m an evolutionist, but this demands respect. It’s a series of pro/con statements that can’t be casually dismissed. And on; I mean this issue is jammed with interesting and significant material, impossible to assimilate rapidly. And it’s the magazine I thought to do just that with. How can I keep up?

Internet circulated list: spot descriptions of states, like Florida: Ask us about our Grandkids; Georgia: We put the “Fun” in Fundamentalist Extremism; Minnesota: 10,000 Lakes and 10 septillion Mosquitoes; North Carolina: Tobacco is a Vegetable; Utah: Our Jesus is Better than Your Jesus; Wyoming: Where men are men and sheep are scared!

I received an ad for the Institute of Noetic Sciences, dedicated to the scientific study of the nature and potential of consciousness. Well, now; that’s one of my buttons; I want to know what enables consciousness in animal minds and whether it is possible to develop machine consciousness. I have read books on the subject. I believe it is a feedback loop, and once we fathom the nature of that loop, we’ll duplicate it. But as I contemplated the literature on this institute, I saw that they believe that prayer has the power to heal, that people communicate telepathically with their pets, that there is compelling evidence for reincarnation, and the survival of consciousness after death. This is fantasy; I write it, I don’t believe it. So I’m not subscribing. No, I don’t consider myself close-minded; I have spent much of my life exploring just such subjects fictively, researching the factual bases for that writing. When I see the fear of death causing folk to grasp at straws in their will-to-believe, I know something other than objective investigation is going on. Sure, prayer can work wonders–but not in a double-blind study. Telepathy–I have whole theories for it, but again, objective studies have not confirmed it. Life after death, reincarnation–I love the concept of the traveling soul, but I have seen no proof.

Last time I commented on the gun issue. I received a few moderate comments and no violent ones; apparently this issue is not the tinderbox anticipated. The main point, I think, is that statistics are bound to be spongy, because a person may have a gun, brandish it, and scare off a robber or threatening person, and that doesn’t get listed as a statistic. If only criminals shot or friend/family shot count, when, say, ten times as many criminals were scared off shotlessly, what does that mean? I guess we need statistics on how many folk with guns get harmed, vs. how many without guns. If guns really are scaring off many criminals, the households with guns should have lower crime rates. Another matter is responsibility: in countries where guns are possessed responsibly, the accident rate seems low. But it’s hard to measure responsibility; it’s intangible.

Chester Beedle sent me a link to www.a-human-right.com, and I checked it. The proprietor seems to be Oleg Volk in Nashville, Tennessee. Bales of material, but as with the Noetic institute, when I got into it I discovered bias. It starts with sections for gun control advocates and for gun freedom advocates (my words, not theirs), but the control section is merely a survey on attitudes about guns, and it’s a push-poll: that’s when the phrasing of the questions is intended to lead to a given answer. Here’s an example: Someone planning a drive-by shooting would use… Only legal 10 round magazines because they plan to get caught, or Anything he wants because he doesn’t plan to get caught. Any doubt which answer is expected? Another sample: A rapist choosing between two victims would prefer to attack the armed one so he could take her gun and use it against her, or the unarmed one because that would be less hazardous, or decides not to mess with either, as he can’t tell which one is armed. Would anyone seriously choose the first answer? Even if someone chose the third, that still is an argument in favor of guns. And it doesn’t seem to occur to the gun folk that the first thing the average criminal would do would be to get his own gun, and if in doubt about whether a victim was armed, shoot from ambush to avoid the danger. So this poll is not credible, and it signals the nature of this site. Nevertheless, there is some good discussion here, and there is much to be learned. Just don’t assume it is all objective; it’s a gun site, and therefore suspect, because of the suspicion that it will omit material that doesn’t support its case. I use the analogy of the car: would you drive a car whose brakes work 90% of the time? When you think about it, the answer is no, because statistically you’ll wreck before you drive far. A site may have 90% good information, but none of it can be trusted if you don’t know what’s been left out. But with that caution exercised, it’s worth consideration. It defines civilized nature as acting humanely towards others even if no punishment would be incurred by acting meanly. That’s a good thought. It says that fewer than 2% of people decline to behave in a civilized manner. Therefore the others need weapons. Oh? I’d prefer to take those few uncivilized folk out of circulation so the others don’t need the weapons; that’s safer. It says that organizations, like people, can be uncivilized, including some governments. There’s another good thought. It mentions the French Huguenots in 1572, Polish Jews in 1939, and Cambodian intelligencia in 1975, all of whom suffered grievously at the hands of their governments. I could think of other examples; atrocities are unfortunately common. The point is that sometimes you do need to resist aggression, lest you be unfairly destroyed. And it points out that guns aren’t the only things that kill. Okay, but my question is whether you are safer with or without a gun, and this doesn’t answer that. But there is more: it says that in other countries, like England, home invasions are on the rise because criminals have nothing to fear from law-abiding people. It indicates that homeowners with guns are in a better position to repel such crimes. I agree. But unless the criminals are prepared to go out of business, they are apt to respond in one of two ways: they’ll go to some other house that isn’t as well guarded and commit their crimes there, in which case the crime has not been stopped, merely passed on to a more innocent household. Or they’ll come prepared, and lob a grenade into your house to distract you while they invade, or set up a machine-gun and kill everyone in the house by firing through the walls, making it safe for crime. As I see it, there is little advantage in having everybody dangerously armed; it would be better to keep the guns out of the hands of criminals and idiots. Yet again, arguing with my own thought, the gun is called the equalizer for good reason; without it the big, strong, trained warrior can push around other folk. I don’t like the idea of a world run by bullies. Back to the site comments: he points out that pacifism can come at a very high price, as Hitler and Stalin showed. I agree; one big reason I did not become a Quaker (the Society of Friends) after being raised as one was that I felt their pacifism was unrealistic, a virtual invitation for the bullies to take over. I am not a pacifist, and I have taken martial arts classes (I was a green belt in judo–that’s not high, but it taught me a lot), and I do have deadly weapons in the house–just not guns. Someone comes figuring to rob my house, rape my wife, and beat me up will damn well have to have a gun. But I’d rather see our laws keep the gun out of his hands. That’s what gun control is about, as I see it: responsible gun possession, so that anyone who commits a crime with a gun will lose it and his freedom. Sure, Florida already has such a law–but doesn’t have effective enforcement. If every gun were registered, so that any bullet could be traced to both gun and owner, there would be a lot more responsibility–and the gun nuts seem to oppose that. They don’t seem to want responsible guns, just guns. The site goes on to say that there are many instances of a gun being used in defense without being fired; the mere threat suffices. I’d like to know whether those cases outnumber the ones where a gun is accidentally or ignorantly fired and harms someone. A responsible gun can abate crime–but does it, statistically? I have not yet found the answer. Then we get to the personal aspect of this site. It has an article by Brent deMoville, Ph.D, female, standing 5’2″, who was raped and took 3 years of martial arts as a precaution against any future attempt, discovering that she was no match for a 6’2″ male martial artist. So she got a gun, and hasn’t been raped since. That’s a reason I understand. But then we get into a section, I assume by the proprietor–it’s not identified–that likens crime to a pack of hyenas stalking a human. They are repulsed by a rifle, and wish they could separate her from it so they can kill her. Now a direct quote: “People who think as those hyenas are less naïve than the idealists who wish to ban guns outright. ‘Gun control’ is a misnomer for what they have in mind. They are evil: they wish to control others. One of the easiest ways to control other people is by making them defenseless.” It goes on to say that Communists, fascists and other totalitarians do that. “Did any people armed with rifles end up stuffed into the holds of slave ships? When we look at history, free people have guns, slaves don’t.” “Violent criminals are direct beneficiaries of gun control.” And so on; go to the site and read the original for its full viewpoint. Meanwhile I suggest that this is unfair argument; first it defines gun control as gun elimination, then it blasts that. I see gun control as gun control, enforcing responsible ownership. That does mean universal gun registration, and sensible requirements for possession, maybe similar to the way it is with cars and driving. I don’t regard myself as evil or power-hungry for that, just sensible, and I want to be able to feel safe from getting ambushed by a gun-toting nut. Maybe I can get Oleg to say whether he supports that. Stay tuned.

Say–they are coming out with a virtual computer keyboard. It’s a full sized functional keyboard that can be projected on any surface and used. I look forward to the next step: a complete virtual computer. Just set up your little one inch cube projector and it makes a virtual keyboard you can type with, a virtual monitor screen you can see in detail, virtual sound you can hear, and virtual backup and printing. Maybe I’ll invent my own, and put it in a novel.

In our universe there are five basic forces: strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravity. In my fantasy there is a fifth: magic. Well, now science is conjecturing that there may be a fifth force, a long-range repulsive force that accounts for the increasing expansion of the universe. Well, maybe it’s magic.

I look at everything that comes my way, including junk mail. Never can tell where something of interest will show up. Sometimes I save financial newsletters that predict utter economic collapse in six months, and your only protection is to subscribe and use the crisis to get instantly rich. They may make interesting reading in six months. Well, health newsletters can be just as nutty. An ad for REAL HEALTH by William Campbell Douglass II MD says that the advice to drink 8 glasses of water a day is nonsense; that nobody knows why that should be done. Oh? I’ll tell you why I do: it stops me from having another kidney stone. And he says that vegetarians are sicklier, need more laxatives, have slumping sex function, muscle loss, bone damage, and die younger. Well, I’ve been a vegetarian for nigh 50 years, and I’m not sickly, don’t use laxatives, remain sexually active, and have good muscle mass. I’m not sure about bone damage, but am not aware of any. And there is no indication that I face an early death. So I think this is cow crap. The fact is, a vegetarian who pays attention to his diet, exercise, sleep, and emotional well-being, as I do, is likely to be healthier and nicer than the carcass eater who ignores such things.

A reader sent me a newspaper article on the trial of Ed Kramer, the proprietor of the annual Dragon Con. I am mentioned therein as one of the name writers who have attended the convention. True; I went there once, and my daughters have gone many times since. It’s perhaps the most successful of the conventions. But it seems he is into sex with small boys, and that is his undoing. Too bad. I’ll bet he’s not a vegetarian.

One of the places in Xanth is the Fanta Sea. A reader sent me a brochure for FantaSea in Thailand, billed as “The Ultimate Cultural Theme Park.” It’s near Phuket, on the coast of peninsular Thailand. So if you really want Fanta Sea, Phucket.

Florida allows personalized car tags. No, the one saying XANTH isn’t mine; I passed on it because I didn’t like paying extra every year for what didn’t cost the state anything extra. Well, they have had to recall some tags because they were deemed obscene. Samples are INSANE, KILLA, GU812, QUICKEE, MDSEX, XEQ-SHNE. If you don’t get that last, think “execution.” And ATHEIST. Now that’s interesting. It’s okay to say IN GOD WE TRUST on coins, but not to abstain from religion in public? I wonder if they’d allow AGNOSTIC?

Letter in the ST PETERSBURG TIMES newspaper, telling how a father kept likening his willful son to a mule, until the son looked up the word in the dictionary and found it had a horse for a mother and a jackass for a father. Beautiful!

I belong to the National Writer’s Union, which affiliates with the AFL-CIO, so I’m on their mailing list and get some literature. One was a plea to boycott Pictsweet mushrooms, because of the shameful way the company treats its workers. It seems that mushroom farming is dangerous work, because workers must operate in near total darkness, climb around on slippery wet mushroom trays that rise up to eight feet off the floor, and constantly bend over. Accidents are frequent, and the harsh chemicals used to treat and bleach the mushrooms can cause sickness. Once a fire burned for nine days–and large fans pushed it into the room where workers were picking mushrooms. The company didn’t care; the workers had nowhere else to go. Attempts to unionize can be met with death threats. A union, you see, would give the workers leverage to get improvements in pay and working conditions. Okay, so what’s my interest, apart from the obvious outrage anyone should feel? It’s that my grandfather made his fortune as one of the earliest mushroom farmers in America, and trained in many who started similar companies. At one point those two counties in Pennsylvania accounted for more than half the mushrooms sold in America. He was known as The Mushroom King. He sold the business about two weeks before the great stock market crash of 1929, and the trust fund made with that money paid for the education of a number of grandchildren through high school. I was one of them. So I owe something to mushrooms. No known connection to Pictsweet; the brand relating to my grandfather was known as B&B.; But I hate to see mushroom workers abused. So I hope my savvy readers will boycott Pictsweet, and if any want to contribute to the effort, the address is UNITED FARM WORKERS, PO BOX 62, KEENE CA 93531-9989.

Editors can be oddball types, and one of the odder ones is Charles Platt, my one time editor at AVON BOOKS and a novelist in his own right. He sends out an annual booklet summarizing his year, replete with pictures. At the moment he’s building his house in Arizona, but he gets around elsewhere. He’s involved with cryonics: “We all have our hobbies, and mine involves freezing people.” The hope is that centuries later, those frozen people will be revived to live better lives. I’m a skeptic; even if the technique works, I think the future will be too crowded to take any moocher from the past. He describes a conference on medicine and virtual reality, where a cute attendee threaded a flexible probe into a plastic penis while a screen displayed the interior of the urethra, and Charles himself forced an endoscope into an unwilling plastic rectum, causing a realistic patient voice to yell “Hey, that hurts!” Some time back I urged him to consider Internet publishing and print on demand, and maybe he heeded, because now his clever novel (I blurbed it ages ago) Less Than Human is available at www.cosmos-books.com. (However, when I tried it, I got a message that there was no such address.) I once sent an autograph to his daughter Rose, so am interested in this update on her: “While I was in New York my daughter Rose asked me to have dinner with her boyfriend, her boyfriend’s wife, and the wife’s boyfriend. Knowing that Rose was enjoying romantic liaisons with all three, I viewed the evening with trepidation.” But they all turned out to be pleasant people. I once remarked to members of my wider family that I regarded myself as the most liberal family member, until my daughter Penny came on the scene. I suspect Charles was similarly eclipsed by his daughter Rose.

A DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS poster describes the 10 most underreported humanitarian crises of 2001. All across the world, man is being inhumane to man. Civil war in Burundi, half a million Chechnyan refugees living in tent cities, North Korean refugees persecuted in China, kidnappings and massacres in Columbia, rampant disease in war-torn Congo–it just goes on and on. Part of the problem is that no matter how hard relief organizations labor to ameliorate things, power-hungry dictators or religious fanatics labor harder to make them worse. If mankind faced an objective assessment by an alien jury, I fear it would be condemned.

DISCOVER magazine recently listed the 11 greatest unanswered questions of physics. What is Dark Matter? Dark Energy? Do neutrinos have mass? Are protons unstable? What is gravity? I’m interested; I hope they come up with answers soon.

A savvy local newspaper columnist, Howard Troxler, has concluded that lies run rampant on the Internet. Do tell. He mentions www.urbanlegends.com and http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org. and the continuing Nigerian scam. Yes; in these past two months I received 30 more Nigerians, including one interesting one that seems to be the second stage, by a Nigerian woman who has been contacted; she mentions marriage “if you think about my age then that means you are not ready to marry me, for age is nothing but a number in the eyes of Allah.” This is a $40.3 million offering, completely risk free and success guaranteed. I understand the scam is spreading to Afghanistan, taking advantage of that region’s new notoriety, though I have not received solicitations from there. Yet. Meanwhile, beware of the lady from Niger; there’s a tiger behind her.

Email humor received from Rudy Favocci, which strikes me as pretty good: “A pessimist’s blood type is always b-negative.” Hey–that’s my blood type! But of course I am a pessimist. “I fired my masseuse today. She just rubbed me the wrong way.” I massage my wife; I wouldn’t dare rub her the wrong way. “If electricity comes from electrons, does that mean that morality comes from morons?” Well, what about fundamentalist morality? “A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.” “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” “When you dream in color, it’s a pigment of your imagination.” “Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?” “A hangover is the wrath of grapes.”

I received a spam ad to subscribe to Weekly Madness. I already have too many subscriptions, so won’t do so, but this guy does have a wicked outlook. He says that every week he gets a little report telling him who searched for what at his website. Someone searched for “penis.” It occurred to him that “vagina” has been colloquially neglected, and maybe it should become better represented. Hm; I wonder if a good insult would be to call someone a vagina-head? He also refers to an old joke: “How do you make a hormone? Don’t pay her.” He comments on tipping, unfavorably, feeling that folk should do good jobs without being bribed for it. He cuts his own hair, so as not to tip the barber. Interesting–my wife and I exchange haircuts. I quit going to barbers when the price went over a dollar, and I suspect we save a good bit more than that on my wife’s hair. So I sort of go for this guy’s notions. Check him out at www.ramblingravings.com/.

Hey–I have caught up with the current stuff. So let me tackle a fragment of the backlog I left a few months ago. Last year I read that Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, a classic novel published in 1946, is now being reissued restored. You see, from time immemorial editors have butchered writers’ books so that the public sees not the original, but the editor’s idea of what it should have been. Some genre writers like Robert Heinlein and Stephen King and yes, Piers Anthony have later gotten those books republished restored. Now scholars are doing it for William Faulkner and Mark Twain. More power to them! So what do the critics think of that? They don’t seem to like it. That figures.

A church held a drive for toys for needy children–then learned that the toys had been gathered by strippers at the Deja Vu nude club, who flashed their breasts for donations. So should the church reject the toys, because everyone knows that sex is evil, or think of the poor children? I think the strippers are turning out to have better hearts than the church authorities, and surely better breasts.

Measles has nearly been eliminated from the New World. That’s good; I almost died of measles in high school. I’m not kidding; they had to give me intravenous feeding and wait for it to pass. I was too weak to walk or eat; in fact I had a nagging cough, but lacked the strength to take a deep enough breath to cough, so didn’t. It was like sinking into quicksand, and the experience colored my outlook thereafter. You see, my closest cousin, at the same school at the same time, had recently died of cancer, and it seemed to me at the time that fate had made a mistake, as I was obviously the more expendable one. I mean, my cousin was a happy, popular, well-adjusted kid who made good grades. I was none of these things. So my turn seemed to have come. But I pulled through, and went on to become Piers Anthony. Now I am most of those things, for an ogre. Were I religious I might see something significant in that; as it is, I’m just glad that measles, a disease that can be serious, is disappearing.

I learned to my surprise that the first nine Xanth novels are now being sold at www.fictionwise.com/. No one told me, until readers did; I guess DEL REY licensed it. As usual, the author is the last to know.

Enough; I’m out of time. The rest of the backlog will have to wait.

Now on to some & sundry notes in no particular order or significance. I was expecting to receive the galley proofs of Xanth #26 Up In A Heaval to read, but they were late, so I started this column early, figuring that the galleys would come right when I had scheduled the column writing. They did; I’m editing this after a three day break for that. So if I seem even less coherent than usual, it’s because it’s the wrong time of the month. I received a couple more queries about my life. Seems the rumor is going around, as it does every so often, that I died. No, I’m in my usual foul fettle; it must be the fond dream of my critics. As with Mark Twain some time back, the reports of my death have been exaggerated. The other rumor that goes around is that I’m a woman. I’m not, my reference to “time of the month” notwithstanding.

We saw some movies; our movie/video freak daughter makes sure of that. Otherwise we’d just vegetate forever in our house, never getting out at all. Remember, we’re of retirement age, on Social Security and Medicare; why should we do anything? The Scorpion King, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, plus some sexy almost bare women: my kind of junk. Then Spiderman, which was pretty good, suggesting some of the reality teens face in and beyond school. Then Star Wars #2, Attack of the Clones. I was surprised by its focus on personal dialogues; it was actually possible to follow the story line between the special effects. Maybe the usual director was ill that day, and the substitute didn’t realize that coherence is to be avoided like the Dark Side. I liked the originality of having boy and girl trapped on a huge assembly line, avoiding stamping machines and pots of molten metal. But I thought the girl’s love for the boy was a bit sudden; after all, he was younger than she, and had been goofing up. Still, young love can be like that. So it was fun, and we’ll watch the next. This looks to be a phenomenal season coming up for blockbuster movies; we’ll surely watch a number. I also watched a video that Dan Reitz gave me last year for my birthday; I had seen the movie before, at the theater, so didn’t hurry. Well, I was impressed; this is the original uncut version, and it is way superior. I hate it when things get cut, because cutters are like critics: they don’t know what they’re doing and take out more good than bad Or maybe they do know, and the degradation is deliberate, to spoil an otherwise superior production. The theater version ended with the splendid view of the thing rising from the depths; our local critic said that too should have been cut out. The video shows how the aliens came to tell Earth to mend its ways lest it destroy itself. They formed a tsunami that towered over New York–then reversed itself harmlessly. What a demonstration! It’s a sorely needed message. So naturally it was cut. There is surely a chamber in Hell for cutters, and I don’t mean for wrist-slicing girls.

Meanwhile I’m trying to do the Internet Publishing survey update too–my present policy is to do a 6th of it every two months, so I’m currently reviewing E through M–and in mid session it started giving me blank screens for each publisher. No error messages, just blankness. They took all their time to load, 43% of a quarter squintillion K at 93 bytes per second, you know the route, but the result was invariably a blank screen. So I stopped, tried it again, finally reset my system. Then HiPiers.com itself was a blank screen. Evidently Netscrape had gotten itself into a tizzy. Next day it was working again, but pooped out similarly in about 45 minutes. This annoys me something awful; I’m doing this on my Linux system, and I don’t want to have to flee to Macrohard Doors, converting my file, to complete the job. Why are computers so damned perverse? That’s a rhetorical question; please don’t flood me with lengthy complicated technical reasons why. What I want is for them to become user friendly. I can’t be the only one wanting that.

There’s another thing about computers: the US government now has a program called Magic Lantern or “sniffer keystroke logger” that can get into your computer, uninvited and unknown, and record all your keystrokes. You are supposed to be notified when your government is spying on you–90 days or more after the event. That’s scary. Isn’t that unreasonable search of your homesite? There was a time when that was unconstitutional. Now it seems the Constitution is considered unAmerican.

Remember those three implants I got–you know, the ones those busty young women giggled at? Dental implants, where they set titanium teeth in place of the lost ones. Six months on the soft diet caused me to lose weight, but now I’m back on real food and have gained it back. Those titanium posts had to have full gold crowns set on them, and because the implants weren’t quite in line, it was a struggle. But now they are complete, and working well. At first I couldn’t chew because the upper teeth hurt, but as they gradually squish back into place that is abating. Now I have the rest of my life to decide whether it was worth the total of over $7,000 it cost me. I’ll be annoyed if I die before I get my money’s worth.

Damon Knight died at age 79. I suspect most of my readers never heard of him. He was an award-winning writer turned critic, and actually he could write well, and his brief comments on the novels of the genre were sharp. He also founded the National Fantasy Fan Federation (NFFF or N3F), and the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA or SFFWA if you add Fantasy). He also established the Milford Writer’s Conference, popularly known as the Milford Mafia; the name derives from the town he lived in when he started it, and the name traveled with him when he moved from Pennsylvania to Florida and then to Oregon. So the man has plenty of credits, and was written up well in the fan press. Naturally my take on him differs. I was a fan of his writing and his reviews, and I joined N3F and SFWA and attended a Milford Conference in 1966, where I met many leading figures of the genre; you can read all about that in my sequel autobiography, How Precious Was That While, now appearing in paperback publication. So this is just a capsule note. When a publisher cheated me, I wrote to Damon as chairman of the SFWA Contracts Committee to see what I could do about their violation of my contract. He passed my detailed letter on to the former president of SFWA, Robert Silverberg, who took it to the publisher. Silverberg then wrote me that I had acted hastily and rashly and maligned the finest publisher in the world. I got a lawyer and got some of my money; I did have the right of the case throughout. And the publisher blacklisted me for six years until its proprietors did it to one too many folk and got boosted out of their position. Thereafter I returned to the new regime with the Xanth fantasy series and became a bestseller. But it was Damon Knight who violated my privacy. None of the wrongdoers ever apologized; it was their misfortune that I became successful enough to be immune from further commercial blacklisting and to spread the word about what had happened. Had they had their way, I would be the one you never heard of. No, Damon wasn’t a bad man; he was merely one whose ethics and interest in reform, in the crunch, fell short of his rhetoric. He is far from alone. This is the sort of thing the fan press somehow overlooks; there is an ugly underside to professional and amateur writing, and my case is atypical mainly in my ability and willingness to publicize it. It seems it is one of the reasons I am something of a pariah in science fiction / fantasy fandom: I told. The experience gave me a score to settle with Parnassus and fandom, and an abiding sympathy for whistleblowers, as is evident throughout my writings and this site. Ogres don’t forget. Now you know.

Stephen Jay Gould died, age 60, of cancer. He was a paleontologist and science popularizer, author of the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution which I believe is correct. That is, that evolution is not a steady thing, but occurs rapidly when conditions change, then slows while they are stable. He wrote Wonderful Life, about the re-assessment of the Burgess Shale that so impressed me I based a character on it in the third Mode novel, Chaos Mode. I understand he had a debate with another fine science writer, Richard Dawkins, about the theory. Thus punctuated equilibrium was referred to as evolution by jerks, while Gould referred to the alternative as evolution by creeps. I’m sorry to see him go. I’d rather read a book by him than a fantasy novel, if you want the secret truth. Don’t tell anyone.

In 1998 my wife gave me the 2,360 page BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB edition of My Secret Life by an anonymous Victorian age gentleman, and every couple of years I read another volume. It’s sexy as hell. His whole life was devoted to sex, and he detailed as much of it as he could. He had at servant girls, ladies, prostitutes, women he passed on the street, single, married, widowed, betrothed, even a cousin–an endless sequence. He wasn’t a rapist; he persuaded, seduced, or paid for the trysts, and he cared about those he was with. Between times he used peepholes to watch what those in neighboring hotel rooms were doing; he loved to see women strip, wash, use the chamber pot, and rest. Once he rode in a dark carriage and got his hands up under the skirts of the women on either side of him; both subsequently met him for full affairs. He was a crotch man, shoving little interest in breasts, but delighting in peering into wide open clefts. He uses the common terms: fuck, arse, cock, cunt, and so on, meaning no disrespect; I suspect these words have become less socially approved in modern times. Some I don’t recognize; he refers to “minette” in a context suggesting oral sex, but none of my big dictionaries list it, not even the OED, Oxford English Dictionary, the ultimate authority. On occasion he philosophizes. “Why, for instance, is it permissible for a man and woman to enjoy themselves lasciviously, but improper for two men and two women to do the same things all together in the same room? Why is it abominable for any one to look at man and woman fucking, when every man, woman, and child would do so if they had the opportunity? Is copulation an improper thing to do, and if not, why is it disgraceful to look at its being done?” He concludes that it is the prejudice of education alone that makes it so. He may have a point. Here’s an example of his ongoing narrative: “I have now great knowledge of the full grown, full cunted, thoroughly developed woman, my taste has run mainly in their direction, but recently I thought of the younger ones, and that I should like to try those less practiced in the art of love, those with forms immature, with smaller and unfledged cunts, and with less cunning and experience in the ways of men, and with a curiosity to satisfy about the male.” So he accosted a 15 year old girl on the street and talked her into it; she turned out to have been fucked two months before, but still found it a novelty, and they had great pleasure in each other. Then he went after her virginal friend, with similarly satisfactory effect. He also liked, as he put it, to have women piddle over his fingers. Once a housemaid was afraid her employer would catch her dallying, so she leaned on the windowsill looking out to verify who was where, and he lifted her skirt and addressed her from behind, she reluctantly amenable. In those days most women did not wear underclothing, so a hand under a skirt soon got into home territory; I’m not sure they make feels like that in this century. Sometimes a woman changed her mind and “uncunted” him. And you thought Victorians were prudish?

Not that we’re sexual slouches today. Article in the May 27, 2002 US NEWS & WORLD REPORT–note that I stifled my naughty urge to refer to US Nudes and Girl Rapport–says that American teens are having more sex earlier and getting more diseases. Some of the specifics are eye-opening, not that that’s all that evidently gets opened. A fifth grade girl speaks of the oral sex she had when she was younger; everyone was doing it. Now she has graduated to the morning after pill, twice. One in ten kids now lose virginity before age 13 (a different source says as early as age 11), and one in four sexually active teens will get a sexually transmitted disease, or STD. 15 to 19 per cent of sexually active girls get pregnant each year–and that’s a decrease from before. Girls that age have higher rates of gonorrhea than any other age group. One quarter of all new HIV cases occur in those under age 21. “Just Say No” has had no discernible effect, partly because it doesn’t educate about sexuality. Kids are getting gonorrhea of the throat, not having known that such things existed. Several surveys indicate that as many as half of all teens have oral sex. And more: a mother was concerned about her twelve year old son after a sleep-away camp, questioned him persistently, and learned that he had had anal sex with a girl at camp. Here’s the rub: told that they must avoid sex, the kids interpret it to mean only penis/vagina. So penis/anus or penis/mouth or vagina/mouth isn’t sex; they have technically abstained and remain virginal. So while sexual intercourse is diminishing to “only” 50% of all high schoolers, the other kinds of sexual interplay are compensating without making the statistics. Is abortion a sin? Not for the boy, only for the girl, the boyfriend concludes; he’s clean. As long as schools can’t educate children on what sex is, and on what venereal disease is and how to prevent it and pregnancy and emotional damage, this is the way it will be. I’m disgusted. In that connection, I read a review of a significant new book: Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine, published by the University of Minnesota Press and perceptively reviewed by Susan Fernandez. University presses greatly extend the scope of publishing, as they aren’t locked into money. A spokesman for the Christian right called the book “very evil” before it was published, and other critics demanded that those responsible for its publication be punished. Punishment for free expression? These are Americans? The author believes that sex is not in and of itself harmful to minors, but our zeal to protect them from it is doing them real harm. Sex can be a positive and pleasurable part of teen life, as it is for adults. Internet porn should not be a danger to children who know what’s what. I agree. I think the folk who need re-education are those who evidently fear and hate sex and want to keep children–and, I suspect, everyone else–ignorant of it. They are trying to foist an unreal world off on the rest of us. They are doing real mischief and facilitating much unnecessary grief. Ignorance is clearly not bliss. One of the stock questions I’d like to ask a religious conservative is “Do you believe that the human body as God made it is obscene? That the consensual act of regenerating our kind is a sin?” But I suspect I’d just get a run-around, if not punishment. Meanwhile, according to THE ECONOMIST, the Catholic Church is not the only one facing embarrassing problems. Pedophiles teach in schools, coach sports, run scout troops and day care centers. A study indicates that 15% of pupils are sexually abused by teachers or staff members between kindergarten and high school graduation. A rabbi is going on trial in New Jersey for sexually abusing more than 20 teen girls. American youth sports represent a pool for pedophiles. Children are taught to be wary of strangers, but most of the abuse is from family members or acquaintances. The authorities, when they are aware of it, “pass the trash” to other districts, doing nothing to stop it. This should be changed. But first, children should be educated to know abuse when they encounter it, and to know how to report and stop it. I’m one who has written on this matter, notably in the Author’s note in Firefly–and so I have been accused by those with their heads in the sand of doing it. One woman wrote that she hoped someone had protected my daughters from me. While the real culprits are protected by ignorant silence.

A reader challenged me: would I give credit to Rush Limbaugh for Demon Professor Grossclout’s frequent remarks about heads full of mush in Xanth? My answer: the hell I would. That’s a deliberate parody inspired by the terrifying professor in the 1973 movie Paper Chase. I find it interesting that fans of the man who has been called the incorrigible dirigible think that he originates all his references. They are fondly known as ditto-heads, perhaps for reason. I myself remember a nice sequence when Limbaugh got in trouble for asking whether women should fard while driving. Oh, the outrage! Fard means to apply makeup, as he knew. In a similar vein I mention how some teen girls show me their snaddies (snail mail addresses). So the man is not all bad, just mostly wrongheaded.

I’ve been on Linux over a year now, using KDE 1, and StarOffice 5.2 as my word processor, and though making the change from Macrohard Doors has been a headache, I am comfortable and like it here. But the things of Linux are still new and evolving, and I believe I can get a system that will be better for me. I don’t want to try to upgrade this one, lest it lose what it has; I prefer to start from scratch, as I did when I moved to Windows 95. I’m in dialogue with Griz Inabnit of Outcast Computer Consultants of Central Oregon griz@outcast-consultants.redmond.or.us who will assemble what he calls a MoNsTeR system with KDE 3, OpenOffice, which is the successor to StarOffice, said to be like a race car instead of a sedan, and software to facilitate my activities. It’s all open source, meaning mostly free and constantly updated and malleable, but it’s not price that interests me. I want to be all the way independent of Macrohard, so that no more Doors slam on my tender fingers. We’ll see; stay tuned for future reports. Linux is spreading internationally and through US government agencies, who like its stability and versatility; a new business version is being developed. Linux is now the world’s #2 server operating system, with about 27% of the market, behind 40% for Windows. It remains far behind on personal systems, but at such time as the Linux nerds catch on to the importance of user friendliness, that should change. Before too long I hope to get the ear of some of them, even if they don’t necessarily like what I say.

We watched the TV Survivor series, but it palled for me when they eliminated the nice Florida girl. Niceness doesn’t cut it in such competition. Yes, it’s a reflection of real life, but it still gripes me to see conspiring and cheating rewarded, whether in a presidential election, the writing business, or on an isolated island. It’s as if the human species has been crafted for some residence other than Heaven.

Some time back I read and commented on the nice historical romance Push Not the River by James Martin. He published it at Xlibris and was indefatigable in its promotion. Well, effort has finally been rewarded, and now he has an agent and a traditional publisher, and I’m sure many readers will enjoy the novel when it appears in bookstores. But what about the other worthwhile writers still being shut out? Last time I mentioned Everything in its Path by Steve Alcorn. Now the same author’s A Matter of Justice is a nice mainstream young adult mystery featuring a pre teen girl, in my judgment fully publishable, but Steve has been unable to get an agent or publisher. An example of his text: “‘There’s more to life than just mysteries, you know,’ Mrs. Peck called gently over to me. Her orange flower print dress clashed monumentally with her curly red hair. She looked like a burning bush.” Further along another spot description: “The woman was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt that made her look like an accident victim.” The protagonist fairly jumps off the page in her juvenile realism. How many more years will it take Steve Alcorn to achieve the traditional print he deserves?

Meanwhile I read a novel for blurbing–that is, a favorable quotable comment by a known writer to help a good new writer–Pendragon–The Merchant of Death by D J MacHale. It’s for young readers, ages 10 and up. They’ll like it; it starts fast and just keeps going, like an accelerating rocket. A young man’s uncle hauls him off to a mysterious interplanetary tunnel where dangers abound and aren’t shy about closing in. He gets separated from the uncle, has no idea what to do, but better do it before he gets killed. When he gets things figured out, it turns out that the situation is much worse than that. The story is told in a series of letters magically delivered to his best friend. And–his family and house disappear, and all records of them disappear too, as though they never existed. What in the parallel universe is going on? This is one compelling story.

Then there’s Married Women Are Easy by Howard Schlossberg, an Xlibris book. What more do you need to know than the title? And the author told me of her book The Composting Toilet System Book, published by the Center for Ecological Pollution Prevention, CEPP. We tried to get a composting toilet when we moved to backwoods Florida 25 years ago, but state law prevented it. So Florida goes right on with a worsening water crisis, maybe half of household use water being mixed with shit and fed into the water table or sea. But it’s nice to know that some folk are exploring sensible alternatives. One other note about publishing: did you see the “Marvin” comic strip, where Marvin’s mother Jenny (no known relation to Jenny Elf) has an offer for her book from a publisher? But it wants a few changes, totally changing the nature of the book to make it unoriginal. Now she has a choice: whether to go along with it, or lose the sale. “Umm, let’s see,” she says. “A rich, published author, or a never published, poor artist with integrity?” Supposedly that’s a joke. As a rich published author, I find my laughter rather forced; I have been the route.

In the past two months we have gotten half a slew of computer viruses. Norton anti-virus stops them, but the downloading and extermination take time. One day we got 21 Klez Gen and H virii. This one uses a fake return address so you can’t inform the sender. We have even received it from our own return address. So if any of you out there think HiPiers.com has sent you a virus, it’s a lie told by the virus. But here is my question: how come the servers don’t stop these nuisances at the outset, rather than dutifully sending them along to their clients? It is evidently easy enough for the anti virus program to spot them, and nobody wants them; it would save the whole Internet a pain if they were stifled the moment first identified. Will someone who gets his system trashed have to sue a server before some minimal responsibility is exercised? Perhaps related: when a local seven year old boy’s mother dialed the promotional phone number in his Scooby-Doo book, she got a phone sex service. Yep–and when they dial my old 800 HiPiers number they get a sex outfit too. This, too, is something that needs to be dealt with, but I guess it will have to get worse before any action is taken. As I have said before, my objection is not to Internet sex, it’s to the inherent misrepresentation by substituting graphic sex for supposedly family sites. If a sex site has to cheat to get clients, it’s not worth much.

I’m not a coffee drinker, but here’s an environmental message for those of you who are: change from “sun” to “shade” coffee and you’ll do the tropical vegetation a great favor. Sun coffee is grown in the sun, and they hack out the jungle or rain forest to make way for it; shade coffee is grown under the canopy, so does far less harm.

Two interesting Supreme Court decisions: virtual pornography is okay, and so is assisted dying. The rationale for abolishing porn and making all adults hew to a fare suitable for children is that the making of child porn has to hurt a child; now that there’s no real child, it can’t be banned. I believe porn comes under the protection of the First Amendment, which conservatives seem to hate as un-American; I haven’t seen child porn but admit it would bother me even if I knew it wasn’t real, but it should be allowed for those who find it to their taste. Assisted dying, as legalized in Oregon–it’s amazing how much is happening in Oregon since my hyperactive daughter went there–I am squarely in favor of. Some folk’s lives deteriorate with age or illness or accident, and when it becomes too burdensome, they should have an expedient, comfortable way to end it, girt about by safeguards. Have you noticed how states-rights advocates abruptly try to overrule state decisions when the states deviate from the conservative agenda?

Snails are pretty dull creatures, and a snail race isn’t calculated to excite much human interest. But I saw a public TV program that changed my mind. It showed snails and starfish speeded up, the way photography can speed up clouds to show them violently boiling, and then they are just like other animals. There was this multi-tentacled predator variant of a starfish that spied two snails and came after them. The snails fled, speeding along at a dangerous clip, but slowly the thing overhauled them. It caught one and swallowed it entire; its shell would be expelled after the tender innards had been digested. But that enabled the other snail to escape, barely. You could practically see its quivering relief.

I mentioned finding the card game Accordion at last. A reader told me where to find my other lost game, Crazy Quilt, as shareware. But when I tried to download it, it didn’t work. Others have told me of games for Linux. Eventually I should have ones that do work.

I had a visit from a German reader, Stephanie Peters, who gave me a copy of the 100 card Animation Tarot deck she had made. It’s lovely, and does follow the description I specified in my novel Tarot; at such time as I want to use a deck, for divination, psychology, or whatever, this will be the one. Understand, I don’t believe in anything supernatural, but the Animation Tarot coupled with the Satellite spread works.

Some time back I commented on the Tampa Bay singing group PYT–Pretty Young things. Four thirteen year old girls formed a group and were making it on the national scene. I wondered how long it would last. Well, now they have run afoul of the usual impersonal corporate foul-ups, have lost their market, and are disbanding. They pay the price of the ineptitude of the faceless decision makers. I know that route. Let’s face it, now they are sixteen, no longer barely-legal young flesh, thus over the hill.

News flash: the Age of Dinosaurs ended with an asteroid–and started with one too. They weren’t dominant until the dominant creatures before them were blasted to extinction. Then they got blasted, and now it’s our turn. But maybe we won’t wait for the meteor; we’ll destroy ourselves first, going the way we’re going.

The Far Side cartoon for my daily calendar for Friday May 10, 2002, shows a winged, haloed man sitting alone on a cloud. “…wish I’d brought a magazine.” Right; why do people think that eternity in such a sterile Heaven would be any joy? I can think of a place that would be a hell of a lot more interesting. Maybe I’ll see you there. I just had a letter from a reader whose parents destroyed his collection of 60 Piers Anthony novels and the letter I had written him years ago, because they said he would go to Hell for reading such stuff. If those parents are going to Heaven, I don’t want to be there.

Interesting paper on the internet at www.woofs.org/psychology/etiology/malecki.html, “From Tabby to Tommy: the Link Between Violence and Animal Abuse.” I’m a vegetarian because I don’t like hurting animals, so this has more than average interest for me. It seems that a high proportion of multiple murderers started as children who tortured animals. Makes sense to me; if they get away with it with animals, they graduate to humans. Animal abuse is a symptom rather than a cause, but a pretty clear alert. I think childhood bullies also relate; a bully, it has been said elsewhere, is a baby criminal. He’s practicing on other children rather than animals, but its the same sort of thing. Here’s another take: US NEWS had a report on a terrorist organization, the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign in Princeton New Jersey. They raid the compound and take away animals awaiting experiments. They intimidate company officials. They are driving the company to the brink of bankruptcy. This puts me on the horns of a dilemma: I approve their objective but not their methods. Yet it seems that the company paid no attention to polite requests to improve the condition of animals. It’s hard to get the attention of profit-minded corporations. Except, it seems, by kicking them in the head. So the bullies learn to respond the hard way, by getting bullied. Is there such a thing as good terrorism?

I’ve been discussing guns here this year. I notified Oleg Volk that I had reference to his site www.a-human-right.com/ and had an interesting dialogue with him. Understand, I’m agnostic on this, as I am on religion and politics; I just want to know whether a gun in the house would make me safer. So far I don’t have an answer. There are points on each side, and the balance has not yet been established to my satisfaction. Oleg made the point that enforcement of gun control tends to be more effective against law-abiding people; criminals won’t obey such laws. So such laws may make honest folk less safe. Also, the enforcing agency may be well meaning, but is corruptible; better that no one have a monopoly on arms. Also, that possessing a gun does not cause a person to be unsafe to others; responsible guns don’t cause crime. I agree on all of this, seeing it as an analogy of freedom of expression: those who try to stifle it (such as the current US administration) are dangerous. But it still doesn’t tell me whether my household would be safer if I carried a gun. Here’s an anecdote from current Tampa Bay Florida news: High school sweethearts were living together and were expecting a baby in two weeks. He thought he saw an intruder, and fired a single shot. Turned out it was his pregnant girlfriend, shot through the chest, and she was dead. He sure didn’t mean to do it; he loved her; it was an accident. But had he not had that gun, she’d be alive today and he’d be a father. The thing is, when guns are freely available to all, the fools get them too, and they are a danger to others. So maybe of 100 gun owners, only one is a fool; he’s the one who will kill an innocent person. How can my family be safe from fools?

Solicitation from Edward M Kennedy says we must close the gun show loophole. At present guns are so freely available with so little constraint that criminals and terrorists have no real problem getting what they want. The Brady Campaign wants to require purchasers at gun shows to pass the same background check as they would at licensed firearms dealers. That seems reasonable to me. But it seems that the National Rifle Association (NRA) opposes that. The NRA even made the comics: “Mother Goose & Grimm” for May 24, 2002 says “Life on the Ark took an ugly turn when Noah joined the NRA.” The picture shows the heads of assorted animals, mounted on the wall, two by two, as Noah reads his newspaper, gun at his side.

Statistics have been hard to come by, because neither the pro nor anti gun nuts seem to want a fair comparison. But I’m keeping alert, and nabbed one from a column by Nicholas D Kristof: Japan has tight gun control. In 1999 (most recent year with available figures) there were 28 gun deaths from murders and suicides combined. In the US there were 26,874 gun deaths. That’s reaching for a thousand times as many. But what is the overall murder/suicide death rate for Japan vs. USA? We don’t know whether the overall rate is similar, with Japan having a higher samurai sword death rate. England has higher rates of assault and theft than the US, but has tight handgun controls; its murder rate is one sixth that of the US. This is persuasive: there is a link between more handguns and increased murder and suicide. I prefer to separate murder and suicide, because I think a person who really wants to die should be allowed to; it’s mostly his business. Funny that Attorney General Ashcroft supports guns but not assisted suicide, when the gun is the readiest way to commit suicide. He unilaterally reversed 60 years of federal policy about individual ownership of guns. The TV program 60 Minutes for May 12, 2002 had a discussion: if there is a gun in the house, the risk of suicide quintuples and the risk of death triples. So evidently a gun is a risk to a household. But does it repel more criminals than otherwise? The gunnies have a point: if all you count is how many folk get shot or killed, that’s only part of the story. A criminal may be coming to commit mayhem, but the resident shows a gun and the criminal changes his mind and departs, no shot fired. That gun has protected that household, but is not reflected in the statistics. We still don’t have an answer.

Okay, so how about doing a comprehensive study of all cases? Make a database to determine gun safety. I’m for it, because I want to know the truth. But the NRA opposes it. I wonder why? Are they not interested in the truth? Well, then, how about a database on all causes of death or injury, guns, knives, clubs, fists, knitting needles, falls, snake bites, bee stings, lightning, everything. But the NRA opposes that too. That suggests to me that they have a fair notion what such a study would reveal, and don’t want it revealed. That damns their case. I think I’d want to include a reasonable fair-minded estimate of the number of crimes stopped by guns, since pure injury and death statistics may be flawed, as indicated above. Would the NRA approve that?

There’s more; I had some good discussions with the gun folk. But let’s conclude for now with a quote from a reader I once exchanged letters with (I mean, if you can’t trust one of my responsive readers, what hope is there for the world?), Elizabeth Soutter: “In the end, it isn’t the gun that protects or harms, it is the training, experience and knowledge of the person handling it. The fanciest, most expensive gun in the world won’t do me a damn bit of good if I don’t know anything about good firing stance, where to find the best cover in my home, and how to keep my weapon in my own hands and not the intruder’s….If I own a gun without this most basic knowledge and responsibility, then by definition, I have not secured my weapon properly in my home. I am protecting no one; I am endangering myself, my neighbors, and those under my roof. No one should own a gun who doesn’t spend time on the range and who isn’t trained by well-trained people.” She feels that gun laws should be enforced–and they are not being. I agree. My time with guns was in the US Army, and I believe that if gun discipline as practiced there was required of all gun owners, there would be far less trouble. But most of what I see are the pro-gunners saying in effect that no limits are acceptable, and the anti gunners saying that no guns are acceptable. Neither seems much concerned about actual gun safety or responsible gun possession as endorsed by my reader. And my question remains unanswered.

I’m still receiving three fifths of a slew of Nigerian solicitations: give someone my bank account information so he can transfer thirty million dollars to my account, getting it out of his country, and I can have thirty percent. Guaranteed risk free. Ha ha. Don’t fall for this scam. 47 more of them received in these two months, added to the similar piles arriving before. Each slightly different, but of the same type. The British magazine THE ECONOMIST had a note that there has been an out of court settlement between Sani Abacha and Nigeria’s government to return one billion dollars that the military ruler looted and stashed in banks worldwide. So why would anyone need you for this? There’s even a column in TECHNOLOGY REVIEW for June 2002 by Simpson Garfinkel discussing it. It says last year this made #3 on the list of Internet scams. They send them through snail mail too–but most get stopped because they are using counterfeit stamps. Enough; I’ll stop keeping count, as this is endless.

Harlan Ellison’s war to stop piracy continues; SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE for May, 2002 has a long article. I hope he wins; virtually all of my books have been pirated too, on the Internet, even my self published ones at Xlibris. I had a fan letter from a reader who collects them and loves them and was apologetic about not paying for them, but couldn’t otherwise afford them. I feel for him, but if all my readers did the same, I would go out of business, having no income. That’s true for all writers and publishers. I’m not sure why folk think that it’s a crime to cheat the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker, but it’s okay to cheat writers. How would you survive if you couldn’t get paid for your work because someone found a way to get the benefit of it free? Some say “Information wants to be free,” and writing is information, so they take it. Harlan says they don’t differentiate between information and creative property. He’s right. If you want to read free, use the public library. If you want your own personal copy, pay for it. Meanwhile, despite contributions from organizations and from writers like me, Harlan is $260,000 in debt because of this fight. He’s never going to break even and knows it; this is for principle, and it benefits all writers and publishers. Here’s the info again: the KICK Internet Piracy site is at http://harlanellison.com/kick, and donations can be mailed to “Trust of Kulik, Gottesman & Mouton” at KICK Internet Piracy, PO Box 55935, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413. This problem isn’t limited to writing; a column by John Balzar goes into what some call “information sharing,” and he calls it stealing. As he puts it: “If technology bestows a new right on its users to ‘share’ music, movies and stories without payment, what will be the incentive to make music, produce movies and write stories? Aren’t we rushing toward a vastly diminished future in which Internet technology coldly devours those things that provide us diversion and pleasure and stimulation?” He says that at Tower records customers bought, copied, and returned 50,000 CDs a month, until the chain tightened its return policy. Perhaps a million people saw the Star Wars installment online before the movie opened in theaters, because of piracy. What will happen to DVD sales? I wonder about those who express outrage about copy-protection devices; they are angry because it stops them from stealing? Since when did theft become the American Way?

I average over 100 snail letters a month to readers, and 400 emails. Sometimes I say something worthwhile. Here is an example, rendered anonymous:

“Dear Xxxxx,
“Your father told me about you. He said you’re such a handful he’ll have to send you to reform school–no, of course I’m joking. What he said, in the dull language parents use, is that you have had some adversity. Okay, I know about that. Back when I was your age, I did some serious thinking, took stock of myself, and concluded that if some power could give me the choice of living my life over, exactly the way it had been the first time, or of never existing at all, I would prefer not to exist. This wasn’t a moment of depression, this was a rational realization, and now, over fifty years later, I still think it was valid.

“So what happened? Several things, including growing up, marrying the right girl, and getting a nice career as a writer. Today if I had that same decision to make, I would choose to live it over, because now the balance is positive. But what happened earliest was reading. It wasn’t easy to start; in fact it took me three years to make it through first grade because I couldn’t learn to read. Years later when my daughter had some similar problems and was diagnosed dyslexic and hyperactive–they call it ADD–I got a clue what might have been my own problem. But in my day there were no such diagnoses, there were just stupid students, so I was good and stupid. You may have noticed how I’m called the Ogre, and how ogres are justifiably proud of their stupidity.

“But when I finally did figure out how to read, I read a lot, albeit it slowly. The worlds in books were wonderful escapes from a reality that wasn’t worth living. I needed that escape. And really, I never left those alternate realms; I became a writer so I could make my own.

“So stay with it, Xxxxx. I have a notion where you’re coming from and maybe where you’re going to, because I’ve been the route myself.”

Now back to live text: DISCOVER magazine for June 2002 has an article on consciousness–one of my pet interests–which includes a reference to Schrodinger’s Cat. This always struck me as nonsense. The idea is that since quantum theory suggests that some states are not only random, they are superimposed, and only the act of looking at them determines their nature. So you put the cat in a closed box with a vial of poison gas, a piece of uranium, and a Geiger counter hooked up to a hammer suspended above the gas vial. If the uranium emits a particle, the counter detects it and signals a mechanism to break the vial, releasing the gas, killing the cat. So when you open the box, is the cat alive or dead? Quantum theory (simplified) says it isn’t decided until you look; the cat is in superimposition, with all things possible until then. Okay, I said it’s nonsense to me; you’d smell the cat corpse soon enough unless the box is tight enough to suffocate it. Yet I have a crude analogy that makes me doubt. Suppose you flip a coin: is it heads or tails? You can’t know until it lands; until then it’s inderminate. If you can’t wait to know, and take a flash photo of it in the air, that will show one side up or down or sidewise. The act of looking determines the answer, because it fixes a precise time–and you can’t then knew the velocity of the coin’s motion. If you want the speed of spin, you can’t determine heads or tails. Is quantum physics like that? I think it may be. Because you can’t define something analog in a digital frame–and fundamental particle physics is, I suspect, analog. That is, continuous rather than a series of spot states. I’m a fan of analog. Consider: the impossible to determine precise digital value of pi is no problem in analog. Maybe many of the intractable mysterious of physics are because we’re trying to define them wrong. Like assigning a chemical value to Love.

Circa 1975 I heard on the radio, on the military station AFRTS–I used to tease my daughters by spelling it FARTS–no, I don’t know why one daughter moved 3,000 miles away and the other stays busy at her newspaper rather than socializing with her dad–an expose about the reason for the then-long-term decline in SAT scores: it was because of the children of the folk who lived downwind of the nuclear tests of the 1950’s. The residual radiation fried their brains to a degree, and their lowered scores drew down the national average. Then suddenly that expose was gone; I never saw it in print. The nefarious government must have sent its black helicopters and squelched the story. Until now: a small buried May 30 newspaper note refers to the “downwinders,” those folk who lived and worked downwind of the atmospheric tests. Now they can get compensation of fifty to a hundred thousand dollars to individuals who come down with certain cancers or diseases. Interesting; so the government is admitting there was something to it. No, it doesn’t explain what’s wrong with my mind; I was in Oklahoma during the key period, and that was outside the deadly swath. I think.

Stray notes: NEW SCIENTIST says that irradiation can reduce the gas propensity of beans by 70%. But there’s a caution: flatulence is an important indicator of a healthy system; you need to expel gas to ensure that your gut is functioning properly. So fire away in good health, as long as I’m not downwind. The hits on this HiPiers site were averaging about 11,000 a day. Then they changed the system, giving a new address. But when they stopped giving the information at the old address, and I went to the new one, the query bounced. So I no longer know how many hits we get. I suppose at some point I’ll have to Make an Issue, or live in ignorance. I continue with my exercises, such as archery, and yes, arrows still have the ability to fly toward the target and abruptly disappear, forcing me to search by eye, weed hook, and metal detector. Growr! Our little Garbage Garden continues; we’ve harvested about 60 tomatoes, and lost about 10 to bugs and animals. Now three squash have formed on the squash plants. Odd thing: the plants that got tagged by the freeze early in March survived, but now their leaves are maybe a quarter the size they used to be. Other squash plants that were further under cover have full size leaves. Newspaper item: most US people are born in August. Damn it, that’s my month; I didn’t realize I was following the crowd. Possible salvation: maybe it’s different in England, where I was born. The fewest are in April. Local crime: here in backwoods Citrus County, Florida, we don’t have high profile crime. Here’s an example of what we do have: A 79 year old widower picked up a young woman he planned to pay for sex. He parked and they went into the woods for it, but he couldn’t get it up, as it were, so he refused to pay. Outraged, she hit him over the head, stole his wallet, and drove away in his van, leaving him in the woods in more than one sense. Moral: impotence is no excuse; pay the bitch. National news item: since 1990 inflation has risen 32%, worker pay has risen 37%, corporate profits have risen 114%, and CEO pay has risen 571%. What’s wrong with this picture? Now you can fold a $20 bill to form a picture of the burning World Trade Center towers. Yes, I tried it, and they’re there. So did the designer of that bill know the then-future? Paranoia is so much fun! Item in US NEWS by John Leo on bloggers: Web loggers who write online diaries and commentaries. It seems some develop respectable numbers of readers. No, they’re not all teen girl sex diaries or boring minutiae; I’ve been told that this bimonthly column of mine is a blog. Wow! Have I been defined at last? Okay, I have more notes, but this is long enough for now. More anon, in AwGhost 2002.

I have several forms of exercise, including dumbbells, a rowing machine, recumbent bike, adult trike, and three mornings a week jogging out to fetch in the newspapers, a 1.6 mile round trip. It occurred to me that an adult scooter could be a suitable addition, easier than running, simpler than biking. But not one of those with inch and a half diameter chair-casters for wheels; first pebble I struck would flip me into a ditch. I saw one once with a 26 inch front wheel that looked ideal, but the cost was out of this world; you could buy a used car for less. So that notion languished. Until I saw an ad for a $100 scooter marked on sale at KMart for $40, with 12 inch wheels front and back. So we went to the store and bought the X-Games Scooter, and it looked to be a rugged piece of equipment, with front and rear brakes, dual suspension, and a general attitude of authority. Probably intended for trick riding, so was built to take rough treatment. There was some assembly needed, and that turned out to be the usual hassle. The instructions skipped a lot, and didn’t necessarily make sense; had we followed them literally there would have been a front wheel without a brake, and a rear brake without a wheel. Maybe they were written on Mars for use on Venus. After three hours we had to admit defeat: the thing simply would not assemble properly. The wheels are on, but no working brakes, and we see no way to make them work, though we have similar brakes on other equipment. It’s like Microsoft instructions: they seem to make sense, but don’t work in practice because key elements are missing. Oh, sure, we can take it to the local bike shop, and for three times what we paid for it they can have it working. Why does that bug me? At least now I understand why it was on sale.

As I have mentioned, I normally do over 100 snail mails a month and 400 emails, about 95% to fans, and they tend to blur in memory. On rare occasion one will smash through the barriers of my awareness and really get to me. Here, from recent memory, is one such: a correspondent in Thailand (yes, I have more than one there) conducted a course in motorcycle riding for the folk of his region. It seems that in Thailand there are traffic laws, but they are broadly ignored, so you can encounter just about anything going any which way on their roads. He taught his students right, however, to obey the signals, stay with the flow, honor the courtesies of the road. One pupil was a 27 year old Thai woman standing something under five feet tall with black hair to her waist, a divorcee with two sons. She began as clumsy as any, but worked very hard and became his star pupil, doing everything exactly right. On the day before the final exam she asked for an extra session, just to be sure, so he arranged for a longer trip. She rode ahead and he followed on his cycle, observing. All was well. Then on the return trip a pick-up truck charged out from the cover of trees, ran over the woman, and zoomed away without stopping. My correspondent went to her, finding her alive but badly injured, blood coming when she coughed. He removed her helmet and held her head in his lap, and they talked briefly while an ambulance was summoned. She asked whether she would have passed the course, and he said yes. She asked whether she was dying, and he said he feared she was. She asked him to tell her family what happened, and to tell her sons she loved them, and he agreed to do it. She asked for a kiss on the lips. He kissed her, and she died. He followed through, and the other members of the class wore black arm bands as they graduated. He sent me pictures of her funeral, with an elegant colorful little pavilion being burned. I never knew her, I doubt she ever heard of me, but I am in pain for her. Why do the worthy innocent suffer while the unworthy guilty go free? It’s not enough to say it’s an imperfect world; that’s no excuse. I’m going to put her into Xanth.

Meanwhile I have just about completed the first draft of my third ChroMagic fantasy novel, Key to Destiny. It will be about a quarter million words, like the first two. No, none of them have found a publisher; you think I’m joking when I say that all traditional publishers want from me is Xanth? I’m not. But my prospects may change in the future, and then we’ll see. Meanwhile someone raised a question: Isn’t the term ChroMagic copyrighted by Microsoft? Oh? Can that be so? I’d hate to have to change my series title. If anyone out there knows the answer–I’m Ogre-stupid about figuring out how to get it from the Internet, of course–let me know.

As a general rule, I don’t announce things until they are pretty will confirmed. So I’m not announcing a big Xanth series movie deal, yet. But I can announce that I have been working with Codemasters on an Internet game, Dragon Empires, that will be released later this year. I’m no interactive game expert, so it has been a learning process, but I hope my contributions make it distinct from all the other games I know nothing about. I have liked games of all kinds all my life, but have gotten away from them since achieving a career as a writer, because I need the time for writing. Had I come to be in the computer age I suspect I would have disappeared into such games and never been seen again. As it is, I play a few solitaire type games on the computer and let it go at that.

Which brings me to “Crazy Quilt.” I mentioned that it’s a card game I liked in youth and wanted on the computer. A reader told me of a shareware site that had it, but when I checked, it wasn’t there. That’s par for my course. So she checked, and found it gone. So she sent me the copy she had downloaded. It worked, but some cards I played disappeared instead of moving, making it confusing to play. So I tried one of the other games in the package, “Labyrinth,” with six decks, and it works flawlessly and I like it. My wife tried the games, and she likes Labyrinth too. So I sent the proprietor $20 for the two copies. You thought shareware is free? Only if you’re the type who steals books and thinks the honor system is a license to cheat. I hope none of my readers are like that. And sometimes there are rewards for doing the right thing: I received a very nice letter back from the proprietor, Michael D. Usher, revealing that he’s a fan of mine from Florida, though now in England. That’s the reverse of my course; I started in England and finished in Florida. He sent a CD disc containing 375 different types of card solitaire games that surely has every game I ever dreamed of playing and many new ones. I’m amidst editing a big novel at the moment, so can’t afford to get thoroughly into this yet–I like such games too well–but did try the fanciest, what he calls the Godzilla of games, the six deck “Battle for Atlantis.” It’s an exercise in imagination: the several patterns of cards represent the opposing fleets of ships, as you try to conquer Atlantis. But for the unimaginative, it reduces to building up in suits from aces through kings in chains six decks long, with a number of options for playing, turning over, moving, parking, and taking chances with the cards that he says is apt to take two hours to complete, with your odds for victory one in two. I, as a first-time duffer, stalled out twice in an hour, but that was enough to satisfy me that it is a very good game. Michael mentioned that he had tracked 100,000 downloads, but only about 40 have paid for them. Now it could be that as many as 9 of 10 found they didn’t really care for the games, so wiped the program. Fair enough. But that would leave 10,000 who liked and kept it, and who do play the games, as I did, who should have sent in $10. Fewer than half of one per cent of those users actually did. Thus the fall of the house of Usher, the victim of legal stealing. I repeat: I HOPE NONE OF THOSE RIP-OFF PLAYERS WERE MY READERS. I fulminate against the monopolistic predatory practices of Macrohard Doors, but apparently that’s what it takes to actually get paid for your work in a climate of ethical vacuum. You invite in the corporate monsters when you mistreat the decent folk; only the monsters survive. But if you have a second thought, maybe having missed the shareware notice, here is the address: Michael D Usher, 12 Stuart Close, Brandon, Suffolk, IP27 0HB, England.

We got rain. The past two months have both been records for our 14 year residence here on the tree farm. We’re glad to have it, though it has all disappeared into the drought-dry ground and Lake Tsoda Popka remains a grassy plain in our vicinity. We need several feet more rain to restore it. But it has been great for vegetation, and the mosquitoes, rendered almost extinct locally by the drought, have resurged. No, they’re not huge monsters; they are tiny cute little specks you can hardly tell from floating eye phantoms, but they do suck blood. They make it a trial to go outside. I do have things to do outside. I hate it when I’m aiming an arrow, and as I loose it I hear a hungry bzzz at my ear and I miss the target. So though I don’t like to kill things–it’s why I’m a vegetarian–I make an exception for bloodsuckers. I have tried spraying the spot where I stand for archery, and that reduces the clouds to the point I can swat the rest. I also tried repellant. Most of them contain DEET, but there’s a new one derived I think from eucalyptus that’s natural. So, being of a scientific mind, I tried both: DEET on the left side, eucalyptus on the right side. Mosquitoes were thronging me as I brought out the bottles, but mysteriously faded as I applied them. One buzzed my right ear as I took aim with an arrow, but it concluded there was nothing edible there and departed. I was outside doing things for over an hour, getting thoroughly sweaty, and never got bit. So here is my user’s report: both types work, provided you cover every exposed surface including socks and T-shirt, which they bite through. So nature freaks like me can now foil bugs without poison or DEET. The storms also brought down more trees across our long drive. One day there were eight sites, each with one or more trees, and I went to work with clippers (because they were swathed in grapevines that anchored them in place), gloves (but I still got stabbed by a thorn), saw, ax, and long crowbar and in due course got them clear. All good exercise. Those tools remind me of a joke: “I see, ” said the blind man, and he picked up his hammer and saw. Lots of things remind me of jokes, like the game of bowling: a worker approaches the foreman and says “I’m a little stiff from bowling.” “I don’t care where you’re from. Get to work.”

William Ruddick invited me to write a short something for his Web site. He’s trying to get his favorite authors to share their hopes and dreams. It seems like a nice notion. So my brief hope is there, at www.dreamsofchange.net, and there are others. Take a look; it’s no joke.

I received an invitation to interview at Slashdot, which I understand is pronounced /. They sent questions and I answered them. They warned me of the Slashdot effect, which could swamp little sites like mine. Well, we got maybe a dozen emails at HiPiers from slashdotters, hardly a blip on our screen; I think they didn’t know how busy this site normally is. The interview may still be at slashdot.org. It was a good one, which is to say I got asked some questions other than what’s my next Xanth novel all about, and they have a follow-up process with reader reactions to the interview and to other readers’ reactions. I checked it a day after the interview was posted, and printed it out. There were some knowledgeable readers, but aspects were annoying. One asked me what problems I had with Linux, and I said that it took me 9 months and a lot of help and expense to make the change, and that the idea that a Linux system isn’t supposed to run out of the box is death to popularity. There was no followup on that. I think there should have been outrage and determination to make Linux systems as easy to run as Windows systems. Let’s face it, that shouldn’t be much of a challenge. One said “Is the whole of his experience with Apple based on his use of the Apple IIe?” Huh? I didn’t mention Apple because I wasn’t asked, and have never used any Apple computer. Another asked whether, considering that I have things like underage sex in On A Pale Horse and Bio of a Space Tyrant, I am attracted to underage women. I regard that, however politely phrased, as an implication I am a pedophile. First, I asked the questioner to identify the page number of Pale Horse where any such thing exists, as I don’t believe it does. Elsewhere in the interview I had a comment about folk who condemn me for things that aren’t in my novels. Then I went into an extended discussion of the nature of human sexual interest, which is essentially that if she’s 36-24-36 and fair of feature, men are attracted, and so am I, regardless whether she’s 15 or 50, and I don’t think those extremes make me either a pedophile or a necrophile. Well, I got no page numbers, and was accused of doing a song and dance, avoiding the issue, and of attacking the questioners. That’s what annoys me. I get the impression that some folk want to make me out a pedophile and think I’m being evasive when I try to clarify the issue. I find all shapely women appealing, which is hardly the same. It’s like asking “Do you still beat your wife?” and demanding a yes/no answer; some purport not to understand why such questions are offensive. But because there were followups on the followups, others did come back at these folk, sometimes with perceptive spot essays. Then one wondered why I wrote DoOon Mode, conjecturing that it was to finance a new computer. Had I been asked, I would have answered there; now I’ll do it here: I wrote it because over the past decade it has been my most requested novel, from readers who wanted the series properly wrapped up. Apparently this reader didn’t like the idea that I catered to someone else’s desire, and trashed the book. So far, this is the only negative response I have had on this novel. (I have remarked elsewhere that 99% of my readers like my books; the other 1% review them.)

And on that novel: Jennifer Young advises me that the reference on page 200 of the paperback edition to a story by Edgar Allan Poe was actually “Rappacini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ouch; I read and liked both authors, and trusted to memory. Memory is a treacherous instrument, rather like dealing with the opposite gender: it can be very accommodating, but don’t trust it too far. I suppose I could point out that it was my character Colene who made the mistake, but she got it from me. And yes, Colene is 14, smart, pretty, conflicted, was raped before the series began–and was modeled on several readers who were like her, who told me their stories. Many since have identified with her, and she is one of my favorite characters, but she is Too Young. Make of that what you will.

Speaking of mistakes, a reader notified me of another: I commented last time how much better the video version of the movie The Abyss was than the theater version, only I neglected to give the title. I had the video right there with me as I commented, and thought I had given the title. I hadn’t. Sigh. Whatever would I do without readers who are paying more attention than I am?

And back to my books: when they are published, sometimes I do a random sampling, just to make sure they are real. This time I checked page 100 of the paperback editions of DoOon Mode and How Precious Was That While, my sequel autobiography. (Yes, of course I’m saving the really hot stuff for the third volume in that series, when everyone else is dead.) In DoOon that page concerns taking a chain as a way of making an oath. I think it’s a nice cultural detail that those hot on the quest for dirt don’t notice. In Precious it concerns our move from Oklahoma to Florida, when I got out of the US Army. As it turned out, my writing career was to flower in Florida, and the Army was to become a bad memory. So it was a significant transition. Yes, there are things on the other pages too; this was just a spot check. Meanwhile, when I checked for my spot corrections from the hardcover edition, I discovered that they had fouled one up: on page 411 of the paperback my attempt to correct Berkely/Ace to Berkley/Ace was rendered as Barkeley/Ace. I always suspected that copyeditors were dogs. Woof!

One reason I wanted to get away from Windows was the way those systems periodically foul up, costing time, text, and frustration, apparently because Microsoft doesn’t care to fix the bugs. Well, I’ve been on Linux for over a year now, and it is more stable and less arrogant, but every so often it does pull a Windows on me. I work in my own “Piers” user section, where I have all the things I need. But defaults are set in the “Root” user, so if I want something to stay put, I have to go there to do it. My files were getting rulers put on them, taking up space, and I got tired of removing them, so went to root and deleted them. That is, they remain in force, just not showing onscreen. When I returned to Piers three of my files had become Read Only, meaning I couldn’t change them. That’s hell with an ongoing novel text. I wasted two hours trying to find a way to restore them to functionality, but there seemed to be no way. Computers are great at doing things you can’t undo; programmers must delight in setting these little traps. So I emailed Griz Inabnit, who is building me my new improved MoNsTeR Linux system, the one I hope will be perfect (like that shapely ageless woman), and asked whether he knew how to get such files restored. He telephoned me and in the course of half an hour of fighting the balky system (computers really really don’t like to be corrected) talked me through the repair, and I had my files back. It seemed that when I went to Root, it decided to claim ownership of the files, and wouldn’t let any other user touch them. There is reason for this feature; it’s to prevent online strangers from messing with your files. But in this case it was preventing me, like an immune system attacking the host. The key was to use a command called “chown”–that is, CHange OWNer–to change ownership from Root back to Piers. Griz promises that this sort of foul-up won’t happen in the system he’s doing. Anyway, now my files don’t show their rulers, by default. If I ever write a book about computers, it will be titled Hardware’s from Jupiter, Software’s from Saturn.

I look at everything that comes in except spam–yes, even fan mail, you cynics–and that includes junk mail. Endless get-rich schemes, potency pills, health aids. One interested me: Indium, the 49th element, not found in the human system, but pushed as a supplement for vibrant health. How so? Because in theory it activates other trace minerals, leading to diminished need for sleep–an hour less a night–a sense of well-being, increase in energy, strength, endurance, improved short term memory, and other benefits. Okay, I decided to give it a try, shelling out $90 for a three month supply, to my wife’s disgust. As mentioned before, I have been on a decades long search for surcease from my chronic mild depression and fatigue; the thyroid pills have helped but haven’t done the whole job. Sometimes I grasp at straws, just in case. Could this do it? It’s a tiny bottle with an eye dropper; you take a single drop on the tongue each morning, and the benefits are supposed to manifest within days. I have now been taking it seven weeks. So does it work? No. I have noted no effects. Damn.

We saw some movies. My wife and I seldom went to the movies before our movie freak Daughter #2 Cheryl re-entered our lives; now she hauls us out to see the more interesting ones, so we won’t disappear entirely into passive senility. Also, we now get the Senior Discount, so we can afford it. We saw The Bourne Identity, which has a personal history: twenty years ago I was looking for something to read that might remind me how to make my fiction exciting. Yes, I know critics say I didn’t find it. My wife recommended The Bourne Identity, so I read it. Yes, it was exciting; you could hardly turn a page without another gun tracking the protagonist. Not a lot beside that, but it sure kept the tension up. I have larger concerns in my own fiction than guns, so it’s not as exciting. Well, the movie simplified it somewhat, and changed some details, but I think on the whole improved it. It remains an exciting story, which naturally a critic panned as dull, that makes a bit more sense than the novel did. So I can recommend this movie as a worthwhile diversion: a lot of mystery, action, fighting, and a tasteful romance. My kind of junk. We saw Lilo And Stitch, and really liked this animation. Stitch is a little blue monster, literally; he’s little, and is programmed to destroy everything he can reach. He escapes to earth, to Hawaii, which was designated as a mosquito sanctuary (I thought that was Florida), and is adopted as a dog by troubled little orphan Lilo. Lilo can be a real handful herself, driving her big sister to distraction. So it’s a great combination, replete with some lovely scenes of destruction. I like that way that the big sister is shown as human rather than ideal; she’s a bit solid in the thighs and plain of face, and believable. So this too is my kind of junk. And Minority Report, wherein in the near future they can prevent crime by seeing what’s about to happen and intercepting it. Lovely notion, and some fabulous chase sequences. One detail I really liked was the little robot spiders, that climbed up people to check their eyes for retinal prints, identifying them. The protagonist had to get his eyeballs replaced to avoid that ID. This is really my kind of junk. So I can recommend them all, when they come out on video, if you missed them in the theater. I saw a reference to another movie I’d like to see, Never Again, about a woman in her fifties who finds new love; it is said to be quite sexy. I wasn’t fooling when I said I’m attracted to sexy 50’s too. In fact if push came to shove, I’d rather have the older woman, because she’s more likely to have an intellect, and to know how to cook, but I don’t expect any critic to believe that. But our local newspaper listing doesn’t even list it, and I know the local theaters won’t run it; it will have to wait for the video. And we saw one more movie:I received a DVD in the mail titled Reflections of Evil with a note saying that it cost $250 per unit, and they hoped I’d enjoy and cherish it for a lifetime of pleasure. But the movie itself turned out to be not my kind of junk. It was about a fat ugly man who kept gobbling junk food and vomiting, whose presence made people quarrel and animals fight. That was it, for an hour and a half. If this was promotional distribution, it did not impress me favorably. If the copy really cost that much, it was wasted on me.

Odd things can happen in research. I had a sequence in my ChroMagic novel requiring imaginative illusion. I am wary of pulling too much from my head, lest I recycle stale ideas–I just had to hit the MUTE button to stifle my critics’ loud agreement that this is all I ever did–so I sought a source of external imagination. I dug out my collection of about 20 fantastic art books and spent several days going through them. Fascinating pictures, about half of which seemed to be voluptuous woman in varying states of dishabille, and much else interesting too. I did get some notions, and proceeded with my chapter. But that delving had side effects. I discovered one of the paintings I had commissioned for the Xanth Calendar and paid a thousand dollars for, was published there, credited to some other patron. Okay, so now I know: those fancy credits may be works of fiction too. I also saw the paintings Michael Whelan did for Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, absolutely lovely art. Whelan does his homework, as do I. Foundation has long been a favorite of mine; I read part of The Second Foundation in high school circa 1949 as And Now You Don’t, following the first part Now You See it which was published just before I discovered the science fiction magazines. Later I picked up on the earlier volumes. So I decided to reread it, fifty years later, and see how it struck my present far more critical eye. I did–and it didn’t stand up. The first novel, Foundation, is really a collection of stories with different characters who trump the opposition with brilliant devices the author doesn’t necessarily inform the reader of before the end. It’s all dialogue, no physical action, no women, just men talking at each other. Atomic power is still a big deal, and many characters smoke. The center of empire and culture is at the center of the galaxy; this was written before the black hole concept of galactic formation was recognized. The sequel, Foundation and Empire, picks up a little, but is still mostly a collection of talking men. Where there is action, it consists of things like a galactic fleet admiral pulling a blaster on a prisoner to make him stay in line, then getting klonked on the head and the prisoner escapes. As military authenticity this is ludicrous; fleet admirals don’t pull blasters, they have layers of lesser officers to do things on command, and prisoners are scrupulously incapacitated. No wonder Asimov generally stayed clear of action; he wasn’t very good at it. Only in the third, Second Foundation, do we get a unified novel, and that’s really only the last portion. That features Bayta, a woman who foils the nefarious mind-controlling Mule, and her later perky fourteen year old granddaughter Arkady. (So did critics accuse Asimov of being a pedophile? As I recall, his later works, like Heinlein’s, suggest fascination with sex; it must be a function of age. As we get older, sex becomes more mental than physical.) Taken as a whole, I found the series readable but not classic; perhaps it improved in later sequels. The art was better than the text.

There was a flap about the Pledge of Allegiance, so naturally I’ll put in my three cents. A panel of judges concluded that the words “under God” were in violation of the Constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. There was instant national outrage. Interesting, considering the judges were correct. Freedom of religion is supposed also to mean freedom from religion, and we shouldn’t have to affirm a belief in God to express our loyalty to our country. Is this too much for Americans to understand? In my day those two words weren’t there; they were added in 1954. The country had not gone to hell before that. The references to God have not always been on our money, either, and it used to be worth more than it is now: dollar bills were redeemable in gold, and some coins were silver. I used to have a silver quarter that could be used for a dirty joke: turn the flying eagle upside down, cover the head, and the flying wings look like cowboy leggings. Ask a person which way the cowboy is walking. He’ll point the direction. “Damn right,” you say, uncovering the head, which in this position looks like a penis poking out from the trousers. I lost my quarter decades ago, but in the past month a helpful reader sent me a replacement. Now I can do the joke again.

Advice columnist Ann Landers died at age 83. She had something like 93 million newspaper readers, and a staff to do the chore aspects, but for a time she quit doing new letters and recycled old ones with small changes of detail. Only when a researcher discovered this and blew the whistle did Ann resume actually doing the work she was paid for. It must have been in that period there was a comment that no crossbreeds between animals and humans existed, and I wrote in to inquire how centaurs, mermaids, harpies and the like had come to be. There was no response. Par for the course; I also wrote to Marilyn, supposedly the smartest person in the world, to correct an error she had about the Chinese Wall, and she neither responded nor corrected it.

Ted Williams died. He was one of the towering figures of baseball, the last to have a season average of 400. He retired here in Citrus County, Florida, and died in Inverness. Whereupon his children fought over the body: whether to burn it or freeze it. That is, cremation or cryogenics, where they hope to thaw folk in the future for a better second life. With the world becoming ever more crowded, and resources being depleted, it is not clear why they should want yet more people then.

Something reminded me of part of a Jenny letter I did four years ago. (I still write to her every week.) The “Pickles” comic strip had a fun notion with made up place names that go with state abbreviations, like Shapeless Mass., Goodness ME, Oola LA, Deathly Ill., Hittor Miss., Poison Penn., Grandpa PA, Proan Conn., Coca Colo., Either OR, and Squee Mich. I wondered if more could be done, like maybe Blushing Virgin., Income TX, Telephone CO, Ga GA, Lock& KY, Americ CA, Eightnine Tenn., Gold Ore., Doctor MD, Tellme WY, Alack Alas., Dirty Wash, Full MT, Kickthe Kan., Show ID, Hug& KS. Shovit IN, Ah OH. Feel OK, Gimme MO. (Bear in mind that Jenny was by then an adult, with an earthy sense of humor.)

We have a current phenomenon: hundreds of tiny black frogs are all around the pool and yard. I picked one up and verified that it would fit sidewise on my littlest fingernail. They look like little crickets as they jump about. Haven’t seen them in prior years. Well, I wish them well, and hope they eat mosquitoes.

Idiot Dept.: That bad fire in Arizona was set by a tribesman who hoped to make $100 pay for fighting it. Instead the timber it destroyed will cost his tribe $200 million. I suspect he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get his ears cut off.

I maintain an informal listing of Internet publishers and writing services, as an ongoing service to my readers. I try to comment accurately and fairly, having had a fair amount of experience with publishing and being immune from blacklisting by those who object, so I can call a spade a spade with impunity. This column and that service seldom overlap, but I thought a recent spot development might be of more general interest, so here is one current entry copied and pasted from there to here: CHICKSPRINGS–http://www.chicksprings.com. I assumed from the name that this would be a feminist publisher, but it seems to be more general. I am not clear how much is provided free and how much the author pays for; this seems to be a bit of both camps. I found no information for writers. UPDATE: here is the response I received from Mary McKelvey, Publicity person for Chick Springs Publishing, quoted verbatim: “We are not surprised that some old fart like Piers would think that you could get away with calling a modern ‘gal’ a ‘chick.’ Evidently Piers has no daughters or is estranged from them or these ‘gals’ bite their tongue in his presence because of the IRS law which allows he and his wife to give $10,000 to each child each year tax free. Actually, we thought that Piers had crossed over several years ago.” So if this is the attitude, accuracy, and grammar you seek for your material, this is the outfit for you. Still no information on terms.

As a general rule I believe that people and cultures should be allowed to do their own things, so long as they aren’t hurting others. But I find there are limits to my tolerance. It seems that in a Pakistani village several men grabbed an 11 year old boy, beat and sodomized him, then to prevent him from telling, took him to one of their houses and shut him in a room with the sister of one of them, a woman in her late 20’s. Then they accused him of molesting the sister and demanded reparation from the boy’s family. There were negotiations, and it was agreed that if the boy’s 28 year old sister Bibi apologized for her brother’s transgression, it would suffice. But when she came, they decided that apology wasn’t enough, and that she should be raped, so that her whole family should be shamed, and four of them raped her. Thus Pakistani village justice. Do I need to elaborate on my objections? The whole matter would not have come to light had not another villager blown the whistle, and the news got out. Then there was general outrage among Pakistanis, and the men were arrested and threatened with death. Another negotiation resulted in sparing their lives if their sisters married men of the victimized family. The designated girls were as young as age 5, and the designated men as old as 80. Maybe I just don’t properly understand that culture; my notion of justice in this case relates to prison terms, not marriages. I also think that feminists who scream about whether they should be called chicks or gals should try focusing on real issues like the degraded place of women in such societies. They could consider Thailand, where sexual slavery is almost a way of life, with a special market for children; clients pay extra for the privilege of raping virgins. So what can we do about it in America? There is supposed to be an annual Trafficking In Persons (TIP) report that grades countries on their efforts to combat such trafficking, and to cut aid to countries that fail. Unfortunately the present American administration seems to be more interested in obscuring such information than in doing anything about it.

Not that I’m against feminism as a whole. Some of my best characters are feminists. Let me focus for a moment on a correspondent: I’ve known Walidah Imarisha by mail for about 8 years and regard her as a black feminist activist, though she may not see herself that way. I was surprised early on when she made an issue of blackness, because her fan letters had come across as lily white. She asked me why I didn’t have black characters in my fiction, and I responded that I did, and named several novels. She checked and agreed. That impressed me, because others have asked the same question and refused to accept my answer, accusing me of racism the same way some accuse me of sexism: more interested in the charge than in the truth. Walidah challenges folk, but she also listens. That marked her in my mind as different, and an entity to be respected. It’s the way I try to be myself. I have opinionations busting out all over, but I pay attention to feedback. She sent me a booklet of her poems titled “This Back Called Bridge” subtitled “To find a way, to make a way, to be a way.” The first poem is “By-Racial Blues” and it describes her early situation. “How come you sound like a white girl?” with the real question being “How come you’re not black enough?” Her mother told her just to answer that she was brown. She remarks here (I’m deleting the poetic form, because I have a lot to jam in here; I hope the author will forgive me): “Yeah, that works…when you’re six years old. After that, you better have something better to explain your mutt birth, your bastard existence, your lighter skin, your upturned nose. You can not straddle the color line, yawning like a canyon between your two halves. There is no middle ground in amerikan culture expression: you better choose or we’ll do it for you.” She envied the “shonuff” black girls who ruled elementary and middle school and regarded her as “the Oreo cookie child,” black on the outside, white inside. She concludes: “I guess I will continue to be miscegenated and misunderstood, but I think I’m done with the bi-racial blues.” That’s just the first poem. You can find her via http://poetryoffthepage.com. She’s the bad sista of the Good Sista/Bad Sista duo.

Walidah also sent me a copy of a book she helped edit, Another World is Possible, which relates to the horror of September 11, 2001. I opened it randomly and discovered hard-hitting political social economic commentary; this is not innocuous material. For example I learned that a few years ago they struck oil in the eastern portion of the Caspian Sea, estimated to be half again as big a supply as what’s in Saudi Arabia. But how could they get it out? The area has no direct access to the sea and is surrounded by politically awkward territories. The best bet was a pipeline through Afghanistan, so they promoted the Taliban to take over and secure the region, making it safe for the Big Oil business. Then things got out of hand, as we know. So how come I didn’t see this in the regular news? You can order it via www.newmouthfromthedirtysouth.com.

Article in the newspaper: two studies show that children who receive gun safety education are just as likely to play with a gun as those who don’t get the training. Meanwhile, a reader sent a commentary on the difference between a victim and a combat survivor. Victims are shattered and terrified, while those who survive combat may also be shattered but have a primal awareness that once awakened never really goes back to sleep. It’s like having a dragon for a roommate; occasionally it wakes and peers out of their eyes. www.nononsenseselfdefense.com.

One of the good outfits I support is the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics–FSEEE–and their publications can be dismaying in the things they reveal. For example, Bob Libershal, a forest protection officer, lives and works on California’s Angeles National Forest. He saw “off-highway vehicle” signs posted on a road he knew was legally closed to off-highway vehicles. So he asked his superiors about the wrong signs, but they couldn’t explain why they were there or who posted them. So he took them down. His bosses ordered him to put them back up. He refused, and was suspended. Well, the Whistleblower Protection Act says the government can’t discipline an employee for refusing to follow an order that would cause him to break the law, but it seems his bosses haven’t got the word. FSEEE is preparing litigation to make them obey the law. I’m on their mailing list and was solicited; this is one of the few solicitations I did contribute to. www.fseee.org.

I have remarked repeatedly on the flood of Nigerian type solicitations I receive, promising easy millions if I cooperate in sneaking money out of that country. We are now deleting those letters as they arrive, like viruses. But it seems one fouled up; along with the solicitation, we got the dope on the program they use to send it out widely. It’s called Rolling Launcher and is shareware. It describes itself as “a flexible and powerful direct & proxy e-mail sender for your opt-in mailing lists.” Now you know. And about those viruses: We get one to five Klez H viruses a day, all nulled by Norton Antivirus, but each takes a minute to process. This virus is tricky: it puts a fake return address on. Thus some readers think I am sending them viruses. I’m not; it’s a frame. So how come legitimate software can be so hard to install, while viruses install themselves?

Sunday supplement PARADE MAGAZINE for July 14, 2002, had an interesting point: there is a difference between “sick” and “evil.” Sickness is a condition; evil is a behavior. It’s talking about pornography and pedophilia, but I think has more general application. I have felt for some time that letting a criminal off as innocent by reason of insanity is idiotic; he should be found guilty by reason of insanity. If you have no conscience and destroy another person, you may be sick, but you are also a criminal.

Collaborator Alfred Tella (The Willing Spirit) has another fantasy novel coming out, Zuralia Dreaming. I read it and blurbed it last year, as I recall.

I view with a dismay shared by many the outrageous dealings of prominent corporations, where the chief executive officers walk away with millions of dollars–sometimes hundreds of millions–while the companies founder and impoverish their employees and investors. I should think those responsible should be required to give back the money, which I regard as stolen, and to be put on trial for fraud. But somehow our government seems more interested in suppressing criticism of itself, warning that people should watch what they say and do. Little people are getting imprisoned without charges and denied access to their lawyers, indefinitely. This is plainly unconstitutional, and the trend is frightening. How come the real criminals, those who mercilessly steal the livelihoods of others while enriching themselves phenomenally, are not arrested and prosecuted? Congress and the administration are now belatedly acting, but I’ll believe it when I see some of those outlaw CEOs sent to prison.

Last time I asked religious conservatives rhetorically “Do you believe that the human body as God made it is obscene? That the consensual act of regenerating our kind is a sin?” Well, I heard from one, Kelly Davis, with a good answer. He says that no truly full gospel Christian–that is, one who believes that the Bible is the true word of God–would believe that the human body is obscene. After all, it was crafted in God’s image. But when sin entered the world–something to do with an apple–things were quickly complicated, and folk realized they were naked. Sex between a married man and woman for procreation is all right, but sex outside of marriage is fornication and is wrong. Davis also quoted my remark “It is as if the human species has been crafted for some residence other than Heaven.” This is an example of that original sin in operation. We have the freedom to choose between good and evil, and thus to choose our eventual destinations: Heaven or Hell. I had asked why people thought that sitting on a cloud playing music for eternity would be any joy, and he replied that God is the true source of all joy; one close to God would require nothing else. The absence of God is the opposite.

I receive many questions from readers, mostly about my work or how to become writers, and I answer as well and personally as I can, given the constraints of time and intellect. Sometimes I say something I think would have some meaning for others. One asked me how to get along when it seemed that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t please her parents. She was told she was lucky to have such parents, but asked me: “If I’m so lucky, why do I cry so often?” Oh, my; what could I say? I have two daughters, and they are not necessarily always pleased with me. Perspectives differ. But I made the attempt, and here is what I said:

“I checked our correspondence, and realized that it has been a while since I first heard from you as a ten year old in 1995. Now you are seventeen, but I still tend to think of you as ten, because of that mental snapshot that forever classified you. But your prom picture doesn’t look ten, so I suppose the time really has passed.

“All of which does have a bit of relevance to your current letter. Parents tend to think of their children as always being children, even though they have grown into young adults or full adults. They can be overprotective and also over-demanding, and unfortunately contemptuous. They forget that they themselves were ever children or teens, and have little respect for the teen situation. When I was young I swore to myself to remember what it was like, and I do remember, but when I mentioned that to my mother in law she thought I was being immature. Certainly my own parents did not understand, and my sister and I both bear the scars of it.

“So how did I get through? I pondered, and realized that many of my problems were really not my own. They were coming from my family, like polluted water flowing down to me. I resolved to forge my emotional independence from my family, to protect myself from that mischief. I date my slow emergence from a really messed up childhood to a really successful adulthood from that decision. I treated my parents politely, but once I set up my own family I did not take any guff from them; if one of them accused me of something that was not true, I refuted it, citing published references if I needed to. The point was not the particular issue, but the larger one behind it: I was my own person, not their person. No, they didn’t like that, and I think never understood why I did it. But I still think it was a necessary course.

“So how does this apply to you? I think you will have to do the same. You can’t be physically or financially independent, at least not at this time, but you may be able to be emotionally independent. Some might call it a wall, and psychiatrists hate walls and want to break them down, but they can serve a purpose. Robert Frost’s poetic statement that good fences make good neighbors can be true emotionally as well as physically. You need to care less personally about what your folks think, so that you get hurt less. That doesn’t mean to treat them with contempt or indifference, just to be more objective about their input. Sometimes a parent is wrong, but sometimes a parent is right, and you need to be able to judge between them without getting thrown. Parents, right or wrong, generally do mean well, and that should be appreciated. I’m a parent (and grandparent), and sometimes I wish I could influence my children more, because I have experience and perspective they lack, but they’re independent now and I respect that. You can’t be perfect, but you can be good enough. Just make sure you’re not less than you yourself are satisfied with. Set a decent standard, and don’t let others get to you because it is not their standard. It is after all your life, not theirs.

“As you get older, it will surely get easier. If you go to college, that’s a great place to find yourself. If you get a job, you’ll be on the way to achieving economic independence. But what counts most is your emotional independence. It’s not easy to achieve; it took me years. But it can solve your problem. I’m sorry I can’t give you an instant fix, but there really isn’t one.

“Regardless, I wish you well.”

And I wish all my readers and correspondents well too.

This column is being done a bit early, because our WebMistress is skipping the country in early OctOgre, but will be back on schedule hereafter. Xanth #26 Up in a Heaval will be appearing in hardcover about the time this column does; it’s normal Xanth, about a young man who doesn’t know he doesn’t exist. Surprise Golem, she with the many one-time-only talents, is now fourteen and will not be pleased, as she falls in love with him. Meanwhile #25 Swell Foop will be out in paperback. Those who want yet more Xanth will be pleased to know that the motion picture option on the series has now been signed; that means they have a year or more to decide whether to make it into a movie. That decision is called exercising the option, and few options are actually exercised, but we’ll see.

I get invited to participate in assorted things along the way. If they involve traveling any distance I normally turn them down, as I’m not keen on traveling. I trace that to the fact that I traveled Europe before I was six years old, then came to America and never saw England again. So for me, psychologically, a journey may have no return. But my sister, with the same background, loves to travel and does it all the time. So much for armchair psychology. But invitations that don’t involve travel I consider more positively. I was invited to contribute a short essay to the volume My America, edited by Hugh Downs, commemorating the horror of 9-11-2001, to be published exactly one year after it. I pondered, and did so. I heard no more, but then received a copy of the volume, and lo, I am one of 150 notables represented in it. No, I don’t know how I rated the invitation; I believe I am the only SF/Fantasy writer there, and none of the top ten most popular novelists are there. Others are former presidents, state governors, company executives, award winning scientists, and all manner of other famous folk. They are arranged alphabetically by author, and it’s surprising how well that works. You’d think there would be a certain sameness, and there is some, but also fair variety, as each does his/her take on the subject. I conclude “I’m an immigrant. I’m a writer. I’m American.” A local reviewer in the newspaper says that more than 150 books on 9-11 have been published this year, and names a number, but this one didn’t make the list. I was also invited to contribute my epitaph to a collection of those. No, I don’t think the invite was by a hopeful critic. It’s just what I would like said about me, when that time comes. That one concludes “Tried to do the decent thing.” It’s surprising how often that generates negative responses.

We saw some movies. Not many, because my movie-freak daughter has been too busy working at her jute mill of a newspaper to come out and haul us to the theater, and our natural state is vegetative. You know how it is with senior citizens. But we did see Signs, about those nefarious crop circles, and XXX, a slam-bang action adventure, my kind of junk. MOVIES UNLIMITED had a ten dollar a video closeout sale on some items, so I ordered eleven of those, but by that time I was writing Xanth on a deadline and haven’t had time to watch. Come DisMember I’ll catch up. I have a DVD player now, but haven’t quite gotten the hang of it; it plays for a while, then locks up. So that, too must wait. A couple of videos we did watch: A Chorus Line, and Hair. It’s surprising how good some of these classics are. I hadn’t seen the latter before, and was caught up in the horror of the conclusion, where the free-soul draft-card-burner gets hauled away to die in Vietnam.

My MoNsTeR Linux computer system, assembled by Griz Inabnit in Oregon, finally arrived, and my new word processor, OpenOffice. I’m still breaking them in, as I struggle to keep my writing schedule, but do have impressions. First, the hardware: this system is designed to be fairly crashproof. It has two hard disks that operate in tandem, recording the same thing, so that if one crashes the other has everything. It’s fairly fast, about 1.4 G I think. It has KDE 3, a more advanced interface than the KDE 1 I was using before. It also has a flat-screen monitor, about two inches thick, the kind you could hang like a picture on the wall. The software includes the KDE Konqueror, which is like the Windows Explorer in that it’s a file handler as well as an Internet browser, and it works well throughout. I have several email handlers to choose from, and tried them: Mozilla, which I think is a kind of cheese, refuses to recognize my Internet server, so I can’t use it. KMail makes me think of a department store chain; it’s okay, and I thought it would be the one, but Griz recommended I try Ximian Evolution, so I did, and it turned out to have superior spelling and Find features, so I’m using it. Unfortunately it sends and receives with a single button and you can’t separate them. That’s like having a cloaca, a common orifice for mouth and anus; most mail handlers separate them for sanitary reasons. It means that if I’m typing a letter to someone, and remember that one is due in that might affect it, I can’t check my incoming, because Evolution will send out my half finished letter the moment I connect. So I have to crank up KMail instead to do that check. What werethe geeks thinking of? This isn’t Evolution, it’s Regression. For going online I use the RedHat dialer; I think of it as the HeadRat. I used to use KPPP, which I think stands for Kiss My Personal Posterior Protocol, but sometimes it gets balky. But mainly there’s the word processing. I’ve been using StarOffice (SO) 5.2 and like it well enough. OpenOffice (OO) derives from it, with mixed result. SO files have the suffix .sdw, which I make out to be Same Dull Wife; OO file are .sxw, which would be SeXy Wench. .sdw files run twice the size of Windows Word .doc files, which is a nuisance when I have a novel too big for one backup disk; I have to convert it to .doc format or storage. But .sxw files compress to half the size of .doc files, so should be able to back up even my biggest novels on single 3.5 inch disks. So SeXy Wench keeps her size down; I love that. The screen display of OO is beautiful; the fonts are smooth instead of looking like dot matrix dots: sexy curves. And it has a block cursor for overstrike mode. I have wanted that for over a decade, ever since I lost it along with my file-saved indication coming to Windows. The thing is, I move around in my text, and texts don’t necessarily hold their places well, so my cursor gets lost. I want it visible. A blinking block is visible. I love to see it winking at me. I also like knowing which files have and have not been saved; I wrote, way back when, to MacroHard and told them I could see no legitimate reason for them to conceal that information from the user. They did not answer. That’s guilt by default, by no means the only example. I also like having every file with a different background color of my choice, so I know instantly what I’m in. OO is strongly file oriented; in fact when you close the last file, OO is gone. There is no background framework; the individual files are all, each with its own set defaults. You can send one file to a different Desktop, or scatter them around the system; there is no”there” there. More fun; I did this to move my Internet Publishing Survey file to the desktop where I went online, so I could make my entry as I checked a publisher, without my other files cluttering the scene This makes for much more efficient updating. Of course I didn’t have the most recent Windows; maybe it has caught up on some of these features. Unfortunately OO kept the idiotic SO feature of substituting paragraph scrambling for the move-cursor up or down paragraph feature; control up arrow doesn’t move your cursor to the prior paragraph, it reverses the order of the paragraphs. What genius thought of that? I had to override it with macros to protect my text in SO. So what does OO do? Its macros are inoperable, so I can’t block off the threat. I hope someone gets a smidgen of common sense and fixes them in the next revision, because this is inconvenient and dangerous. So there is improvement to come, but despite that I really do like the program, and am writing Xanth on it, and this column. One thing about both SO and OO is that unlike MS Word, when they crash, THEY SAVE YOUR FILES. The arrogance of MacroHard, which trips over its own feet, accuses you of performing an illegal operation (like maybe a coat-hanger abortion?), and throws away your material, just because it can-well, that’s a big reason I fled to Linux. And I do like Linux, but it is not yet sufficiently hassle-free to recommend freely to others, except for those who have a resident Linux geek in the house to handle the crises.

The darndest stuff can come in junk mail. I received an ad from NATIONAL UROLOGICAL GROUP for Uroprin, a Viagra-type male sex enhancement pill. It’s supposed to make a man’s relevant anatomy bigger, harder, longer-lasting, more urgent, and deliver a stronger climax. All this for only two dollars a pill, much cheaper than Viagra, and it’s OTC-over-the-counter, so you don’t need a prescription. But here’s the kicker: they enclosed two sample pills. Try it, you’ll like it. Well, now. My response and performance at age 68 is not what it was at age 18; would this restore it? I admit to being curious. So I tried it. And-am not sure it had any effect other than placebo. That is, the expectation and attention to sex could have caused the moderate enhancement I experienced. Of course I’m not dysfunctional; my capacity may be something like 85% of what it was, for a single effort, which would leave only 15% for the pill to fill in, and that might be the case. Maybe if I had lost 50% the pill would have had more to work with, as it were. So I won’t say it doesn’t work, just that I can’t be sure, and even if it does, it’s not worth two bucks a shot to me. Ask me again, a decade hence.

Sometimes Americans dismay me. A recent survey suggests that 49% think the Constitution’s First Amendment goes too far. That’s the one that guarantees freedom of speech, the press, assembly, petition for redress of grievances, and separation of church from state-that is, freedom of religion. Without those guarantees you get things like the Muslim states, where you had better NOT preach Christianity lest you be stoned, and I don’t mean by pot, and thought-controlling dictatorship. This goes too far? This is the essence of America! As a naturalized citizen who takes the Constitutional safeguards seriously, I think 49% of our people need to go back to school and learn fundamental American values, lest they lose them. Certainly I don’t want them voting to destroy the safeguards that made America great. The present administration’s aversion to Constitutional rights is scary; those who don’t remember McCarthyism are likely to experience something similar.

In AwGhost 1952 Philip José Farmer’s novella “The Lovers” was published in STARTLING STORIES. It was a landmark, a story where sex was integral and well handled. It had been rejected elsewhere, demonstrating the idiocy of the editors of the day, an idiocy that seems to be a requirement for the office right up to the present. Well, friends of his staged a 50th anniversary party for him, where they read him letters they had solicited for the occasion. I had been invited, and I sent such a letter, as “The Lovers” has always been outstanding in my mind. I understand that mine was the first such response they received, and it is in the star-studded booklet they made of the occasion, along with past comments by Harlan Ellison, John Brunner, Poul Anderson, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Afred Bester, Theodore Sturgeon, and present ones by Gene Wolfe, Robert Sheckley, Jean Auel, Frederik Pohl, Andre Norton and other genre luminaries. We all agree: “The Lovers” is great, and it ushered in a great career. I’m glad Phil Farmer lived to receive this recognition.

Another anniversary was the 25th since the death of Elvis Presley, the popular singer. Would you believe, he was five months younger than I; we were in the US Army at the same time, he in Germany, I in America. I could take or leave his singing, but I think it was too bad that he got into drugs and took himself out so early.

Remember two years ago when the world stood still while Florida recounted its fouled up ballots? You’d think they’d have gotten it straight by now. So, several of the same counties fouled it again again, this time in the Democratic primary, resulting in a questionable decision, as before. Here in Citrus county things proceeded without problems, it was said. Ha. We live here, we voted, and it was lucky it worked out. I had only two races to vote on, as a registered independent; nothing complicated. My ballot was rejected by the machine something like five times before finally, reluctantly, being accepted. It seems it had to be put in the machine a particular way up, a particular end first, and I had to try them all before one took. The personnel seemed not to know what to do; my wife remarked that they seemed scared stiff of the balky machine. So all is not yet well in paradise. I hope that two years hence they’ll finally know how to run an election.

I notice little things. We have Norton Antivirus, and it does the job, intercepting about half a dozen viruses a day and keeping our correspondence system clean. When you put the mouse cursor on its icon, three more little figures appear, and they remind me of a toy choo-choo train: the engine with big wheels, the coal car with a big red hopper, and a boxcar. All of it upside down. Par for the computer course.

Some folk write to me, by snail or email, and are concerned that my office is simply brushing them off, pretending it’s me. Some even get sarcastic about it, poking fun at obvious “office” responses that really are mine. Sigh: I say it yet again: I read everything that comes in that isn’t a virus or from Nigeria-and some Nigerian missives carry viruses along with them. I answer what I deem requires it, usually with a quick sentence or two, sometimes with a full letter. I do it promptly, because a backlog can quickly become overwhelming, so normally the reader has an answer the same day or the following day. If an answer says it’s from me, it is. Responding responsively to my voluminous mail still takes about one third of my working time; I know of no other successful writer who can say the same. But I appreciate the uncertainty: how can a person know that it really is me on the other end? Well, I suppose you could follow a link to one of my dedicated fans, like Dan Reitz, who knows what’s what here, and ask his opinion; I think he will tell you that yes, it is me, and won’t tell you why he is sure. But apart from inside information, certainty is difficult; after all, if a secretary faked a response, wouldn’t she lie about it when asked? Some secretaries do get too pushy for their panties; once a doctor asked me to collaborate on a book about health and tennis, and when I called with information his secretary got it letter perfect-and never relayed the message. Since the doctor was eagerly waiting for my response, I suspect that girl was in trouble when he found out. But the good ones know their place, and if they bury incoming messages, you can be sure it is on the doctor’s orders, as it were. One even told me she didn’t recognize the name I was asking for; I suspect the boss had forgotten to let her know he had solicited my call. Well, we have no one here who will lie for the boss; integrity is another of my oddities, which may be why critics sometimes pretend I’m a liar, in the same manner they pretend my books are dull: to smear what they don’t understand. There is a place for privacy; I try to keep my address off the Internet (and I blacklist those who post it) so that fans won’t drop in on me uninvited and take my time when I’m trying to meet a deadline. Oh sure, you wouldn’t do that, but you know there are others who would. There is even a place for secrecy, as in the secret ballot or battle strategy during a war. When I post a complaint about an Internet publisher, the first thing that publisher wants is the identity of the complainant, so that person can be suitably intimidated into silence; that’s why I protect such anonymity. Remember, as mentioned above, I was blacklisted for six years (and may still be, thirty something years later, by some turds) for taking my complaint about a publisher to a writer’s organization; you think I have forgotten or forgiven that? (And yes, now I don’t go to writer’s orgs; I get a lawyer and make my point in a manner they understand. It’s called getting the cow’s attention by kicking it in the head. And no, I would not do that to a real cow. Remember, I’m a vegetarian ogre.) But my HiPiers website is public, and however anonymous I may be in other respects, I am behind every response here, including those that merely acknowledge. I can offer no better guarantee than my word, and if you think a secretary is faking this column, then maybe she’s the one you should be talking to anyway; maybe she’s also writing my books and taking the heat for my supposed pedophilia. Which reminds me of an academic joke: Shakespeare’s plays weren’t written by him, but by another man of the same name. Piers Anthony isn’t even my legal name; its the part of it I use as a pseudonym. So you might say I don’t really exist, like the main character in Up in a Heaval. But this column is me, and so are my letters, for whatever that’s worth.

I try to read at least one book a month. You might think this would be no problem for a writer, but it’s a struggle, because I’m a workaholic, and reading subtracts time from my writing. I’m a slow reader; remember, I’m the one who took three years to make it through first grade, because of reading difficulty. As I like to say, ogres are justifiably proud of their stupidity. So a novel that someone else buzzes through in an afternoon takes me three full days. I seldom if ever read for pleasure, these days. Still, it is possible to learn things from reading, and I’m addicted to learning; I want to know all the secrets of the universe and maybe even the nature of women before I kick the bucket. So when I received a nice self-published edition of The Ancient Ones by Rob L Calvert I read it. This is what I call high grade amateur; that’s not an insult, it’s a category. Such books generally get bounced by publishers because they are not in the top one per cent of submissions; this one would be in the second or third per cent, a suitable candidate for Internet publishers, but that isn’t ideal if what you want is a physical edition. This is the story of a man who wins a spaceship in a card game, and discovers it has a friendly autopilot named Beth who knows the ropes. She’s not a woman, understand; she’s a programmed personality in the machine. But she’d like to be a physical woman, so she could make it with the captain. Well, ship, autopilot, and captain are soon abducted by what seems to be a wayward comet and hauled elsewhere in the galaxy. What follows is a fairly wild adventure, with the captain sought as a lover by more than one alien female entity. My kind of junk, actually. So why did I decline to blurb it? Because I blurb only those books I deem superior as professional efforts, and this one has faults of expression and characterization that put it below that. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad book; in fact it’s a lot of fun, with some elements that aren’t normally found in traditionally published novels. Men have penises that react, women have vaginas, and rectums can pucker. At one point Beth gets to animate a physical body, but it’s a few more days before she gets the vagina installed, so she can’t seduce the captain yet. When the captain gets back to Earth, a century has passed, which complicates his romantic life. If you like sexy science fantasy, this will do. You can order it for $19.95 plus $5 shipping from Cos-Paw Publishing, PO Box 202, Dunlap, CA 93621.

Then I read another from my library, as I do every so often, refreshing and verifying my impressions of yore. Some great books remembered from teenage reading turn out to be less impressive when reread at retirement age, but some stand up. I like to think that my own books will stand up. This one was Roadmarks, by Roger Zelazny, where there is a highway that travels time. Fascinating notion, but I stalled out when I first got it twenty years ago. Zelazny was a friend of mine, a writer whose professional course was reminiscent of a flaming meteor, the object of effusive critical praise, awards, and publisher interest. You might think that I, as a distant also-ran struggling to overcome the blacklist, might have resented his success. That was not the case, and not because I’m a generous person. It was that from the first, Zelazny, who came on the scene about the time I did, openly praised my books and supported me. When we met at a conference, and I told how an editor had bounced a novel of mine as uninteresting, other writers said he was a good editor and my book, Hasan, probably was as he described it. Then Zelazny stepped in, telling how the same editor had bounced one of his novels similarly. When it won an award as best novel when published elsewhere, that editor wrote to him demanding to know why he hadn’t submitted it to him first. He moved his two hands as if weighing the two letters: which one was valid? That shut up the other writers, and indeed, my novel later did better than much of what that editor accepted. It’s extremely hard not to like a person like Zelazny, and I didn’t succeed. Indeed, I call it my Zelazny lesson: you can’t resent someone who’s busy praising you. He was a nice guy, and, despite the applause of critics, a great writer in his heyday. In later years the winds of fortune changed, his illness evidently washed out his writing flair, and I became more successful than he, commercially; it was my regret that I lacked opportunity to support him as he had supported me, and he died too young. So what of this novel? This time I damn well read it through-and verified my prior impression. Oh, it’s well enough written, and it has a story. But it’s all about the machinations of time travelers along this fabulous highway, spy and counterspy. We never see any of the cultures to which that highway has access. No Babylon, no future realm, nothing. Just taverns and campsites and friends and enemies along the way, as if we never leave the Interstate. That’s a gigantic waste of a great opportunity. I’m sorry to see it.

And I read what I took to be a cheap sexy historical novel, Mistress of Rogues, by Rosamond Marshall. I mean, it’s in cheap paperback format, with a reclining half nude beauty on the cover, and the blurb “Passion And Intrigue In A Lusty Era.” I must have picked it up when it was published in 1956; it’s the first paperback printing by POPULAR LIBRARY. Then marriage, trying to scrape out a living in a depressed area, my wife’s first miscarriage, and my entry into the US Army for two years diverted my attention, and I never read the book. Until 46 years later. So just how junky is this effort? I was amazed: it is well written, well characterized, and has a considerable story of a young woman married off young to an abusive man, who finally escapes him and makes it to riches and the discovery of the worth of good works. So this is not cheap sex, it’s misery and redemption set in Renaissance Italy.

Then I got caught up in mastering my new Linux system, and in writing Xanth, and reading halted, except for My America, at 10 pages a day. The Jehovah’s Witnesses gave me a copy of a beautifully illustrated little book Life-How did it get here? By evolution or creation? whose thesis is that the intricate miracles of life as we know it could not have occurred by chance. Well, I have been through this before; in fact I have a considerable discussion in And Eternity, so I won’t belabor it here, other than to say that I believe in evolution, not creation. The key elements the creationists omit are natural selection and time-billions of years of it.

Nick Jamilla sent me a copy of his Shimmering Sword, a nonfiction discussion of Samurai, Western, and Star Wars sword fighting. The author is a black belt in aikido and kendo, so is writing from a base of knowledge and experience. I once took judo classes, and authored a number of collaborative martial arts novels, so have a notion; if you are interested in the reality beneath the Star Wars fantasy, this is a worthwhile book. Check www.ShimmeringSword.com.

And collaborator Clifford Pickover, known primarily for his imaginative nonfiction books, sent two of his individual novels: Liquid Earth and The Lobotomy Club. These are the first two of the Neoreality series, with Sushi Never Sleeps and Egg Drop Soup to come. These are from The Lighthouse Press, http://TheLighthousePress.com. As I said, I abruptly ran out of reading time, but these look fascinating.

Stray notes: I was asked what the three biggest problems of publishing are. I replied Stupid Editors, Bad Distribution, and Ignorant Critics. I dare you to find any writer who disagrees. I received a copy of NEW HAMPSHIRE FEDERALIST, put out by the National Federation of the Blind, whose president is Ed Meskys, with whom I once worked compiling an index of genre book reviews, before he lost his sight. He published the award winning fanzine NIEKAS, which means Nothing in Lithuanian. Those interested can find him at edmeskys@localnet.com. I saw a note on DVD players: it’s best to buy a multi-regional player, so the anal-retentive movie industry can’t stop you from watching videos that originate elsewhere in the world. Makes sense to me. Evidence is developing that the left side of your brain registers “me,” and the right side “not me.” So our sense of self lies in the the left side. The health newsletter ALTERNATIVES says that aspirin is responsible for as many deaths each day as AIDS in this country. There may be more rapes perpetrated against men than against women. Here’s the key: prison. Officials prefer to ignore the problem. There’s a health warning out: seems the meat substitute, Quorn, makes some people sick. We haven’t found Quorn on sale locally yet. One of the ongoing scandals is that around the world children are forced into perilous work, including sex slavery. On the other hand, some adults are falsely accused of child abuse, complicating the problem; see http://abuse-excuse.com/home.html. A number of folk have researched the term ChroMagic online, and satisfied me that though it exists, it is not related to my fantasy series, and there should be no problem. Thanks, folk. Someone played anagrams with my name, and informed me that it spells “insane trophy” and “horny panties.” Why are my critics not surprised? Newspaper item says most whistle-blowers face retaliation. Duh! What I want to know is why they don’t go after the retaliators, who are obviously the unreformed culprits? And a reader informs me that I am among the top 100 most challenged authors of the last decade. Gee-I made a list! A reader sent me information on research on gravity shielding. I think shielding is the way to go; I use it freely in the Space Tyrant series. But as seems to be usual in such cases, the evidence is somehow obscure and a straight solid demonstration has not been verified. Jamie Lee Curtis, the actress, can look sexy as hell when she wants; now she is exposing herself without air brushing and other aids, at age 43, and looks considerably less sexy. I say more power to her for her honesty; I wouldn’t kick her out of bed, even un-airbrushed. Why should only faked up women be considered attractive?

A reader who found SF/Fantasy genre books not represented in his school asked me to write my thoughts on the subject. I did-and my letter bounced. This happens too often; I answer a letter on the day it arrives, and the return address is no good. This annoys me. So here is that spot essay for your benefit instead: “Yes, I’m annoyed by the determined ignorance of many schools. I was an English teacher myself, and it bothered me then. The classics, Shakespeare, and so on, should be considered. But so should contemporary literature, and science fiction, fantasy, and horror are a significant part of it. But it’s hard to make an impression on curricula that are set in stone. Here is a possible line of reasoning to use: most students will never read another classical book after leaving school, having been effectively taught to hate that type of literature. Those few who continue to read at all, will read what they like, such as fantasy. Wouldn’t it be better for schools to address the genre, perhaps enabling students to read it more critically than they would otherwise? If what is taught in schools is to have any bearing on real life reading, this would seem to be in order.” Meanwhile, cheating and plagiarism are a massive problem in schools at every level; I wonder whether this could be in part because the schools are not teaching anything that interests students? I don’t approve of cheating, but I do wonder. Meanwhile, according to a newspaper article, in Florida students are systematically taught to remove all thought from their writing. Great going, schools!

I had half a slew of additional notes, but my squeeze of time prevents me from exploring them right now. Sorry about that.

Then there’s the rowing. I have a rowing machine, but one side broke, which is the trouble with machines; I wear them out. So I tried emulating rowing with my two 20 pound dumbbells, putting them on the floor and lifting them up to chin height. 50 of those 40 lb. heaves leaves me out of breath, so it seems like good exercise, and those hand weights won’t break. And the running: I do it half an hour before dawn, the moment there is light enough to see the drive, jogging out to fetch in the newspapers. It’s about 1.6 miles round trip, and there are stops along the way to open the gate and to urinate at the little magnolia tree I saved from the bulldozer when our long drive was scraped out of the forest. That magnolia suffered root damage when the road was cleared and wasn’t doing well; that’s why I started stopping here, to provide it some nitrogen. It worked; it’s now a solid tree about 30 feet tall, and it had its first flower last summer. Anyway, my jogs have been slowing as I age and don’t push them so hard, but I was making the circuit in about 15:30 to 16:00 minutes until this summer. Then when I tried that Indium supplement I slowed to over 17 minutes. When I finished my trial of the Indium there was a bounce back into the 16:00 to 16:30 range for a month, making me wonder whether instead of no effect, the Indium had negative effect. I can’t be sure; there are cycles and weather that affect it too. One factor is my Synthroid thyroid supplement; my blood test this summer indicated that it was losing effect, so the doctor upped me from .05 pills to .075, and I’ve been on the latter for the past month. Those pills do seem to elevate my mood slightly, from mild depressive to low normal, and they make me run warmer. That is, I sweat sooner when exercising, and can handle cooler temperatures. This can be a problem when running, because I hate being either too cold or too hot. I normally run in shorts and T-shirt, but 55°F has been my low limit for that. Below that I wear a sweatsuit, and that takes me all the way down into the 20s if need be, though I do add cap and gloves below freezing. Well, the old pills made me too hot in sweatsuit at 55°, so I moved it down to 50°. But with the new pills when I ran in the upper 40’s I was getting hot, having to pull back the sleeves and lift the front clear to try to cool my body, which interfered with my rhythm. So should I take it down to 45°? I thought so, but wasn’t sure. Then came the morning: 46° and I was in shorts and T-shirt. So I took nerve in hand and tried it. I was cold the first half mile, then warmed and was comfortable. It was okay, and my time was 15:54, back in the decent range after a number of runs a minute or more slower. So that’s the mark, and I figure the pills are working. In Dismember I’ll get my blood test and see whether it agrees.

Okay, time to get off the dull stuff and into the dirty stuff. Specifically, my erotic novel Pornucopia. Readers have been getting ripped off as much as $450 for this dirty fantasy, and I hate that. I contracted with an online publisher to make it available at a reasonable price, but that outfit folded before publication. So now I’m trying again, working with my fan Dan Reich of the Piers_Anthony.com site to set up Mundania Press LLC at www.mundania.com to republish the novel electronically and in paper for nominal prices. It is due to be available in the course of Dismember, perhaps in time for Christmas, though anyone wanting to put a book like this into an Xmas stocking must have a sick mind. If you’re under 18, forget it; I don’t want to get sued by someone’s irate mother for corrupting youth. Remember, I’m the writer who has been accused of pedophilia because there are teen girls in Xanth who actually have an interest in boys, and boys who like to peek at panties. Good thing none of that exists in Mundania. Meanwhile I’m writing the sequel, The Magic Fart, which will be published at the same place if things work out. For those of you who would never touch material like this, or who take this as evidence of my degraded nature, here is confirmation in the form of cleaned up capsule summaries of the two novels. Porn concerns Prior Gross, a young man whose penis is only 3.97 inches long erect, ashamed to put it into play with a real woman lest she die of laughter. Then a succubus seduces him, no difficult task, and discovers that his smegma cures all venereal disease. As a result, a lady doctor, Tantamount Emdee, drugs him and amputates his penis, setting it up in her laboratory to manufacture this marvelous smegma so she can discover its secret. She sends him to her sister Oubliette Emdee, who fits him with a socket to which can be attached a marvelous range of artificial members that nevertheless have full sensation. For example, now he can don and wield a twelve inch monster, or one with multiple shafts and heads. After that it gets pretty wild, because he still wants his original member back, and does recover it after some really far-out adventure contesting with aggressive copulative demons, male and female. To put it crudely: screw or be screwed, literally, and if you get screwed, you lose. You don’t see sex like this in regular porno; this novel was too weird for that market. Fart picks up where Porn leaves off, when the succubus brings news that Prior’s anonymous ideal woman has been abducted and he must rescue her. The trouble is, she’s captive in the land of Fartingale, where nether crepitations have real powers and male and female folk break wind politely as they meet and say “May the farts be with you.” The main access features a statue of a naked man on a toilet, leaning forward to brace his forehead on his hand, titled “The Stinker.” Suppositories are available to enable women’s farts to truly smell like roses. Some folk have such power of gaseous emissions that they can fly, jet propelled. In a serious duel, one person must hold the other down and suffocate him with a dose of stomach gas in the face. Fortunately Prior, lacking the intestinal guts for this, has the wit to obtain the means to generate a magic fart that makes him more than competitive. Unfortunately, not only does he not know the identity of the woman, she wants nothing to do with him. She has actually been set up as bait to lure Prior into the foul-smelling vengeance the demons he defeated before have plotted for him. Can even the magic fart handle this challenge? Who knows; I haven’t written that far yet.

It is the hope of most serious writers to have a movie made from one of their novels. They know that the story can be figuratively destroyed by the idiot scriptwriters and the movie may bear only coincidental relation to the book, but the movie folk come bearing barrels of money that could enable the authors to retire young, so they follow the ancient sage advice to take the money and run. Only Scrooge McDuck, with so much money he needs depth gauges to keep track of it in his vault, can actually afford to make a movie, and he doesn’t have much artistic sensitivity. Well, at present there are movie options on my Incarnations and Xanth series, and they look serious. I don’t know the statistics, but I think only about one of ten options is ever exercised, meaning that they actually make the movie. The option merely reserves the right to make the movie, for a year or so, and they pay good money for that right. Still, some options are more likely than others, and I think these are likely. But there’s a complication. You see, a movie contract ties up virtually all subsidiary rights that haven’t already been placed, especially the merchandising of items relating to the movie. They don’t want any confusion about ownership, because of course others will try to trade upon the success of the movie. And there is a confusion about Xanth. You see, I haven’t originated all of Xanth. Oh, the setting is mine, apart from the way it resembles the State of Florida, and the nature of the magic. But I use many ideas from readers; the last novel, just finished, was #28, Currant Events, about Clio the Muse of History and a red berry, and I used 200 reader notions therein. So do those readers have a claim on Xanth? I think not, because those ideas would be nowhere without being integrated into the stories, but the movie folk are concerned. I went through and compiled for them a list of all the novels that used any reader notions, and that’s most of them. Why do I do it, when it really would be easier working entirely with my own notions? Because it has seemed harmless, it makes the contributing readers happy, and introduces notions I didn’t think of, contributing to the originality of a series that has gone on long enough to be in danger of unoriginality. Never mind the critics, who know without reading it that there was never any originality in it; I mean it’s a real concern of mine. But it may have a cost, if it frightens off the movie folk. Also, things don’t always work out perfectly. For example I used a good idea that required a lot of detail work in one novel, and when it was published I sent an autographed copy to the one who had suggested it. I was dismayed when I received a terse response indicating that the person was disappointed and hurt that I had not given more credit; the implication was that I was claiming this reader’s imagination as my own. My policy is to credit every notion used, but in minimal fashion, so that readers don’t deluge me with notions just to get their names into print. Sometimes there is a special story relating to a reader, and I tell it; otherwise it’s is just a listing. Evidently this reader expected more, and I fear I have lost a fan. I don’t like such misunderstandings, and certainly I don’t want to hurt readers. I had to ask myself, is it worth it? I am in doubt, and am going to try to stifle reader notions to an increasing extent. I will still use them, but my object will be to use fewer, and to avoid any that might give anyone the notion that my career depends on inspiration from my readers. It doesn’t. Meanwhile I have finally graduated my penciled reader suggestion file to a computer file for readier tracking. In the past I have sometimes lost notions or credits, and this should prevent that.

We had an election, and I voted. Yes, I voted for an amendment to the Florida constitution that forbids penning pregnant pigs in boxes too small to turn around in. Isn’t it ludicrous to put pregnant pigs into the constitution? Such humane measures should be handled at far lower levels. So why did I, and enough others to pass the amendment, do it? Well, we haven’t lost our marbles. The thing is, the Florida legislators, like all others, are supposed to serve the will of their constituencies, which is to say, the people in their districts. Unfortunately, they don’t; they serve the will of the special interests that contribute the most money to their campaigns. When there is a conflict between the will of the people and the will of the special interests, such as the big hog farmers, the special interests win. This is emphatically true on the national scale too, and it’s a shame. So here in Florida when the people want something, they have to bypass their own legislators by putting it directly into the constitution, cluttering it up with things like pregnant pigs. Certainly there should be a better way–but until politics is freed of the incubus of money, this is the way it must be. Oh, it’s easy to say that a legislator should do what he knows is right, and some do try. But the fact is, if he goes against the will of the special interests, he will lose campaign money the next time around, and will be replaced by someone who serves his true masters better. So do I have an answer to this dilemma of inevitable corruption? Yes: eliminate special interest money from politics. Provide a set amount for each candidate to use, and enforce the limit. Provide a certain amount of free TV time for each, and track anything that seems out of place, such as unwarranted charges against his opponent. And when a person is elected, then goes counter to his platform, impeach him. Lying to get elected should be an impeachment offense. Make false promises not pay.

Several people died. One was Dave van Arnam, a science fiction writer I knew personally; his little girl was the age of my little girl, and the two were friends. He was the one who told me about an option available to established writers: selling books from summaries: if you don’t get a commitment from a publisher, then you don’t write it. This saved me a lot of mischief, and I believe my writing income tripled as a result. I’m sorry Dave is gone. Another was Lloyd Biggle, a writer who was established while I was coming up, who treated aspiring writers decently, and he was a decent writer himself. We had some correspondence, and I miss him too. Andre Norton has been hospitalized, her life in danger; I’ve known her for decades, she being one of the few who have published more genre novels than I have. I wrote her a supportive letter, and may it helped, as she recovered. Then outside the genre there was Paul Wellstone, perhaps the senate’s most liberal member, dead in a plane crash. Thanks in part to his loss the senate has now shifted from Democrat to Republican control, and the meaning of that will soon be apparent. And there was Aileen Wuornos, who was executed for murder. She was a prostitute here in the Florida Suncoast who hitchhiked, got men in isolated places, and killed them. My researcher once picked her up, not knowing then who she was; she suggested a tryst but he wasn’t interested, and nothing happened. Her last words before death were “I’ll be back.” Vaguely related is the game I play with the daily newspaper obituary section: I add a point for every person who dies at age 90 or above, and subtract one for every death below 70. More often than not, it’s a minus score. Another way to play it is to use 80 as the marker, adding one for each death over that age, subtracting one for each under. They are generally about even. It is said that folk are living longer, but my ongoing obit tally suggests that the average death age is steady. You can make it to 70 fairly readily, but are unlikely to make it to 90 or above. It would help if folk tried seriously to live healthy lives, as I do, but few do.

The mosquitoes disappeared. One day I was testing repellents, then in AwGhost as I recall I didn’t need them. I thought it was a fluke, but they stayed gone. Oh, there were a few, there are always a few, but I was swatting from one to none in half an hour outside, instead of encountering swarms. What accounted for this? Our tree farm is well away from metropolitan spraying programs, and we smelled none. My best guess is that it’s those tiny frogs and toads. We saw them by the hundreds, all over, and they must have been eating something. Bless them, and I hope they don’t croak when winter comes.

On occasion I receive solicitations for writing congratulations to Eagle Scouts. I have done so, with certain reservations. Now those reservations have grown. The Boy Scouts exclude those who are gay. They have that right, but there’s a question whether they should be in the business of policing the sexuality of their members. A homosexual scout can hike, learn crafts, and be a good citizen as well as a heterosexual. Now they are excluding those boys who won’t profess a belief in God. Again, an atheist or agnostic can be a good citizen and a decent person, and this should not be a matter for others to decide. I’m agnostic, and integrity and decency are fundamental to my philosophy. America is a free country, including religion or lack of it, and I regard it as slightly unAmerican for the Scouts to interfere in such a personal matter. So I am considering whether to decline to write future congratulations, as I don’t wish to support institutionalized bigotry any more than the Scouts wish to support homosexuality or atheism. I think I would favor don’t ask, don’t tell.

I finished Xanth #28, Currant Events, as mentioned above, and looked forward to relaxing with games and videos. Ha. Immediately books socked in, and I read five in NoRemember. I seldom read for pleasure, being a workaholic, though it helps if I do enjoy what I read. The first was Twilight Crossings by Allen et al, a collection of four novellas by four women, published by DOUBLE DRAGON, an online publisher listed in my ongoing survey. I regard them as high grade amateur, which is a classification, not an insult. Only the top one per cent achieves traditional publication; the other 99% must fend for itself, and the online publishers address some of that need. These are two Science Fiction Romances, one naughty Fantasy, and one Fantasy Romance, overall varied and interesting. “Isadora” by Jeanne Allen is an alternate reality tale of America, with love across realities. Isa is about to be burned for witchcraft because she is curious about science. I thought of the Inquisition and the reaction of our present American administration to criticism. The oppressive feel is well presented, and the resolution consistent. “Twin Star” by Jeanine Berry is about a woman of an alien but really human species who is selected to marry the ruler, stirring up plots against her. I am a foreign-born naturalized American citizen; I can relate to that kind of discrimination. Again, it is well enough done. “Eidolon” by Shannah Biodine is quite different. Azubah is one of Satan’s sisters, and she’s full of mischief though she is a sexy living doll: no genitalia. She has a bet with Satan that she can find an honorable man, one who won’t lie and cheat to get sex. She loses, though I think Satan cheated. Regardless, this is a fun read. “Thief of Dreams” by Sheri L. McGathy features Nery, whose true love is treacherously ambushed, so that the bad man can force her to marry him, and she undertakes a rough quest to recover her love. I like the environmental theme, with a stag she saves helping her. Do I recommend this book to genre readers? Yes, especially to women.

The next I read was ME–The Builder’s Series, the first volume by David Corthell. The author sold me my first computer, back in 1984; I’ve had a number since then, but remember that DEC Rainbow with fondness as it ushered me into the great new realm of computerized writing. His story is a huge brute of an adventure of alien forces warring for our planet, in the milieu of Stephen King’s The Stand, but less sophisticated. Men fart, women know what sex is, and there is bloodshed aplenty, including nuclear detonations on American soil. So if you like gutsy people who are often cruel, this is the one. It hasn’t been published, but maybe will get there.

Then there was The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy, edited by Tom Dullemond and Darin Park, published by TWILIGHT TIMES BOOKS at www.twilighttimesbooks.com, listed in my Survey of Internet Publishers. It is comprehensive, with much advice on historical settings, weapons, combat, world building and such, and I think fantasy writers can profit by it. But I also feel that much of today’s fantasy doesn’t apply, such as my Xanth series, that is parody more than period. The authors don’t seem to be aware of such fantasy writers as Terry Goodkind, Terry Pratchett, Robert Asprin, or Jack Vance, and seem to think aikido is a system of punches and kicks, which is a phenomenal confusion. That doesn’t change the quality of the advice herein. So I recommend this to beginning writers and to those who wish to improve, without promising that it will address their needs perfectly.

And Jailed For Justice

by Clare Hanrahan. I mentioned her a column or two back: she participated in a peaceful protest of the nefarious School of the Americas, now retitled but unchanged in nature, where are taught the elements of warfare, torture, and intimidation that Latin American despots use to cow their citizens. The media talk of terrorism as if it is some foreign invention, but the USA is also proficient. My collaborator in the Jason Striker martial arts series, Roberto Fuentes, was a US trained terrorist; it has been going on a long time. So how do they handle protests to this awfulness? By imprisoning the participants. So Clare served six months in a prison camp. This book is not a political diatribe, or a chronicle of abuses, but rather a manual of advice for others facing such detention. So don’t expect James Bond here, but if you have civil disobedience in mind, this can help prepare you for the consequences. $12 post paid from CELTIC WORDCRAFT, PO BOX 7641, ASHEVILLE NC 28802. Email: chanrahan@ncpress.net.

And finally Something’s At My Elbow, by Kathleen Burns. This is a children’s story, and it seems to be of publishable level to me, were traditional publishers open to new writers. Ten year old Eliza-Bridget is unhappy because her nice aunt vanishes, but then she encounters the little sprite Kiba, who makes E-B as small as she is so they can explore the new world of little things where ants are formidable and a pet kitten is dangerous. But it’s also a caring realm. E-B returns to regular size for school and meals at home, but prefers the time with Kiba. At the end some mysteries are neatly resolved. As I read it, I kept thinking of my own children’s novel, Tortoise Reform, whose ten year old girl encounters a telepathic gopher tortoise and comes to prefer his world to her own. But traditional publishers aren’t open to new things from established writers either. At any rate, if you want a book for your child, or something easy to read yourself, you’ll find Elbow at www.Xlibris.com.

I don’t like to travel, so avoid it whenever I can, but on rare occasion something is Close Enough. I’ll be speaking at the EPIC –Electronically Published Internet Connection–March 7, 2003. My topic will be “Perspectives on Publishing–a Dash of Cold Water.” Readers of these columns of mine will be familiar with my attitude and material; I figure folk should know something about the dark side of traditional and Internet publishing, and self publishing too, along with the advantages. I’ve been the route, and lost more money than most writers ever make; ogres are stupid, but they remember. Here’s a preview of one aspect: Privishing. It’s not in the dictionary, but it’s real. No, I had never heard of it either, until the National Writers Union publication AMERICAN WRITER blew the whistle on this dirty little secret in the Summer 2002 issue. It’s the way publishers kill off troublesome books by “privately” publishing them with no promotion. They make their own books privately disappear; it’s a form of censorship. When I read that, suddenly some odd things fell into place. Such as the way I had to spend money to buy draft copies of my own novel Tatham Mound from the publisher in 1991 at $3 per to send to reviewers, because the publisher wouldn’t do it. How I had to fight the publisher to make it support the hardcover book-signing for that novel at the big New York ABA convention that I had set up at my own expense. I spent approximately $50,000 dollars promoting my novel, only to be trumped by the publisher’s refusal to print enough copies to address the market, thus guaranteeing its commercial failure. So why would a publisher torpedo its own novel, which wasn’t even controversial; it’s a straight serious historical novel about Hernando de Soto and the American Indians he encountered, told from the Indians’ point of view. Well, the deal had been set up by AVON, the paperback division, and the editors of MORROW, the hardcover division, didn’t feel it was one of theirs, so they reneged on promotion commitments and did their best to prove it was a washout as a novel. They sent me only the indifferent reviews, and dragged their feet wherever they could without being too obvious. So this was a partial privishing; too bad I had to learn the way of it a decade later, after the major novel of my career had been skunked. Of course I left that publisher, and the publisher’s fortunes sank as other writers, similarly treated, also departed. You don’t shit on a bestselling writer and have him beg for more, please, massa. But if you’re not well established, you can be privished right out of existence. I think this happens mostly to books that have become politically embarrassing to the publisher, perhaps for reasons unrelated to the author’s competence or responsibility. Writers need to be warned. It ain’t all sweetness and light there in Parnassus. Which of course is one reason I support Internet publishing.

Meanwhile, I did an inconsequential interview for Steve Grace. It’s at www.firstpersonquiz.com/anthony_piers.html.

I had my annual medical checkup, routine; I’m in good health for a vegetarian senior citizen. But I ran afoul of one detail. I had to urinate into a little bottle. These things are more complicated than they were in my day, when you just pissed into it; now you have to commence urination, then intercept the stream so as to get the mid-portion of the voiding, and move the bottle away before it overflows. I’ll bet women have a real challenge, perhaps making a real splash. Then, the instructions said, throw away the other stuff. So I did. But when I brought in the sample, the woman asked about the plastic bag. It seems I was supposed to keep that, to put the sealed bottle in. Next time I’ll know not to take the instructions literally. Never too old to learn.

The Continuing Joys of Linux: In Linux you don’t just receive from and send to peripheral things like floppy disks, you have first to mount and unmount them so the system knows they are there. Okay, I could do that with a right mouse click on the Floppy icon which produced a menu with a number of choices, one being Mount. I down-arrowed to reach Mount, and that was fine. Then one day I thought why am I wasting my time, and I hit M for Mount to jump to it. And the icon disappeared, so I could no longer address my floppy, thus could not back up my material. Disaster; I have known from long experience that a computer is out to get you, just waiting its chance when you’re off-guard, so I back up and print out every day. So I pestered Griz, my Linux guru, and he checked and discovered my icon was in the trash bin. We tested, and verified that keying M instantly trashed it, not passing GO, not collecting $200, but sending it directly to jail. Apparently no one in Linux had tried to jump to a listed function before. So Griz invoked an intercept, so now it asks me whether I want my icon trashed, and I say no, and I keep it. But this is one reason I say that Linux, while being very nice in many ways, is not yet ready for ordinary folk; it likes to privish icons. Then there was the printer: I finally gave up trying to make Linux address my old Panasonic printer and bought a new Hewlett-Packard 2200d that can print 19 pages a minute and do duplexing, which is printing on both sides of the sheet. Watching that is weird; it passes the paper through, and it emerges ? of the way out–then gets sucked back into the grinding innards, as if time has been reversed. After a couple of these tantalizing teases it finally lets it go, and it is printed with page 1 on one side and page 2 on the other. Neat, though at present it prints page 2 upside down. But I turned that off when printing out my 500 page novel, Currant Events, due on deadline; editors don’t understand about duplexing. All went reasonably well, apart from frequent fake paper jams; every time the printer failed to pick up a sheet properly it thought it had jammed and ground to a halt. I got good at fake fixes, opening it up and closing it again without doing anything, so that it would resume. But then it pulled a new one: it would print only about 60 pages before stalling out. Turned out to be the Linux spooling: it fed the file to the printer memory and quit, though the memory was only sufficient for a fraction of the novel. So I had to spoon feed it in 50 page sections to make it through. That’s how it took me an hour and a half to print 500 pages at 19 pages a minute. Yes, I let Griz know, and he’s letting the Linux folk know. Seems nobody ever tried to print a novel before with this aspect of Linux. Well, they’ll know how in due course, because I fire off an email every time my Linux does something stupid. I repeat: I do like Linux, and Windows is just as fouled up in its own devious ways, and a lot more arrogant. But it’s an ongoing adventure. Stay tuned to this column for the further Perils of Piers, for the Love of Linux.

I like plants. That’s one reason I live on our tree farm. I’m sorry the pine trees will eventually have to be cut down, as they are a crop, but at least I’m doing something to replenish the trees that go into the production of my books. But my personal focus is closer to home. Yes, we maintain the garbage garden, and at present have a dozen potatoes and maybe one tomato plant growing. But I like the others too; every plant has its value and its own little history. Out front is one juniper tree that was a Christmas tree for Daughter #1 Penny; she gave it to us, and we planted it at the corner of the house, near where the gopher tortoise later made its burrow. It did okay, but sometimes branches turned brown. I put a hose on the drain for an air conditioner and routed it to the tree so it would get that water, and now it’s doing better. We make a small science of conserving water, having appreciated the terrors of the drought that killed a fair number of our pines and maybe a quarter of the adjacent natural forest. We have a water purifier for the house that drains itself once a day; I put in a small cistern to save that water so I could dip it out to water dry plants. We save the cold hot water for assorted uses. That is, when you need hot water, you have to run it until the cold water in the pipe passes and the hot water comes. We use that early water for drinking, as it has been heat treated, as it were, and for bird baths, and for mixing powdered milk. Some still gets wasted, but we do what we can. Anyway, there were two little holly trees of different varieties coming up naturally in our front yard. One got torn up when the firemen were maneuvering, but now it has sent up a new shoot from the mangled root, and I’m glad it survived. Our other juniper has grown by the house for fourteen years, but was doing poorly, so finally I dug it up and moved it to a spot where it will get more sun. If the damage of the transplanting doesn’t kill it, it will do better. I watch it every day, but it takes time to know, with that kind of tree. There’s the little volunteer cedar tree along our drive that we discovered when it was 2.5 feet tall; it was growing nicely, but it too got messed up by the firemen, spending a day pinned under a car. I pulled it back up, after, but it had suffered scraping of the bark and wouldn’t stand fully upright. I gave it water, and it survived, and now is doing well. There is the Confederate Jasmine we planted, that grows along the fence, and the Star Jasmine that grows big every year, then gets wiped out by a freeze. I hate that, but it’s hard to protect them all from nature. We do what we can, putting sheets over the flowering hibiscus plants and the garden, yet it isn’t always enough. There’s the little Fringe Tree we planted. The Norfolk Island Pine, that suffers both in the heat and in the freeze. We have azaleas; my favorite had red and white flowers, but the dieback took it out, then went after the others, one by one, and now we have just one left. And so on; I feel for them all, and am glad when they prosper. They are all living things, deserving of their places. But there are limits; I hate the bad ones, like what I call the thorn plant, a weed tree with spikes; I dig them out, but there are more than I can keep up with. Sigh.

Some readers are receiving blank email responses from us. One, angry, decided not to read my books any more. Well, we aren’t doing it on purpose; apparently the virus control takes out text on occasion. Sometimes the Klez virus puts our address as the sender, when we’re not relaying any viruses. We re-send anything we know about.

We had Thanksgiving with Daughter #2 Cheryl. I can take or leave parades, but must say that I was intrigued by the glimpses on TV of well endowed girls whose breasts were almost bouncing out of their halters.

The whooping cranes are back. They come to Citrus County to winter, led here by a little airplane made to look like a bird. Last year I think there were seven; this year sixteen. This is a vanishingly rare species, and we hope these efforts will succeed in restoring their migrating populations. The rare manatees also are here, though it’s a pain to stop that damned speeding boats from injuring them.

We saw three movies in this period: Ghost Ship, which the reviewers trashed, and I can’t say it was great, but I’m a sucker for the type. Treasure hunters find this huge dead liner, and there is gold aboard it, which they toss about as if it were balsa wood; real gold is heavy. But one by one they get gruesomely killed, per the formula. More interesting are the flashbacks to what happened to make the ship a derelict. People were dancing in the ballroom, when the bad guys snapped a cable across, cutting them all in half while still standing. Well, it looked like a quarter inch cable; you’d need a micro-filament to make it through all those people like that, so it’s not credible. But you don’t come to these shows for credibility. We saw Harry Potter 2, and that was okay as he gets into trouble but in the end wins through. And James Bond #20, one of the better Bonds, with a lead-in episode that actually relates to the main story, an evocative female companion, and more violence and explosions than ever. All of these are my kind of junk.

Last time I mentioned receiving and trying two sample capsules of Uroprin, the stiffener for men. I got some interesting responses. One said the stuff really works, on women as well as men. That’s interesting; the fact is, the hottest motivator for a man is an eager woman. But another said that this stuff can have long-term side effects that are dangerous to health and life. And another was from the FDA: this could be a pharmaceutical drug normally used in urology for pain relief from infections, and there are contraindications and side effects. Translation: as with fire, don’t use this carelessly. So I sent the literature there. I doubt there’s any big legal case brewing here, but the notion is intriguing. It may soon be academic; now there’s a nasal spray being developed that causes men and women to become sexually aroused. Get a whiff of that!

I received a letter from Delilah (something about that name reminds me of haircuts) saying that in my first autobiography I said I wanted to make a positive difference in this world. Yes, that remains my attitude, and it’s surprising how easy it is to make enemies as well as friends that way. She said I had made a positive difference in her life by reinforcing her belief in right. Yet she fears finding herself in a situation where right is not readily apparent. What about when you have to choose the lesser of two evils? (I saw a cartoon once, where the slightly smaller devil was saying “I’m tired of being the lesser of two evils.”) She wondered what my take on this was. Well, I share her concern. It’s easy to choose between right and wrong when they are clearly labeled, but what about when they aren’t, or when there is good and evil on each side? Choosing the lesser of evils is an ugly business; you are thus endorsing some measure of evil, whatever your definition of evil may be.

Sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand and take an action you don’t like, lest the alternative be to let evil win by little stages, none of which seems worth fighting over. Sometimes you regret whatever stand you do make. I think of President Jimmy Carter, who was a strong environmentalist, and I supported him for that. Then he approved the special interest project of the Tellico dam. No sincere environmentalist would have done that. So I deserted him and went for Anderson next election. Carter lost, and we got Reagan, who would have had trouble spelling the word, and certainly had no interest in it. As an environmentalist I would have been better off with Carter. Later I supported the environmentalist Al Gore–and Ralph Nader, who claimed to stand for many good things, ensured that the anti-environment forces won by siphoning off just enough votes. He put ambition before principle, facilitating the victory of the things he claimed to be against. Where were good and evil there? Nader had a right to run, and a right to torpedo his own side; he’s not evil. But I regard his judgment as suspect and his participation as a disaster, in the larger picture, and I will not support him in future.

It gets more complicated. There is a magazine called THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER that is devoted to getting at the reality of things, pricking the bubbles of psychics and other supernatural claimants. I agree with it, and indeed, if there is any organization whose principles I fully endorse it is its underlying stratum, the humanists. Yet I dropped my subscription long ago. Why? Because of its approach to the Shroud of Turin, the supposed covering of Jesus Christ. It argued the case for the falsity of the Shroud. I doubt its validity myself. So what was my problem? It was that the Catholic Church, which believes in magic–I mean it even requires that miracles, as much as good works, exist for the promotion of saints–had a more objective approach than did the INQUIRER. The Church let science investigate to test the Shroud to verify its remarkable qualities, and finally concluded that it wasn’t valid. The INQUIRER knew that from the outset. And that’s the problem. I want to know the reality behind anything, even if it’s not a reality I like, and that was the Church position in this case. It would have accepted the Shroud as valid, or not, depending on persuasive evidence. But the INQUIRER didn’t need the evidence; its mind seemed, to me, to have been made up in advance. It was there to debunk, rather than to find reality. So I agreed with its conclusion, and dropped it because of its attitude. If debunkers were always right, much of modern science would not exist. We need to keep our hearts and minds open; that’s where good lies, and evil lies in being cruel or close-minded, its extreme manifestation being bigotry. I hope to continue being open-mindedly opinionated on many things, and to continue being surprised when my beliefs turn out to be wrong, and to continue learning and changing. But this does lead to judgments between shades of nuance, where the extremes of good and evil are almost out of sight. The root causes of problems can be well hidden in the midst of unquestioned centrist positions, and most folk who are sure of things are likely to be wrong. So how do any of us really make ourselves count, when the very nature of reality may be too subtle for us to understand?

On with simpler things. I received a request for an autograph from “a very great fan.” But he had forgotten to make the multiple addresses he was soliciting “blind,” so we got 66 pages of them. I declined. Periodically I receive the SHOMER-TEC catalog, having once bought from them; this time I looked at other pages and found things like sneezing powder, a stink bomb you can put in an illegally parked car, vomit fluid to slip into someone’s drink, industrial strength fart spray to clear a room of people, the Evacuator that causes a person to shit without control, and “The Blob,” that you put in a car’s gas tank and it turns the gasoline to jelly. Can’t think why anyone would want any of these. Then there are T-shirts with messages, such as CHRISTIAN AMERICAN HETEROSEXUAL PRO-GUN CONSERVATIVE–Any Questions? No, but you might not like my commentary on bigotry, above. Solicitation from Robert Redford addressed to “Dear Fellow Environmentalist” asking me to send a petition to W Bush opposing his agenda. I doubt this would be effective. If you really want to make your voice heard, send a complimentary letter accompanied by a half million dollar check made out to the Republican National Committee. Repeat weekly until the environment is restored. Be patient; some things take time. An email warns me of a massive database the government will use to monitor every purchase made by every American citizen. I don’t think this will work either, and not because I have much faith in the ultimate beneficence of any government. It’s that I can hardly track my own papers and finances; how could anyone track everything in the nation? They’ll be buried in minutia. It won’t locate many terrorists. But I can see what such a database would be good for: targeting particular people for embarrassing dirt. Such as anyone who criticizes the government. So indeed I am wary of this. CEO pay went from 42 times the average hourly worker’s pay in 1980 to 411 times in 2001. I am somewhat at a loss to understand why CEO pay should be even 10 times the average, or 5 times. A math trick found in a book review: take any 3 digit number whose first and last digits differ by 2 or more. Reverse it and subtract the smaller number from the larger one Add the result to its own reversal. The answer will be 1089. And I received an email saying there are three words in the English language ending in “gry.” Angry, hungry, and what? I couldn’t get it. Harlan Ellison has an article in FREE INQUIRY for Fall, 2002, about his thoughts on 9/11. It’s worth reading if you can find the magazine. A reader, James Flax, let me know that I made a mistake in DoOon Mode: I said “De gustibus non carborundum” means “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” I had garbled two statements together. The correct one is “Illegitimus non corborundum,” while the other is “De gustibus non est disputandum,” which means approximately “There is no accounting for taste.” And the biggest known volcanic eruption has occurred on Jupiter’s moon Io, which is surely where Hell is (I have a sequence there in Refugee), covering an area a thousand times as big as that of Italy’s Mount Etna. That seems to be enough of a blast to conclude on. May good lava be with you.

When we came to America, and my parents’ marriage slowly foundered, my mother was absent much of the time, and it was Alfred who took care of my sister and me. There were positives and negatives, as other children of fractured families know, but one positive was that he read to us at night and told us stories when we were together by day, working on some common chore. I loved those stories, which were bright spots in an otherwise generally unhappy life, and I think my fertile imagination stems from them. When I had children of my own I passed along that favor too; we read to them every night until they were teens. And of course I came to make my living as a writer of stories, as some folk may be aware. So my father’s social influence may have been critical in the formation of my life’s work.

My mother was a creature of the city, preferring the conveniences of civilization. My father was a creature of the country, liking the forest and self sufficiency in its isolation. I liked both, and a major theme in my writing has been the relation of the two, as shown in the Adept series that juxtaposes a super science metropolis with a range where unicorns graze, or my novel Realty Check, with a house whose front door opens on a busy city street, and whose back door opens on an eternal forest. But if I had to choose between them, I would choose the forest. Xanth is a forested realm. I am an environmentalist, and hate to see the despoliation of nature by the constant encroachment of the human species. I feel safer walking through wilderness than I do on a city street. I live on a tree farm I own. This is the legacy of my father’s forest.

So aspects of Alfred are in me, apart from the genetic. Now you know some of the threads. This summer I will write a fictionalization of the main women in my father’s life, of which my mother was not necessarily the most significant one. This won’t be a commercial effort so much as an exploration of personal understanding. I may publish it for Anthony completists, but it is really a family and memory thing, rather than an entertainment. My uncle Phil died the following month; he was a deeply religious man, and got caught up in a cult that took him and his considerable potential out of circulation. Observing that, I developed an abiding aversion to religious cults, and I’m not easy about the big religions either, being a lifelong agnostic. There is a good deal else on my mind than frivolous fantasy.

However, that fantasy does power my career, and more of it is coming. There is a motion picture option on Xanth, and one on On a Pale Horse. An option means someone has paid money to reserve a piece for a year or more while deciding to make a movie; if the decision is favorable, the option is exercised, and a good deal more money money is paid. Top Cow, a comics company, had the option on Pale Horse. Well, Disney is now interested in it, and it seems that Jamie Foxx will produce it and play the part of Zane, the man who is so shaken when he has a pistol to his head and sees Death coming for him that he shoots Death instead, then has to take Death’s place. Paul Guay of Liar Liar will adapt the novel for the screen. Readers are berating me for this; am I so badly in need of money? Actually no; I have had a good career and am a wealthy man. But not only do I want my books to be read, I want them to be seen, and gambling on the movies is a necessary stage in that process. I don’t choose who makes the movie; I follow the standard advice to take the money and run, knowing that what emerges from the movie meat grinder may have little resemblance to my novel. I’m hoping for the best. Disney can do good work when it chooses to. Meanwhile, my original novel will always be available for folk to read, so they can see exactly how the two compare. That seems fair to me.

Meanwhile I have other fantasy in the fire. My dirty book Pornucopia is now back in print at Mundania Press, so readers need no longer get ripped off paying ten times its natural price. I have completed the first draft of the sequel, The Magic Fart, just as dirty in a flatulent way. Now that Mundania Press is up and running, it is also tackling a reissue of Macroscope, and the first publication of my ChroMagic fantasy series, starting with Key to Havoc. All of these except the third ChroMagic should be available before the year is out, and that will follow early next year. In Jamboree I proofread Havoc for that edition; it’s a big sexy novel, a quarter million words. I started it five years ago, and got tired of waiting for traditional publishers to catch on that I write more than Xanth, and that my readers might be interested in more than Xanth. In fact I regard this as an end run around the bean counter idiocy of Parnassus, which is to say, the traditional publishing establishment. So soon enough, readers will be able to judge whether I or the traditional publishers have the right of it. I have worked to promote alternative publication for everyone, in the form of support for small press, Internet, and self publishing. I regard this as part of the proof of that. If these novels flop, Parnassus will be vindicated.

I have agreed to be the final judge for Fantasy in the annual Draco Award contest instituted this year by Internet publisher DOUBLE DRAGON. See the entry in the Internet Publishing Survey elsewhere on this site. This is open to unpublished and self published manuscripts; I lobbied to get approval for the latter, having an interest in the self publishing industry. I feel that a new writer should not be penalized for putting his money behind his imagination. There are three categories, and the judges for the other two are Mike Resnick for Science Fiction and Mike Arnzen for Horror. The winners well be published by DD, which is, by all accounts so far, a good one.

Speaking of Internet publishing, sometimes I get a certain devious pleasure in lecturing those I feel are going wrong. AMBER QUILL announced it would delete all queries unread, and I told them they were shooting themselves in the foot. Well, they wouldn’t have deleted my query, they said. In my response to their hurt email I say in part: Okay, but what about unknown writers? My purpose in this survey is to discover markets for the little folk, whose entrance is often the nether port of the privy… “The correct way to handle a serious query is to answer it. A form reply will do: ‘Thank you for thinking of us, Mr. Shakespeare, but we aren’t into plays.’ You should never give prospective contributors the idea that nothing they have to offer could possibly be of interest to you–even if that happens to be the case.” You can check the full entry in the Survey if you care to. Some publishers thank me, some send corrections, and some threaten me. All part of the fun of being the Ogre.

In the Tampa Bay area of Florida, where I live, we have a generally hapless professional football team, the Buccaneers. You may wonder what this has to do with fantasy. I shall make the case. This year Xanth, which is the magic aspect of Florida, will complete its first magic trilogy: three cubed, 27 novels. When the Bucs first formed, they lost their first 26 games. That presaged 26 lean years. Even when they had a real chance to get somewhere, bad calls by the officials stifled it. What did they think this was, a presidential election? This was the magic 27th year, and the Bucs brought the leading defense in football to meet the leading offense, and stifled it, winning the Super Bowl by 27 points. Any questions? Stifle them.

I get mail. As I like to say, 99% of my readers love my books; the other 1% review them. That’s not entirely true; the percentage of reviewers is much smaller, and not all of them actually read the books, their opinions already fully formed. That leaves a bit of room for those readers who don’t like them. One woman wrote to condemn the overwhelming sexuality of Xanth, which she felt was obviously written for testosterone stressed teen boys. I responded briefly, nor really arguing with her, saying I regarded her as a lost cause as far as keeping her as a reader went, and hoping she would find a writer she liked better. Sigh; some folk mistake politeness for weakness, and she returned saying that the fact that I hadn’t refuted her meant that I knew I was wrong. So no more Mister Nice Ogre; I let her have it with the following missive:

Here is why I regard you as a lost cause as far as keeping a reader goes: you read Demons Don’t Dream, which alternates between a male viewpoint and a female viewpoint, and did not appreciate the difference in characterization. The young woman’s perspective was distinct from that of the young man. She did not attune to breasts or panties; the man did. You were, it seems, unable to tolerate the man’s perspective, and condemned the author for it. Apparently you required him to have another female perspective. That’s not the way I write. Zombie Loveralso has a young woman’s viewpoint alternating with male viewpoints; again the woman is not fascinated by female flesh (or by penises) while the men are – and you object to the male portrayal. It is not accurate characterization you seek, but the suppression of the male interest, even in obvious parody.

If my fan mail is a guide, I have more female readers than male readers, and most of them appreciate my sensitivity to the female perspective. You, in contrast, evidently do not. Instead you protest references to “boobs” though you would have to look extremely hard at my fiction ever to find that word used other than in negative characterization of a crude male. Thus it seems that you come to my fiction with a pre-existing agenda, seeing what you expect to see rather than what is there. Thus you refused even to read Isle of Woman because of your expectation of its nature, so did not discover that it is a serious historical novel that is realistic rather than humorous about sex. Indeed, sex is there – but with your disinclination to accept any reference to it, you would be turned off. If you care to try that novel, you will indeed see that women are as interested in men as men are in women, albeit in a different way.

Your mind seems to be already made up. I don’t write for closed minds. I repeat: find a writer who writes your way, and leave me to my existing readership. You are not going to persuade me to write about men as if they are women, any more than I am going to persuade you to let your agenda rest.

That essentially concluded our correspondence. As can be seen, I gave her a chance to try my serious fiction, but she was resistive, as it is contrary to her agenda, which has little to do with what is on the page. My patience with closed minds is limited. I do find women to be a fascinating species, and when I’m not doing parody I can write sensitively about them. An example is the story I wrote while traveling, “The Key,” which is simply a dialogue between two women concerning an abusive man; if I don’t find publication for it, I might put it on here at HiPiers as an example of the way I do relate to the concerns of women.

The biggest reader response I received to my Dismember column was on GRY: a score of letters. That’s the question about the third word in the English language that ends in those three letters, like Angry and Hungry; I couldn’t figure it out (ogres are not noted for their intelligence) so put it to my readers. The first letter was from Rob Miles, who said it’s an oral trick, where the answer is any word that ends in G or Y, which sounds like GRY when spoken. He felt it was a cheap joke. The second was from Robert Lot, who gave what turned out to be the dominant explanation: the key is the sentence “What’s the third word in the English language?” The answer is “language.” It has nothing to do with the original question, and is thus another cheap trick. The third letter was from Michael Graves, who said that the riddle is often written incorrectly, making it have no answer. That was the case in the variant I first encountered. Then came my collaborator Al Tella (The Willing Spirit), who said that there is a third word in the mundane dictionary: gry itself, which means a small measure. So there is a third word! He added that if you go to the non-mundane dictionary there are others, such as ogry (ogre-like–why didn’t I think of that?), pigry (whore house), hagry pigry (where the whores are hags), dogry (kennel), wigry (wig shop), bugry (my yard in summer), fangry (mad vampire), analphalligry (the study of phallic assholes), phongry (ass-backwards gryphon). This is getting snigry; time to ease off. Then Margaret Caragan went to the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the ultimate authority; it’s the size on an encyclopedia, and even the Compact Edition, which I have, which requires a magnifying glass to read, is huge. She came up with aggry, which is a glass bead found buried in the earth in Ghana, puggry, a light scarf wound around a hat or helmet to protect the head from the sun, and meagry, of meager appearance, which it seems appeared in an Ann Landers column. Then came correspondent Mary Baker, who must have done a computer search, with a list of one hundred gry words. Many are variants, such as half-angry or wind-hungry, but many more are not. This does seem to give the lie to the statement that there are only three such words. It seems there is a whole Web site devoted to this subject: www.contestcen.com/gry.htm. So my thanks to all of you who responded, even if I didn’t name all of you here, and I think we can let this one rest now.

However, since my readers are obviously more knowledgeable than I am, I’ll throw out a couple more questions. Way back in the Pleistocene epoch when I was young (um, before purists jump on me: that’s hyperbole = humorous exaggeration) there was a song singing the praises of a man’s girlfriend. Part of it went “She’s got a pair of hips, just like two battleships; I buy her everything to keep her in style.” I have struggled for about 50 years trying to figure out in what way two battleships have sex appeal. Anybody have an answer?

And here’s the big one: the reader comment I receive most is that my fiction puts the reader into the scene, actually seeming to live in it instead of merely reading it. I love to hear that; it’s the way it is for me when I write it. I am in every scene I write, and I see it through the eyes of every character I write about, male or female. I’m glad it translates, so that my readers are having the same experience I am. It is clear that it doesn’t happen for editors, reviewers, and critics, but of course there is no blood in those stones. My question is, how is that empathy conveyed? I am limited to words on the printed page, following established conventions of syntax and spelling, just as a thousand other writers do. What am I doing that they aren’t? I want to know, so as to be sure to keep doing it.

I’m an environmentalist, which means I try to do my bit to help preserve the precious natural global heritage. Unfortunately the political powers that be at the moment seem dedicated to destroying it in the name of greed. One of the organizations struggling to protect our resources from despoliation is the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, or FSEEE. They sent me a free copy of a huge volume, WELFARE RANCHING. It is 13.5 by 12 inches, 370 pages from cover to cover, and weighs six and a half pounds. It’s really a beautiful picture book with a list price of $75. Yet it has some stomach-turningly ugly pictures, along with many beautiful ones. It is showing the 300 million acres of public land that are currently leased for private livestock production. In a nutshell: the ranchers pay a token fee for grazing their bovines on land belonging to all of us, and this is impoverishing it and costing us money. They are getting a destructively free ride. Once lovely flower-filled land becomes ugly barrenness, and the pictures show it. The home where the buffalo roam may become littered with cow carcasses. Ugh, the pictures! It presents a series of myths vs. truths, such as whether ranchers are good stewards of the land–they aren’t, because they can’t be; cattle are wrong for this land. Are rangelands improving? No, they have been seriously overgrazed. Does wildlife benefit? No, hundreds of species are in danger of extinction. So it continues, a grim story. Thus the book’s title: this is welfare for the ranchers, and they are destroying the western environment. There needs to be brutal reform: get those cows off. An interesting aspect is the way the FSEEE’s FOREST MAGAZINE reviews this book and another, RANCHING WEST OF THE 100TH MERIDIAN that has a different outlook: an editor of each volume reviews the other. This we get insightful commentary; my presentation here is essentially one sided, based on my general impression of one book. But I’m pretty sure there’s a serious problem, with the current drought in that area.

We saw a notice in the newspaper: my APC power backup has been recalled. Seems some overheated and could cause a fire. So I called the number, gave my information, and they sent me a replacement, no problem. Except that the supposedly simple matter of putting my old one in the box the new one came in and returning it, isn’t; there is no return label or instructions. So we’ll have to ship it back at our expense to whatever address we can find, and hope they get it straight. When I inquired, since my unit never got hotter than lukewarm, they said that something like eight of two million had the problem, so they’re playing it safe.

A comment I saw that resonated: with an apparently gratuitous war looming, fomented by chicken hawks–that is, those who avoided military service themselves, but now are gun-ho for others to fight–the suggestion is that we institute a draft limited to the sons of rich folk, and see how eager the politicians are for war then. I can support that; I have no sons.

Once I got my last Xanth novel done–that was #28, Currant Events, about the Muse of History and a red berry–I figured to relax and watch some videos. Then my father died, preempting the last half of Dismember. So okay, Jamboree–and it filled in too. Sigh. Maybe FeBlueberry. But I did watch a few, such as The Lover, promoted as super sexy but actually a quality film about a fifteen year old French girl in Vietnam in the 1920s who has an affair with a wealthy Chinese man twice her age. The conflict of cultures makes their love impossible to keep. I ordered the DVD Midnight Tease 1 and 2, getting two fifteen dollar movies for the price of one; it’s a double sided disc you simply turn over for the other movie. At one point I got what I think is called the blue screen of death; the sound kept playing, but there was no picture, just blank blue. Fortunately next day it worked okay. Two stories of strip tease girls who get murdered. I didn’t care for the murders, but liked their sexy dances a lot. There was also Clean Slate, about a detective who loses his memory every time he sleeps. That’s a wild romp, as things keep tearing up his life: a lovely woman begs him to protect her, thugs want him to pay up what he owes them, the police are after him, and so on. We also went to the cinema to see Solaris, a science fiction mystery with disturbing implications, and the second Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers, which certainly delivers tension and battle, with an almost womanless cast. And we watched the TV movie War Stories, which impressed me with the way it shows the gritty, awful, frightening realities of war. My military stint was in peace time; I never saw combat. But World War Two disrupted my life as a child in England and brought me to America; I remain highly conscious of my luck in escaping it, which was a very close call. Fomenting needless war is an abomination.

Perhaps connected: THE ECONOMIST had an editorial titled “Is torture ever justified?” At first blush, most folk would say no. But if you capture a terrorist who knows which plane is about to be hijacked to take out which building, do you honor his personal rights and let the hijacking happen? Then it becomes easier to say yes. The magazine concludes no, and I agree. The thing is, once you open the door on torture, it’s not going to remain a rare last-resort-only expedient; it’s going to become increasingly common, and for lesser offenses, such as criticizing a government official. Such a slippery slope has been the case elsewhere in the world. So you are signing a pact with the devil, for immediate gain but the loss of your soul, and in time you are bound to regret it. The ends do not justify the means. Also, as I see it, when torture is used to extract confessions, it is too effective; just pick up anyone on the street and torture him until he confesses despite being innocent. Some police methods smack of this. Remember those wilding kids in New York’s Central Park, raping and almost killing that lady jogger? They confessed–and now DNA shows someone else did it. In fact, I am uneasy about this business of plea bargaining: you stand accused, but you can get a lighter sentence if you confess, saving the state the trouble of a trial. So if you are innocent, and they convict you with trumped up evidence, you get a worse sentence than someone who is guilty and cops the plea. Is this justice? Torture, or even just the threat of it, would magnify this problem. Remember the Inquisition? Folk confessed to having sex with the devil; do you really think they were guilty?

I did a verbal interview with Michael Evo that was released the day after Christmas at www.dragonpage.com. I understand it did well for them. Haven’t heard it myself, but I have a fair idea what I said.

We get SPAM. One I saved out to comment on here: it demanded in bold print “Want a BIG Penis?” and went on to promote pills that supposedly do the job with no exercise, surgery, pumping, or stretching; it happens easily and gently in just a few weeks. How Big Can You Get? it demands rhetorically, and answers that you can grow up to three full inches in length, and get thicker too. But the best part, it says, is that when the woman in your life sees how massive and manly you have become, she will surrender everything you have always wanted. “As you drive your penis deep inside her she’ll gasp as you dominate her. And the intense satisfaction you give her will be the BEST sex she has ever had.” Thus the spiel. Now my comment: first, I seriously doubt that it is true, and believe that anyone falling for this will be bilked of whatever money he pays for these pills. Second, this business of women craving massive male penises is fiction. Just about any man can have sex with just about any woman, both being amenable, in large part because of standardization of the parts; the average penis is sized to fit the average vagina. Why would a woman want to be painfully impaled on a phallus that is half again as big as she can reasonably accommodate? She would prefer to have a conveniently sized penis. In fact many, perhaps most, women would be satisfied to leave the penis out of it, and just cuddle, kiss, and exchange sweet nothings. What a woman wants in a man is support, gentleness, reliability, attention, and appreciation, rather than a member the size of a club. So this whole ad is nonsense. Correct me if I’m wrong, distaff readers.

Shorter shrift: correspondent Tom Lang sent me a set of picture postcards: What Muslims want vs. what Americans want. One is of black garbed Iranian militants practicing with their pistols, the other is of the Kilgore College Rangerettes doing a high kick, showing their panties. Why do I prefer the latter picture? We received a junk mail catalog from LILLIPUT with intriguing novelties, like scale models of famous tall buildings–the Petronas Towers in Indonesia look like standing corncobs–and you can get the World Trade Center set. Also cutaway models of submarines and warships. A tiny model train that circles its seven inch diameter loop of track. A rolling drum clock that takes a week to make it to the bottom of its 24″ ramp, that motion powering its timekeeping. Only $4,450.50. Elsewhere you can buy theme caskets, such as one painted to resemble a golf course. Just the thing for an idle afterlife. Column by local color writer Jan Glidewell, whom I know, summarizing twenty years of child tragedies in this area. The one I remember most keenly is Jennifer Odom, age 12, abducted and killed in 1993, and they never caught her killer. Which reminds me of this intrusive database the government is assembling that will have all the data on all people, nominally to catch terrorists–but would it catch child killers? I suspect it will be good mainly to get the dirt on any known person a bureaucrat doesn’t like. Ad for a health newsletter, saying that vegetarians are sicklier, have slumping sex drive, and die younger. Bullshit! A smart vegetarian is healthier than a garden variety dead-meat eater. News in ALTERNATIVES, the health newsletter I do subscribe to, having winnowed the best from many: selenium helps ward off depression and other mental problems, and Brazil nuts are one of the richest sources, but other nuts are also very good for health nuts. The spice turmeric, found in curry, guards against Alzheimer’s. Email relayed by my daughter Penny relates to the way the current powers that be oppose abortion and also oppose contraception. Evidently they don’t just want to make abortions unnecessary, as universal effective contraception would; they want to control sex itself. Let’s face it: almost nobody really likes abortion, and we’d all rather see it gone–by seeing that no unwanted babies are conceived. Since sex is not about to be abolished, despite the evident wish of some, that means contraception or sterilization. Is that too complicated for religious conservatives to understand? Coincidentally, the spread of access to contraception, even in Catholic countries, may be about to abate the global population problem; birth rates are dropping worldwide. Now if the same can just be done for VD… SPAM: “Tired of American women? Russian Mail Order Brides.” Thanks, but as an immigrant who married an American woman, I’m satisfied. Editorial by Mortimer B. Zuckerman, editor in chief of US NEWS & WORLD REPORT: in the Arab world lies are openly taught about the Jews, fomenting hatred, refusing to accept the Jewish state’s right to exist–and Israel is supposed to turn the other cheek? Remember that pregnant pig amendment to the Florida constitution? Now there is news of a hog farmer sending his sows to slaughter and quitting the business rather than comply. One down. Junk mail: “Tired of BIGOTS on the air?” Join the National Organization for Women–NOW–and join their campaign to expose Rush Limbaugh. I have no quarrel with NOW, but anyone who can’t see the nature of the man called the incorrigible dirigible is an idiot. The answer to the abuse of free speech is more free speech; by all means expose the bigots. Now, having enraged the conservatives, let me go on to the Mormons: THE ECONOMIST reports that a devout Mormon, Thomas Murphy, says that the claim of the Book of Mormon that Native Americans are descended from lost Israelites is disproved by genetic evidence, and the Book is fiction. I knew this decades ago; it was pirated from an unpublished science fiction novel. I have argued the case with Mormons, who don’t want to hear it. But as THE ECONOMIST says, similar might be said of other great religious books. Note from Ori Tend: the site www.FetchBook.Info offers a free service to compare prices of books so you can get the best price. If you try it and like it, let him know. US NEWS has an example of the idiocy of publishers: History writer Joy Hakim got the weird idea that students would like history better if it was presented in an interesting manner, so she wrote it that way. It was rejected by 15 publishers as too interesting before OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS gambled on it in 1993. It sold four million copies, and students do like it. Maybe I should have taken my GEODYSSEY to Oxford? A new study indicates that state laws that allow citizens to carry concealed weapons do not reduce crime, and may even increase it. GLOBAL MARCH AGAINST CHILD LABOR says that an estimated 246 million children are working as child laborers, most in bad conditions. Child servants, prostitutes, slaves, and other exploitations. The egregious inhumanity of man to man disgusts me.

Meanwhile I will attend the EPIC convention at Tampa March 6-8 and give the keynote address, and be on hand for the rest of it. I plan to speak for half an hour, and field questions for half an hour. I have not attended a convention in years, and may not again, so this is the occasion for those who want books autographed or just to chat to meet me. The big booksigning will be at Carrollwood Barnes & Noble, 11802 Dale Mabry Highway N, Tampa Florida, from 7-10 PM. I’m not asocial, I just don’t like to tear myself away from my writing, and am most comfortable at home with my wife; the older I get, the worse I get in this respect.

And as I set up to edit this column on the First of FeBlueberry, came the awful news of the space shuttle Columbia crashing. Damn! These missions have become routine and I hardly pay attention, but I hate it when something like this happens. Five men and two women lost; somehow it seems worse about the women, who in my foolish fancy shouldn’t suffer violent male-type deaths. I knew none of those folk, but suddenly I mourn them all.

Philadelphia Trip report

I hate to travel, and avoid it at every opportunity. I had succeeded in not leaving the state in the year 2002. Then my father Alfred died the morning of December 14, Saturday. He was 93?. He had been fading, his physical and mental horizons narrowing, until he was a shell of the man he had been, and it was time. Still, death is not a pleasant business, and I’m sorry to see it.

The news triggered a cascade of events. My sister Teresa notified me, and we notified our daughters, and Daughter #1 Penny booked passage with her husband John and daughter Logan from Oregon to Pennsylvania. My wife set me up a five day trip north, she remaining home to keep the hearth. We learned that the airlines have significantly reduced Grief fares, but they require such things as confirmation from the funeral home, and we did not know those details, so didn’t bother. Which is the problem with grief trips, as perhaps the airlines know: you’re not inclined to fool around with niggling details, you just need to get there soon.

I took along a fat little notepaper book and made notes constantly during the trip. I’m a writer; that’s the sort of thing I do. I also took a book to read that Cheryl had given me two years before, saved for a travel occasion: The Darwin Awards, by Wendy Northcutt, commemorating idiots who manage to remove themselves from the gene pool by doing sublimely foolish things. I also took five magazines to catch up on. And never got around to the book, thus demonstrating my own idiocy. We had hired a taxi service, and promptly at 9:45 AM Monday, December 16, 2002, Sharon arrived to pick me up. During the hour and a half trip to Orlando we talked about the hazards of travel and about raising children. Every human being has his or her personal history and concerns; as a writer I’m interested. Then at AIR TRAN I was offered an upgrade from coach to first class for $35, so I took it. I guess they had a spare seat, and it made sense to proffer a bargain rather than let it go empty. They said my credit card address didn’t match my ticket address, so I offered another card, the one we had used to buy the tickets, but they couldn’t accept that either. Finally they asked whether I had cash. Yes, so I forked over the cash. Odd that the cards bounced; they work everywhere else. Maybe they thought there was a knife hidden therein? So I had the pleasure of about 50% more room, and a larger bag of pretzels. I was also allowed to carry on my suitcase and briefcase; the published restrictions had been so small that we could not use a small enough bag, so this was a relief. It was weird having things go right; I thought it was in the Big Book of Rules that things went wrong for me when I travel alone. The security check was interesting. This was my first post 9/11 trip, so the experience was new. I had to clear out my pockets, take off coat and outer shirt, and run it all through in a bedpan. My impact kerambit self defense weapon was there in plain sight but they ignored it. Instead they challenged my briefcase, running it through the grinder a second time. Lo, there was a small pair of blunt-nosed scissors in there, lost in a crevice; I had not known they were there. But they turned out to be okay; they were not confiscated. Then I had a couple hours to wait for my plane; that’s why I had reading material. Also granola bars, and Vitamin C. The week before my wife had caught a horrendous cold/cough, but I had staved it off with one gram of C per hour for three days. C does stop a cold, and perhaps later in this century the medical profession will grudgingly recognize that. But the cold can recur of you stop the C too suddenly, so I was careful. Then when I boarded the plane, I was selected for the Random Check. This time I had to take off my shoes and be wanded all over. Fortunately I was clean, physically; the wand doesn’t check the mind. The flight itself was uneventful; I admired the patchwork of roads, houses, lakes, and the tributaries to the St. Johns River, looking like varicose veins. The forests look like mold, the houses like grains of sand, the clouds like cotton fluff, and the flat larger landscape like a giant game of mumbledepeg, sliced by erratically straight segments of roads. Farther north the drought was evident as rivers became bare gray channels.

We landed early, and I found my way out into the freezing Philadelphia air. AIR TRAN was at the very edge of the airport complex, so I made my way up the windy street checking for other names until I found UNITED. I located the concourse where Flight 90 should arrive; I would intercept Penny’s party there in another hour. Meanwhile I had to call Niece Erin. Naturally I couldn’t figure out the pay phone; there was no book or decipherable instructions. So I asked at the nearby information desk, and they said to put in 35 cents and dial my number. So I did that, and a recording came on telling me to try again. This is typical of my luck with phones; they are ornery devices. So I inquired at the desk again, and they concluded that I should try it with 50 cents. Then another traveler suggested that I use her cell phone. She even dialed the number for me; my incompetence was evident. Got Erin, told her I was safely there and waiting to intercept Penny. Returned the phone and thanked the woman. When I traveled to New York I had helped a young black woman by carrying her baby carriage down a steep flight of steps; this time a black woman helped me, as it were returning the favor. These vignettes of strangers assisting travelers are a bright spot in my general abhorrence of traveling.

I managed to intercept Penny, and she rented a car (license tag BTC 66-77, which I figured mnemonically stood for Before The Crash, things were at sixes and sevens; I’m not sure she fully appreciated the interpretation) and drove to Erin’s house in Lansdowne, which served as a base of operations for the week. It’s a fine old house on a nice forested acre beside the river. Penny’s daughter Logan and Erin’s daughter Greta interacted, two cute little girls in the age two range, keeping the silence constantly at bay. Thursday they were joined by a third, Niece Caroline’s daughter Amelia, a notch older. We wanted to get the three of them together for a picture, but it was like solving one of those tilting puzzles, with one always flying elsewhere. Finally they watched a TV program upstairs, and after I was home Erin sent an email attachment of the three of them side by side in bed, watching. Meanwhile I tried to maintain my exercise schedule; lacking dumbbells, I hefted Greta’s little chairs instead, mornings, while listening to MORNING EDITION on the headset radio a reader gave me. The main problem was that the chair legs liked to catch the wire and yank the radio suddenly onto the floor. Perhaps fittingly, they ran a serial spoof “I’d Rather Eat Pants,” of which listeners later said it helped them make up their minds when to turn off the radio.

Tuesday I wrote a story,”The Key,” during interstices in the ongoing activity, about the relationship between a woman and her ex daughter in law; it turned out she preferred the young woman to her errant son. I’m a writer; that’s what I do, though I have no immediate market for a 2,200 word mainstream story. I went with Penny and her husband John to Normandy Farms, where we met Alfred’s friends Curtis and Charmoine, and Janet Norton, who had known both Norma (Alfred’s first wife, my mother) and Genevieve (his second wife, a very nice woman). In the course of the dialog I mentioned that my wife and I have been married 46 years, and how that makes me nervous because her parents were married 46 years when death did them part. C & C, who have been married 61 years, told of friends who lasted exactly 46 years, and others did too; there turned out to be a reassuring number of cases in which death set 46 as the limit. Then my sister Teresa arrived, and Bonnie, who had been helping Alfred in the past year, and we repaired to his room, where his remaining things were. Two of the girls who work at Normandy were amazed by my resemblance to Alfred, having I think no notion of my notoriety as a writer. We got his things organized and distributed; I had little notion what to do, but fortunately Teresa and Penny were competent, and the sad job got done.

Wednesday I went with Erin’s husband Bruce to meet the CEO of Xlibris, John Feldcamp; I’m a significant investor in Xlibris and on its board of directors, so knew that it may be expanding soon, and hiring new people, so is alert for prospects. We met at a restaurant for lunch–only to discover that the restaurant was closed. My normal travel luck seemed to be returning. So we went to John’s Xlibris office instead, and had sandwiches, and later I got a tour of their establishment, which I hadn’t seen since they moved to larger quarters. When I returned to the house Cousin Dotsy and husband Bert were there, bringing a beautiful basket of fruit that reminded me of the time I had the measles at Westtown School, an illness that was perhaps my closest approach to death, and when I at last emerged from that awful well, there was a phenomenal basket of fruit Dotsy’s parents had sent. It was like seeing the glorious First Dawn after touring Hell. Bert and Dotsy had recently visited us in Florida, as had John Feldcamp, but it was nice seeing them again. In the evening the Pennies, the Erins, and Erin’s friends Heather and Christian, who were also fans of mine, joined us at the Asakura Restaurant for a fancy Japanese supper. We seemed to be the only customers, which was perhaps just as well, because Heather/Christian’s little boy Isaac was of similar age to Logan and Greta and liked to run around.

Thursday John and I toured the property, Erin as guide, admiring the huge trees and the stories associated with the property. Then John and I walked around the neighborhood. Then I went with Penny, Logan, Erin and Greta to the shopping center where they had a two story merry-go-round Alfred had liked. Children pay, adults go free, but after one session I stayed off, as I was getting motion sick. I did pose with Logan as Penny took a picture; that picture is now in a subsection of the HiPiers What’s New section. Logan at age two is as cute as ever, but my head looks disembodied; I told you I was getting queasy. There was a fancy fountain there, with jets of water that formed a number of different circular patterns high and low; Logan and I watched intrigued. We had lunch and returned to the house, and at 4 PM Alfred’s long-time friend Stan arrived, then Teresa, Niece Caroline, and her daughter Amelia. Teresa showed off her new Toyota Prius hybrid car, and gave Stan and me a ride. It’s an impressive machine, getting 55 miles to the gallon in city driving. Back at the house we chatted amicably, then had bread, cheese, and a ham Teresa brought for the non-vegetarians. We settled by the fireplace in the living room for an informal ceremony: a Quakerly silence, then we each spoke of aspects of our memories of Alfred, while the three toddlers ran around. We agreed that Alfred would have liked that setting. John told of a dialog with Alfred concerning the merit of stout (as in beer, ale, porter, and stout), and passed around a glass of stout from which each of us sipped. So it was a nice and I think appropriate occasion. In the evening Erin and I watched the Survivor finale on TV, a shared guilty pleasure; too bad the Florida woman didn’t win, but she was evidently too decent for that.

Friday Erin took me to the airport, and I had an uneventful trip to Florida. Naturally I saw no car waiting for me; then Sharon tapped me on the elbow from behind. It had been so jammed she couldn’t get in, so she had parked the car and come for me afoot. We went to the parking garage, and she couldn’t find the car key. My travel luck was returning in force. She finally dumped everything out of her purse and the key reluctantly appeared. I read my story”The Key” to Sharon as she drove me home, as it seemed relevant to the occasion with a key getting dropped, and it’s a woman’s story, and she liked it. I’m a writer, as I may have mentioned every so often; I like folk to read what I write. I made it safely home at 4:15 PM Friday the 20th, vastly relieved; as is evident, women took care of me at every stage of my trip, as I doddered along, but my favorite is my wife–and next day came down with diarrhea and vomiting, maybe from something I picked up on the trip. O joy. It wasn’t as bad as what I got when we traveled to Oregon; only three sessions with a cumulative 15 heaves this time. I found that the bunnies had eaten all my Garbage Garden potatoes and the tomato plant during my absence, and the mail had piled up horrendously; I wrote more than 80 letters the last ten days of the month, catching up. Apart from that, it was a nice Christmas.

Last time I posed two ogre-stumping questions for readers, and I got good responses. The simple one was in what manner a girl with a pair of hips just like two battleships was considered sexy. I received several responses, and realized that it’s really hyperbole (remember, I defined this word last time: humorous exaggeration) rather than serious description. It seems it’s from an army marching song, “My Gal’s a Corker,” which may be where I heard it. Both Ian Covell and Joseph Reed sent me the complete version, which begins “My Gal’s a corker, she’s a New Yorker; I’ll buy her anything to keep her in style.” It goes on to describe her several aspects, such as a pair of legs just like two whiskey kegs, a pair of lips just like potato chips, a pair of eyes just like two custard pies, a giant nose just like a big red rose, a head of hair just like a grizzly bear, and of course a pair of hips just like two battleships. She’s just big and bold all over. David G. Medlock had a couple of alternate stanzas: “My girl ain’t got no nose/ Breathes through a rubber hose…/ My girl ain’t got no tits/ Squirts milk through little slits.” Rob Miles has gentler stanzas: “My girl’s a pretty girl/ She is a city girl…/ Someday she’ll be my wife/ I’ll love her all my life../ She’s got such pretty hair/ In patches here and there…/ She’s got two great big eyes/ just like two pizza pies…” One version, he says, devolved into her being in a coma in the hospital: “She’s got a new TV/ It’s called an EKG.” Reminds me of the collection of facetious romantic descriptions I learned as a child: Your lips are like petals–bicycle pedals. (This works verbally, not written.) Your eyes are like pools–cesspools. Your teeth are like stars–they come out at night. Your nose is a Roman nose–it’s roamin’ all over your face. Your ears are like flowers–cauliflowers. I think there was more, but that’s all I remember, half a century later.

My other question was more serious: What am I doing in my fiction writing that puts the reader into the scene, distinguishing it from what some other writers do? Half a slew of answers, some hard to summarize. I’ll mention ten in the order they arrived, then see if there’s a consensus. Tim Reddick says I write in a simple style with just enough detail to set the scene so that the reader fills in the rest with his/her (hereafter, “his” includes “her” for convenience; I can’t stand the singular “they” to fudge gender) own imagination. Thus every reader’s impression may be different, yet real to him. Rob Miles says his favorite writers do draw him into the scene. “I’m not sure that it’s necessarily something you’re doing so much as something those writers who fail to draw me in aren’t doing.” Shirley Stafford says that I answer the question myself when I say that I am in every scene I write; I’m there as an eye witness, so my reader is there too. William Fink says he noticed the way I describe the environment visually, and the thoughts, emotions, and actions the characters have in response to the environment. “A lot of writers tell a story, you make us live the story, by making the picture in our heads of the scene so complete.” Michael Kaler agrees that I give just enough detail to get his imagination in gear. Some other writers describe too much. “Your characters also read very real with realistic motives and development.” Leah Clark says that I know Xanth really exists, so it’s real and alive, and I care about my readers. Glenn Moss, who met me in Tampa–see my convention report following this column–says “It’s YOUR talent.” Joan Matousek says “Just believe me that your natural method of writing is both simple and complex enough to draw in a wide range of readers spanning all ages, and that it is also uplifting by touching on real life issues that we can connect with.” Jim Hufstetler ays “Good writing is the same as good music; the words must follow each other as a note follows a note in building the ambiance necessary to project the LOGIC of the story. Even fantasies…have to have logic so to woo the rational mind so the unconsious mind can be set free to wallow. If the rational mind is not soothed, it will thrash about and prevent the reader from the restful experience of taking a cruise on the ship called IF.” And Richard G. Everit says that seventy ears ago an aspiring writer named Conrad Richter learned the principles that make a reader respond to a writer’s prose. He applied them and won a Pulitzer. Later he published a book on the subject, The Mountain on the Desert (1955). My Xanth novels, Everit says, illustrate many of those principles. Okay, what does this all add up to? That I write simply, with just enough of the right detail and logic, and care about my characters and my readers, bringing them into the scene with me. Maybe so. Critics tend to think that good writing is detailed and complicated, so simple narrative is inferior. That’s like missing the target–and blaming the target. My writing is seldom if ever held up to critical acclaim, but readers seldom find it obscure or dull. I suspect that the same qualities that make it readable bar it from critical acceptance–which perhaps says something about misplaced critical standards. My pet theory is that most critics are failed writers who relentlessly refuse to understand the reasons for their failure, and condemn those who succeed. They’re in denial about the real nature of effective writing. But mainly, I just write the kind of prose I like to read, and it seems my taste aligns with that of many readers. Like a runner who doesn’t care to analyze the interplay of his bones and muscles, but who does move along better than most.

A third question received fewer responses. I discussed the ads for huge penises, saying that women did not crave being rammed by these, and asking whether any ladies disagreed. So far I have had three or four responses from women, all agreeing, some emphatically. Women do look for particular things in men, but not monster members. Shere Hite, sex researcher, had an article in the 25 January NEW SCIENTIST on a perhaps related matter: most women don’t orgasm regularly during sex. The drug industry wants to claim this is female dysfunction, and provide a Viagra-like pill to fix it. The real problem is that male penetration rarely–maybe in 2% of cases–fosters female orgasm, because it doesn’t stimulate the clitoris. Women know how to have orgasms, but don’t feel free to express this during sex with men. What’s needed is a revision of the concept of sexual activity, so that women become free to have orgasms their way during copulation. If men left their supposedly inadequate penises alone and focused on appropriately stimulating their partners, they could truly please women sexually. And also perhaps related: the Dear Abby column had a case where a man arranged a sexual liaison for his adult (age 40) paralyzed friend. The woman was knowledgeable and understanding, and the event went well. Then the man’s religious moralistic parents caught on, and banned the friend and cut off their son from any further such experience. It’s interesting how so much religion condemns the natural function of sex; didn’t God make sex, too? A storm of letters followed, supporting the paralyzed man and his friend. Good for them.

My readers are doing so well answering my questions, some of which have bugged me for decades, that I’m inclined to ask some more. Obviously if I were smart enough to research the answers myself, I’d have done so long ago. That’s why I cultivate smart readers. Once in childhood–not that I ever really left it–I was reading what I remember, perhaps incorrectly, as a book of stories by Rudyard Kipling. I thought it was Jungle Stories, but later when I checked, it wasn’t. They were preceded by brief poems. One story was unmemorable for me, but the poem latched onto my mind. It went something like this: “The earth gave up her that dead than night/ Into our camp he came/ And said his say and went his way/ And left our hearts aflame.// Keep tally on the gun-butt score/ The vengeance we must take/” That’s all I remember. Does any literate person out there know this poem or this book? What does it mean? This has bugged me for about 55 years.

There was also a poem I heard once during training in the US Army, 1957. Its title was something like “Elegy on the Four Letter Word,” and it was a phenomenal statement about how it’s not the concepts but the words that really make a difference. For example, if a man would like to have sex with a woman, he can talk about a roll in the hay or evening delight, and maybe he’ll be in luck. But the girl doesn’t live who will stand for “Let’s F—” it concludes, the rhyme scheme making the blanks clear. I mean, what four letter word begins with F and rhymes with Luck? Even an ogre might figure that one out, in time. So it’s not subtle, but it’s right on target. This has bugged me for 46 years.

There’s also a piece of music that I hear every so often but never get the title. It may be associated with the Russian Revolution, or some such. It’s voice, four notes, a break, four notes again, break, then about 7 notes, very feeling. It’s that odd staccato beat that gets me, making me think of the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution: move forcefully ahead, abruptly pause, then move forward again. My wife, who once played the bass strings and knows music, can’t place it. Can any musical literate tell from this inadequate description what piece I’m looking for?

The morning of the day I was to head for EPICon–there’s a tediously long con report following this column–I was amidst my archery when the string broke on my left handed reverse curve bow. Actually it turned out that it had merely slipped off, but it shouldn’t have done that. The bow has started to warp, after six years, and finally got to the point where it won’t hold. It was a good bow, but these things don’t last forever. I pondered, and concluded I’d be better off with a left handed composite bow, to match my right handed one. So after the convention I went to the local archery store to order one–and lo, they had one there, so I bought it. I had them set it at 60 pounds, same as the right side bow, so my exercise will be even. For those not into archery, I’ll explain that a 60 pound draw weight means that it takes 60 pounds of pull to fully draw the string. This one has a 75% let-off, which means that when you draw it all the way, the pull declines to a quarter, or about 15 pounds, making it much easier to focus on the detail of aiming. That’s part of the joy of compound bows; you can take time to aim without stress, and when you loose (not fire) the arrow, it takes off with 60 pounds force. It’s not magic, actually, but rather an offset wheel that makes a pulley effect, gearing it down. So you don’t have to worry about drawing it too far, or not far enough; the let-off sets it up for the same force every time, which is a real convenience.

Okay, I brought the new bow home–and realized it had no sights. So I put on the ones from the old bow. It had no peep-sight in the string, so I threaded through a bit of dental floss to mark the place. Then I set about zeroing it in. That turned out to be an adventure, spread out across three sessions. First, it was difficult to draw the string. I could do it without the arrow, but when I had the arrow in place, my effort of drawing (60 pounds would be beyond the ability of beginners) dislodged the arrow, and it fell to the ground. Shouldn’t I just draw it smoothly, keeping the arrow in place? Yes. But I couldn’t be smooth at the limit of my strength. Also it was a different type of arrow rest that allowed the arrow to fall off either side; I couldn’t tilt the bow to keep it in place while drawing. And I realized that my right side bow, set for years at 60 pounds, must have eased a bit, because it was not as hard to draw as the left side bow. So 60 pounds was not at my level, but beyond it. Sigh; once again, ogre-style, I had stumbled into a picklement. Oh, I could wind it down to 55 pounds or less, but that would be like cheating; I wanted to conquer it at 60 so I wouldn’t have to admit to making a mistake. What to do? Well, first I set the shaft of the arrow off the arrow rest, nestled in a nook so I could tilt the bow when drawing. I heaved, but the arrow couldn’t escape. Then I used my finger to nudge the arrow up onto the rest. It went too far, dropping off the other side. I angled the bow to swing it back, and it dropped off the string entirely. So there I was with drawn bow, no arrow. (There are those who think the stupidities of ogres are funny, when viewed from a safe distance.) So I started over, managed to heave-draw again, and nudge it correctly. Then I loosed it at the target from 50 feet. Pow! The arrow vanished from the bow and appeared instantly in the upper baffle target. I had missed high. Well, that’s why I have to zero in my sights. I missed two high, then moved back to 100 feet and tried the same setting. And missed two more high. Okay, so I moved back to the 150 foot range, figuring this time it might drop a foot or so and be in the center of the target. And plowed two arrows into the ground, one of which vanished. Huh? Finally, with much heating of overstressed brain, I figured it out: the ground isn’t level. The 50 and 100 foot sites are at similar elevation, but the 150 foot site is a foot or eighteen inches lower. Allow a foot drop of arrow for distance, and another foot or more for elevation, and suddenly it’s not in the center of the target, but below. So I adjusted my floss and caught the bottom of the target. I adjusted it again, and scored on the ground again. Oh–I had gone the wrong direction. (I believe I have mentioned how ogres are justifiably proud of their stupidity.) So I moved it the other way twice as far, and fired again, and scored roughly in the center of the target. Victory! Then I searched again for the lost arrow, and finally managed to find it, buried behind the target at an angle; it had evidently bounced and deflected. They can be fiendishly clever about hiding. So I’m making progress. I’ll work on building up my muscle until I can draw the bow correctly. It may take some time; I’m 68 and have to work to stay in shape. But I should get there eventually. Meanwhile, breaking in a new bow feels somewhat like breaking in a new computer program: an unpleasant challenge fraught with risk, but with eventual rewards.

Coincidentally, I received a letter from a lawyer pursuing a case of a carbon-shaft arrow that shattered on release, damaging the archer’s hand. One of the other recipients of that letter–maybe the lawyer made an Internet search for Archery–was sharply negative in his response, dead set against any action against the manufacturer. So then I weighed in, and here is the edited text of my letter:

“I use metal arrows, and am strictly amateur in this regard, loosing only at propped targets. I am no hunter; indeed we do not allow hunting on our 90 acre forest property. I do have one set of 12 carbon arrows, but do not use them. This is because they are too light for my 60 pound draw weight, and because their shafts are narrower than their points. This tears up my target when I remove them.

“However, for what it’s worth, I disagree with Mr. Falks. I wear gloves and glasses to protect my hands and face, as I do not care to risk injury to my body when practicing. But I believe the manufacturers have a responsibility, a tort, to ensure that their arrows are well made and free of potentially dangerous defects. If there is a defect that caused your client injury, I believe he has a right to appropriate compensation. But this is merely a bystander opinion; I have no case of my own.”

I sent a copy to Laval Falks, who is serious about archery, and had a response, explaining his reasoning, and it is persuasive. If a new arrow broke, the archer might have a claim. But when he uses it, it can suffer damage, and the manufacturer should not be liable for what is done to an arrow in the course of use. Don’t I know it; I bent two of my new aluminum arrows when I missed my targets and bounced them off trees and/or into the ground. Ouch! So there needs to be evidence that the original arrows are defective, or there is no case. Also the equipment should be inspected whenever used, to avoid any potential problem; the user does have to take due care. I have to agree. A compound bow is no toy; it can be dangerous if used carelessly. And I guess I’d better wind that draw weight down a notch after all, rather than tempt fate.

Collected smaller notes, jammed ignominiously together: I think it was a Microsoft form I filled out once, name and employment. Now I get letters and calls for Piers Anthohy Writer (sic on both spelling and name). No, Mr. Writer isn’t home, and my middle name is not Anthohy. But it does give me an instant indication that the other party is working from a blind list. My RowBike chain broke. This was the second time in a couple years. I could get it fixed again, but decided instead to retire the machine, because it’s dangerous. When the chain breaks, I’m pulling back hard to row it up a hill, and I smack my back down and could maybe whipcrack my neck. We aren’t the world’s greatest housekeepers; papers pile up. My wife saw one beside her chair starting to go, and grabbed it, but it fought her. I grabbed it to help hold it upright, but it started to bow out from the middle. That thing was determined to come apart, despite both our efforts; in the end we had to entirely dismantle it. A shame to lose several patient years of accumulation like that. A miniature wasp is setting up house on my study door. These little wasps are cute; their wingspan is about the breadth of a human thumbnail, and their nests start out acorn sized. Every time I use that door the wasp gets a jolt, but seems resigned. We also have wrens building a nest by a window; we’ll be able to spy on their secrets from inside the house. Carroll and Lina Wren might not like that, if they caught on. They are sitting three eggs. They found Elizabeth Smart, the fourteen year old Utah girl kidnapped from her bedroom last year. She had been taken by a would-be founder of a religious cult. God told him to breed with teen girls. Ever notice how God tells some people to do what they secretly desire to do but don’t dare admit it? Some use God to forbid sex; others are the opposite. As an agnostic I see both attitudes as suspiciously convenient. I should think that by this time God must be getting fed up with hypocrisy in His name. Some folk are overdue for smiting. Speaking of which, a deadly new flu-type virus is spreading; I hope it doesn’t come here. And Mister Rogers died. He was the exception proving the rule: there are some good men on television, just as Senator Wellstone showed there are some good men in politics. They praise them and lay them away. Thirty years ago we set our daughter up to watch Sesame Street, but it was Mister Rogers who won her little heart. I used to tease her with a parody of his monologue on the uniqueness of each child: “You’re a bad little girl, and there are hundreds more just like you.” No, of course she knew better. A reader asked me, challengingly: Why do I write about the Afterlife, if I don’t believe in it? I answered that I write fantasy, and the Afterlife is fantasy. (Will they ever learn not to challenge the Ogre on his home turf?)

I have a third current movie option now: Split Infinity, the leadoff novel in the Adept series. Remember, an option is merely the paid-for right to make a movie; most options are not exercised, but these look promising. Xanth, Incarnations, Adept–I see it as like lighting matches in a firecracker factory. I’d love to experience the explosion. Of course it might make my inrush of mail worse, forcing me to hire a robot ogre to write feeling personal responses.

In FeBlueberry I finally caught up on videos. Some were sexy junk, like Body Chemistry, and some were not as sexy or junky as I had hoped, like The Amy Fisher Story, while some were interesting in devious ways, such as In the Realm of the Senses, about a Japanese prostitute who becomes obsessed with her master. At one point he puts an egg in her vagina, and she has to lay it like a chicken. She finally kills him in a siege of sado-masochism that goes too far, cuts off his penis, and happily keeps it. She’s not shown as a bad girl, just one who loved unwisely. Banned & Censored cartoons were not sexy at all; many seem to have been banned for political correctness. Betty Boop sees a man whipping animals, and is outraged; black folk are shown with huge lips, eating watermelon. Caricature, yes, but this sort of thing should not be banned so much as refuted. To me, censorship is more dangerous than caricature. Then there was The Fury; I read the book decades ago and found it imperfect; so was the movie. Unforgiven, a harsh and I suspect realistic look at the wild west. Finding Forrester, wherein a smart black youth associates with a former award-winning novelist, and gets in trouble at school because his teacher thinks he’s stealing material. The idea is that he had to be, because blacks are known to be intellectually inferior. Forrester, the novelist, finally gets fed up with this nonsense and intervenes at the school, vindicating him. Yes, this is a movie for a liberal writer, my kind of non-junk.

We also saw two current movies. My daughters are long since tired of my story of how a quarter century ago my wife and I made a deal with them: we’d watch one of theirs, then they’d watch one of ours, and maybe see which was better. Theirs was Disney’s The Rescuers, a nice cartoon feature. Ours was the first Star Wars. We won. It’s a real achievement for the old fogies to set back their savvy children like that, which is why I cling to the memory. Well, this time we saw Daughter #2 Cheryl the Newspaperwoman’s choice, Daredevil. Then came our choice: Chicago. I believe we did it again, despite the fact that my daughter is not turned on the way I am by the sexy opening song and dance, “All That Jazz.”

I also read some books. Several were related to EPICon so are covered in that report, but some were not. Dragon’s Fire & Wizard’s Flame by Michael Mennenga is a fantasy for young folk, the story of Zac, a dragon without fire, making him a pariah. He sets out with a big moose and small squirrel–all the animals talk–and in due course overcomes evil and saves the dragon’s village. Children should relate. Surviving Dystonia, self published by a local (Inverness) writer, Carmine Petrangelo, nonfiction. Dystonia is a rare disease that gradually deprives the victim of control of his body; limbs may jerk around on their own, and the body can warp. Adults decided that the author was faking it for attention, so no one was allowed to help him, when he could not even walk without support. After years of this he finally saw a competent specialist and got treatment, which helped considerably. As one who in childhood suffered from jerks of the hands and head, I relate, though mine was indeed psychological; when I finally declared my emotional independence from the stresses between my divorcing parents, I slowly mended. But I remember how it was, having made myself an oath never to forget. Childhood is not necessarily the joy most adults choose to think, and doctors and psychologists can be idiots. Tales of the Man Da’oud by David de London, Xlibris, is a collection of apocryphal stories that may have been part of the oral tradition for perhaps 5,000 years. They are moralistic but not dull. The shortest is under 50 words; others can be several pages. In one the man Da’oud (think David, though the pronunciation is not the same) saw an old man laboring to plant olive tree seedlings beside the road. Why, Da’oud wondered, did he work so hard despite knowing that he would be long gone before the trees bore fruit? “Consider this,” the man replied, “the world was not a barren place when either of us came into it.” In another an arrogant stranger expected Da’oud’s grown son and his companions to wait on him. They, annoyed, wrapped pellets of sheep dung in warm flat bread, urinated in half a cup of sour wine, and filled a wash basin from a muddy stream. The stranger used them before realizing, then was most upset, while the others rolled on the floor in helpless laughter. Then Da’oud arrived and chastised them for violating the laws of hospitality. But the great judge of all things (think God) was not really upset by the conduct of the young men, seeing the humor in the situation.

I receive a good deal of mail. Most is routine, but some isn’t. I received a desperate plea for an interview from a fifteen year old tenth grader with a paper due in two days; could he have an interview? I said sure, via email, the only medium there was time for–and my response bounced because of an invalid address. I heard from Metria R Jones, the name chosen from my character the Demoness Metria. Xanthly demons are more or less independent of gender, though they do tend to choose a male or female identity. Metria Jones chose. She is a transsexual, converted surgically from male to female it Thailand, after struggling with the wrong gender for 38 years. Her site is http://xanth.us/, and provides the life story and pictures. Press release from UFOWATCHDOG.COM, the one who put me onto Sean David Morton’s appropriation of On a Pale Horse for a supposed movie and who reacted, as I put it, like a smoking rectum when we challenged this. Now Morton is suing WATCHDOG for a million dollars for defamation. This is evidently a SLAPP effort: Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, the intention being to prevent legitimate criticism of a person’s actions. WATCHDOG has my sympathy, as I suspect some publishers would like to SLAPP me for telling the truth about them; the truth needs to be published. My agent and I are cooperating with WATCHDOG’s defense, though the Pale Horse matter is peripheral. A grandmother wrote about the way her fourteen year old grandson’s school excluded two Xanth novels from their reading program: The Color of Her Panties, and The Dastard. Apparently their librarian was unfamiliar with the actual content of the books, which are typical Xanth novels, and banned the books because of their titles. Maybe there is supposed to be something obscene about panties, or maybe someone misread Dastard with a B? This is of course foolishness. Xanth pokes fun at just about everything, including the foibles of those who base their judgments on other than the real nature of things. I’d say that fun-poking is justified, as they evidently don’t find it funny. So let’s cut the fun for a moment and call a spade a spade: this is the sour fruit of the bigotree.

Two people sent me “Charlie Daniels Open letter to the Hollywood Bunch” which begins “Ok let’s just say for a moment you bunch of pampered, overpaid, unrealistic children had your way and the US didn’t go into Iraq.” It continues that if we destroy our nuclear weapons, cut our military budget, and bring our troops home, would there really be peace in the world? This is a good rhetorical question; obviously there wouldn’t, because there are too many shits like Saddam out there who know no language but force and deceit. But this tirade vitiates its case by descending to name-calling and posturing. “Why you bunch of pitiful, hypocritical, idiotic, spoiled mugwumps, get your head out of the sand and smell the Trade Towers burning.” Oh–did Iraq do that? It suggests that opponents of the invasion of Iraq are traitors. “America is in imminent danger. You’re either for her or against her. There is no middle ground.” Really? Black/white thinking is typical of bigotry. There is no credible evidence that America is in imminent danger from Iraq. From North Korea, maybe; from terrorists eager to get hold of old Russian nuclear bombs, surely; from al-Qaeda who may want to follow up the Trade Towers bombing with a plague of smallpox, oh, yes. But it seems these are being ignored in favor of an invasion of Iraq. This isn’t sensible defense so much as militaristic folly. There is indeed a huge middle ground, and I’m in it: I want to see America defended from the real threats, which include the erosion of our constitutional rights by our own government. I fear the rantings of the author of this open letter as much as I fear the savage ill-will of Saddam, because this ranter is much closer to home and shows so little comprehension of what America is all about. He seems to think that honest dissent is unpatriotic. He thinks he’s making sense; that’s truly scary.

Another circulated essay is by Tony Parsons of the UK’s DAILY MIRROR. It says the 9/11 event was horrible, the victims innocent, the perpetrators evil. Yes. Then it says that anti-Americanism has increased in the last year. Yes. What it doesn’t say is why: because the current US administration ruthlessly squandered global good will by invoking a hard right-wing agenda it did not campaign on and that the majority of American voters did not support. Remember, G W Bush was not elected, he was appointed by a party-line decision of the Supreme Court that ignored the evident will of the voters in America and in Florida, where a careful recount showed Gore won. Then this administration used 9/11 as a pretext to undermine Constitutional civil rights, and to invade a country that was not responsible for it. This is a horribly cynical use of a horrible atrocity. Is there no shame? That’s why there are protests around the world; America is half-blinded by misplaced patriotism, but elsewhere the truth is clearer. Those of us whose belief in American values is more than platitude deep hate to see them thus ironically corrupted.

Yet another: the text of career diplomat John Brady Kiesling’s letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Selective quotes: “The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.” “We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary.” “Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has loderint dum metuanti really become our motto?”

Okay, I regard this as an excellent statement, as my prior remarks in this column should indicate. But one thing perplexes me: I can’t make out the Latin phrase. I took three years to barely pass two years of high school Latin, and it did me precious little good. The context suggests “Devil take the hindmost,” but I don’t know. Maybe a more educated reader will clarify this for me. (I remember a joke: Teacher: “What was the Roman’s most significant achievement?” Rebellious student: “Learning to speak Latin.”)

This is hardly the only informed criticism of current policy. According to THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR newsletter the AFL-CIO unions voted unanimously for a resolution criticizing President Bush for failing to make “a compelling and coherent” case for invading Iraq now. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), now the Senate’s most senior member at age 85, said in a speech there: “This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of pre-emption–the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future–is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN charter…In only the space of two short years this reckless and arrogant administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years.” Amen.

But some condemnation goes too far. A To Whom it May Concern email from a prisoner who says he has been beaten and tortured for many years blames the present administration, concluding “Bush is Evil.” If he has suffered for many years, he can’t blame it all on Bush; some blame, by this logic, attaches to former president Clinton. Prisons are rough places; abuses do occur. But I doubt that W Bush is doing it, or that he approves of it. The letter also says that most 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, which I think is true but does not implicate Bush, and that Bush is addicted to cocaine, which I doubt, but again, this would not make him evil.

Another circulated essay: “A Soldier’s Viewpoint on Surviving Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Attacks.” This one makes a lot of sense. It tackles various threats and shows that they aren’t as dire as they seem. Chemical weapons tend to hang around the area they are distributed, and have to be in the right concentrations to be effective; you can simply leave the area, preferably upwind, until they settle out. Low-yield nuclear devices will kill most folk within half a mile and fry electronic devices two miles from ground zero. Care and hygiene offer considerable protection. Biological weapons can also be dealt with by hygienic measures. The fact is, common sense can minimize such threats. They are unlikely to bring total devastation. I suppose that’s reassuring.

On to more personal material. I received an email from a girl, which asked me not to answer because she has to use her parent’s email account and they could not be told. “I’ve taken the pills and am most likely gonna die real soon, so I’m just writing my goodbyes to everyone.” She asked her family to send me a story she was writing, that perhaps I might finish, but wasn’t sure they would. They didn’t. She said if she ended up surviving, she would finish the story herself. “With my luck, there is a very good chance that I will not end up dying.” I have not heard since. This is one of those cases where I have to reconsider ethics: I try to maintain the confidence of my readers, and not betray their secrets to others. But is it right to remain silent while someone may be dying? I am not sure.

Perhaps related: a teen girl said that she and a friend both burst into tears, and neither knew why. My answer became a spot essay, and here it is:

My observation, based on correspondence over the decades with hundreds of teen girls and some boys, is that things can get tough for girls at the time they become young women. It may be the rush of hormones, or the way boys stop trying to avoid them and start trying to touch them, or the new rules they must learn to get along as people who can no longer match the size or strength of boys. It’s a different lifestyle. Now a girl becomes a social leader if she is sexually attractive, rather than intelligent or well coordinated. Those who are average in appearance become marginalized, and that can be painful. They are in a whole new world with changed rules, and not well equipped to handle it. They suffer loss of self-esteem, a little or a lot. If they are then subjected to additional stresses, like moving, divorce of their parents, a death in the family, unfeeling or predatory teachers, or bullying by other teens, it can be overwhelming. They can lose it, for a minute, a day, or years. They turn depressive. Some survive to find their places in the new scheme; some don’t. The thing to remember is that it’s a combination of things, and probably NOT YOUR FAULT.

The next letter I answered seemed to relate, indirectly. It was from a girl the same age who sent me her poem. I asked permission to run it here, but did not hear from her again, so can’t. It was the image of branches seeming to weep as they dropped down toward a deep pool whose mirror reflected more leaves than were there. I saw it as a possible analogy to the state of young women in distress.

Another letter was from the Florida mother of an eight year old troubled boy. He “has already seen the inside of three psych hospitals. He has been diagnosed with a form of Autism and three other disorders…There are thousands of children in our state that are suffering and being ignored.” Psychiatric care is limited, and insurance companies don’t pay for treatment because it is expensive. Is there anything that can be done? I have my doubts, given the present political climate where bombs seem more important than sick children, but I present it here, just in case.

Column by Robyn E Blumner in the ST PETERSBURG TIMES concerning the global status of women. They are disappearing in societies that want male babies, via gender-selective abortion or infanticide. There are now about 75 million excess males in Asian countries with little to do, it seems, but fight, since they can’t make love without women. This threatens to fuel a new regime of violence ranging from crime to war. The best means of reducing aggressive tendencies in men is to marry them off, but less of that will be happening, obviously. We need to have more women, and to promote equality of women. To save the world.

A prospective nightmare for writers: messed up regulations may cause writers to receive two 1099 forms for every payment: one from the publisher, the other from the agent. The tax man will think the writer is earning twice as much as he is. Ever try to clarify things with a messed-up tax collector? I have; it just kept hitting me with higher penalties, for nonpayment of a tax I never owed, until I suggested that I was getting ready to sue. Then it softly and silently faded away, after harassing me for a year. Will it be that easy the next time?

Another problem for writers: a letter in AUTHORS GUILD BULLETIN, Winter 2003, confirms what I knew from experience long ago; in fact it’s the reason I dropped my subscription: PUBLISHERS WEEKLY’s policy of anonymous reviews allows unscrupulous reviewers to crucify the work of writers they don’t like. Writers and editors are afraid to complain, lest they be the next ones targeted. It’s an act that needs to be cleaned up, but the magazine shows no interest in doing so.

A new take on dark matter: NEW SCIENTIST had an article suggesting that there is no such thing, it’s just that physicists don’t properly understand the nature of gravity. Modified Newtonian Dynamics–MOND–suggests that in certain cases gravity may weaken directly with distance, rather than by the square of the distance. Thus the galaxies can indeed spin cohesively like giant platters, requiring no hidden matter to boost their outer gravity. I’m a fan of dark matter–it’s a fantasy concept–but MOND has a certain persuasiveness. When they try to locate dark matter they find it associates with galaxies; so does gravity. Interesting coincidence.

Newspaper item: a long-term study indicates that violent TV does promote violence. Boys who watched violent programs in the 1970s were more likely as adults to push, grab, or shove their wives during arguments, and to punch, beat, or choke other men, or commit a crime. Girls became women more likely to throw things at their husbands. This may be the real reason America has about a hundred times the incidence of gun violence as other nations: not the guns, but the TV.

My daughter is dyslexic, and I suspect I was as a child. But sometimes a dyslexic makes sense. Letter in the newspaper said “My dyslexic son, when asked what letter followed ‘A’ answered ‘They all do.’” Let’s finish on that truth.

EPICon 2003

As a general rule I don’t do conventions any more. I tried them for a decade, but got fed up with their determined amateurishness, and I think the last one I attended was in 1992. Once I wrote a letter to a convention organizer saying something like how I expected there to be a room available for my program, and a person to introduce it. Evidently they didn’t know that, as they had not been doing it, and maybe still aren’t; I had a later report that they spread the word about how choosy Piers Anthony was, so other conventions should be wary. So I solved the problem the easy way by no longer going, turning down all invitations. Of course then the word spread that I had done something that made me be no longer be invited to conventions. In sum: they just didn’t get it. Maybe expecting minimal professionalism at amateur conventions is too much to ask.

So I considered carefully when EPIC invited me to be their keynote speaker for the 2003 EPICon www.epic-conference.com in Tampa, Florida. I don’t like to travel, and normally do so only under duress, such as a death in the family, but this was close enough. EPIC stands for Electronically Published Internet Connection, something I’m interested in and that I support. So I put duty before desire and agreed to attend. Would I regret it, again?

The short answer is no. Oh, I still hated to be away from home, and things piled up in my absence, and I missed three days of exercise and a TV Survivor episode. I really need my wife on hand to run the details of my life, but she had to stay home to run our dog Obsidian’s life. But apart from that, the experience was good. In fact, after consideration, I have to say, grudgingly, that this was probably the best convention experience I have had. It was well organized, had a dynamite schedule of events, programs started on time, and yes, there were rooms and personnel to introduce the programs. The hotel was good, the people were friendly and compatible, and there was an excellent mix of publishers and knowledgeable folk so that I found I could talk with any random person there and have a rewarding dialogue. For example when on a bus bringing us back from an event I sat next to a woman I’d never met, Anita, she was interesting to talk to. One morning I joined another unfamiliar woman, Sarah, for breakfast in the hotel buffet, and again we had common interests and a nice exchange. When my key card stopped working so I couldn’t get into my room, Jennifer came to my rescue, called, and got a hotel man up to fix it. Of course I was meeting others throughout, at programs and between, and always relating well. There was a community of interest that made that happen; I suspect that any of the other attendees would have been as easy to be with. (I’m using mainly first names so as to provide a translucent veil of privacy for folk who may not wish to be fully exposed here, hoping I got the names right. When I refer to specific books or publishers, I try to use full names, so that potential readers can locate them.)

But such a commitment meant I had to prepare. I didn’t want to look too shaggy, so cut my hair and trimmed my beard. But lo–my teeth were yellow. Something in the water from our well gradually colors them. It’s okay, except when I go public; then idiot vanity kicks in. These days folk are supposed to have impossibly white teeth. I had a vision of the convention: “What did you think of Piers Anthony’s talk?” “He talked?” “You know–the keynote address.” “Oh–the guy with the teeth!” I concluded that I preferred to be judged for the content of my character than the color of my cuspids. So I asked my dentist: how can I whiten my teeth? He set me up with a bleach treatment involving plastic molds containing gel that I wore overnight. It was expensive and hard to tell how well it worked, but at least I didn’t freak out any convention folk. I hope. Another spot decision was to leave my hat at home; I normally wear it outside to keep the sun off my ears so it doesn’t trigger more cancer there, but I figured to be indoors almost all the time, and the hat’s a nuisance to tote around. So I gambled and won.

I also worried about things going wrong. I’m marginally depressive, which actually seems to help my writing–I suspect most creative folk are depressive–but my imagination doesn’t turn off for the negatives. Would I suffer an accident or pneumonia right before the convention? Would the US invade Iraq the day before it, forcing suppression of travel and stifling the event? Would I mislay key papers at the last moment, and have to speak from balky memory, making attendees wonder what idiot ever invited me to speak? Experience has shown me that it’s the one thing I don’t think of that will go wrong, so I try to think of everything. But this time, by some mischance, nothing was amiss. That’s suspicious.

The convention started, really, with the trip there. Traveling is my hobgoblin; things always foul up. But Dan Reitz, of MUNDANIA PRESS, came to my house with his associate Bob to pick me up, and delivered me back home three days later, so that this part was easy. His rental car had a fascinating feature: a satellite connected travel guide that spoke in a woman’s voice saying things like “Turn right in half a mile,” and was correct. Even I might find my way somewhere with that. Where will such guidance lead, when perfected? As the day wanes, maybe this: “Turn right in half a mile,” the dulcet voice will say. “Enter the motel there, Room 5B. I will be waiting for you in a pink negligee.” Well, maybe not, in drear Mundania. Thus I reached the hotel on time and without hassle. Amazing.

I checked in, put my stuff in the nice room on the 8th floor, went to the Registration Room, and found Janice Strand, who was running things. She was very friendly and helpful, having time for everyone. No, she wasn’t in a pink negligee. Then a teen boy wandered in, probably cutting through on his way to the sandlot. He turned out to be Janice’s husband Jeff Strand, maybe not as young as he looked, the author of several books, the master of ceremonies for the awards banquet and a hilarious fellow when he gets going. I met several people, and some gave me books and things. One book was The Ultimate Guide to Sea-Monkeys (small crustaceans), by Susan Barclay, replete with advice for naming them, such as Seamantha, Crustacea, or Clamentine, together with their associated mythology. There were also bags of goodies for all convention attendees, including useful briefcases with straps so that things could be conveniently toted around. Plus convention membership tags set up on a sort of plastic holder with a neck strap that also had several pockets for cards, notes, hotel room keys, or whatever, plus a surface to hold buttons. Maybe this is now standard at conventions; remember, I hadn’t been to one in a decade. I found it quite handy.

Soon it was time for the trip to the book-signing. We didn’t have to struggle to get there; there were two chartered buses that took us to Barnes & Noble in Carrollwood, where the Internet publishers lined up in front with their wares. I was taken inside and given royal treatment, something that makes me uneasy; remember, I’m a writer, not used to that. I had asked where supper fitted in, as things were continuous from 4:30 to 10 PM, so Janice mentioned it to the store personnel who quickly set me up with juice and a nice salad. So I sat there just inside the glass that fenced the electronic peons out, and read the first five pages of one of their books: Enchanted Cottage, by Linda Bleser. The author saw me reading it, and took a picture through the glass. It starts well: “It was a beautiful day to die.” It’s about a cottage that restores youth to its inhabitants: a timeless residence for a woman to die for. A well written Romance Fantasy crossbreed. The electronic publishers are doing a lot of cross-genre material, and more power to them; traditional publishing at times seems to care more about length and classification than about quality or interest. That’s one of many reasons why we need an alternative. I noticed how different approaches can be; my Realty Check concerns a house whose front door opens on a busy city street, and whose back door opens on an endless ancient forest. My novel is all about fathoming the mystery of the house, while Enchanted Cottage is a romance that uses the house mainly as a setting.

Then came the book signing. They organized it well, setting up numbered groups of ten people, so that it never seemed rushed. That gave me a chance to chat briefly with the folk, as I prefer, and to pose with them for pictures. It took two and a half hours to clear the line, and I know some folk quit without enduring that. I’m sorry, but it just wouldn’t have seemed right to process them through with impersonal swiftness. I noted that A Spell for Chameleon was up to it’s 49th printing; ten minutes later it was the 51st printing. Two printings in ten minutes–that’s fast! There were also copies of MUNDANIA’s edition of Pornucopia, and of course I teased any women who brought it: “What’s a nice girl like you doing with a book like this?” Actually I understand that Romantica, which is erotic romance, is getting pretty hot, and may make my dirty book seem less obnoxious. I ought to read some Romantica and see; one thing I wonder about is that it seems that it requires the use of four letter words, which are hallmarks of gutter writing. It is my thesis that anything a four letter word shows can be conveyed by other means, so I use them mainly for spot special effect, rather than dissipate the impact by repetition. Even in my dirty books, which are no strangers to weird sex. Glenn Moss brought a book for me: Souls in Metal, an anthology of robot stories. He had mentioned it in a letter, because I’d said science fiction had not predicted the Internet, but “A Logic Named Joe” by Murray Leinster had done that in 1946, and here was a book containing the story to prove it. And lo, when I got into it, I discovered the book led off with a story I had been searching for for decades: “Helen O’Loy” by Lester del Rey, published in 1938. (I didn’t start reading SF until 1947, so had missed it.) Thus serendipity. Then at ten the buses took us back to the hotel, the day being done.

After my struggle to get into my room, mentioned above, I entered, and discovered that they had set it up with a fine plate of assorted nuts and a container of iced beer. The problem was, I was late returning, so the ice had melted, the sides had sweated, and the glass table was covered with water trying to drip on the floor. I mopped up as well as I could, drank one beer, put the others in the refrigerator, called my wife, and turned in. I never got back to the beer; I’m not a teetotaler, but as a general rule I don’t drink while driving lest I kill myself physically, and don’t drink while making public appearances lest I kill myself socially. I’ve never been drunk in my life, preferring caution to inebriation. Moderation in most thing is a good rule.

In the morning after 5 hours sleep–I wake up at dawn regardless when I turn in–I showered, dressed, and took the elevator down. Those are fun boxes, glass-faced on the back so that they show the hotel’s huge exotic inner court. They rise and sink on long poles; I wondered whether those rods ever got bendy when fully extended eight floors. When you stand in the atrium, the folk in the elevators look like posed framed pictures floating up and down overhead. Unfortunately no young women were wearing short skirts while I was gazing up. I ate at the breakfast buffet, where I joined Sarah, who has lived in Spain, as I have, and is writing an episode of Mexican history, trying to find a market, much as I sought a market for my novel of Spain and World War Two, Volk. If you leave the mold, you do have trouble getting published. Until the Internet, electronic, and self publishing change things. That of course was the point of this convention: promoting that vital change.

At 9 AM I attended the EPIC business meeting, though not a member. They remarked on their lame Web site; it seems that the host had been good, but deteriorated, and they need to do something about it. The EPIC standard model publishing contract, which is potentially a good recommendation for EPIC, is supposed to be on the Web Site, available for everyone. Instead it got put in the Members Only section, unavailable to the public. There’ll be a new EPIC president in April; maybe he’ll be able to fix it. EPICon 2004 will be in Oklahoma City, and EPICon 2005 in the Los Angeles area.

Next I attended Todd Stone’s “Talk Like a Man” program, because I do a fair amount of female viewpoint narrative and want to be sharp on the distinctions between male and female expression. Todd used slides with printed paragraphs. He said that dialogue is a challenge, and said it is not recorded speech but forged speech; counterfeit rather than real. Had he lost his marbles? No, he was right on. Translation: he agreed with my observation over the decades. Real speech is fraught with “uh” and similar interjections, it backtracks, it sidetracks, it fouls up with wrong words and awkwardnesses. It would be boring as hell in narrative writing. So we clean it up for fiction, make it sharp, on-target in a way natural speech seldom is. And what do you know, that makes it seem realistic. Art imitates life, becomes more real than life. So if you want your character to talk like a man, you fake it. And before you females expire of the giggles, remember that female dialogue is similarly faked.

It was a good presentation, and I have more notes on it, but I’ll skim on. I think I summarized the essence of the difference between male and female writing, which is akin to the distinctions in their dialogue, years ago: a woman takes the reader by the hand and leads him to view her wonders. A man picks the reader up by collar and crotch and hurls him into the action. Both techniques have their points. At the end Todd gave the audience a spot assignment: write a piece about two lovers who quarrel and make up, showing their different approaches. Then exchange it with your neighbor for comparison. I was sitting next to Katharine, a long-time correspondent and novelist in her own right, so we exchanged. And you know, we both found it hellish to write that on short notice. When we did, we discovered it was essentially the same thing, except that I was still foundering for a suitable lead-in to my text, while she had figured one out that would do for either of our pieces. “Andrea said, pirouetting: ‘Do I look all right?’ Andy, not looking up: ‘You look fine.’” That of course precipitated mischief, which was the point of the exercise; she wanted to be noticed and appreciated; he wasn’t doing it. Just like a man.

Naturally I was constantly talking with others between programs; this is what you do at conferences like this. This continued through meals. EPICon was well laid out, with half hour breaks between programs so that folk did not have to be rushed, had time for spot snacks, bathroom, and stray acquaintances. Thus I had lunch at a round table for 9 with Dan, Katharine, and others, and they did have a vegetarian entry that three of us used, with peach pie for dessert.

Then it was time for my keynote speech. I did it as I usually do, with a prepared text for half an hour, followed by questions from the audience for the rest of the time. I began by calling my audience blockheads, and they applauded, and I concluded with my hope that electronic publishing will help reform Parnassus, the arrogant traditional publishing establishment. No need to bore you with the text of it; that follows this convention report, so you can readily skip it if you wish. It did seem to be well received.

In the afternoon I attended the Editor Round Table Part 2, having missed Part 1. This was general advice for writers, presented by publishers. I was going to skip the one after that, the Hot Java New Product Release; what did I want with some snazzy new brand of coffee? But Katharine more or less steered me into it, and I was pleasantly surprised. This was not a spot gimmick, but a new approach to reading. They demonstrated a three way novel: ongoing text, ongoing speech, and a series of still pictures in the background. This works well; it makes even a dull story interesting, as they were showing a dull story and it was interesting. They’ll be selling books for $20 to $30 minus a nickel, running 8 to 11 hours long. You can back it up to repeat a section, thus clarifying a difficult passage, getting the spelling and pronunciation right. The pictures change at about five second intervals; it takes about 5,000 of them for a book. They figure they’ll be able to prepare a book in three months from acceptance. They believe that the average reader will be able to retain 95% of what he assimilates this way, much higher than with ordinary books. So is the this shape of future publishing? We’ll see.

Friday evening was the Starlight Cruise. Three chartered buses conveyed us to Clearwater, taking about an hour and a quarter to get there because there was an anti-war demonstration they had to get around. I’m glad to know that folk are expressing themselves; objections are beginning to approach those of the Vietnam war era, our last pointless military adventure. There was enough slack in the schedule so that we were not late for our cruise. The boat was really one big floating restaurant. We made our orders, then went three stories up to the top deck where we viewed the night sky of Clearwater Beach in a fairly stiff breeze. The motion of the boat was so smooth I would not have known it was moving without seeing outside it. I got involved in a discussion with Todd’s expressive wife of present American policies; it seems I’m not the only one who feels we have a disaster in the making, because hard-line idiots have got the bit in their teeth and don’t seem to care what’s right or wrong. Dinner was served after close to two hours, and my vegetarian platter was good, but twice as much as I could eat. I hate wasting food but had no choice. I understand that’s one reason for the alarming trend of obesity: huge portions. There was live music, and a few couples danced. So it was nice enough, but once is enough for me. I came away with their parting gift: a little packaged candy.

Saturday I started again with the buffet breakfast: mushroom cheese omelet, cereal, orange juice, banana, assorted fruit slices, yogurt. The atmosphere and service were very good. I tried the plastic spoon in the yogurt lid, assembling it and using it: it worked. Fun for the inexperienced. I’ll keep that brand in mind for when I’m traveling without a spoon.

In due course, on to the Writing for Children panel. Children’s books need to be simpler in organization and language, with less violence and sex. If you plan to write for this genre, the organization to join is the Society of Children’s Book Writers, scbw.org. Otherwise, it’s similar to adult books.

Then the panel I was on, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Pros and Cons of E-Publishing. I shared it with Jane Friedman, managing editor of WRITER’S DIGEST, and Moderator Elise Dee Beraru, who pointed out that the panel title seemed like labels: Piers as the good boy, Jane as the bad girl, Elise ugly? Um, I’d have to think about that, but I suspect it’s just a coincidence of listing. We differed on things; I said traditional publishing hardly gave new writers a chance, as it’s hard to sell without an agent, and you can hardly get an agent if you haven’t already published. Jane said that wasn’t true; she had a list of 25 agents. Oh, agents exist, but that’s not exactly my point: will they take on novice writers? I suspect she’s out of touch with the reality most writers face. So I stand by my contention that we do need alternatives, and electronic publishing is a major one. One sad note: I understand a woman wanted to attend my panel, but couldn’t, because her panel was scheduled opposite it. Sigh; I hate to put damsels in distress.

Then there was the Publisher’s Luncheon, where we fetched sandwiches–yes, there was a vegetarian one for me; it did seem the convention managers saw me coming–and sat at our choice of tables hosted by publishers. I spoke briefly to the folk at AWE-STRUCK because it was that publisher that inadvertently put me on to the notion of making a list of electronic publishers, then went where there was space, HOT JAVA. They said yes, they could consider a book like Realty Check, which I feel could adapt very nicely to their pictorial presentation. So when I got home I followed up formally with an email query. As yet I don’t have an answer; they may be glutted with queries.

In the early afternoon I joined the table of ELLORA’S CAVE, talking with their Public relations coordinator Jennifer Martin and author Ann Jacobs. They do Romantica and are it seems getting really hot, now getting 100,000 hits a day on their site. They were passing out GOT SEX? buttons, and I got one. I love that mode of advertising. We had a nice dialogue, as we do have different notions. They require use of the four letter words for their hottest line; as mentioned above, I use them only advisedly, even in my dirty books, preferring to save them for special effect. I suppose it’s a matter of which segment of the erotic market you are appealing to; I suspect mine is more intellectual. I maintain that it is possible to convey any almost concept other than bad taste without resorting to gutter language, but maybe those who really do see all women as walking vaginas yearning to be penetrated by the nearest penis require language tailored to their intellects. (Substitute the appropriate four letter words where applicable; both begin with C.) Female authors of erotica generally need to use pseudonyms, because male readers otherwise get crude notions. I use a pen name to protect my privacy, not being subject to the sexual interest of strange men. Actually some horny females approach female writers too; for some reason they don’t regard that as an improvement. The female approach is one I am careful of as well, not because it bothers me but because if I were ever in a room alone with a young female reader, she could cause me grief by accusing me of molesting her, regardless of the truth. Some folk who have never met me have already suggested I’m guilty of that, apparently because I recognize sex as one of the pleasures of life. So I had a good deal in common with the Ellora’s Cave folk, with separate slants. It was fun comparing notes. This is of course one of the prime reasons to attend conventions: you get to have meaningful dialogues with those you would seldom if ever otherwise encounter, who understand where you are coming from. I have not published with the Cave, or ever read any of their books, and may never do so, but it was great talking with them, because we do have a rough community of experience. Their literature amuses me in places, such as the guidelines for writing Romantica: heroes must always be tall, muscular, well endowed, and slightly obsessive. Strong heroines are a must, but not drop-dead gorgeous. Always have a plot. (It is necessary to tell writers this? Must be.) Use condoms wisely. For their NR-17 rating, which outsells R rating by four to one, use the four letter words, have explicit sex leaving nothing to the imagination. Folk tell me that this sort of stuff makes my dirty books pale in comparison. I doubt it, but those familiar with this genre are welcome to read Pornucopia and The Magic Fart and let me know. I believe I violate too many of the Cave taboos, despite having written the first novel over 30 years ago. So what to make of this? I think they are tapping into the enormous market for sex, and why not? I’ve always felt that a good novel should not have to expurgate the sexual element, which is after all a fundamental aspect of nature. But I do like to have a story with it.

An afternoon snack of assorted ice cream sticks was served; EPICon was great about feeding folk physically as well as mentally. Those of other folk behaved well; mine fell apart before I could finish it, and I got melted gunk on my hands and had to go wash up. No, I don’t think Fate was sending me a message about messing with hard sticks poked into meltingly soft sweet substance; I just happen to be a slow eater.

Then on to the panel on E-Book Erotica, where some of the same folk were. Six women and Jeff as moderator; no symbolism there either, I think. Why write erotica? Money, for one thing; sales are hot. But some also like to write sensual stuff. Do family and friends know? Some do, some don’t; the authors wish that some family members didn’t. I know exactly how it is, having been brought up in a Quaker environment were elders were wary even of dancing or card playing. But I knew that if I allowed my writing to be subject to their tacit censorship, I would never be a success. It turns out that some men write female erotica under female pen names, and some women write under male names. Again, not much of a concern of mine, as my name is sometimes confused for female and occasionally stories circulate that I am a woman. There was a question: what was the oddest fan mail received? It seems that some readers do curse the authors (I think those are called critics), but I didn’t hear anything really odd.

Then I took an hour’s break, relaxing in my room, before attending the photo session. I didn’t put on a tie, as I didn’t need a picture; I simply make it a policy to get generally out amidst people, so that anyone who wants to meet me has opportunity. But the change in those who were getting publicity pictures was remarkable; suddenly these relaxed sloppy folk were spiffy. I sat and chatted amicably with several.

Then at 7 PM it was time for the Eppie Awards Banquet. I had asked Janice whether I could skip this, as in my experience they are long dull events and my interest in awards is limited. She urged me to attend, promising that it would be interesting. Sigh; I had my orders, so I attended. As we entered the hall, I was talking with Linda Eberharter, publisher of the new (as of January 2003) Liquid Silver Books imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, dedicated to quality Romantica; she had been on the erotic panel. Her daughter was with her; I didn’t catch her name, but she would surely answer to the appellation Blonde Bombshell. Women outnumbered men at EPICon four to one or worse, but the men I think noticed only this one woman, glowing like a star amidst debris; I’m surprised they let her in. Maybe the Liquid Silver artists use her as a cover model. She turned out to be another vegetarian, surely owing it all to that. At any rate, when the meals were delivered, it seemed that the steaks had been cut from old tractor tires. Remember the Incredible Hulk movie and TV? Banquets traditionally serve Inedible Bulk. Meanwhile the vegetarian portobello mushroom entree was wonderful. Gay, on my left, struggled with her blob, gave up, and exchanged it for a vegetarian entree; so then we were three, making the others suitably jealous, I’m sure. Vegetarianism will conquer the world; this night was one small step. Jeff, the Master of Ceremonies, was apt and clever throughout. Gay, journalist and mystery writer, asked me to define fantasy, and I gave my standard response: Science Fiction is the literature of the possible; Fantasy is the literature of the impossible. Gay turned out to be the presenter for the Fantasy Award, and she used my definition there. The winning novel for that category was Shadow Prince by Jennifer Dunne–you know, the one who helped me get into my hotel room. Everything makes sense when you fathom the threads. There was one category without a listing of finalists: the Friend of E-Publising Award, given to a person not a member of EPIC who had done most for electronic publishing. That turned out to be for me: a nice plaque for my ongoing Survey of Internet Publishing, and my support of the e-book format. Yes, I was surprised. Good thing I learned about EPIC and added it to my Survey recently.

Sunday morning I was up as usual at 5:30. I left my room before 7 AM, went to the courtyard, and found no one else up, nothing open. Par for the course. So I sat at a table in the atrium, admiring the exotic palm trees and sculptured artificial rivers that course from five rocky springs, along the court, down to a quiet central pool. It is truly a pleasant place. I read an issue of LIBERAL OPINION WEEK, trying to catch up on reading. The convention had been so busy I had read almost nothing, and had not written a story, as I usually do when traveling, though I did manage to make some notes for the story “Scenarios.” In due course I was joined by Edward, who showed me a silver replica of the coin Jesus saw when they asked him the trick question whether Jews should pay taxes. If he said no, he would be in trouble with the Roman authorities; if he said yes, he would alienate his constituency. But he foiled them by replying “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” and of course it was Caesar’s picture on the coin. Jesus was no dummy.

Folk slowly gathered, and we had the Continental Breakfast. I talked with Katharine again. Two of her novels had been up for awards, but the inherent competitive dynamics of the awards process that turned me off several decades ago denied her. Then the breakfast melded into the final program, What Editors are Looking For Right Now. Last year only three publishers attended; this year there were eighteen, pretty well covering all genres between them. It wrapped up with door prizes, concluding about 11AM. EPICon was done.

Dan and Bob drive me home, and we got there by 1 PM. My wife served a luncheon and we chatted until 3 PM. Then Dan and Bob headed back to Tampa to catch their plane, unless their dulcet guide really was waiting at a motel in a negligee. I started in on the accumulated routine of complications of my father’s estate, negotiations for movie options, and the ubiquitous stack of mail. Mundania is such a dull realm.

Only when I got home did I have occasion to delve into the collected goodies I had acquired during the convention. It was a considerable haul. One was a mini CD disc labeled EPIC History 1998-2003. I hadn’t seen such small discs before and wasn’t sure whether they would work on my system, but lo, no problem. In 1997 folk at Romance Writers of America–RWA–tried to set up a special email list for the exploration of ebooks. But RWA balked at having an epub chapter, so they had to do it independently, setting up their own website. Mary Wolf was president, but then she purchased Hard Shell and resigned so as to devote herself to that. EPIC incorporated and made plans for a conference. They had a mini-conference in Chicago in 1999, and the first full conference in 2000. Then another mini-con in Las Vegas in 2001, and another full one in Seattle in 2002. And of course the con in Tampa in 2003. EPIC was growing throughout, and now seems reasonably well established.

Other goodies: a copy of the January 2003 WRITER’S DIGEST. This magazine supports electronic publishing, unlike some in Parnassus, though I’m uncertain how deep that goes. This issue has a column on submissions and contracts, very general; articles on writing fiction and nonfiction; finding a mentor–that is, a successful writer to help guide you past the slings and arrows of outrageous editors–; setting goals; breaking into the women’s markets (you don’t have to be female); how to survive the problem editor (you mean there’s any other kind?); writing for the alternative weeklies; 10 commandments of writing (which boil down to Love Writing and Be Professional); and so on. The novice writer can profit from this compendium of general advice; the pro can get along with out it, having graduated from school long ago. I never read such magazines, for example; I never was good at fitting into molds. My impression is that this magazine understates the hazards writers face, being largely fixed on positives, but I recommend it as a place to start.

There were numerous free samples of myriad types. A big plastic EPICon mug with a false bottom, under which is a Suncoast scene: loose sand, a toy baby alligator, palm fronds, shell, sunglasses, and a computer. Yes, I have a mug story: once my daughter had a fancy mug, and when company came she called down the stairs to me “Daddy, should I bring down my mug?” I replied, “Yes, and bring the rest of you too.” I don’t know why she moved far far away when grown. A pencil with a salamander. “Hugs and Chocolates,” courtesy of Ginny McBlain (www.ginnymcblain.com), with real chocolates; maybe if you visit her site she’ll email you some. Her 3.5″ disk was also included, with the Bear Hugs novel. A packet of pepperment herbal tea, courtesy of Janet Lane Walters, author of Murder And Mint Tea. A necklace of plastic pearls from Catherine Snodgrass (www.catherinesnodgrass.com), author of Circle in the Sand, and several others, and a pen and newsletter. A cute keychain lamb doll from Karen Hudgins (www.KarenHudgins.com), author of One Night with Zorro. An emery board: “Stories to touch your heart,” www.anitalynn-author.com. A week after my return I got a messed up fingernail; I clipped it back, but it was cracked so still snagged things. So I fetched that emery board and filed it smooth. Thanks, Anita, one time seat mate and author of Hart’s Treasure, at FICTION WORKS, a novel with a breast cancer survivor. A badge from EBOOKS showing a naked man with a computer masking his groin: Hot Reads for your Hard Drive. CD disc What’s Cooking, favorite recipes of authors at www.ebooksonthe.net; I recall being invited to contribute to this or a similar compendium and declining because I’m ignorant of recipes. 3.5″ disk from The Book Babes, www.bookbabes.net. 3.5″ disk Romance with Attitude from Maralee Lowder www.maraleelowder.com. 3.5″ disk Holiday Hearts, by four authors, autographed by Linda Bleser. CD The Wages of Justice by Kate Saundby, the Double Dragon Publishing edition. I read that novel some time back, and believe I had some input on its revision. CD Mind Trap, audio, written and read by Tony Ruggiero. Also half a slew of bookmarks, and publishers; literature galore. I was also given the novel Tell No Tales, by the author, Michael P Higgins, in a massive 1stBooks trade paperback edition. This runs over 500 pages, and I had this convention report to do, so had to wait, but I did read it. Its setting is interesting: the year 2007, in the sixth year of the War Against Terrorism, some odd things happening. So it’s a science fiction adventure, and my first glimpse of a physical 1stBooks edition. There are some problems with it; a competent copyeditor could have made a world of difference. But it is nevertheless a work of considerable imagination, with hard-hitting adventure. It could make a slam bang movie.

PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLISHING–a Dash of Cold Water

I’m a blockhead. No, I don’t mean for coming here, and I’m not suddenly agreeing with my illustrious critics. I am referring to the statement by Samuel Johnson: No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. It’s a nice pithy sentiment with which many agree, especially when responding to those who profess to be outraged that any person should ever get paid for writing. Well, I’m a commercial writer, which means I do write for money. But I don’t write only for money. Money is my means to an end, rather than the end itself. I need money to survive so that I can continue writing. Anyone who writes without getting paid for it will soon be out of business unless he has an independent source of income. I made it as a writer, and now am pretty well independent. That means that now sometimes I can write what I want to write, instead of what someone else wants me to write.

But making it the way I did is like winning a lottery: only one writer in a hundred will ever sell anything traditionally, and perhaps only one in a hundred of those will make a good living from it. So unless you are that one in ten thousand, you’d better not be writing for money. You have to write for some other reason, such as the sheer love of self expression, or to sustain a worthy cause, or to create a thing of beauty. In short, you need to be a blockhead.

That goes for most publishers, too. There are a few big boys with access to the bookstores and publicity mechanisms, and about 99% of the sales. If you’re a small publisher–and chances are that if you’re an electronic publisher, you are small–you aren’t going to make much money. So you’d better be in it for idealism or diversion or perversity; probably you won’t get rich, even if you don’t go broke, and you know it. So you have to be a blockhead too. In fact I’m pretty sure that just about all of us in this room are blockheads, and rather proud of it.

Now, having established my credits for addressing you–that is, that I’m a blockhead–I’ll get down to business. I said only one in a hundred will make it to traditional print. I don’t think there are reputable figures; some say only one in four hundred. Fortunately today there are alternatives. There are the small presses, and they publish many good books that big publisher’s won’t touch because they aren’t interested in good books, they’re interested in bestsellers. It is true that it is theoretically possible for the two categories to overlap, but as a practical matter it’s not common. So if you have written a good book, small press is a more likely bet. And there’s electronic publication, and the Internet connection. Why do I suspect that’s not news to you folk of EPIC?

But here’s the kicker: electronic publishers also have standards, both literary and commercial. They have to, because few will take them seriously if all they print is junk, and if they aren’t aware of the bottom line, they’ll soon be where the bottom goes, which is in the toilet. They are up against the cold equations of survival. They can’t give you ideal terms, lest they perish. You may think it’s smart to go to the publisher that provides the biggest royalties–and royalties can go as high as 70%–but if that publisher doesn’t have a solid financial foundation, it will fold, probably just before your royalties come due. So they are looking for quality and saleability. That means they don’t publish everything they can reach. In fact they take only about one in ten proffered manuscripts. Most are soon glutted with books. So if you’re a writer with a book, you can upgrade your chances from one in a hundred to one in ten by going electronic. That’s fine for you, if you happen to be the one who makes the grade, and you get a stable publisher. But what about the remaining 90% of all writers? They have dreams too. Where can they go?

That’s where self publishing comes in. Let me make an important distinction: I don’t mean vanity publishing, where you pay twenty thousand dollars and get crap, I mean affordable services that facilitate your doing it yourself, and you retain control of your literary rights. That’s important. Technically they’re not publishers, but they waddle and quack like publishers, and lay some eggs, so it’s easy to dismiss the distinction. As some of you may know, I support self publishing. In fact I’m on the board of directors of one of the big ones, Xlibris. I invested in it for blockhead reason: not to make money, though it is possible I will, but because I wanted this avenue to exist for all writers. Yes, I use it myself; I have nineteen books there at present, all of which I paid to publish. Xlibris isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough, and so are the others. 1st Books, iUniverse, Trafford–compare their services and see what’s best for you. There are small self publishers too, so you have a fairly wide choice. I maintain an ongoing survey of electronic and self publishers at my HiPiers.com site that anyone can access; it’s free and ornery and, I hope, fair.

A sidelight on that: A year or three back I was asked to write an article on writing fantasy by a long-time writing trade magazine I had written for before. So I wrote a generalized advice piece, and included a positive note: aspiring writers who get nowhere in Parnassus, which is my name for the traditional publishing establishment, could go electronic and greatly increase their chances. I provided some Internet site addresses. And the editor refused to include any reference to that alternative. So I withdrew my piece and it was not published, and of course I wasn’t paid. Here’s the thing: not only was this censorship, which should be anathema to a magazine for writers, it was evidently editorial policy to provide its readers with no hint of their best chance for publication. It was locked in to Parnassus, serving the interest of traditional publishers rather than the interest of its readership. That disgusts me. When, decades ago, before electronic publishing existed, I encountered a similar attitude in a writer’s organization, I quit it in disgust, and of course got badmouthed there as well as blacklisted. It seems Parnassus hasn’t changed much in the interim.

Fortunately we do have electronic publishing now. If you have a book, you should be able get it published, one way or another, unless it’s really offensive. Wouldn’t you know, I ran off the Xlibris chart in two directions: I had some novels that were too big for it, and some that were too dirty for it. I believe I mentioned that today I can write what I want to, and that can mean pushing the limits. What’s the point of limits if you can’t push them? So I found a small press that lacks those limits, and if you have a lot of patience or a dirty mind, you’ll be able to obtain those books. So if you have written a book that makes even self publishers balk, keep looking; you can surely get it into print somewhere, somehow. Thus virtually every writer is publishable today, if only by Blockhead Books. I love that.

But here’s the dash of cold water on that: not only may it cost you several hundred dollars, which you are unlikely to recoup; when reader reactions come in you may be sorry you did it. Because chances are you aren’t nearly as good a writer as you think you are. Despite appearances, editors are not total fools. They may reject your manuscript because it is unreadable. So it’s worth pondering not only what you can do, but what you should do. If your book gets bounced many times, consider whether you are after all not destined to be a writer. I’m a writer, not a publisher, but I have to say that some writers seem less than realistic. Once I received a query from a hopeful writer that was directed to another established writer; the publisher had garbled the mail and sent it to the wrong writer. It happens; anyone named Anthony can be confused, or even Piers–I once got a passel of student letters intended for Piers Paul Read. Yes, I redirected them, and hope he eventually received them. But in this particular case, the correspondent was offering a deal: he would write the books, and the established writer could put her name on them, making them salable, and send him half the money. Great plan, no? I redirected the letter, but also wrote to this person myself, explaining that readers and even some editors do notice the difference in styles and competence, so it wouldn’t work. I suggested that he focus on developing his own talent and name; this might take time and effort, but would be better for him in the long haul. He wrote back: “You don’t understand: I need the money now.” I let him be; this turd had to find his own bottom line.

I also receive queries from writers asking for my personal recommendation for a specific publisher to try. I try to avoid doing that, for several reasons. There may be no single publisher that is ideal for every writer, just as there may be no single man or woman who is the ideal marriage partner. Publishers and writers vary, and the challenge is to find a good fit. That means spot research on the part of the writer, keeping his own needs in mind. Also, there are a number of worthwhile publishers; who am I to say any one is the best? When it comes to self publishing, I have a conflict of interest; the one I know best is the one I have money in. How can my judgment there be trusted? So I try to comment objectively on the ones in my survey, include the links, and leave it to writers to sort out what makes sense for them.

I mentioned trying to be objective. That means positive and negative comments where they seem warranted. A list that praises every publisher, including the bad ones, is useless; there has to be some differentiation. Naturally publishers don’t like negative comments about them. I do get feedback. Yes, some of those publishers are here; no, I won’t name them. Some are polite, correcting my errors; some are threatening. I feel it is a point of principle to stand my ground, and to protect my sources. If a writer gets wronged by a publisher, and tells me, and I run the information anonymously as a warning for others, naturally the publisher wants to know who the whistle-blower is, so it can step on him. I won’t tell, because my survey would be useless if I let publishers squelch all negative comments. I have been the route; as I mentioned, I was blacklisted by some traditional publishers for six years because I complained to a writer’s organization and got a lawyer when a publisher cheated me and stonewalled my queries, and the organization tacitly sided with the errant publisher. This was serious business; I survived as much by luck as determination, and the rights of the case had little to do with it. I learned first hand, the hard way, that justice does not necessarily prevail, and that neither publishers nor writers are necessarily honest. Parnassus has one big bottom; some of it does smell.

This is where it pays to be the ogre: today I have the will and the means to take it to an errant publisher, and I have done so on occasion. I know that the average writer can’t do that, so I feel obliged to do it myself when it is warranted. I tend to view editors as a different and inferior species and publishers as potential scoundrels. But how can I tell when a writer has an unjustified grudge and just wants to get back at the publisher? This can be tricky. So I run the comments, but keep an eye on the situation, and sometimes retract them on a subsequent update. I hope you will take my word that I have never done so on the basis of a threat. But neither do I trash those who threaten me, except to summarize the situation in their entries in my survey, in my ornery fashion, so that all will know their attitude and mine. A publisher can be arrogant but also honest; I know it’s possible, because that’s the way I am. That doesn’t mean I’m always right, just that I do try to correct my mistakes.

I mentioned luck. It’s nice to think that good writing ability is all you need to succeed as a writer. File that with the other illusions. Even if the system were not loaded against the beginning writer, he still needs to get the right manuscript before the right editor at the right publisher at the right time, and that can be sheer chance. It can also be damned near impossible, in traditional publishing, because most editors will not even look at unagented manuscripts, and most agents won’t take on writers who have not previously been published. I sold several novels on my own, and got cheated, before I got an agent. For small press, electronic, and self publishing you can make it without an agent; in fact you may have to, because there’s not enough money in it to interest most agents. If you make enough of a splash electronically, then you may be able to interest a good agent. You don’t want a bad agent; that’s another black hole. But at such time as you can get a good one, do so; you’ll have to pay him 15% of your earnings, but he may double your income and save you the sort of hassles I got into early on. An agent has leverage you don’t.

Let’s say you have your book and you find an electronic publisher. This type of publishing is new, and standards have not jelled. We need a model e-contract, because publishers can rip you off legally by predatory terms, and some will. Some things to look for: limitation of rights taken, such as electronic only, so that if a traditional publisher offers you a bundle for your book, you can take it. I had a report of a movie option proffered for a book, $7,500, which is a good offer, that could have transformed the author’s career, but the e-publisher controlled the book’s movie rights, tried to get greedy, and lost it. A license for a fixed term, such as two years, so you can recover your rights then without hassle if you are not satisfied. If you are satisfied, then you can renew it; it merely gives you some control. An audit clause, so if you suspect there’s a mistake or outright cheating, you can prove it. A typical audit clause allows you or your lawyer to inspect the publisher’s accounts, at your own expense, unless a discrepancy in your disfavor is found that amounts to more than ten per cent of the total; in that case, the publisher must pay for the audit, as well as catching up the missing royalties. This is not academic; I audited a print publisher, caught it cheating, and made it pay for the audit. But if you are wrong, and the accounts are straight, you pay–and I’ve done that too. So this clause is not a license to harass the publisher without cause.

Here’s something that happens in traditional print publishing that I don’t think occurs in electronic publishing–yet. It’s called privishing. This is when for some reason the publisher changes its stupid mind about your great book, and doesn’t want to publish it, but has already paid the advance and is obliged by contract to follow through. So it prints a few copies and releases them without any real promotion, so few folk even know the book exists, let alone where to buy it. Since few electronic publishers pay advances, they don’t need to privish; they can simply dump your book. But keep an eye on it; they might hang on to the rights without doing anything with the book, so you can’t take it elsewhere. I have a jaundiced view of the way traditional print publishers typically treat writers; I have seen more than enough of the way they can hold the writer to the letter of the contract, while violating it themselves. Just because they can. This is not going to change unless the balance of power changes. It is said that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear; when I was in the US Army we had a more pithy version: you can scrub and scrub but you can’t shine shit. I don’t want to see it in electronic publishing, and I will expose it when I do see it. Meanwhile, try to keep an escape hatch in the contract, such as the limited license I mentioned, so you can get out of it if the publisher does wrong by you or your book. This is where an agent can really help, if only you had an agent.

One liability of electronic publishing is that the author may have to do the promotion. If you love traveling at your own expense to hawk your book, and you like paying for ads, and you have connections to get book-signings, okay. But if you’re like me, you’d rather stay home and let the publisher handle all that. So consider the promotion the publisher is prepared to do on your behalf. It can make the difference between great sales, and dead weight. The thing is, there are thousands of books out there, and unless there is some way to attract the attention of your potential readers, they won’t know your book exists. Traditional publishers ship books to bookstores, and a fair percentage of readers go into the stores, look around, and choose from what is there. That doesn’t happen with electronic books; they aren’t in the bookstores. Maybe in future they will be, but you have to survive today.

So maybe you’ll use the Self Publishing and Print-on-Demand technology to print up a pile of books and market them yourself. You’ve got a Web site and friends; surely you can sell, oh, a hundred books. If you make two dollars profit per book, and you sell them all, you’ve got two hundred dollars right there. And all it cost you to publish it was $500. You blockhead. I’ve been that route too; HiPiers was originally set up to sell my own books. We had an office and a staff and an 800 number, and copies of all my titles. We did sell a lot of books. And we lost $50,000 a year. So we shut it down, and they gave our 800 number, still listed in some of my books, to a porno outfit. Now I get irate letters from the mothers of teens who tried that number, and some blacklist me. So heed the voice of experience: be cautious.

So I hope my dashes of cold water have chilled you somewhat. What I’m trying to do is to bring reality to your fond dreams. By all means write your book, and get it published, and hope for the best. And you publishers, do what you can to be successful. All of you have a better chance today than you would have had a decade ago. Just be aware of the pitfalls. You are unlikely to make a lot of money or fame, but if you get the right breaks, and play them correctly, one of you writers in ten thousand may achieve the sort of success I did, and I wish you the best of it. One of you publishers may advance from the small time to the big time; more power to you. Just try to do it without making the mistakes I made, and without getting too arrogant. After a while, it can get tiresome being a blockhead. There are panels coming up at this convention to help you steer a better course in whatever respect you require. Be there.

And maybe, maybe, all of us together can help change the face of publishing so that there is room again for good books by ordinary folk that are not bestsellers. So the regular guy can have a fair chance. The Internet is a phenomenally powerful tool, and we’re still pretty much on the ground floor. What we do today will help determine the shape of publishing tomorrow, and not just on the Internet. There is our Dream; let’s try to make it come true.

Speaking of poop: I heard on MORNING EDITION that if you ask children in a class whether they want to learn about excretory functions, they’re bored before you begin. But if you call it pooping, puking, pissing, burping and farting, they’re interested. I wonder whether there is a lesson about effective writing there? The kind of books critics like are about excretory functions, while I write lowbrow titles like The Magic Fart.

Circa 1980 my wife and I started investing. We decided to diversify the easy way: we bought 200 shares of AT&T; stock just before Ma Bell fragmented into the seven Baby Bells. Since then there have been so many splits and recombinations that it’s a torture just figuring out what to pay tax on, and we hope to start selling them and simplifying our investment. We get two copies of most, for accounts that somehow got split, and when we tried several times to merge them we got nowhere, because big corporations just don’t listen. So selling seems best. Meanwhile I do look at the statements, and noted that recently Verizon had a shareholder initiative to limit CEO pay to 50 times that of the average worker. Yep–the management was arguing against this limit. CEO pay for such corporations now runs about 1,500 times that of lowly workers. If I ran the world, I’d limit the CEOs to a 10 to 1 ratio, and if they quit rather than endure that poverty, I’m sure there would be competent workers ready to be promoted to that office. This idea that companies exist to shovel money to officers while squeezing the blood out of workers and clients is foreign to me. Obviously I’m not a Republican; I’m a registered independent. Otherwise I might understand.

When I encounter something I don’t know (you’d be amazed how often that happens) I have had a simple expedient: ask my readers. Again they have been coming through. But one asked why I don’t just go to a search engine for myself? Well, in prior days I tried that. The thing would chug along and produce pages of listings with mysterious percentages following each, none of which related to my need. Obviously I wasn’t sufficiently geek to appreciate how this benefited me. But this time I tried it again, and here is the story. A reader asked about the ghost in On a Pale Horse, Molly Malone. Well, she’s from a well known Irish folk song, “Cockles and Mussels.” I checked my book of Irish ballads–and the song wasn’t there. I did further research: no song. How could a song I knew so well suddenly not exist? This sort of thing happens to me more often than is comfortable; it’s as if my non-belief in the supernatural causes the supernatural to go after me, especially when I travel. I remember when I did spot research on the unicorn, and suddenly it no longer existed; it had become fantasy. The rest of you probably think it was always fantasy. That’s the way it works; reality changes retroactively, and few folk realize. So I wrote a story relating, and that was my very first sale, “Possible to Rue,” showing how a number of creatures have thus been fantasized. But that didn’t bring them back; the damage was done. Okay, so I knew I had to get on this in a hurry, before the new reality had time to solidify. I tried Google–and just like that it gave me a page of references to Molly Malone, mostly pubs in Ireland, but one covered the fabulous legend. A fishmonger by day, a courtesan by night, until she mysteriously died. Maybe a client smelled something fishy? So I couldn’t save her as a historical character, but at least I saved the legend. Well, almost; it is now listed as a “fake” legend, as if such a thing is possible. Maybe if I had gone to Google first, before wasting time on books? Reality can be so fleeting, it’s gone before you realize. But I do wonder how it managed to exclude Molly from the Irish ballad book; that looks like a critic’s agenda in operation, similar to the one that excludes me from being listed as an effective writer. Since when did the hearty Irish get in bed with the critics?

So anyway, the readers came through on other questions. That Rudyard Kipling poem turns out to be associated with the story “The Man Who Was” identified by Jackie Barnes, Sabbir Muhit, and others. The most competent answer was by Vicki M Taylor, who sent the full poem and story. It starts “The earth gave up her dead that tide,/ Into our camp he came.” The story is about a British party in India where a Russian officer is a guest, and a bedraggled lunatic straggles in. He turns out to have been a prisoner the Russians had “forgotten” to repatriate thirty years before because he had insulted an officer; only now had he escaped and made his way to the home territory. So now the British know what the Russians did, and there will be a reckoning. It concludes “But a terrible spree there’s sure to be/ When he comes back again.” Another reader put me on to the site for The Diary of Bobby Sands, who staged a hunger strike in 1981 as a prisoner in Ireland, protesting English occupation. On the fifth day of the hunger strike he quotes that poem. On the seventeenth day he concludes “They won’t break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then we’ll see the rising of the moon.” So he wasn’t in bed with the critics.

Incomplete progress on that poem about the four letter word. Elizabeth “Windy” Riggs identified it as “Ode to the Four Letter Word” in the volume Bawdy Ballads & Dirty Ditties of the Wartime RAF. I don’t know for sure that’s the poem, but it does seem like my kind of book, so I asked my daughter who knows how to buy things from Amazon (I don’t do money on the Internet) to order it for me, but Amazon didn’t have it.

The mysterious piece of music garnered some suggestions. Windy Riggs thought it might be the Easter overture by Rimsky-Korsakov. Mike Shannon in Belgium thought it might be an excerpt from “The Volga Boatman.” Simon Ashlund in Sweden suggested “Conquest of Paradise.” That turned out to be dynamic and moving music, and I like it, but it wasn’t the one. Adrian McCarthy said to check out “O Fortuna” from the opera Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. It seems to be an experimental opera; maybe some day it will be on video so I can see and hear it. I think that’s it, because I heard it in the background of a TV ad for that production. He said it’s in the soundtrack for the movie Excalibur. Shla’tekkin the Centaur also mentioned Excalibur. As it happens, I have that on cassette, so I played it, and yes, that theme does appear. So this one has been nailed. My readers are just so smart.

Several readers identified the Latin quote. It seems the copy I had used single quote marks that looked like lower case L, so I had it wrong. It is Oderint dum metuant, or “Let them hate, so long as they fear.” Fred Heywood and Bettina Dilger clarified that for me. The bad Roman Emperor Caligula had that philosophy, now echoed by the American administration. Parallels to imperial Rome are apt and disturbing, as are those to Germany’s Third Reich.

Then there’s the song I heard once on the radio when hitchhiking in 1953, whose refrain I remembered as “I’m glad I kissed those other lips/ Before I kissed your own; / If I had not kissed those other lips,/ I never would have known.” Decades later I heard Eddie fisher sing it on TV. So I started collecting Eddie Fisher songs, but it wasn’t there. I have a hundred dollar book listing American popular songs, but it’s not there either. It seemed to have vanished, per that cosmic deletion agenda mentioned above. Ann Holme Cooper was doing research on Eddie Fisher songs, and picked up my reference in an Internet query, and told me it is “When I Was Young,” circa 1953. But it’s not listed in my book. So she sent me the words, and it surely is the song, almost what I remember: “I’m glad I kissed the other lips/ Before I kissed your own. / For I was young, so very young, / I never would have known.” I looked up the site she listed, and it is as she described it. How could Eddie Fisher sing a song that the official records deny exists? The workings of this reality-changing power continue to intrigue me, particularly when the break isn’t quite clean.

Which brings me to the movie Matrix Reloaded. In this period we saw Bullet Proof Monk, which was fun but not great, and X-Men 2, fun and solid with some nice female shapes. Preparing for the third, I watched our video of Matrix, and you know, that’s a better movie than I remembered, making more sense. Here in the Speculative Fiction genre (do not call it Sci-Fi, you turd) the works of Phil K Dick are well known, and this was reminiscent of his takes on ever changing reality. I mean, how do we know reality? When we examine solid matter too closely it turns out to be mostly vacuum infused by electrically charged motes, beginning and ending we know not when or how. So the reality we think we know could indeed be a construct. Matrix Reloaded continues where Matrix leaves off, with a bit too much pointless kung-fu type fighting for my taste–the repetition bores me when every blow is countered, on and on–but has a nice car chase. Does it make sense? I doubt it, but I’ll watch the third one in the series. Certainly it helps explain the reality-changing phenomenon I have remarked on here. When a black cat walks by, and walks by again, that’s a hitch in reality that means it’s being imperfectly changed. Okay, and when an Eddie Fisher song or a Molly Malone legend disappears only partially, isn’t that a similar indication? But who is doing it, and why? I think some healthy paranoia is in order.

I mentioned growing volunteer things in our garbage garden. Well, the fenced potato, tomato, and squash all did well. The potato ran its full course and died back, leaving a nice medium-small new potato. The tomato is still growing, spreading voluminously, but is not yet producing fruit; these plants take time. The squash grew up the chicken wire fence, reached the top, and set up ten flower buds. The flower at the base bloomed, and then the second. Meanwhile I had a number of squash seeds left over from last year, so decided to plant them before they faded; I don’t know how long they last. So these were planted squash, an exception. Then as I left the garden my foot snagged on the other squash fence, and I windmilled, losing my balance. And accidentally ripped out the fence, and the squash with it. Appalled, I replaced it, putting the broken stem back in the ground and watering it, but of course I had killed it. Except that it wasn’t dead; the leaves all wilted but it opened another flower. In a week it started new little leaves. It was recovering! But then caterpillars or something ate off the leaves. In its weakened state it couldn’t handle that and it died. It would have been producing squash by then, if I hadn’t ripped it out. Okay, so now there are 34 new squash plants growing; the loss of that one still bothers me. I cared about that one.

Simultaneously there were adventures with the wrens and wasps. The wrens increased their nest to five eggs, in due course hatched them–and it must have been a snake, coming in the night and bloodlessly cleaning them out. All were gone, the nest undisturbed. So the wrens set up house again, building a new nest in an old umbrella I had leaning in the corner of the pool enclosure. It seemed a singularly insecure site, but soon they had a nest and three eggs. And when they hatched–the predator came again and they were gone. This is nature in operation, but it bothers me. The little wasp, the one whose wingspan hardly extends beyond a thumbnail, slowly constructed her nest and in due course hatched three more wasps. They set to work enlarging the nest–and something took the entire nest away. There were four wasps with no nest. They they were two wasps; maybe the newest ones couldn’t survive without it. Two two set about rebuilding on the same site, and now the nest is shaping up again. Three more wasps have hatched, so now they are five. Will the brave effort suffer the same fate? I worry. I suspect many folk would find it laughable to be concerned about the individual welfare of garden plants or birds or insects; that’s the way I am, nevertheless.

Which brings me to another subject: Asperger syndrome, AS. This is a relatively newly devised diagnosis that is coming to the fore. It is a mild form of autism; it has been conjectured that some leading figures may have had it, like Albert Einstein. Three key symptoms are obsessive interests, difficulty in social relationships, and problems communicating. Folk with AS have trouble with casual chatting; they can’t do small talk and generally lack a sense of humor. But they can grasp complex systems, and can be great musicians, mathematicians, engineers, or physicists. Or to put it my way: their brains are wired for performance, not socializing. They are more akin to powerful motorcycles than to friendly horses. The geeks of Silicon Valley may run to this; that would explain why they produce such powerful programs that somehow don’t relate well to the needs of real people, with manuals that may be technically accurate but don’t help much. Asperger syndrome.

I have been pondering a parallel track: empathy. This term was coined about a century ago and means literally “feeling into.” A person or creature with empathy can imagine another person or creature’s emotion and feel something similar himself. He infers what others feel, and reacts to it, to a degree. Few animals do much of this, but some more than others, and primates most of all. Mankind has taken it to an extreme. I’m sure it facilitates hunting, because our ancestors could get into the minds of their prey and know how it would react, where it would hide. It facilitates social intercourse, because people understand how other people feel. It helps make large social groups feasible, and tribes, states, and nations. I conjecture that it is a lack of empathy that typifies AS. Those whose brains are wired into complicated disciplines have less circuitry for social feeling. Thus geeks. Similarly those who are strong on empathy may lack the qualities necessary to accomplish great tasks.

So how does all this relate to the squashes, birds and wasps? I do tend to feel their feelings, as I understand them, and hurt when they hurt. I feel similarly for my characters as I write fiction, and for my readers, to whom I relate well. It may make me a better writer, and is surely something technically minded critics have trouble fathoming. They are different mindsets. But it is a mystery, because my research into my own family history suggests that my ancestors suffered from lack of empathy, and may have has AS. They tended to be great businessmen or highly religious, even founding their own cults. How did I come to be different–or am I different? There are qualities in me that echo those of my father and grandfather and other relatives. I’m a workaholic with a dedication to my craft that resembles religious fervor. But I do have empathy and a sense of humor, and am adept at small talk. So I wonder.

So on to writing: I wondered whether I should read some Romantica, the sexy romance genre, to see how it compares to my own naughty erotica. ELLORA’S CAVE took me up on that and sent me two novels in exchange for The Magic Fart: The Empress’ New Clothes by Jaid Black and The Switch by Diane Whiteside. The first is science fantasy wherein Zor, the masculine hunk king of a planet, seeks his Sacred Mate, who turns out to be the earth girl Kyra. He abducts her and marries her. His culture practices sex often and openly, in full detail; no ellipsis here. During a banquet he reaches out and titillates her clitoris until she climaxes; she can’t stop him, being bound by magic and not wanting to make a public scene. Women have multiple orgasms; men have sex freely with sexy female forms. There is still the pervasive yearning, the instant knowledge that he or she is The One that seems typical of Romance, but this does have a story and more sex than you can shake a penis at. The Switch is contemporary, standard to a point: Woman in bookstore encounters a handsome man and is intrigued. Soon they are alone together practicing a form of dominance. Indeed, this is a bondage/sadomasochism story; the trick is that each partner has to be able to switch, being dominant or submissive. Genital, oral, anal, whatever, done fully. There are things like nipple clamps on either party to induce some token pain, and butt plugs to affect the nature of sexual penetration, without ellipsis. So if you are into kinky sex, this has it. But the characters are carefully drawn; they do have lives outside the bed. It’s well crafted and I liked it, though I am not into its elements; there is a certain education to be had here. So is this pornography? No, because it has characterization and a developed story. Is it sexy! You bet. Is it equivalent to my dirty books? In sexual detail, yes; in fact it has more detail. But mine still break the Romance taboos, because they don’t draw the line at bestiality, necrophilia, urination, defecation and similar scatological issues. Mine also get into demon sex, impossible for normal human beings. One example: when a demoness wants to punish a man, she runs her limber tongue into his anus and squeezes his prostate, forcing him to ejaculate again after he has spent. It’s not fun; it feels more like rape. So mine are too dirty for this genre. But if you like competent sex with character and story, instead of all-sex or no-sex that some conventional genres force on us, Romantica is the genre for you. ELLORA’S CAVE started it but other publishers are imitating it, so you should be able to find all you want.

One day I checked my email. There were 67 in, but when I trashed the spam it boiled down to 14. This is annoying; even if I wanted a larger penis or to pay off all my debts, I wouldn’t need several solicitations in those areas each day. Everybody complains about spam but it just gets worse. According to an article in the April 25 2003 THE ECONOMIST it is costing Americans maybe ten billion dollars this year lost in productivity and extra spending to combat it, and worldwide costs are much larger. So what can be done about it? The answer, as I see it, is simple: the servers should charge for emails. If they cost one cent each to send it wouldn’t break regular folk, but it would hit the million-copy spammers with $10,000 bills for each mass mailing, and that would sober them up rapidly. So obviously spam can be stopped–if those who transmit it want to. Similar goes for viruses: if my computer can spot and eliminate viruses, why can’t the servers do it, and decline to forward any? That would speed up the Internet, because those viruses are much bigger than simple emails. So again: why don’t they? Obviously they don’t have the welfare of users in mind, but I should think it would simplify their own operation. Are they stupid, or is there some reason they want spam and viruses? Meanwhile some hackers are going after the spammers, locating them and jamming them with so much spam that they can’t operate. Guerrilla computer warfare: I love it.

From time to time I have corresponded with Osmond Beckwith, an erstwhile small publisher who published one of the most significant volumes I’ve read, Rationale of the Dirty Joke by the late G. Legman, that presents thousands of dirty jokes and analyzes them, showing how they relate to the core nature of mankind. Legman said that he could judge character by a person’s favorite dirty joke, and surely he could. My favorite relates to communication in a story, and I had the pleasure of advising Mr. Legman that his comprehensive compendium lacked it, as he acknowledged: I had heard one he hadn’t. That was a naughty thrill. But Beckwith is a person in his own right. In 1981 I bought his anecdotal novel Vernon, which I took to be autobiographical; there are things that really can’t be said straight, so must be cloaked as fiction. This year he sent me Polly, self published with no credits at all; the text simply starts on page 1 and ends on page 447. It’s about 145,000 words, a solid book about a special woman, written I think circa 1990. Beckwith I believe is older than I am; he won’t be around forever, and he writes well. So if you are interested in out of the way material that Parnassus ignores, consider this offer: the author will supply sample copies of both Polly and his earlier wood-engraving illustrated novel Vernon to e-mail requests to OsmondBeckwith@hotmail.com or by snail mail to Osmond Beckwith, 376 Franklin Road, Denville NJ 07834. This is a genuine offer and not an advertising gimmick. Like so many of us, he wants his material to be read, and at this point has printed copies to spare. But if you care to, you could send him a $5 bill to cover packing and shipping. Sure, you can wait until after you receive the books, if you remain suspicious.

One of my roommates in college in the 1950s was Robert Pancoast, a class ahead of me and two or three years older. He was odd in ways, so was my kind of person. One fall he and I hiked the southern Vermont portion of the Long Trail, I doing it in bare feet. One summer he joined me logging at our forest farm in Vermont. Once he and I went camping with our respective girlfriends. Mine remains with me; we’ll celebrate our 47th anniversary in JeJune. His did not. He graduated and moved on in life, becoming an economist. He married and divorced. Then he went to Ukraine as an economics teacher. There in Ukraine, lost, not speaking the language, he was desperate for someone who spoke English. He encountered a librarian, Nelli, who spoke just a little English, and he fell on his knees before her singing a verse from a popular song whose Ukranian words he really didn’t know: “You are the one I’ve been waiting for!” She feared he was a bit crazy, but did help him find his way. It became a wacky romance, and in due course they married. Robert was happy, having found love at last, but he missed American food. When McDonald’s opened its first outlet in Ukraine in 1997, its first customer was Robert Pancoast. They gave him a ride in an air balloon. Nelli wasn’t sure about this, but they took the ride. It turned out to be a bit more of an adventure than planned. The balloon drifted off course and fell into the Dnieper River. The pilot managed to get it aloft again, but they were soaked. Robert suffered ill health thereafter, and sued McDonald’s, but evidence mysteriously disappeared so it didn’t get far. They were short of texts in Ukraine, so I put him in touch with my old high school roommate Ronald Bodkin, an economics professor in Canada, who was able to help him with economics texts. I facilitated their visit to America to attend the college reunion of 1998, where my wife and I got together with them and they met a number of old friends, and then they went on to visit the Bodkins in Canada. Robert got some treatment for his eyes in America and they returned to Ukraine. His health problems continued, and on February 27, 2003 he died. He was 71. I got the news from his widow Nelli as I was writing this column. The old order passeth. About all I can say at this point is that I’m glad Robert got some happiness toward the end of his life.

In Mayhem we had a visit from our two and a half year old Granddaughter, her parents trailing along. She was cute and active. It has been some time since we had children that age. It was fun, but we discover in our dotage that we don’t care to tackle child raising from scratch again. We played with marbles, with the gyroscope, with the seven unit Babushka doll from Ukraine, endlessly taking it apart and putting it back together, with cloth dolls, with cookie tin converted to drum. We went to the forest park where there were all manner of swings and slides and things on springs, and a few other children to interact with.

I continue to break in the left handed compound bow in archery. I can now draw it well enough, but there was something skew about my aim. First arrows kept going right; I fixed that by raising the right side of the arrow rest. Then they started going low, though I wasn’t aiming low. I remembered when I kept missing to the side with the prior bow and fixed it by getting a new arrow rest that didn’t let arrows slide off when loosed; this time I suspected that the arrow rest, which is spring mounted, was dropping down as I loosed. So I used a bent paper clip to jam it in the upright position–and then my arrows missed high, not low. Okay, that didn’t improve my score but suggested that it was indeed the equipment; I can’t score well when the arrow rest lowers my aim a random amount. I’m not sure why it’s sprung, since that does seem to spoil aim, but at least I fixed it. Meanwhile I heard back from Laval Falks, mentioned last column, and learned more about him. He is serving as the national Federation director of the Archery Shooter’s Association (ASA), coordinating and providing direction for the ASA’s 210 member archery clubs across the nation. He’s an active tournament archer on both the local and national level. So as I said before, he is serious about archery, somewhat the way I am serious about writing. No, I haven’t asked him about why an arrow rest should be designed to drop an arrow randomly low, fearing that his answer would make me look idiotic. My guess is that the arrow rest is intended to stabilize an arrow so that a shaking hand or trace irregularity doesn’t foul the shot, like a shock absorber on a car preventing the jolts of the road from jarring the passengers, but that my 34 inch long arrows are too heavy so weigh it down. I see that the ASA site has an ad for Cabela’s, the same place where I order targets. Every time I miss my target array and lose or damage an arrow I get more interested in larger targets. I’ve been looking for one lost arrow for over a month now. The poor thing probably thinks I’ve forgotten it.

Recent studies have indicated that the Atkins diet actually works, at least at first; after a time there’s no difference from other diets, so it’s not a permanent cure. I don’t like the Atkins diet, ever since my father tried it, eating all fat, and did not lose weight; in fact by the time he died he weighed so much that he could no longer stand. By then he was off Atkins, but my annoyance remains. It mainly proves that you can eat anything and lose weight if you limit your diet to that one thing and take supplements to provide other necessary nourishment. There’s a more sensible way: have a balanced diet and don’t overeat. For good health exercise regularly, sleep well, try to avoid unnecessary stress, stay low on sweets and alcohol, and away from tobacco. It works for me; I remain my college weight. All it really takes is reasonable discipline. Why is that so scarce?

Have you seen that new bra, NuBra? Two pink hemispheres that stick to the breasts and hook together, making a woman look upstandingly bra-less. No, I haven’t persuaded my wife to wear one. Sigh.

Those Nigerian solicitations continue to come in, several a day. But some are getting more original. One was from Princess Joy Mswati of the ruling family of Swaziland, who got into trouble when she protested her elder brother the king’s decision to forcefully marry a seventeen year old virgin as his tenth wife. Joy had to leave, and now needs to siphon her $25 million out of England. 15% to me if I help, and who knows what other favors from the Princess? Too bad I’m a cagey old man.

Depression is one of my buttons; as I have said, I have skirted its abyss close enough to have a grim respect for it. I’ve had considerable correspondence with teen girls not because (as some critics would have it) I’m sexually attracted to underage flesh, but because I do not laugh at or belittle their depression; I know they are suffering. I’d like to know how to truly abolish it, even if that should cost me some readers. Despite claims of psychologists, the problem is nowhere near solved; in fact it’s getting worse, and a sizable segment of the population experiences it. An interview in NEW SCIENTIST for April 12, 2003, says depression will soon rank second in the global disease burden, suicide rates are rising, and the toll is horrific. Mental illness costs Britain two billion pounds a year, and surely more in America. It seems that depressed people have excessive REM (rapid eye movement) sleep: they dream far more than healthy people do. Wow–now I know why I’m a dreamer! Dreams are there to process memories–that’s been my thesis for years, and slowly science is catching up to me–but in some folk they overload and use up a lot of energy. Treat that problem and it might abate depression in a day. Depression, this interview suggests, is not merely a chemical imbalance in the brain; it is caused by worry about needs for control, meaning, intimacy, connections, and this worry is a misuse of imagination. Now I have the most active imagination I know of; could it connect to my mood? Would abating my mild depression cause me to lose the quality that makes me a successful writer? That’s scary. It seems that counseling that encourages introspection will inevitably deepen depression. Freud thought that the unconscious mind was like a cesspool, so the noxious elements had to be conjured up and expiated. But dreams do this already and shouldn’t be duplicated. The interview also suggests that the right and left brains may not communicate well with each other and so left-hemisphere thoughts can come across to the right hemisphere as “hearing voices.” And folk with good imaginations are more likely to suffer post traumatic stress. I’m not sure I can afford to believe all this, but it’s worth pondering.

Another question of the day is torture. There’s plenty of it; ask Amnesty International. I am appalled by it; I think torturers should be hung up by their thumbs and probed with hot irons until–um, let me reconsider that. (For the slavering critic who has somehow read this far: this is grim humor, not an expression of hypocrisy.) But here’s the crux: if a kidnapper buries a child in a vault with only 12 hours of air, and you catch the kidnapper but he refuses to tell where the child is as the hours pass, do you give him a good night’s rest as the child dies, or do you do what it takes to make him tell? That is, torture him. I’m not sure I can answer that question. If you justify torture in one case, it becomes easier to justify it in another, in a deadly slippery slope, until at last folk get tortured for criticizing the government. But if you let kidnappers get away with it, many more children will be at risk. There’s also the fact that an innocent person will say anything, especially what the torturers want him to say, to escape further torture, so the results are not necessarily reliable. Remember the Inquisition, where women confessed to having sex with demons. Police would be able to elicit a confession confirming their charge, even if they have the wrong suspect. There’s too much of that already, as DNA testing is demonstrating. So I’m against torture, but could squirm some if pressed on specific cases.

I trust most readers know I maintain an ongoing and sometimes feisty survey of Internet publishing and services for the benefit of aspiring writers. Every so often I phrase something there in a way that pleases me, so here are a couple of examples. A writer was displeased with the response of one publisher, but my information about this publisher was good, so I said: “I think you should keep them on your list, as a future piece might connect and they might do better with it than a hungrier publisher would. To make a crude analogy: if you were single and looking, you might be cautious about cursing the handsome billionaire just because he didn’t ask you out, because the neighborhood grease monkey who is eager to get into your pants may not really be a better prospect.” Another publisher came back with a good response to my caution about preserving movie rights, and that got me into a spot discussion perhaps of more general interest The publisher quoted my shouting (that is, the capitals) and added to it: “DON’T LET THE PUBLISHER GRAB MOVIE RIGHTS–UNLESS THEY ARE LIKE LIONHEARTED WHO HAS THE CONTACTS AND PARTNERS TO DEVELOP THOSE RIGHTS.” Then my discussion: “If an author doesn’t have an agent, working through the publisher may be the best shot for a movie. So there you have the ‘He said, she said’ abridged dialog. I must say that movie options are complicated and a writer who tries to handle them alone is likely to get stung, so this does make sense. If a movie option offer comes to you and you don’t trust the publisher, GET AN AGENT. If it’s a real movie offer, any agent will jump at the chance to get a piece of the action. That’s likely to mean a regular agent for your book, and a separate Hollywood agent the book agent will contact. Yes, maybe double commissions, but do it anyway; barrels of money may be on the line, but the sharks in those waters can be fierce. If the movie interest fades out the moment an agent appears, it’s probably either spurious or a rip-off ploy; a real movie outfit will be satisfied to work with an agent.”

Shorter shrift: NEW SCIENTIST had an article about Cold Fusion. That was the fabulous low-tech breakthrough to garner fusion power that turned out to be spurious, to my regret. Except that it seems one outfit didn’t give up on it: the US Navy. The Navy is not noted for wild goose chases, so this is interesting. Simple, cheap cold fusion power would be a world-transforming breakthrough. We’ll see. US NEWS & WORLD REPORT has a letter remarking that Nazi Hermann Goering, when asked how Hitler gained the support of the German people, said that it was fairly easy to convince them that they were in imminent danger of attack while denouncing the pacifists as unpatriotic and aiding the enemy. Considering the recent American campaign against Iraq based on claims of weapons of mass destruction, it is evident who was paying attention to Goering. US NEWS had more on Hitler’s machinations, which evidently remain a model. The Humanist magazine FREE INQUIRYs Spring 2003 issue has an article titled “Fascism Anyone?” by Lawrence W. Britt that considers five repressive regimes and what they had in common: Powerful expressions of nationalism. Disdain for human rights. Scapegoats as a unifying cause. Militarism. Sexism. Controlled mass media. Obsession with national security. Religion tied to the ruling elite. Power of corporations protected. Power of labor suppressed. Suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Obsession with crime and punishment. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Fraudulent elections. Of course, the article concludes, we don’t see any of that in democratic America…

Over the years I have supported environmental causes and organizations, but sometimes they disappoint me. I dropped The Wilderness Society when its chief executive bulldozed old growth trees from his property and the Society ignored my pointed query. Now I learn that the Nature Conservancy, which accepts donations of property, sells it, and uses the money to buy and protect environmentally sensitive land, is not exactly what I thought. It has amassed three billion dollars in assets, but has logged forests, engineered a $64 million deal paving the way for opulent houses on fragile grasslands, and drilled for natural gas under a breeding ground of an endangered bird species. Corporations like General Motors, American Electric Power Co, and Georgia-Pacific have been represented on its board, and Mobil Oil, Exxon, and Dow Chemical Co are major supporters. It seems somehow loath to get at all confrontational with the big polluters. This is not to say that it has joined the enemy, but probably other organizations will more truly represent the environment, and my interest will turn toward them.

And Sunday, JeJune 1, as I struggled to wrap up this column, there were other things to do. A letter explains it, but first I must explain the letter: In a Georgia school they have a program relating to Flat Stanley. In that story Stanley was squished flat, but that made it possible to mail him places so he could readily travel. Well, twelve year old Courtney sent me Flat Courtney, who looks a little like Raggedy Ann, asking me to report on local activities. Here is the text of my letter:

Dear Courtney,

And here is Flat Courtney back. I don’t like to travel, so I didn’t go out of town, but today I did go to see a movie with my wife and daughter. You see, they each had a birthday in Mayhem, so we celebrated it by going to see Finding Nemo and eating at a restaurant. So it was a good occasion for Flat Courtney to participate in.

Finding Nemo is a wonderful movie about a little orange clownfish, Nemo, who gets abducted by a dentist and put in an aquarium. His father Marlin is desperate to rescue him, because he’s the only survivor of 400 baby fish. (Ugly story; no need to go into detail.) He sets out with Dory, a blue lady fish with a short memory; she can’t remember what happened more than a moment ago, so she’s not a lot of help, but he can’t get rid of her. They get accidentally swallowed by a whale who takes them to the coast of Sydney, Australia, where Nemo is captive. A pelican tries to help them, but things get fouled up. There’s a hilarious scene in the dentist’s office where the dentist is running around trying to catch the pelican and a little girl is screaming her head off, and the folk in the waiting room think this is horrible dentistry. Nemo plays dead and finally manages to get flushed down the toilet and washed back out to sea, and all ends happily after a few more scares. There are some lovely colorful scenes and some scary ones, but overall it’s a lot of fun and you’ll surely like it if you haven’t seen it already. I’m sure Flat Courtney loved it, especially blue Dory fish, who is almost as flat as Courtney.

Then we stopped at EL RANCHITO for a Mexican dinner, but Flat Courtney didn’t eat anything because she didn’t want to get fat. I mean, a burrito is as fattening as a small burro, and she wouldn’t fit in the envelope.

PREVENTION sent me a solicitation: “Let food be your Miracle Medicine.” I’m a vegetarian and do pay attention to my diet; those who say vegetarianism is unhealthy are ignorant about what smart vegetarians eat. But I’ve always been a bit wary of PREVENTION. For one thing, it uses what I call prick-tease ads: the kind that lead you on, then deny you unless you pay. “Just one small serving of this delicious ‘miracle’ food gives you more protection against cancer than 60 cups of broccoli!” See page 221 of their touted book. But this booklet does give some hints; it recommends preventing cancer with strawberries, and says one little carrot a day slashes your risk of stroke by 68%, and to live longer eat pizza, and that grapefruit is your mighty shield against breast cancer, pasta will stop heartburn, heal a wound with honey, eat a pear to slash your cholesterol, reduce your blood pressure with celery, fight heart disease with nuts, prevent cancer with cherries, perk up your love live with apricots, and stop the stinging and itching of a bee sting or mosquito bite by rubbing it with an onion. I suspect that just about any food is considered good for something, so a healthy diet should accomplish wonders without the need for this book. But about vegetarianism: anyone is a potential convert, because they have discovered that many tropical ants are vegetarians, and there is also a species of piranha fish in French Guiana that is vegetarian. Maybe “Piranha” could be taken as a condensation of “Piers Anthony,” so this vegetarian could have relatives you wouldn’t want to mess with.

Post card addressed to Anthony Piers suggests this new version of the Pledge of Allegiance: “Before the flag of the United States of America I FREELY pledge allegiance to that republic’s Constitution and to the democracy enshrined within, our nation one with valor, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Makes sense to me.

Every so often Dear Abby reruns a hilarious story titled “A Dog Named Sex.” It concludes when Sex gets lost, and the owner looks for him in an alley. Challenged by a cop, he explains “I’m looking for Sex.” His case comes up Friday. Not connected except in my wicked imagination is an item on a local plant: at Coral Gables, Florida, they have a rare tropical flower that bloomed. They call it Mr. Stinky because it smells like a cross between rotting roadkill and eggs left in the sun, the putrid stench suffusing the neighborhood. Here’s why it relates to a name like Sex: its official designation is Amorphophallus titanum, loosely translated as “enormous vague phallus,” looking like a seven foot tall male member. So if you come to see it, when the cop inquires what you’re looking for, say “A stinky seven foot penis.” He may not be amused.

Which reminds me in turn of another news item, seriously unfunny: In Ethiopia women have a serious problem, obstetric fistulas. A women doesn’t have much independence in that neighborhood, so can get pregnant early and may have a baby too big for her pelvis. After several days of labor without a doctor, the baby dies, and the girl is left with a hole between her bladder, vagina, and maybe also her rectum. Thus urine and feces drip constantly down her legs, and she stinks. She may be abandoned by her husband or rapist and driven out of the village. She can be attacked by hyenas who are attracted by the smell and come to tear her apart. Dr. Catherine Hamilton has helped 24,000 women overcome this condition, and two American women are campaigning to get people to donate one dollar each to make up the money that President Bush cut, to prevent and treat these fistulas. Dr. Lewis Wall is begging for funds to build a fistula hospital in West Africa (www.wfmic.org).

A reader put me on to the Betty Dodson site, www.bettydodson.com. It’s about liberating masturbation, erotic sex education, and promoting sexual diversity. So if you want to see nonjudgmental discussions of sex that aren’t straight porno, this is one place. One man says that he loves to sniff a woman’s panties as he jerks off, and asks Betty to send him hers. She declines because she doesn’t wear panties. A woman’s fantasy of sex with her father makes her feel dirty sometimes. Then there’s the joy of fist fucking. There’s a woman’s letter to her man, going into detail about how she will penetrate his rectum with her nine inch dildo. Actually there is similar in the Romantica novel The Switch discussed above, so this is evidently current practice. It seems sexual role reversals are enjoyed by some. I admit to ignorance: where is the line between “straight” and “gay” sex? If the dildo is wielded by a woman it’s straight, and if by a man it’s gay? Does it matter? There’s a sodomy case that relates, addressing whether the same act of anal penetration is normal if done with a woman and criminal if done with a man. Then there’s Jane Juska: at age 66 she feared her sex life was over, so she placed an ad inviting sex with any man she liked. She got such a response that she wrote a book about it: A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance. But a newspaper column suggests that a marriage based on being really hot for each other may not be the best basis. I agree. When I was with a girl in college, I considered whether there were factors beyond sex appeal to make an enduring marriage, and concluded that there were. So I married her, and we’ll have our 47th anniversary this month, JeJune. An Internet forwarding says that in the 1500s most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May; even so, brides carried bouquets of flowers to hide their body odor. That is evidently still true today.

Look, I have so much stuff in my “Column” folder that I could go on way too long; I can’t comment on it all. So let me cut it off here, concluding with this from NEW SCIENTIST: Women it seems have a double life. From their fathers they get an X chromosome (boys get the Y), but since they already have one from their mothers, one has to be turned off. This is accomplished randomly, so that a woman is a patchwork of mother and father X chromosomes. This can lead to patches of different kinds of skin, to auto-immune reactions, and to considerable differences between identical female twins. So they aren’t identical, despite having the same genetics and upbringing. Maybe that explains some of the mystery of women; they really are more complicated and conflicted than men.

“The problem is that few in the first world know or care much about the plight of those in the third world. Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, the American Friends Service Committee and others regularly document horrors around the world. But trying to do something about it is problematical, because often the problem is as much political as economic. Supplies that are sent may wind up for sale on the black market; money can be stolen or squandered. My father went to Spain with the British Quaker relief effort during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39, to feed the starving children, and did save many children. Then he was arrested and deported by the victorious Franco regime. That’s how my family came to America in 1940. So what happened to the children? By then the war was over, so maybe they survived. But it shows the risk entailed in being on the spot to make sure the assistance goes to those who need it. Millions have died in central Africa because of internecine war there now; it’s hardly limited to the Berbers or to Africa. There’s a campaign of extinction against the Mayas in central America. None of this makes headlines, if it makes the news at all. So I applaud your effort, but it’s barely a drop in the bucket. The whole world needs reform.”

Another form of solicitation is for autographs. At first I honored all of them, sending pictures. A year and a half ago I stopped sending them overseas, because I was receiving slews of almost identically worded requests for two pictures, mostly to central European addresses where my books are not currently sold, so chances were they were not readers but autograph hounds who were merely sending requests to any addresses they could find. It was done entirely at my expense for pictures, postage, and time, and if they could sell the pictures it was free money for them. Well, now I am receiving increasing numbers of requests for two or more pictures from North American addresses, and also learning more often of my pictures and even my letters being sold on eBay. So it seems the same game is being played here. It has gotten so that about half my snail mail consists of sending out pictures. I have a certain aversion to being a patsy, and I resent the waste of my time. Since it is hard for me to tell whether any given request is legitimate–that is, from a real reader who would really value a memento, instead of a faker emulating a reader–I think I have to call a halt here too. I have been refusing to send pictures to those who get one and ask repeatedly for more, but that isn’t enough. I have a couple hundred pictures I got printed, and I’ll honor requests while they last, then stop. I realize this will make for a sudden campaign by those same free-pictures-for-profit jerks that will quickly exhaust the pictures, and make them more valuable on the second hand picture market, but I don’t see how else to do it. I recommend that my real readers refuse to be taken by these sharks, if only because their rapacity has caused me to stop honoring legitimate requests. It’s like the honor system, which dishonest folk regard as a license to cheat; one cheater can ruin the whole thing. In this case it seems to be many cheaters. I’ll limit pictures one to a request, and only personalized to a given name. When I run out of pictures I’ll answer requests with a polite demurral for a couple of months, then cease responding. I know this will alienate some readers, but I hope that those who value me for my books and thoughts rather than my image or illegible scrawl will understand. Enough is enough. Why would you want to buy a picture you know has been obtained by fraud, autographed to someone else? Let me conclude this discussion with a quote from a girl in Sweden: “I think you sing very good,” and wanting my autograph. Why do I suspect she’s not a reader of mine?

The morning I started this column I was reading the newspaper, trying to get through it efficiently, when I encountered two items that ruined that. The thing is, I pause to read anything that seems worthwhile, or there’s no point in having a newspaper, and sometimes that takes time. So I was late that morning, as is the case about as often as not. One item was on cybersex: it seems that some married folk like to go to Internet chat rooms to romance others. A woman wrote a thesis on the subject, interviewing participants and drawing conclusions. It seems that about 30% of participants go on to have physical sexual affairs with their partners. Why do they do it? They say because their spouses don’t meet their sexual needs, being too busy with their own activities. I suspect that those spouses may also have become overweight or over-familiar, so lack novelty. The author interviewed 76 men and 10 women, not because she didn’t care about women but because the women were fewer in number and thus busier than the men; the women tended to brush her off so they could get it on faster with a hot male prospect. I suspect that women may also be more cautious about advertising their activity. In our hypocritical culture, a man who strays is proving his manhood, while a woman who strays is a slut. I have never subscribed to the notion that when two participate in a mutually consensual act, one is uplifted and the other is degraded. But of course I am known for my odd ideas. So do they consider it cheating, as presumably both parties are married? They say no, because it’s not physical, except for that 30%. That’s an interesting question. Since it seems they may masturbate to climax while linked to their cyber lovers, it does seem to be solidly sexual. When a man and a woman have physical sex, using condoms or other barriers, is there real physical contact? The pleasure each gets is really self-generated, triggered by the body of the other but not really from the other. So does it matter whether the partner is the thickness of a condom distant, or the distance of a computer screen and beyond? They are triggering each other’s sexual culminations. I can’t say I know the answer, but my guess is it’s a gray zone, neither quite fish nor fowl. Or maybe fishy or foul.

The other newspaper item was about bullying: a bullied girl has grown up to write a book about it. I approve of writing books about things; it’s my bailiwick. In school I was the smallest in my class, male or female, until a late growth spurt that finished two years into college left me at a respectable five feet, ten and a half inches and quite physically fit. So I got to know the bullies. Yes, being bullied leaves a mark on a person. Once I outgrew it, as it were, I retained my antipathy to it, though the arena shifted from physical to social/economic. I was the one who was suspended from college because I refused to bow to an arbitrary rule change the faculty lacked the authority to make but enforced by, yes, suspensions. (The college administration never cared to argue the merits of the case, after I became a major monetary benefactor, so there is no refutation to my statement that I was suspended for principle. I would still love to argue the case.) I was one of two who were blacklisted for promotion and booted as a survey instructor in the US Army because I refused to be bullied into signing up for a “voluntary” savings bond program, thus denying them 100% participation. (One officer in a rare moment of candor expressed outrage at my case. Then I think he got the word about his own promotional prospects, and shut up. That’s the way it is in the army, but I doubt it cares to argue the case publicly either.) I’m the one who gets a lawyer when a publisher tries to bully me the way it does other writers. Yes, I got blacklisted as a writer, but again you won’t find any publisher I have tangled with arguing its case publicly. That would cause me to get rather specific on names and details, and I do have the resources to pursue it legally. But you do pay a price when you fight back, and it may be more than you win. Dastards are vindictive when balked. I did get suspended, I did get barred from promotions, I did lose markets. It’s similar to the whistle blower syndrome: the whistler may win his case, but his livelihood may be shot. So bullies exist throughout, and few underlings stand up to them, and I understand why as well as anyone does. But it’s way past time for our society to tackle this problem and abate the damage being done. It has been said that a bully is a baby criminal. I suspect some grow up to be CEOs. I think a school bully should be summarily removed from class and placed in reform school, not for his sake but for the sake of the decent kids who are just trying to get along. I think a corporate bully should be fired and blackballed, maybe branded with the letter B on his forehead. And a publisher who cheats writers and threatens them when they object should be exposed and penalized. But of course we’ll never see it; I don’t run the world. But in my limited way I do try to accomplish some good by speaking out candidly in this column, and by calling a spade a spade in my ongoing survey of Internet Publishers.

So okay, here’s a current example of a contentious Survey update, showing my feisty attitude: “2003 UPDATE–An annoyed notice informed me that they have ALWAYS paid 25% royalties. Maybe so, but if that’s not spelled out in the contract, it can be changed without notice, as I said. They say they have never, ever kept the rights on any books. They told me ‘You are doing a disservice to everyone by posting incorrect information.’ Well, I got it from their site, and am happy to update when notified or when I recheck the site. But as of the day I rechecked, following their communication, I found that they still take world rights including print, and the contract still doesn’t specify the royalty rate other than ‘as indicated on PUBLISHER’S website, or the submission documents.’ In short, nothing has changed, my original caution is correct, and if there is a disservice here, it is by the publisher’s spokesperson who rattles an ogre’s cage by falsely accusing him of publishing incorrect information. That is unlikely to garner a favorable report. (Message to publishers: be wary of challenging an old pro; he may not be as far into his dotage as it appears.)”

Or to translate the exchange into basic terms: they called me a liar and I told them to fuck off. It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.

On to more practical matters. The modem on my Linux system got balky, so I tested it one Sunday morning at 5:30. My dialer dialed for 40 minutes and didn’t succeed in getting online. I figured that if it was that way at the least busy time of the week, it was shot. Right before Survey Update time, when I needed to spend hours on the Internet. So I queried my Linux Geek, and he suggested replacing it with an external modem. He recommended US Robotics, but nobody in these parts carries it, so we settled for AOpen. It had a disk with activation software for everything except Linux, which is par for the course. Smaller companies are extremely wary of the bully in the software arena, Macrohard, which hates Linux. I connected it by the idiot-proof expedient of plugging plugs into those orifices they seemed to fit, except that the main one didn’t fit anything. It terminated in a wide plug that had an offshoot going back, like a six lane highway with a two lane diversion just before the intersection. That was the one that fit, leaving the big one to hang in space. I pity anyone who drives that six lane highway and overlooks the U-turn. Then Geek talked me through the labyrinthine process of orienting on it, layer by layer, menu by menu, code by code, and finally it worked. No, of course these things aren’t plug & play; that would put Geeks out of business. It’s in the Big Book of Rules: thou shalt not have it User-Friendly, lest Macrohard step on thee. But I was able to do my Survey update in good order.

Are you thoroughly bored with my Archery reports yet? Maybe this will get you there. There were two things I wanted to improve about my target array. First, I didn’t like having arrows that missed low plow into the ground; it’s not good for them. Second, I don’t like having arrows squeeze between my main target and my baffle targets so they can plow into the ground beyond the array. Arrows are cunning; if there’s a crevice, they’ll find it and forge through. So I bought some more targets. One was the Black Hole, a layered one that I put beneath my main one. That works; I have missed the main target many times, but no arrow has plowed into the ground. Two more are Humungo targets, that really do stop the arrows, though I have to lay the target on the ground, put a foot on it, and haul with both hands to get the arrow out. That’ll teach me not to miss. And I set baffle targets behind the crevices between targets. And that’s working, except when I manage to miss the entire array of eleven targets. I have lost three arrows that way. Sigh. Another development is the Kisser Button. That’s a knob on the string that touches the corner of the mouth when the bowstring is drawn, sort of fastening it in place so you always line up the same way. It seemed to help on the left side, so I tried putting one on the right side bow too. Well, ever since I made these changes in targets and string, my scores have plummeted. I mean, with my crude system of counting +1 for each arrow that hits my one square foot center at 50 yards range, and -1 for each arrow that misses my central target, I used to have scores ranging from 0 to 12, usually in the 4-6 range, loosing 12 arrows right and 12 left. But now I have been making scores of 0 to -9. Once in a while I’ll creep over 0, but more often not. I don’t know whether raising the target array messed me up, or whether I’m getting suddenly unsteady as I age.

I get requests for interviews, and usually honor them if they are convenient. Email interviews are easy to do, chat room interviews harder, and face to face ones harder yet, because someone has to travel to make them possible. This time I had an AOL chatroom interview. AOL, for those who haven’t heard of it, is a sort of merged dialer/browser/email facility with something like forty million members. This was a whole separate experience. It turns out that AOL, being anal retentive, doesn’t let a person meet a chat room from outside; it has to be inside. That meant that I had to join AOL on a temporary basis; they offer a generous month’s free trial. I think the letters stand for Annoying Old Lady. The chat hostess, Lyric, sent me an AOL disk, and in the course of two hours I got it installed on my correspondence computer. Pretty much from the start I found I didn’t like it. It deluged me with pop-up ads, and the ongoing news window had more ads, and it send me daily emails that were ads for its services. It’s like going into a bazaar with hawkers crying at you from every side; the constant clamor is annoying. In addition it made pop-up ads on my screen when I wasn’t in AOL that sometimes interfered with my email. Its own email drove me crazy, because it offered a ready Reply to an incoming one only when I didn’t need it, and did not offer it when I did, forcing me to send a new email instead of getting the automatic setup of responding to the incoming one. I finally figured that out: I handle so much email that I check all of it in a given batch before answering any of it, then do it in a queue. But the moment I do anything other than answer an email immediately, AOL deletes the Reply option, and I found no way to get it back. I tended to typo the complicated address when doing a Reply via a New letter, and it would get bounced back to me unsent. You can’t type your email offline then go on to send it, as I normally do; you have to be online all the time, which is wasteful. It saved old letters in a special folder specific to me–but there was no way to find that folder. Lyric finally told me: you have to look under Mail, not Folder. Why didn’t it tell me that? Its Speller is out of this world; would you believe it even challenged my comma after “Dear Lyric,” thinking it should be a colon? Yet it missed some real typos. Overall, AOL simply does not operate the way I do.

Then the interview, which was at 7 Pm Sunday. Seems they normally do it at 10 PM but I demurred; I am falling asleep by then. I’m an early bird; I wake about 5 AM and poop out at night. So for me they moved it up. It was supposed to be at CHAT WITH PROS but there was no chat room by that name; it had been changed. When I actually went there Sunday, it seemed it had been changed again; I couldn’t find it. So I sent Lyric a quick email and she sent me a link to the new address. This is par for the course; for some reason electronic hosts always seem to change addresses just before my event, messing me up. My screen name was Docks153. That’s as in the plural of pier, 153 of them. I was surprised that 152 folk had chosen that name before me; I thought no one would have. The interview room was as auditorium with two windows; I was in the top, on stage, while the audience was in the bottom. There was some grumbling about that; they didn’t like being segregated. I don’t blame them. AOL was supposed to promote the event, but apparently didn’t; there were only about 25 folk there at any one time, and some of them were evidently ignorant of the fact that it was an interview session; they wanted to chat among themselves as usual, and did so. At one point I evidently miskeyed, because in the middle of my sentence AOL said “Good-bye” and kicked me out. I had to scramble back in, find Lyric’s link, and return to the chat room in time to catch someone in the bottom window being glad I was gone. No such luck, sucker. Others expressed annoyance that I was there only for the agreed hour; one said it was no wonder I was sinking on the midlist range if I didn’t do more interviews. (Actually this was one of three interviews I did in the course of about a week; the email one can be found at http://members.tripod.com/~geek_world/fantasy_interview_anthony.html and the third will be on Sci-Fi Radio, done by Alan Story) It was nevertheless a lively discussion, punctuated by my frequent typos. You see, I type touch on a Dvorak keyboard, but my keys are marked for QWERTY; the moment I look at the keyboard I can get in trouble. One was a mental typo: I typed “experiencing” when I meant “expecting.” Apart from that it was a routine interview, with the usual questions and answers. Surprise was expressed at the way my answers did not match the “book” answers. Well, the book tries to be artificially encouraging; I tell it as it is. That’s more like watching the blood fly as the squealing pig disappears into the grinder, instead of merely eating the sanitary sausage. Those who actually try to get traditionally published discover that sweetness and light is mostly a figment of the Parnassus image marketing; literary dreams are often a sucker’s game. The chatters were all right. But I still don’t like AOL and don’t expect to go there again. I understand it has been losing members; I could surely give it a hint why, if it cared about my opinion or anyone else’s.

This summer I have been reading my late father’s lifelong Journal of thoughts and activities, which he kept from the time he was 15 to 86. This is research for my book length semi-biography of him, as seen by the major women in his life, the most difficult of which was my mother. It is an understatement to say that my parents’ marriage was not made in heaven. If some readers wonder from what crazy scene I emerged; well in ways it resembled a subdivision of hell without there being any overt or intentional abuse. But here’s a hint: my father loved a girl his age in England, and she was warming to him–when she got typhoid fever and died. Fifty years later he still mourned her loss and constantly reread the references to her in the Journal. She was a nice girl, and like him in key ways, which is why she might not have been a good match for him. For one thing, they both seem to have been depressive, and unable to express positive personal emotions. That’s a formula for mischief. After her death he came to know her sister, who was a delightfully positive girl; could I have gone back in time and interacted with her, I think I would have fallen in love with her, and I love her a bit regardless. She was ideal–but though he considered marrying her, he could not bring himself to pop the question, and so it was in stasis. For one thing, she strongly resembled her deceased sister in appearance, and neither of them could be sure that it was not really her sister he saw in her. Then he met my mother, and everything changed. They married without really knowing each other, and regretted it ever since, for good reason.

So that volume is not conceived as a commercial book, and it’s not about me; I will be only an incidental minor character therein. It’s a special, limited exploration of my father’s life, significant portions of which are tragic. I’ll distribute it mainly to surviving family members, many of whom will not be interested. I’ll self publish it, making it available in due course, so completest readers can find it; a few will be curious. But that’s how the time between Xanth novels went this year.

So how did my sister and I survive? Well, our parents certainly weren’t much interested in us; they went off to Spain to feed hungry children during the civil war of 1936-39, leaving us with our maternal grandparents. They weren’t much interested in us either, so they hired a nanny. That’s how it’s done, in England. And there, would you believe was our salvation. That nanny was competent and devoted, and as I came into the critical years of the formation of my first enduring memories, she was my mother figure. It was I believe my caring time with her that set the basis for my mental and emotional framework that makes me what I am today, battered but not destroyed by the decade of cruel existence that followed. I have wondered how I came to have such strong empathy when others in my family lacked it. I read recently that empathy comes into being in that period of a child’s life, if the nurturing is there. That solves that riddle. So I have been learning things about myself as I learn about my father. It has not been a completely comfortable study, but perhaps true personal understanding seldom is.

Now, having reviewed the women in my father’s life, three of the four dying before him, I contemplate my own marital future. My wife’s health is not as good as mine; I fear I will survive her, though I hope to make our 50th anniversary first, and whatever offers beyond that. We passed our 47th in JeJune. Once I thought I would never marry; now I can’t tolerate the notion of ever living alone. I’d have to look for another woman. Well, it’s not as if I’m choosy; any smart, honest, healthy, esthetic vegetarian humanist with long dark hair and a sweet nature would be considered. Ah, you say, but does my wife match that template? Well, no; after a decade or so of marriage she cut her hair short. But she’s grandmothered in.

Most of my mail is positive, but once in a while comes a stinker. Here is an example. I received an unsigned email from a woman totally agreeing with the suggestion that I like underage sex. “You claim there is nothing in On a Pale Horse to suggest underage sex. Either you are a liar or you are moving into the ‘land of senior citizen dimentia.'[sic] I won’t be able to point out the page(s) where the underage sex or what is really child pornography is written down, because I tore that book to pieces after I read it, and I burned it along with your other works.” She goes on to say she will report me. “For you see, I am a woman who knows what it is like to be forced to have sex with a grown man when I was only five years old. I hate men and now I hate you most of all. May you burn in hell, but first may you die a slow, painful death from anal rape and the ravages of AIDS.” Well, I’m sorry she suffered abuse, as it evidently unhinged her mind. Obviously she destroyed the wrong book, and so thinks her certainty can’t be refuted. That’s one way to preserve a delusion. It’s a common problem: a writer who addresses an abuse is then accused of practicing it. I wonder what kind of mail is received by murder mystery writers? I hope she finds solace somewhere. Meanwhile, again, for the record: my sexual interest is in grown women, not children, as my wife can attest, but I can’t claim that full-breasted teen girls are uninteresting merely because they are not yet eighteen. Neither are retirement age women uninteresting if they have kept their shape. Were I in a position to choose, I’d favor the older ones, as they would have a greater community of interest with me. But I’m not eager to have to choose any time soon.

We saw movies, thanks mainly to our movie freak daughter. There was the League of Extraordinary Men, whose preview had impressed me. It turned out to be not as good as expected. It seemed that each time our heroes got together in some secret place, the bad guys surrounded them. Then someone would douse the lights and the good guys would beat back the bad guys. So how come the bad guys didn’t just wipe them out from ambush without giving warning? That didn’t make sense. Much of it was also filmed in semi-darkness. Darn it, I like to see the action; I don’t care how much money they save by dousing the lights. But the characters drawn from fiction were fun, including a vampire woman what was not entirely averse to spot romance, and there were some nice explosions. So it was okay, but could readily have been better had they hired an electrician and a script writer with common sense. Then we saw Terminator 3, and that surprised us the other way: it was better than anticipated. It had a small cast of about four main characters, a cohesive story line, nice enough effects, and fair verisimilitude. The human female lead was believable, and the unhuman other female believable in her lack of acting ability: she was a machine crafted to look like a sexy woman. I’m sorry we didn’t get better glimpses of her nice emulation body. There was also about the wildest car chase sequence I’ve seen; it seems there are still new wrinkles on an old standby. The conclusion surprised me, and seemed apt. We also watched a video that impressed me: Monster’s Ball, the story of a lawman’s affair with the girlfriend of a prisoner. It was mostly realistically dark in spirit, with some startling scenes. One was a young woman who dropped in on the lawman, evidently an acquaintance. Then suddenly she removed her shirt, baring splendid breasts. Then she bared her bottom and leaned on a counter, and he had at her from behind. Oh–she was a regular prostitute making a house call, wasting no moves. Why lie down when standing is faster? The moment he finished she repaired her outfit and walked out. He might have liked a bit more of a relationship, but she had no interest. Another was a sequence with another officer who had made a mistake; when rebuked he pulled a gun on our hero and knocked him around some. “You never cared for me much,” he said accusingly, and our hero agreed. “But I loved you,” the man said, and abruptly shot himself to death. And of course Halle Berry was nice as the late love interest; she didn’t decamp the moment he was out of her.

There turns out to be another writer in Inverness. She’s lived here as long as I have, but we never met. That is Kristina O’Donnelly. I read her big novel The Horseman, a romance/historical set in 1960s Turkey. There’s a lot here; immense detail on Turkish history, culture, and politics merged with a hard-hitting story. It’s not perfect, but it is a substantial novel. The author’s website is www.ladyliterature-films.com. As usual I have an immense pile of clippings and tearsheets I saved during these two months, too many to comment on with any competence. I’ll surely have to winnow. But let’s see what I can do with attempted brief mentions. NEW SCIENTIST says that it turns out that memories are not fixed like video recordings, but are modified and refiled each time they are summoned. Thus they are dynamic, changing with use, and it is possible to have clear memories of things that never actually happened. That may indeed be so. I’ve had people accuse me of things that just ain’t so, and perhaps this explains the mechanism. The same magazine had a complex on human nature, including free will and the difference between men and woman. Do we really have free will, or do we just think we do? Whole volumes can and have been written about this, yet it remains unsettled. It says there are no psychological characteristics in which all men are different from all women, but there is a fundamental reproductive asymmetry: a woman must make a massive investment in a few children, while a man can potentially father a large number. So to be reproductively successful women should seek males who have ample resources to share, and men should pursue women at the peak of their fertility. And indeed we see it: women value healthy wealthy stable older men, while men are attracted to young sexy women. Beyond that it becomes complex. Women typically, it says here (I may disagree), have more imagination and empathy than men, while the male brain is hard wired for understanding and building systems. Autism (again it says) is the result of an extreme version of the male brain. Agree or disagree, this is worth pondering. Another article tackles evolution: How did life begin, how do mutations lead to evolution, how are new species formed, is evolution predictable, and what’s God got to do with it? That last interests me. Humans, it says, are odd by animal standards in their extraordinary willingness to accept and even die for the community. This level of altruism is a key to our success; the group is stronger than the individual. But why should individuals give up personal advantage for the sake of the group? What mutes their natural selfishness? In essence, this says, gods are created by our big brains to prevent free riders from benefiting from cooperative society without paying the costs. The religious urge may enable human society to function. If you believe in life after death where accounts will be settled by a judgmental god, you are more likely to behave well in this life. SCIENCE NEWS lists a book Why God Won’t Go Away, subtitled “Brain Science and the Biology of Belief.” There is a region in the brain that seems to compel the spiritual urge. That explains a lot. I have noted with a certain bemusement mankind’s seeming eagerness to believe in the supernatural, thus endorsing astrology, divination, superstition, deficits, and yes, the miracles and afterlife of religion. It never made much sense to me, as there is no creditable evidence of the validity of such things. But if it really contributes to the supremacy of our species, that may indeed make sense. It may be nonsense, but nonsense that facilitates cooperation that in turn enables our kind to dominate the world becomes on some level not nonsensical after all. So I suppose I’ll have to school myself in tolerance, like the boy who defined faith as believing in what you know ain’t so.

Something that definitely is brain related and perhaps genetic is dyslexia. I believe I have mentioned before how I took three years to make it through first grade, being just about as stupid a student as they come. (And haven’t changed a bit, I suspect my illustrious critics say.) Only when my daughter had some similar problems and was diagnosed dyslexic did I realize what my problem might have been. More information is accumulating, and a discussion in NEW SCIENTIST indicates that dyslexia is more than the inability to read and write. There can be short term memory effects, a problem sequencing events, an impaired sense of time, problems with coordination, and less reliable sensory feedback. Dyslexics can’t touch their noses when their eyes are closed, for example. It seems English is an opaque language that causes dyslexics more trouble. Again I forget whether I have mentioned this before (forgetting is more likely a signal of old age than dyslexia), but I suffer from few if any of these complications today, and believe it is because I was able to develop an alternate brain center to handle them. I can touch my nose with my eyes closed. Maybe there is similar hope for others. But what a struggle it was in the early years!

I hate reading Amnesty International’s literature, because it documents man’s inhumanity to man. I had a paragraph on this last column, so will keep this amendment brief. The United States has a policy against using torture that turns out to be currently meaningless. AI quotes an anonymous official: “We don’t kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them.” With a list of questions we want answered. Woe betide the prisoner who is innocent and so is unable to answer, may his soul rest in peace. AI quotes Oxford scholar Henry Shue: “If the most powerful country in the world has to torture, how are we supposed to convince anyone else that they shouldn’t torture?”

WORLD WATCH points out that anti-abortion politics result in the deaths of many mothers together with their children, during childbirth. The denial of US funding to international family planning organizations that consider abortion an option will result in the deaths of 4,700 mothers and 77,000 of their babies each year. “It’s one of the great ironies of right-wing politics in the united States that the self-styled ‘pro-life’ activists devote the most vigorous of their activities to promoting policies that increase death.” I’m not sure that irony is the right word; maybe hypocrisy is.

The AUTHOR’S GUILD BULLETIN for summer 2003 has a symposium on selling your book to Hollywood. It’s a nice discussion. If you are offered a movie contract, take the money and run, because you won’t like what they do to it. Do you need an agent for this? Yes, because otherwise you may get ripped off. If you can prove it you may win your case, but you’ll be blacklisted, so it’s better not to make an issue. There’s a book about the stupid things movie executives have said to writers titled A Martian Wouldn’t Say That, edited by Leonard Stern, who has been president of the Writer’s Guild. For example, one script had a woman who wasn’t supposed to be pregnant, but did get pregnant, a real problem. The exec asked whether it had to be a woman. A comment by Jonathan Parker: “I think a lot of people have the idea that people make movies because they want to tell the exact story in the book. That’s not why people make movies. The people who are making the decisions are making them for financial reasons. One hopes there are artistic reasons as well.” If this is the sort of candid discussion you like, join AUTHORS GUILD; their seminars can be excellent. They also recently sent out an email warning writers that ZIFF DAVIS was trying to coerce its writers into forfeiting all rights to their work, without pay, retroactively. Other writers’ organizations have similar objections, and are taking legal action. As I have said before, publishers are often shits; they don’t care whether a given writer lives or dies, so long as they can use his output cheaply. It does tend to get cheaper seventy years after he dies, and sooner than that if his heirs are ignorant. So if you really want to please your publisher, hurry up and die.

Newspaper item titled “Some ghosts don’t want to be seen.” It’s about ghost writers. If you want to be a writer and don’t care about receiving credit as long as you do get paid, this is the profession for you.

The WALL STREET JOURNAL had an article on Print-On-Demand publishing, listing the major self publishing outfits. It says that traditional publishers are increasingly taking on self published authors, if their work is good. Acceptance of self publishing is growing. Newspaper article says that more older writers are using POD. I have said that this is the likely future of publishing, being the main avenue out from under the heel of Parnassus. Yes, I have put my money where my mouth is.

Newspaper article titled “Use it or lose it, your brain that is.” It makes the point that the brain needs exercise just as the body does, or it becomes flabby. I’ve always figured that, which is why I exercise regularly both physically and mentally. I tackle the scrambled word and chess puzzles in the daily newspaper, and constantly seek new and novel insights, as this column might indicate. My body is standing up well; I think I don’t look my age (I’m 69 August 6) and my brain still seems to work reasonably well though spot memory of names and numbers is an increasing problem, and I’m a virtual idiot when traveling. I can get lost in places where other folk don’t even see places. One theory is that so much information has been overlaid in a limited brain that stuff does get fudged, like a fragmented hard drive. But if I could clear out old out-of-date memories to make room for new ones, which ones would I clear? Maybe it’s a sign of threatening senility that I’d have a hell of a time deciding which ones to throw out. Those old memories make me what I am today, for good or ill. US NEWS & WORLD REPORT says that age normally brings a decline in the speed of information processing. But sometimes it’s more than that, as with Alzheimer’s, that attacks the memory processing area of the brain. That’s like a slow degradation of your computer hard disk; eventually you’ll lose something vital and die. But brain exercise such as reading, crossword puzzles, playing board games like chess or checkers, playing musical instruments, and even dancing can delay the loss.

Here’s an example of my ignorance: the daily comic strip “Gasoline Alley” recently had a series relating to a musician named Doug Kershaw with a long homely face. He is obviously readily recognizable, but I draw a blank. Is there such a person, or is this a parody of someone? My recognition of musical names and faces more or less expires with Dinah Shore, and no, I don’t want to forget her now that’s she’s gone.

Article in NEW SCIENTIST titled “How not to beat spam.” My solution to this constant annoyance has been simple: charge for email. Often simple solutions turn out to be simple minded (duh!) and this article clarifies what’s wrong with mine. Spammers are adept at stealing the use of unguarded computers, forwarding their messages through them, and so would manage to foist off the charges on folk who were innocent. The article recommends passing global anti-spam laws and going after the spammers and their sponsors. It would be a job tracing them down, but in time they’d be gone.

Another newspaper article has input on Web surfing: when you encounter microscopic print, go to View and Text Size and tweak the type to make it big enough to read. Naturally it won’t work for me; I use the Linux KDE Konqueror, and it lacks that option. Par for my course.

Item in a letter in NEW SCIENTIST explains why there is no Nobel prize for math: a mathematician was having an affair with Alfred Nobel’s wife, and Alfred was furious. But a subsequent letter pointed out that Alfred was a bachelor. Hm, that does complicate it. Did I mention the problem with simple answers?

Another from NEW SCIENTIST: masturbation may be good for men. It seems that the process of producing seminal fluid concentrates certain carcinogens, and frequent ejaculation clears the pipes and prevents them from accumulating to a toxic level. Thus men who ejaculate daily from ages 20 to 50 are less likely to develop prostate cancer. So would having a different woman every night accomplish the same healthy benefit? No, because that elevates the risk of venereal disease. There may be a parallel to women who nurse their babies, because that similarly flushes out carcinogens. So it may be that in future doctors will require men to masturbate often, for their health. In addition, women don’t necessarily ovulate just once a month; some do it twice a month, and some three times. That may help explain the unfunny joke: what do you call a woman who uses the rhythm method of contraception? A mother. But her tubes are probably clean.

Depression: TG Browning emailed me about a New Zealand study that indicates at least one type of depression is genetic, and I have a local newspaper clipping and an article in THE ECONOMIST saying the same. Yes, it is slowly becoming recognized that depression is an illness, not a weakness. Psychological counseling can help, but the assumption that it’s all in your head is mostly bogus. This is one of my buttons. Remember; I’m the one who was excluded for all mental diseases because the doctor didn’t diagnose the cause of my moderate chronic fatigue. Now that I’m on thyroid medication that has eased, and so has my mild depression, I think by no coincidence. My father was depressive, and I wondered about a genetic component. There are surely a number of causes for clinical depression, and I suspect most of them are physical. You can’t just snap out of it, any more than you can snap out of your limp and run footraces after your foot has been amputated; you need to deal with the condition first. Nevertheless, there are psychological triggers for temporary depression, such as loss of job, death in the family, romantic breakup, financial setbacks, and poor health. When those are piled on top of an existing depressive state, it can get serious. Hence loss of appetite, ambition, illness, or suicide. I have encountered many depressives–yes, mostly teen girls who write to me–and have much sympathy. When they try to express themselves in story or poetry others can condemn them for their morbidity, which hardly helps. I am wary of drugs–I don’t even like to take aspirin if I can avoid it–but sometimes drugs seem to be the only answer, and they can work wonders.

US NEWS for June 30-July 7, 2003 is a special issue featuring the Builders of Dreams. Building is broadly interpreted: palaces, fortresses, parks, suspension bridges, the Panama Canal, tunnels, highways, skyscrapers, the Eiffel Tower, the Egyptian Pyramids, cathedrals. It’s quite a display of human engineering.

We bought a different kind of mosquito remedy. This looks like a small tennis racket. You depress a button on the handle to activate it and sweep it through the air. When it catches the mosquito, pop! and it’s electrocuted. It will be a while before we know how practical this is. I tried waving it over my head, and got stung twice on the leg.

An email told me of PPCM, Peripartum Cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart muscle that occurs in the last month of pregnancy and six months thereafter. It may relate to congestive heart failure, and is mast often misdiagnosed so that it goes untreated, so that women can die. My thought is that this could relate to postpartum depression, another physical ailment that others tell the mother to just snap out of. I suspect that so much of the building blocks of living things go to the making of the baby that the mother’s body is seriously depleted, and she needs to get them restored. If she were given a diet rich in those key elements she might recover much faster, and be happier too.

The scams continue. Galen Sturgess in Australia notified me of one, and we received a similar one ourselves, and spied a newspaper article on it. It starts with an email notification that you have won a lotto prize of several million dollars. You must get in touch privately; if you break confidentiality you will be disqualified. You are told to wire something like $9,000 for taxes owing on your winnings, but not to worry; they send you a good faith check for $12,000 to more than cover it, so you aren’t really risking anything. Except that after you send the money, their check bounces, and you are out the money. You fool.

Niels Eji in Denmark sent me a CD of his music, which was inspired by his reading of my books. It is part of a research project called Musica Humana, whose main purpose is to create a relaxing atmosphere and stimulate imagination of hospital patients. Indeed the music is melodic and smooth. The site is www.gefionrecords.com . The 50th anniversary of the ending of the Korean War made the news. It’s called the forgotten war. That’s weird, because that war had everything. I remember it well. If you watched the long running TV series M.A.S.H., that was set in Korea. I was in high school in 1950 when the North Koreans invaded South Korea. Each day they advanced farther south, soon capturing the capital Seoul and going on. Korea is a peninsula, like Florida only a bit larger. It’s as if they took St. Petersburg/Tampa and forged on down toward Miami. America rallied to the defense of South Korea, but had to squeeze its machinery in through that limited port in the south, Pusan. They were able to hold a perimeter of only about 90 miles. But then came the counter attack, back near St. Pete, oops, Seoul. They forged in from the Gulf of Mexico, I mean the Yellow Sea, took Seoul, and cut off the enemy supply lines. The North Korean army fell apart as American led forces exploded out of the south in the summer of 1950. In something like five days they had driven the enemy clear of the country. Then they invaded North Korea, and pushed on up to the Russian and Chinese borders. At that point China interceded, sending in massive forces, and drove the Americans back. The war finally ground to a stalemate about where it had started, and that’s where the line remains today. But the significance was greater than the peninsula. America had thought it was virtually impossible for its vastly superior firepower to be overcome, but the Chinese did it, using “human sea” tactics. That was one lesson. But in so doing the Chinese took such dreadful losses, human and equipment, that I think it set their economics back years, and they never had much inclination to face American troops thereafter. It was a Pyrrhic victory for them, one that cost more than it was worth. That was their lesson. Yet there was more: we learned later that General MacArthur wanted to nuke the Chinese, which would have stopped them, for sure. But Russia said that if we did that, they would nuke us, precipitating World War Three. We concluded that we couldn’t risk it. MacArthur was sacked and the Chinese took North Korea, which reformed its autocratic ways not a whit. And thereafter China made sure to develop nukes of its own. And this is the forgotten war? What would it take to make a memorable war?

A reader answered my question about the song “Manuel”: it turns out to be an early Kingston Trio effort. Another reader sent me her to-be-published children’s poem/story featuring Flied Lice. It’s disgusting; children will love it. I told her the joke it reminds me of: Oriental Diner: “I’ll have flied lice, please.” Waiter, snickering: “Are you sure you don’t mean fried rice?” Diner, annoyed: “That’s what I said, you plick.”

Right into AwGhost 1st things kept coming; I have two bleeping many interests. You know how books by new writers often have blurbs on the cover? That is, endorsements written by more established writers, saying how great they are, so that readers will figure if their favorite writer likes this book, it’s probably worthwhile. Indeed, it probably is. But now many writers who were helped by blurbs at the outset of their careers won’t blurb the works of other writers. Seems like a bad attitude, doesn’t it? But this newspaper item tells why, and it’s true in my experience: a popular author receives so many requests for giving blurbs that if he/she honored them all, there’d be no time left for anything else. I have been the route. What am I to think when a publisher who won’t even look it my current novel wants me to take my time to read and promote the writer it did take? Well, I try to be fair, and I have blurbed the work of writers I don’t personally like, and of publishers who have shat on me, because I feel a good book should be fairly promoted for the sake of literature. But it takes me three days to read an average book, and that comes right out of my own writing time. Suppose I am crowding a deadline? Also, sometimes I read a novel, and conclude it is not of sufficient quality to blurb; I won’t cheat my readers by recommending something I don’t think they’d like. Sometimes I read and blurb, but the publisher finds a bigger name or a more enthusiastic quote and doesn’t run mine. Chances are maybe 50-50 that my time will be wasted in that sense. Once I blurbed, and the other writer then denigrated one of my novels in an interview. That’s not good form. Sometimes I know that the value of my lost time reading a book is greater than the advance that other writer has been paid, though perhaps my blurb will help him earn more for his next novel. Sometimes I blurb an unsold writer, hoping to help him make a sale, and then his book doesn’t sell anyway. Sometimes I read one by an aspiring writer, and have to tell him with regret that it is unsalable as it stands, thereby alienating him. Some writers don’t want honesty, they want useful praise; unfortunately that has to be earned by good writing. So there are constraints. I’m sure other known writers have had similar experiences. I believe I have given many more blurbs than I ever received, so have paid my dues. And that’s why I am reluctant to blurb today.

The other later newspaper item is about starvation as a means of euthanasia. That’s one of my buttons. I believe that a person should be allowed to live and die as he chooses, provided he’s not hurting anyone else. When the time comes, in his considered judgment, to slough off this mortal coil, he should be allowed to do that without undue discomfort. He should not be required to suffer until his body and his bank account finally expire together. The idea of having some fanatic of the religious right tell me when it is permissible for me to die turns me off. But it is true that assisted euthanasia can be abused; in some cases sufficient pain medication might make a few more years of life worth living. Fortunately (?) the NRA has fought the good fight to keep the single most convenient and effective suicide device freely available: a gun put to the head. But that can be messy, and yes, many folk do care about the mess they leave behind. Is there a cleaner way? Yes: just stop eating and drinking, and in about two weeks you will quietly and, it seems, fairly peacefully, fade out. There’s also a safety factor: you can change your mind at any time and resume eating/drinking. The latter is more immediate; starvation alone can take months, but dehydration takes days. I understand that it can even be a comfortable, almost pleasant termination. A survey in Oregon rates it on average about 8 on a scale of 0-9, the higher end of the scale being positive. This was the judgment of the nurses who cared for those who died; we don’t have direct word, of course. When my time comes, I will remember.

Our WebMistress visited Nepal and took many pictures. Those interested can see them at www.seema-designs.com/nepal/nepal.htm .

I still have too much of a pile of clippings and notes to get through, ranging from Vitamin C, through the purpose of sleep and dreams, Mormonism, politics, the movie being made locally titled The Punisher, a ranch in Nevada where men pay to hunt naked women and shoot them with paintball guns and have sex with them after, the world’s serious water problems, a twelve billion year old planet, a DISCOVER article on slide rules–I taught slide rule use in the Army–the resurgent power of the Y chromosome, the truth about migraines, the NRA’s campaign against safe guns, to the candidacy of Vermont’s Howard Dean; I lived in Vermont and would really like to comment, and more, but this column is 95,000 words and I have to arbitrarily cut it off. I hope what’s here suffices.

So I started this column on the 28th day, hoping to jam it through efficiently too, and update the ongoing electronic publishing survey by the turn of the month, puff puff. But in the rush of writing there were time consuming details I had to skip over, that I need for the completion of the novel. What to do? A dim bulb flashed over my head–such things are literal in Xanth–and I realized I could ask my loyal readers, who generally seem to know more about Xanth than I do. Certainly they send in cutely phrased “questions” that point out inconsistencies, such as how come Cynthia Centaur lacked the tail-flicking body-lightening magic of other flying centaurs, then later had it? Since I can’t afford to get caught in an error lest I lose credibility and break my fans’ hearts, I have to strain my brain to produce a credible answer, somewhat the way current American administration officials do when asked where those documented Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq are. For the record: Cynthia lacked it that tail magic, but then in Harpy Thyme was transformed by Magician Trent to another form, and back to winged centaur, and he absent mindedly used the template for the other type of flying. It took her a while to realize, but in time she did. Anyway, for some loyal detail-tabulating reader out there: if you can answer one or both of these questions within a week of the appearance of this column (so I have time to revise my material before it’s Too Late), I’ll give you a measly credit in the Author’s Note, buried where few will notice it. Fair enough?

#1: I’m sure I had reference to Iron Mountain, I think in Color of Her Panties, which is a mountain in south Xanth made entirely of iron. By some suspicious coincidence there is a tourist attraction by that name in the same section of Florida. In Pet Peeve I have a major battle there, so I want to know exactly what I said about it before. But I can’t find the reference, frustratingly. Can you? #2: There is a description of Lake Wails, with the wailing monster who leaves little prints on the water–the prints of wails–a little south of Iron Mountain, in the same spot as Florida’s Lake Wales. I thought maybe I had that in The Source of Magic, but can’t find it there. Maybe it’s also in Panties? I’d like to have the title of the novel and the page number, so I can verify my memory of the locale. If, perish forbid, I should receive half a slew of correct answers, I’ll credit the first five and stop there; there has to be a reasonable limit, even for magic.

My prior project, which to my surprise I wasn’t able to finish, so I will return to it after Xanth is done, was my semi-biography of my father as seen through the eyes of the major women in his life. There have been, as you might imagine, some dismaying things I have discovered, especially as I explored the circumstances of my own genesis, but I suspect this is the normal penalty for poking into one’s parents’ lives. But also some odd notes. One was a quote from a prayer “The Fountain,” beginning “When I was a boy, God held my hand, but I escaped from him.” As an agnostic I find that intriguing. God never held my hand; I’m not a refugee, but one who never felt the need for this particular fantasy. No, the prayer is not agnostic; it tells how the lost boy grew up forever searching for God, and finally found God within himself, per Quaker doctrine: the Inner Light. If I believed in God, that’s the way I would have it. In fact I already do: cultures make their gods in their own images. I like G. B. Shaw’s statement in the Revolutionist’s Handbook: “Beware of the man whose god is in the sky.”

My favorite author is surely George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, especially for his author’s notes. I have his complete plays, which some day maybe I’ll read–ah, the delights we postpone forever, waiting for the appropriate time–and was checking them when I saw an odd title: “Why She Would Not.” Many a man has surely wondered that about his wife or girlfriend. The play was short, so I read it, and discovered it was incomplete. Shaw was writing a play when he died in 1950, and this must be the one, unfinished. It’s about a woman who befriends a man who helps her, gets him a job, and he thrives and is obviously the man for her. But she would not marry him, because she likes to run things herself, and he is too competent. So what happens? Shaw’s death prevents us from knowing, but were I writing it, I would have him suffer an accident that makes him dependent. Then she would marry him, as she would have the upper hand. Which reminds me of a piece by my favorite poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan,” also unfinished. A reader wrote to me once urging me to finish it, but I’m not sure that I could match Coleridge’s intention or his phenomenal poetic skill. No false modestly here; I can do just about anything I aspire to, but Shaw and Coleridge represent peaks beyond my aspirations, even when they are unfinished.

Last time I mentioned temporarily joining AOL so as to participate in a chat room interview. I thought it might be difficult to quit, and it was. Oh, I called the number, and after a 25 minute hassle got through to the right party and got canceled. But that wasn’t the end of it. Periodically they called us back, with special resubscription offers, and the software on the hard disk refused to let itself be completely removed. AOL, I learned, is in some respects like a virus. At one point I returned to the computer, whose screen saver was on, meaning it had been at least five minutes since I had touched a key, and heard dialing. Yes, AOL was calling itself up, though we had abolished the summoning icons. Had I not returned when I did, and hastily exited it, my system could have been on for hours, racking up charges. This was still in the grace period, so I wouldn’t have to pay, but what of later days? So we delved more deeply and trashed every AOL file we could find. It was sort of like beating a zombie to death–zombies don’t readily die–but it is finally quiescent, I think. And of course I’ll never touch AOL again.

Which brings me to a coincidental connection: some of my readers are at AOL, and on occasion they email me. Okay, if you mail me from AOL and don’t get an answer, it’s not because of my direct problem with them. It’s because AOL may bounce my reply. No, not in retaliation; I test-joined it under a different name. It’s that these damn viruses and worms now use fake return addresses, including hijacking ours, so AOL thinks HiPiers is spamming it or sending it viruses. We had a warning from eBay too, and sometimes from elsewhere. Folk, we have Norton antivirus software, constantly updated, that checks all incoming and outgoing email; we are not sending anyone either spam or viruses. But until AOL and others catch on that return addresses are being faked, we are at risk for being blocked there. Maybe if the address of someone important gets faked, causing inconvenience, something will finally be done about the viruses and spammers. I imagine this response to such a prank: “Dear Secretary of State: I am not accepting any more of your emails, because you called me an ignorant turd and sent me a virus. I don’t care if you did find Weapons of Mass Destruction, you are to be blocked henceforth. PS–I don’t think that term ‘ignorant’ was called for.” Signed, the President. So maybe the Attorney General will sift through garbage and locate the originator of the fake email and hang him up by his toenails for two years before he gets charged, but meanwhile what about the rest of us? Yes, we wrote to our Internet Service Provider, EarthLink, carefully explaining the situation–and got the bug letter. Oh, you who came on the scene yesterday are not familiar with that? I’ll tell you the story that best illustrates it. Once upon a time a traveler took a train ride, and was appalled to find the coach overridden with roaches. He wrote an angry letter to the president of the railroad company. In due course he received the president’s response: “Dear Mr. Gleep: Thank you for calling our attention to this problem. We are shocked, shocked to learn that you encountered such a situation. Rest assured that we will do everything in our power to clear our coaches of vermin and maintain the quality of hygiene you have every right to expect. We appreciate responsible passengers such as yourself, and value your business.” Well, now; that was very good. But Mr. Gleep noticed that something was clipped to the letter. Apparently it was the president’s instruction to his secretary, who had forgotten to remove it before mailing the letter. (Such things can happen when handling hundreds of similar letters a day.) It was a scrawled note: “Send this SOB the bug letter.” Okay, no note was clipped to our email response, but it was definitely the bug letter; we know it when we see it. It even politely informed us that we were infected with the SoBig worm, apparently taking one of the fakes as gospel, instead of addressing the real problem. They must get thousands of complaints such as ours, and have no more intention of addressing them than did the railroad. That’s why bug letters are used.

Which naturally brings me to the Do Not Call list. Yes, we signed up for it, toward the end; I think we were about the 50 millionth. Then a court blocked its implementation, because the government department lacked sufficient authority, so Congress quickly revised the law to get it on again. And another court blocked it because it doesn’t cover charitable solicitations. At this writing it’s in limbo, which I hope is expeditiously resolved. Yes, I’d like to see charitable and political solicitations blocked too. I am capable of forming my own opinions and making my own decisions with respect to these things, and prefer not to be bugged by phone. Humor columnist Dave Barry published the number of a telemarketing firm that claims the list is unconstitutional so that readers could swamp it with calls. It seems the firm was not amused. Another interesting aspect: some of the bosses of telemarketing firms have their own numbers on that do-not-call list. Hm.

All this is quite apart from readers who send me queries, and my answer bounces because their email address is not valid. Cale A. Numinen, if you’re reading this: I wrote you a full letter answer the end of AwGhost. It bounced. So if you cursed me for not answering, now you know the fault was yours. Next time use a valid address. I don’t appreciate having my time wasted by a thoughtless reader.

The cute little paper wasps (in Xanth they don’t make paper, they are made of paper) on my door were doing fine one day, a dozen or more associated with that nest. Next day there were none. I think there must be a bird that comes through like a killer planet and gobbles them all up. Damn. But next day I discovered another paper-wasp nest, of a rather different nature: a foot-thick gourd-shaped edifice about twenty feet above our drive. Those would be hornets, and I doubt that bird bothers them much.

I read that one theory about men’s nocturnal erections is that they are to ensure that the penis gets enough oxygen. I suspect that’s hogwash, like the early theory that the purpose of the brain is to cool the blood, but time will tell. It could lead to a new kind of therapy. A man in the hospital wakes to find a shapely young woman approaching his bed. “Hello, Mr. Gleep, I am Oola, your oxygenation therapist.” “My what?” “Have no fear, I’m not here to give you a shot. We just need to be sure that all your parts are properly oxygenated. Now let’s just uncover you and open your hospital gown–” “Hey!” “And proceed. Yes, you are in dire need of oxygenation. Now let’s get you standing tall.” She removes the upper portion of her uniform, revealing a splendid set of breasts. “What, no oxygen yet? We shall just have to try harder.” She removes the lower portion and turns grandly around, showing protean buttocks. “Mr. Gleep, you don’t seem to be cooperating. We shall just have to get serious.” She gets into bed with him, her hands busy. “Ah, now we have it. Excellent!” She gets quickly out of the bed and dresses. “But–” he protests. “Now you just hold that for five minutes, Mr. Gleep, and do it again an hour later. Perfect oxygenation. On to my next patient.” She departs, leaving him rigidly oxygenated with nowhere to put it. And to think anyone ever thought therapists were teases.

Then there’s the news item about auto-ads coming on when a person uses a public bathroom. So Mr. Gleep sits on the toilet, and is treated to a hemorrhoid treatment ad. Or uses the urinal, and gets a penis enlargement ad. The women of course would get vagina ads: get that rag off and try our new improved tampons. Or use alum for tight closure. Which reminds me of the collection of MALEDICTA books in my library. MALEDICTA is “The International Journal of Verbal Aggression,” edited by Reinhold Aman, and it covers a lot. The last issue I received, back in 1996, had a section on “Shit Happens.” It showed (facetiously) how different religions, politics, professions, famous people and such would approach it. One example: Teddy Roosevelt would say “Grunt softly and take a big shit.” (He actually said “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”) Get the idea? I hope I didn’t just give one to the auto-ad folk. Famous quotations adapted to the urgent need. What fabulous poop!

At this writing the California recall election has had its own adventures, including a couple of court challenges. Without commenting politically on it, I nevertheless appreciate some of the humor it has stirred up. Columnist Molly Ivins remarked that Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts. Why do I suspect she’s not a Republican? But PARADE ran a picture of him when he’s not making a Terminator movie, and he was just as fiftyish and dumpy as the rest of us. Despite the remarks of some, he’s not a stupid or mean-spirited man, and he has a live-wire wife, and I suspect California could do worse as governor, and has in the past. We’ll see. But my concern is for those who have trouble spelling his name. I worked out a mnemonic device back when I novelized his movie Total Recall: We have no trouble with the first or last letters, SCH and ER; it’s all the ones in the middle that are difficult. But they do make sense: what kind of movies does he make? Action, violence and WAR. But sometimes there’s a bit of mood, so add ZEN. And sometimes humor, and he winds up with egg on his face. EGG. Put them all together inside the outside letters and you have it, and will never misspell him again. That will surely enable you to rest easy at night. This has been a public service explanation for Californians.

Meanwhile I read a book or three. One was Too Profitable to Cure by Groves and Hoadley. It’s on diabetes, and is frightening. It seems that the newer, laboratory-made insulin has certain side effects for some users that can make it lethal. Now I’m a vegetarian who was once diagnosed diabetic, and I welcomed the arrival of vegetarian insulin, but now I’d be scared to use it. You see, with normal pig-origin insulin the patient has some warning when it is doing its job too well, and has time to take some sugar before he goes into shock. But the new “human” type doesn’t give that warning; he feels fine, until suddenly he’s out. If he’s alone, or driving, that can kill him. Human insulin kills more people than terrorists do, and there can be complications like liver problems, stroke, heart disease, eye damage that may be caused by the insulin, rather than the disease. Mortality has tripled–and they blame the patient. Uh-huh. So he’d be better off returning to the old type. But here’s the catch: it’s almost impossible to get the old type any more in America, because the big drug outfits make more money on the new type, and have quietly gotten the old type off the market. Thus the title: in the name of their profits, you must risk sudden death. And of course they won’t tell you about that particular side effect. If you’re using insulin–and it seems there are more Type II diabetics using it than Type I, because they are a much larger group–I suggest that you locate and read this book, rather than settle for my layman’s summary, then make your own decision. I read this as an electronic edition, and am uncertain where it is to be published, but a Googol search for the title should help. I doubt that writing to the insulin providers would garner more than a bug letter, though.

Writer Kristina O’Donnelly, whose novel The Horseman I mentioned last column, sent me via Amazon.com When the Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis, by Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, and I read it. Now I’m an Atlantis skeptic, satisfied that the Greeks were thinking of the island kingdom of Crete and the horrendous detonation of the Thera volcano. There’s no damned sunken continent in the Atlantic Ocean. But one difference between me and other skeptics is that I try to keep my mind open. If someone shows me a living ghost (as it were) or a Flying Saucer from Mars, I’ll investigate. Sometimes the incredible turns out to be true, such as plate tectonics, or meteors killing dinosaurs, or the best-seller potential of fantasy. If someone makes a truly convincing case for the existence of God, I’ll listen. Meanwhile, I doubt. But this book makes a damned interesting case. Its thesis is, in a nutshell, that the fabled Atlantis was the continent of Antarctica, which was warmer in the past. How could that be? Because the skin of the planet may periodically slip around some, carrying continents to warmer or colder climes. No, don’t sneer; the authors take pains to present a credible case. If before the last slip Antarctica was warmer, say 50,000 years ago, there could have been human habitation there, and early civilization. So where are its ruins? Buried under ice. This is similar to my thesis that the coastlines of the Americas were colonized earlier than is generally credited, the evidence buried by the rising sea level of the past ten thousand years. There are mysteries about the evolution and migrations of mankind that are still being fathomed; this is one of my serious interests, as my historical fiction shows. So while I remain doubtful about Atlantis–for one thing, ice corings suggest it has been frozen over for at least 750,000 years–this is another book that skeptics should read before condemning. I realize it’s wishful thinking to suppose that skeptics on anything might try to be objective, but it would be nice. I would hate to be the only objective skeptic.

And I read my own novel Macroscope. Mundania Press will republish it, with a brief author’s note, so it will be available again for completists. This was first published in 1969 so is one of my earlier novels, and many others rate it my best novel. Rereading it, 35 years after writing it, I found I had forgotten many details, so it was like reading it new, and I liked it. It is a good novel, the kind I’d enjoy if someone else had written it, and it covers a wide variety of notions, just as this column does, from the thoughtful to the crude. The fact is, I’ve always written the kind of novel that I’d like to read, in part because others were not writing that kind. Today articles are being published about the prospects for entering black holes and being transported elsewhere via them; that’s in this novel. It’s dated, but still solid.

And we saw a few movies. The most recent was the day I started writing this column: Matchstick Men. That reminds me in a manner of a prior one I liked, The Thomas Crown Affair, with levels on levels of deceit. It starts slow and dull, but builds as the protagonist, an expert con man, discovers a 14 year old daughter he didn’t know he’d had, who aims to be his protégée and turns out to have an aptitude for it. Then things complicate as a job goes wrong. The conclusion faked me out completely.

I received a solicitation to add my name to a to-be-published ad promoting artist Darrell Sweet for the Hugo Award for Best Artist, as he’s not won it before. He’s about my age, and we came on to the pro scene at a similar time, and have I think had similar impact on our fields of endeavor. He has perhaps done more covers for my books, especially Xanth, than any other artist. We’ve corresponded. But I will not add my name to that ad. Why? Because though early on I was a devotee of awards, the more I learned of them, the less I respected them. One reason is that they tend to be given as the results of campaigns, like political office, or to those who play the game of trading votes for each other’s favorites, or to pieces whose publishers give them the best distribution among the electorate, or for other reasons irrelevant to actual merit, such as death. They thus bear only coincidental relation to quality. I feel an award should be given only for perceived virtue, as decided by each person individually. An award won through campaigning is minted from debased metal, as I see it. So I no longer participate, and I list my own awards only as a service to readers who want to know; I can’t say I respect them as a class. For those who want to participate, okay, and for those who win, okay, but I try to stay out of it.

Last column I mentioned that if I lost my wife and looked for another woman, I wouldn’t be choosy: any smart, honest, healthy, esthetic vegetarian humanist with long dark hair and a sweet nature would be considered. A woman asked me what my wife thought of such a statement. She doesn’t worry about it; she knows I’m not going anywhere. I understand there are writers, single and married, who attend conventions to get laid. Maybe that’s one reason I don’t attend many conventions; that particular lure isn’t there for me. I can get laid much more readily and safely staying home. Though I phrased my requirements facetiously, they are accurate, however. I’m not an active humanist, but humanism pretty much defines my beliefs, and I think I am incapable of loving a woman who eats dead animals.

Remember that big power blackout in the northeast? I received a fan letter from George Morrow, living in that area, shortly after it. I asked him whether he had done something foolish, such as sticking his wet finger into a power outlet to see what would happen. He replied “I assure you that it was not my wet finger in an outlet that started the North Eastern blackout. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The outlet has been replaced and the finger is healing nicely.” I’m relieved to hear it; I wouldn’t want to lose a reader that way.

Notice from the Electronic Publishing Survey: FAMOUS HISTORICAL CHARACTERS ANTHOLOGY– www.worddabbler.com. This is a one-shot anthology of erotica featuring famous historical characters from Cleopatra to Elvis: any that turn you on. Any sexual orientation, but no underage or non-consensual encounters. (Translation: no kiddieporn or rape.) Try to keep length under 6,500 words. Reprints are okay if you have the rights. Query by email, but submit only hard copy. Deadline is December 1, 2003, so get it on soon.

Warning sent by Sandi Van Handel of AT&T;: DON’T EVER DIAL AREA CODE 809, 284, OR 876. The come-on may say something like “Hey, this is Karen. Sorry I missed you–get back to us quickly. Have something important to tell you.” Then a phone number beginning with 809. It’s a scam: they charge you $2425 per minute. It’s foreign, not covered by US regulations.

I received a letter from a reader, Andi, about an ugly occurrence. She and her husband were expecting, but she suffered a miscarriage. She had announced the pregnancy on a message board shared by folk who attended an American high school for the military in Italy. Then of course she had to post the disappointment. Most responses were supportive, but one was malicious. I quote it complete: “Andi, I am touched that your body rejected your unborn baby. What did you and your husband do with the little dead baby? I would have saved it in a jar and served it to my guests on X-mas. Yummy, nothing beats fresh miscarriage babies!!!! Sir Hump Alot ” Okay, she was hurt, and asked me if I could explain why this one response seemed to cut more deeply than others. I did my best, the essence being that she was a sincerely feeling human being, and she said my letter did help. But I don’t want to leave it there. I’d like to nail the freak who did this. Of course the return address was not valid, but I have some knowledgeable readers. Does anyone know how to run down such an identity? I’ll be happy to relay such information.

I was interviewed for a magazine: PARADOX–The Magazine of Historical and Speculative Fiction. This is a physical magazine that publishes three issues a year. Its site is http://home.nyc.rr.com/paradoxmag/.

I no longer track the Nigerian scam; it just goes on and on. But now it is spreading to other locales and types. I received an Iraqi version, and one from Malaysia. There is also a lottery scam, and I have received several variants. The essence is that I have won half a million to two and a half million dollars. I must designate my bank account so the money can be transmitted to it, and must keep the matter private. Etc. I also received a warning from http://haystackinaneedle.com/news/200304_traffic_magnet.htm about Sarah Williams of TrafficMagnet, a firm promising to submit your site to 300,000 search engines and directories. It’s a scam; there is no Sarah Williams, and there aren’t that many suitable sites. I also received notices purportedly from Microsoft, telling where to get security patches. The notices themselves carried a virus.

But one legitimate site is www.perfectbound.com, where Xanths 13, 14, and 15 are being published. That’s Isle of View, Question Quest, and Color of Her Panties. So if you have wanted to get into Panties electronically, now’s the time.

I was sent a copy of an interview with Billy Graham’s daughter. It annoyed me. Essentially she blames the liberal agenda for bad “Acts of God.” It’s an extended argument to break down the constitutional separation of church and state. Sure, and we’d wind up with a government like that of Iran, only in the name of Christianity. If hell is real, this is the way Satan would argue, to destroy what made America great.

Another email described Project I SEE YOU, dawnfromorcas@centurytel.net. This is a project started by Dawn Macaskill, to enable children from all over the world to see each other and share their dreams and life stories. I am wary of email solicitations–there are way too many to keep up with, and every one is for the world’s best cause–but I mention this for readers who may wish to check.

I continue with my exercise program, trying to stay physically as well as mentally fit. My main adventure is the archery, trying to get a decent score on my target. Remember, I loose the arrows from 150 feet, and if one strikes the marked one square foot in the center, that’s +1, and if it misses the two foot wide target, that’s -1. One day my right side bow performance was +5, followed by the left side bow of -5, leaving me with 0. Next time the right was -1, and the left was +1, totaling 0 again. My best was +2 right, +4 left for a cumulative +6. But more often than not the total is negative. I used to have better scores, and am not sure whether I’m losing accuracy because of bad luck or old age. My morning jogs are slowing, too. Let’s face it: I am 69. Other folk in my age range are conking out. I maintain my college weight and strength, but life is more than that. But I still figure to be active and ornery for another decade or two.

I had three movie options going, on Xanth, Adept, and Incarnations. The Xanth looked most promising, but suddenly it expired, so now it’s two options. However, there is other interest in Xanth, and there could be another option soon.

A reader of my biography saw a mention of the popper, a paper device that makes a popping sound, and wrote to inquire how it was made. That was the first such thing I learned to make, in first grade–it was of course not part of the official school curriculum–so naturally I remembered it. Except that when I set out to make one, so I could detail the steps, I found I had forgotten how. Ouch. I could make a water bomb or a paper airplane, but not a simple popper. So I struggled, and in effect re-invented it, producing something that popped, and wrote out the instructions. But that was a shock; what else may I have forgotten without knowing I have forgotten?

Email I received: “We have just charged your credit card for money laundry service in amount of $234.65 because you are either child pornography webmaster with dirty money, which require us to layndry [sic] them and then send you to your checking account.” I did not respond.

I read an article in our local newspaper–THE CITRUS COUNTY CHRONICLE–commenting on government, and it made me think. It says if you wish to remain free, be wary of government, because governments, not private terrorists, have always been the greatest threats to liberty. I have tended to support government, because in my view privatizing everything will merely turn the power over to the big corporations who don’t even pretend to care about the welfare of the common man. But as I see what is happening in the American government today, I do fear for our liberty. It has been said that when totalitarianism comes, it will come in the name of democracy. That’s happening now. It looks to me as though the object of the present powers that be is to return the world to the medieval feudal system, where there are two classes: the lords and the serfs. 99% of us will be the serfs.

Sigh–I have a pile of clippings and such I’d like to share and comment on. Sometimes “recovered memories” of sexual abuse are false. A company is suing IBM and others, claiming they stole Linux. Quality diamond made artificially, cheaply. Seeing back to the origin of galaxies. The ten Commandments are not widely practiced in America; for one thing “Thou shalt not commit adultery” applied only to married women, not married men, who could have sex with single girls. Neither do we rest on the seventh day, which is Saturday. The birth of human war with the agricultural age. That lice indicate mankind started wearing clothing between 114 and 30,000 years ago. The estimate that frozen methane in the polar seas represents at least twice the known global fossil fuel resources. More material on bullying, which is something I am sensitive to. The statement that psychiatry is no better than astrology; I’ve known that since childhood. But my novel writing jammed my time, and I have to cut this off as a “short” column of only about 5,900 words.

Here’s where the Web site comes in: I asked my readers, and promised to give credits to the first five who located novel and page for me. Within a day after that column was published, I had five responses: Lake Wails is in Ogre, Ogre, and both Wails and Iron are in Panties. That enabled me to do my homework efficiently, and stay on my accelerated schedule. So here are those credits: Krysta Barcok, Cynthia McSorley and Rob Doherty, Michael Ratcliff, Rachael Biggs, and Kristina Keller. I regret that I am unable to give credit to #6; Mike Sloan just missed the cut. Thank you, all, and all the others who followed.

I completed the novel within two months, thanks to the expected interruptions that did not come. It may be the funniest and naughtiest Xanth yet, therefore may in danger of editorial censorship, though TOR has never been guilty of that so far on my books. But just in case they don’t make it into print, here are some of the saucy bits, so when you get your copy you can copy them back in. The protagonist is meek Goody Goblin, whose job is to find a good home for the pet peeve, an irascible green bird that doesn’t like anything, and says so loudly and pointedly, using Goody’s voice. Its amazing how angry how fast fierce creatures like ogres, dragons, and women can get when expertly insulted. So Goody has a bodyguard: Hannah Barbarian, a fan suggestion who first appeared in Geis of the Gargoyle. She’s a tall, fit, trim, handsome, militant woman. So the peeve calls her “beef butt.” At one point an evil sorceress is trying to take over the body of nice Gwenny Goblin, who was introduced in Isle of View and is now Chiefess of Goblin Mountain. Goody has the wit (he’s polite, not stupid) to sic the peeve on her, and the bird has a ball. It threatens to poop on her head, insults her freely, and when she protests, it says “Tough tittie, tootsie.” Then they cross the Sar Chasm, another fan suggestion, and the huge cleft comments on them sarcastically. Naturally the peeve rises to the occasion. “I’ve seen better cracks on a poop pot.” I was thinking of a crevice on the side of a caked ceramic chamber potty, then realized that someone with a filthy mind might have another take on it. Should I change it? Naw, none of my readers would have such dirty minds. There’s one that doesn’t involve the bird: a fine masculine male robot lacks just one part that isn’t standard on robots, that he needs in order to be able to consummate his romance with a human woman. So they make that part out of iron–he’s an iron man–and go to the Mundane Outernet for a formula to make it bigger and harder. Of course by the time the novel is published, two years hence, the Internet may have been cleansed of spam and its anatomy enlargement ads, ruining the humor.

Meanwhile some of my other books are being published now. As a general rule I don’t push my books here in the bimonthly column; HiPiers is intended as an informational site, and those interested in my latest efforts can check the appropriate sections or linked sites. I’ve seen the sites of other writers that amount to BUY MY BOOK! BUY MY BOOK!! BUY MY BOOK!!! and that’s okay for them, but I regard my readers as people as well as markets, and I talk to them as such. So if book ads turn you off, skip the next few paragraphs.

The second ChroMagic novel Key to Chroma should be available from Mundania Press at any moment. I proofread the galleys right after finishing Peeve, and you know, this is a different kind of fantasy. It’s big, bold, and sexy, but also qualitatively distinct from other fantasy I’ve seen. No evil wizards shooting lighting from their fingers, no huge medieval battles between the forces of Good and Evil, no mystic magic swords, no armies of grisly ghouls. Instead this novel starts with the lovely Red Glamor suddenly appearing and sitting on King Havoc’s lap as he is on the royal privy pot, giving him a mission (not an emission), and fading out, leaving him sexually frustrated but bound to do her will. It turns out to be quite a challenge. What I like best about ChroMagic is the culture of the world, with its special conventions of speech and action. Magic abounds, but it is inherent rather than flashy. Women are by no means lesser citizens; they know their sexual power over men, and use it freely. And I love the inset stories. One of these, “The Dancer,” I believe could make a fine movie by itself. It’s the story of the “no fault” relationship of an old man and a nine year old girl as they travel. No, not sexual; it is as temporary grandfather and granddaughter. He’s a retired drummer, and she’s a novice dancer, so they practice together, making a team in the manner of this culture. When their journey is complete they find they have fallen love with the roles and don’t want to give them up. He never had a granddaughter, and she never knew her blood grandfathers. That leads in due course to remarkable things, as they find themselves competing as a team against the finest drum/dance team of the area: her mother, his son. I wrote this after seeing the stage production of Riverdance; it obviously affected me. There really is something about a live performance that celluloid lacks. So okay, nobody has to read the series, and traditional publishers weren’t interested. But it is what I believe is my finest fantasy, and though I enjoy Xanth, ChroMagic moves me in ways Xanth does not. I’ll happily put it up against any other fantasy, for interest, quality and power. My hope is that readers will agree.

Also available now at Mundania Press is the sequel to my dirty fantasy novel Pornucopia, titled The Magic Fart. Yes, it is exactly as naughty as the title suggests. The protagonist Prior Gross, having won back his small anti-VD smegma penis in the first novel, now must rescue his ideal woman, who he didn’t know existed, from the land of Fartingale, where farts are social currency. When folk fight, they try to hold down their opponents so they can emit stunning farts in their faces. They have pissing, shitting, and yes, farting contests galore, with prizes for the victors. Men love to watch women leaning back, spreading their legs, and pissing for distance. No, I’m not implying anything about the tastes of Mundane men; this is fantasy. Shitting gold bricks can be literal, if you have the guts for it. Demons are involved, with supernatural nether abilities, and they really have it in for Prior Gross, who defeated them before. And of course there is the climactic Magic Fart, which blows the corona off the sun and plugs the black hole in the center of the galaxy; that will surely generate some mischief bye and bye. Fantastic naughtiness, if I do say so myself. So if you are of the decent persuasion, stay well away from this; it is not for your kind. Not sold to anyone under 18, either. If you want open access to farts, go to their Web site The Fart Mart at www.farts.com/, where you can buy everything from a whoopee cushion to Crepitation Contest CD. I found half of that in 1960 and it wowed me; maybe sometime I’ll order that CD so as to hear the nether end of it. Perhaps related:I received an email with two pictures of a naked human male torso decorated so that the erect penis looks like the head and body of a snake. Clever, colorful, and artistic. And I received a solicitation for a Revolutionary Sex Wafer that delivers blood to your sex organ within minutes. Only $49.95 plus shipping for a bottle. Gee, does my limp old anatomy show?

Mundania will also be bringing out my older novels Macroscope and the Omnivore trilogy. Why, I hear some cynic inquiring, are those old novels now going to Mundania instead of Xlibris? Because its easier and cheaper, and they get better editions and promotion. Xlibris costs $500 for a trade paperback edition and that’s fine, but Mundania costs me nothing and they also do hardcover. So I’m doing what I recommend for everyone: try for a regular publisher, and if you don’t land one (let’s face it, the average publisher is an idiot and you’re a genius, so naturally it doesn’t understand you) then go to a self publisher like Xlibris and do it your way. I suspect the golden age of literature is incipient, because now writers can bypass the plugged bottleneck of regular publishers and make their material available directly to the public. Sure, there’ll be a plethora of junk, but there’ll also be material that misses the editorial cut by being too good for it.

Whatever I have done, at some point gets a request for a sequel. The most frequent request is for an 8th Incarnations of Immortality novel featuring Nox, the Incarnation of Night. So far I have demurred, feeling that anything after God would seem anticlimactic. But now Stephen Smith has made the suggestion for Under a Velvet Cloak with such detail, tracing the whole history of Nox–a portrait of the Incarnation as a young girl, as it were (that’s an oblique literary reference to James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Boy), that I am constrained to take it seriously. Also, there’s a breakthrough in the complicated chronology of that series: go to www.druidstar.com/IoIChron.html for a five page listing covering 15 billion years BCE (Before Christian Era) to 2004. I never published my timelines before losing track of them, so this is invaluable. It makes it possible for me to return to that series without having to reread 7 novels to get it all straight. So I am consulting my readership, that vasty font of information and opinionation: should I tackle such a novel? I don’t undertake to do it, merely to consider the input pro and con. I don’t even have a market for it, but one might develop, as was the case with the 4th Mode novel. These days I pretty much write what I choose to, then worry about the market, which is why my current rejection rate approximates that of a novice writer. I did mention that publishers are idiots?

Here’s another serious query: a gay reader suggested that I have gay characters in Xanth. I replied that the market probably wouldn’t tolerate it, and that I, being unabashedly straight, might not be able to portray gay folk well. He replied that such a surprise might pack a punch, and that if I can write female or black viewpoint well, when I am neither, why not gay? Okay, so I’m checking: what do readers think of this? If I do it, I would have a gay male character, sympathetically portrayed. Would this alienate readers? I’m not preaching tolerance here, but checking reality. Things can be presented today that couldn’t be a decade or two ago. But Xanth, apart from panty naughtiness and running nymphs, has been a pretty straight-laced series. I mean, storks deliver babies, and the standard cuss word is bleep. If readers say to do it, I’ll check my agent and publisher. My guess is that the publisher, conscious of subterranean prejudice, would veto it. I won’t do it without clearance from all parties. I’m happy to push the limits every which way elsewhere, as perhaps the prior paragraphs suggest, but Xanth is commercial fiction, with commercial limits.

Meanwhile after Pet Peeve I returned to my prior project, Alfred, the pseudo biography of my father as seen by the major women in his life, based on his lifelong journal and corollary references. I discovered something that made me wonder. Jack Kevorkian at the University of Pennsylvania in 1950 gave special credit to my father as an outstanding teacher there. My father did teach there, and certainly he was an independent thinker, as am I, but that’s an unusual name. Was it the same Kevorkian later known as Dr. Death, now in prison for helping people to choose their own deaths in their own time? The law is often an ass, as that demonstrates. So I looked up Kevorkian via Google, and got material, but could not verify his school and college education. So here’s where I appeal to my readers again: can anyone verify or refute his attendance at the U of P in 1950? I don’t promise any credit in a book this time; this is a noncommercial project that has no guarantee of publication other than eventually at Xlibris, that may be read only by some family members. It’s just something I’d like to know.

While I’m on the subject of books: Stephen King got a literary award for his contributions. The National Book Foundation presented him with its 2003 Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters, intended to honor American authors who enrich the literary landscape. Naturally the critics are foaming at the mouth. I mean, no popular writer is ever entitled to literary recognition; commercial success is by definition a signal of poor writing. I once read an article by a person who surveyed the New York Times Book Review for a year, and found that there was zero overlap between their reviews and their bestsellers lists. No bestseller had been reviewed. That showed the way of it. After that, of course, rather than admit they were not serving the public they were selling newspapers to, they started to review a few popular books, I suspect grudgingly. Naturally I am weighing in on the subject. I’m with King; it’s high bleeping time a readable writer got some literary recognition. It may never happen again, but at least it makes the elites relevant for that fifteen minutes. Readability should be a fundamental definition of good writing; the fact that what critics typically endorse is apt to be unreadable is a signal of their> willful ignorance, not that of the reading public. Got it straight now, literati? Get with the program. Meanwhile, congratulations, Stephen King.

I received an invitation from Cliff Roberts of the Ft. Worth Haiku Society to contribute a frog haiku to his site. He’s a reader of mine, so naturally I obliged. A haiku is a Japanese art form akin to poetry. It consists of seventeen syllables in three lines of 5, 7, 5. So I wrote my first haiku: “Wee tiny green frogs/ Jumping around my windows/ Cute as they can be” You can see that and many others at http://members.aol.com/Vanpire13/bk.htm. Note that that’s Vanpire, not Vampire. We do like those little frogs; they snap up the bugs trying to get into our house. Their feet stick to the glass so they can jump sideways on a vertical pane. There are even smaller brown toads on the ground on occasion; they’re cute too.

It’s the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Jack Kennedy. It seems half the citizens of the USA were born after that tragic event, so to them it’s history. Not to me. I’m an immigrant, naturalized American at age 24 while serving in the US Army. Thus I didn’t get to vote in a presidential election until I was 26, and I voted for Kennedy in 1960. Sure he had his flaws, but he was an intellectual and ethical giant compared to the current occupant. He visited Tampa Bay, Florida, and was welcomed. Four days later he visited Dallas, Texas, and was killed. Conservatives seem to have loved Texas ever since, and fought to keep guns freely available, maybe so they can be ready for the next Kennedy.

I read Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. The past two years have dated it a bit, but time has already amplified the points he makes. I also have his movie Bowling for Columbine, which I mean to watch when I’m not trying to complete something on a private deadline. I received an email from Michael Moore, saying Macroscope was one of the best books he’d read. I thanked him, and inquired whether he was the same person. It could be a coincidence of names. I received no answer, so as with Kevorkian, I can’t be sure. Regardless, Stupid has some solid points, and I agree with much of it. I’d love to have the author as a reader.

Meanwhile Ralph Nader had a column about a nefarious outfit. It says all citizens should be free from government surveillance of their electronic communications, and no data should be gathered on law-abiding citizens by business or government. “The current greatest threat to our individual liberties is overreaching government controls established under the guise of preventing terrorism.” Presidential authority to issue executive orders and directives should be eliminated, and all previous executive orders should be repealed. So what is this subversive outfit? It is the Texas State Republican Platform for 2002, the underpinning for the present national administration. Hypocrisy, where is now thy sting?

I seem to be on the mailing list of several political parties, though I am a registered independent. A mailing from Chuck Schumer for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee says in part that right-wing strategists are running up immense deficits deliberately so as to tie the hands of government for decades to come. They want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, among other things. I also received a sample issue of THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST for December 1, 2003. It’s interesting for those at the left edge of the scale, as I am, but I already have more subscriptions than I can keep up with and am trying to cut down. But there’s one shocker in their letter section I want to share: it points out that investigative reporter David Icke www.davidicke.com says that the Bush administration was aware of the danger of the 9/11 attack, but let it happen in order to gain the immediate political advantage of shocking 90% of Americans into supporting the Bush agenda. Okay, I don’t know David Icke and can’t speak for his authority, but I have heard that the White House has been stonewalling the official report on 9/11, refusing to allow it to be released. I don’t see how there can be legitimate reason to suppress that–unless it indicates administration complicity. I know that the nefarious Patriot Act was rushed through Congress in the immediate wake of that tragedy, while public attention was distracted. (I understand the lurking sequel, Patriot Act II, is even worse.) So now I must wonder: were 3,000 innocent people deliberately sacrificed on the altar of rightist politics? If so, this smells like treason.

Newspaper column by Robyn Blumner in the ST PETE TIMES points up one of the things about the current US administration that bothers me. The Constitution is being battered. The Bill of Rights requires that certain rights be honored when folk are arrested. The Geneva Conventions have similar requirements. We don’t torture prisoners to make them confess. But now we do send them to other countries that do use torture, with lists of questions to be answered. Yes, there’s a specific: naturalized Canadian citizen Maher Arar was arrested but never charged with any crime. He was born in Syria, moved to Canada as a teenager, and has been Canadian since 1991. He has a wife and two children, and does computer consulting. He attended a family gathering in Tunisia, then was returning to Canada when he was arrested at a New York airport changing planes. Why? Because he had an acquaintance who was suspected of being a member of Al-Qaeda. They sent him to Syria where he was held for ten months in a cell resembling a grave, six feet by seven feet by three feet. He was beaten, whipped, and threatened. Finally he was returned to Canada. Evidently there never was any evidence against him. This is Bush administration justice? Comparisons to Nazi methods are overdone, but this is suggestive. If they can do this to the innocent, who in America is safe? I think it is my blind luck that I am a naturalized citizen whose country of origin was England, not Syria. But every time they get away with it, the corruptors of our constitution will be emboldened. Do you have a friend from Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Iran? Maybe you should get out of America before suspicion falls on you. Remember, they don’t need evidence. They may simply torture you until you say whatever they want you to say. Don’t try to protest your innocence too long; that will merely annoy them.

One of the outfits I support is RESIST, whose full title is A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority, at www.resistinc.org. It sends money to numerous outfits that aren’t on the radar of the big charities. Africa/Asia/International; Environmental; Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender; Health/AIDS/ disability; Labor; Media/Culture; Middle East; Native American; Peace/Anti-Militarism; Prisoners; Women; Youth. The February/March 2003 issue–I got backlogged–mentions how the attention on Iraq allowed numerous other outrages to be overlooked: The dismissal of many basic civil rights, forced registration of immigrants of Middle Eastern descent, disregard for previous nuclear arms treaties, appointment of right-wing judges, and the wholesale amputation of major social service programs. Outraged activists have sounded alarms, but you don’t see much of that in the big-time corporate-controlled media. Amnesty International also does good work, with current special missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia. The way things are going, they may need one in USA soon. I find it scary the way we are meekly allowing ourselves to be herded like sheep to the fleecing or slaughter.

I also read Foul Matter by Martha Grimes. I had seen comment on it and had it in mind; then the other Inverness writer Kristene O’Donnelly sent it to me. Here’s the key: “foul matter” is what publishers in their arrogance call unedited manuscripts. I’ve seen those words marked on my own returned novels. The author spins a story demonstrating how foul the whole publishing industry is, and she gets off some good ones along the way. The story itself isn’t much, and the writing is not compelling; she’s evidently more of a literary writer than a gut writer, at least in this book. But some of the incidental comments are choice. For example, the idea that the aspiring writer might go to some exotic place for inspiration. Like the castle in Scotland–but what about the hassles of dreary cold from inadequate fires, clanging pipes, awful plumbing, and the need for many servants to maintain it? The daily grind soon ruins it. What about telling students about achieving success by constantly writing? No, better to tell them the truth: their chances of getting (traditionally) published are less than zero, that getting an agent is almost impossible. Aspiring writers seem to have a total lack of understanding of what writing is about. What about best sellers? Those are generally bought, not achieved, by publishers buying shelf space up front and hawking dumps for those authors or books they decide to push. You think this is fiction? It isn’t. It’s called promotion. In the music industry it’s called payola. Pay the money, get the sales. I was put on the bestseller lists by publishers that bought exposure for my books, and taken off those lists by publishers that didn’t. The quality of my writing was incidental; it hardly matters how good it may be, if readers can’t readily find it. So Martha Grimes, couching it as fiction, tells some truths that publishers and advice books won’t reveal. Foul matter, indeed.

And while I’m on the subject of publishers: there is a window of opportunity to correct errors between the hardcover and paperback editions of books. I took advantage of this to send in corrections for Up in a Heaval. The corrections were acknowledged–and not made. This is not the first time. Essentially, whatever they say, they don’t make corrections. After the initial publication I normally have to revert a book and take it to a new publisher to get corrections made. I’m talking about traditional print publishers above, but some electronic publishers seem to be understudying them to pick up their worst traits. This time one demanded what made me such an expert? Not that I make the claim; here is the opening sentence of my ongoing publishing list: “This survey has no authority other than my own ornery wish to help hopeful writers make progress; I’m really a writer, not a surveyor.” Then I say “I’ve had a good deal of experience in the publishing school of hard knocks, hence my interest in making it easier for others.” Believe it. I do it in part because today I am beyond blacklisting; traditional publishers tried that thirty years ago, and the experience made me permanently militant, like an abused animal. Beginning writers dare not protest too much, because they can be blacklisted. So I say what they can’t; someone has to. Publishers who don’t like it are free to challenge me, but they need to learn who can be pushed around, and who can’t. I don’t enjoy educating them, but I do it when necessary, my object then being to make them sorry they tried. I do make corrections when warranted, and sometimes they are. My concern is the truth, whatever it may be.

Meanwhile my dreary mundane life continues. We have two 1995 vintage cars, a Saturn and a Ford Aspire. We’re watching the new high efficiency cars like the Prius but not rushing to buy them as long as our older cars are reliable. Well, one day the Aspire front left tire collapsed. Totally flat. So I went to take it off–and couldn’t. The car tools are simply inadequate to compete with the powered nut tighteners they use to put them on; you have to get help. Maybe that’s why they do it. Where would profits be if anyone could remove and patch a tire as we did in the old days? It gripes me. Finally I tried pumping it up with my foot-pedal bicycle pump. Took time, but eventually got there. If the tire would hold for more than an hour, we could drive the car in to the shop. And it did. In fact they couldn’t find anything wrong with the tire, so it’s still on, and doing fine. Magic, anyone?

We replaced two of our aging air conditioners–it’s a big house–and added another heat exchanger. This is a device that takes heat from the hot air and puts it into the hot water, and it just about doubles the efficiency of the unit. Our other heat exchanger is fine; some summers we turn off the water heater and just use the heat exchanger, and our electric bill drops. But the new one doesn’t work. We paid $800 for it, and it worked for only the five minutes the repairman was here, and quit literally as he was departing. This gripes me. We’ll keep after it, but summer is gone.

I went to the Florida Community College Press Association Conference in Ocala and spoke to a small group about electronic publishing. I don’t go out often, and the older I get the less I am inclined, but I hope my words to the students were helpful. I was once a teacher, you know. One of the items in the membership package was a booklet “Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists.” It consists mainly of a listing of ways in which newspapers are deemed to be unfair: they get the facts wrong, they refuse to admit errors, they won’t name names, they have ignorant or incompetent reporters, and so on. Seems eerily like regular publishers. Each complaint is explored, and there are suggestions for correction. May they be heeded.

Remember Andi and the “dead baby” jibe a cruel chat room participant sent? Several readers sent advice, and I relayed it. Now Andi knows the identity of the man: evidently in the US military in Japan, Kelvin Martin. It seems he is known elsewhere. But in the course of rousting him out, the chat room got shut down. Andi is grateful to those who responded to my column note, lending support.

Keeping up with medical research is difficult; there’s so much going on now. Harold Varmus decided to do something about it. He set up PubMedCentral, at www.pubmedcentral.org/, to become a digital repository of all the works in biomedical science. Access is free and unrestricted. I mention it here because I approve of this sort of thing. Paper scientific journals are expensive and hard to search through; an online facility is much more convenient. This is open-access publishing for the benefit of the world.

The universe interests me. NEW SCIENTIST has an article that stretches minds and suggests how it is that the fundamental laws of physics are right to enable life like ours to form. If you are religious the answer is easy: God made it so we could inherit it and worship Him. Too bad I’m not smart enough to take the easy way. I want to know how a seemingly chance distribution of laws happens to work so well for our convenience. I don’t much trust the beneficence of chance when it comes to my existence. I doubt chance gives half a crap about me. Well, string theory postulates nine or ten dimensions of space, and one of time. The extra six or seven dimensions may be very small or even rolled up, not seeming to affect us much. But, if I understand this correctly–and it’s not certain that anyone understands it correctly–those fragmentary dimensions affect the main ones, modifying their parameters, such as the cosmological constant. They may vary across the larger landscape, generating bubbles of existence with varying physics. There may be an infinite number of bubbles, each with slightly different rules. One bubble happened to have rules that enabled life to form. We are in that bubble, selected by pure chance. Maybe the principle is better explained by a con game I read of long ago: a man receives a free sample of advice from a stock investment service saying next week this stock will rise. Lo, it does. Comes another prediction, and it is right again. After about a dozen accurate predictions comes the sales pitch: are you convinced? Our service costs yea much. Sign up if you want more. Well, it’s expensive, but it has been 100% accurate, so he should be able to make a bundle. He signs up. Okay, where’s the catch? It’s that the company sent out maybe 128,000 letters, half saying the stock would rise, half saying it would drop. Naturally half of them were right, half wrong. Then it sent out 64,000 predictions to those who had received the right predictions. Half of those were right. It sent out 32,000 to those. Then 16,000, then 8,000, 4,000, 2,000, 1,000, 500, 250, 125, 64–and solicits those 64 rights after twelve predictions. Half of them will lose their shirts next time, then half the remainder, and so on, but the company has their fat payments for the supposedly perfect service. The perfect prediction record is selection, not insight. Too bad the marks don’t know that. Okay, here we are in the selected bubble where the rules have favored our existence, and we think it was inevitable, but it’s just selection. All those other universes washed out. This explains the unique variables that make us possible: one spot on the continuum. God isn’t necessary. Another item suggests that the shape of the universe is a dodecahedron: that is, like a soccer ball with many pentagonal sides. An angular bubble?

Another article relates to the length of life. Some creatures live briefly, others for up to a century or so. Humans live longer than most. One way to figure it is total number of heartbeats, which I think is about one billion: use them up at a hundred per second, you don’t survive as long as a creature with one beat per minute. By this reckoning, humans live about twice as long as other mammals. What’s our secret? Well, it may be membranes. They govern everything about us; cells have them. There are enough membranes in one person to cover, if spread out, 75 soccer fields. One type leads to fast reflexes and short life; the other to slower reflexes and longer life. We have the latter kind. A creature that under-eats suffers a conversion of membranes to the slower kind, so lives longer. The wrong membranes may contribute to diabetes, depression, mental disease and whatnot. I find this fascinating. If they find out how to convert membranes without starvation or mental disease, the secret of positive long life may be at hand.

Not that longer life is necessarily desirable. Quality counts, too. A short happy life might be preferable to a long sad one. NEW SCIENTIST has an article about happiness too. What would increase the personal happiness of the average person? #1 is to earn more money. How much more? About $100,000 a year. Oh. #2 is to desire less. Yes, I guess you’d better, because you are unlikely to get a hundred grand a year more. #3 is not to worry if you aren’t a genius. Gee, you mean it’s okay for ogres? It says tested IQ means knowing a lot of vocabulary and being able to rotate things in your mind; that doesn’t have a lot to do with your ability to get along with people. Others are to make friends, get married, find God or a belief system, do someone a good turn, and grow old gracefully. Hm; I’m a mixed case.

A couple of columns ago I commented on the Asperger syndrome: high-end autism that interests me because it may run in my family. I had a long response from a reader with a number of thoughts, “OldPhoenix,” who suffers the condition. People with AS (Asperger Syndrome) may not understand the human need for affirmation. They see a conversation without real content, “small talk,” and figure it is pointless. My father was that way; even routine social queries like “How are you?” bothered him because he knew no one really cared how he was, and didn’t want detail on his health or mood, so he figured this was wasted breath. I can handle it, but empty conventions do bother me some. If there is some searing trouble of the heart, AS can relate, because that has content. My father did; I do. But it is easy for AS folk to make social blunders, not picking up well on nonverbal cues. My father did, and didn’t understand why he managed to tee off so many folk on occasion, including members of his family, and yes, including me. I once ran out of space on the last line of a letter, so abbreviated it in the manner of “space is gone, will write again soon.” He assumed from that, that I did not know the proper use of a comma, so sent me a letter explaining it, including a half page of deliberately run-on sentences to demonstrate the case. Never mind that I was an English teacher and professional writer, or that all other commas in that letter and every letter were correct. On the basis of a single comma, he assumed I had a lifelong ignorance. It was insulting, and I blew my top. In retrospect I wish I had had a better understand then of his nature; I would have let it pass. And of course he never understood my reaction, or the reactions of others he corrected. He was just trying to be helpful.

My thesis, as I have discussed before, is that the problem may be a lack of empathy. That is, the ability to feel the feelings of others as if they are your own; to put yourself in the other’s place. I regard empathy as a defining condition of humanity. We all have it, but some more than others. The lack of it does not mean that a person is mean spirited; it’s more like being color blind, and wondering why others seem so thrilled over a scene that to you is merely shades of gray. If you wince when someone cuts his hand by accident, that’s empathy. Whether I am correct remains to be seen; empathy may have nothing to do with autism. But so far, it seems to me like a fair match. So let’s say two men meet at a bus station, and there’s nothing to do for ten minutes while they wait. Complete silence can seem hostile, so they prefer to make small talk: how are you, fine, do you think it will rain? maybe, that damned bus is running late again, yeah they do. Empty dialogue, but it relates them to each other in an amicable way, so neither feels nervous. Small talk connects people; it doesn’t need content. Social engagement counts. But for those who don’t pick up, empathetically (not emphatically), it is pointless, and they may come across as strange because they don’t relate in the manner of normal folk.

“I think the hallmark is intensity,” OldPhoenix says. “Normal people are afraid of intensity in anything.” And I think, maybe with reason. Say I, a white bearded senior citizen, encounter an attractive young woman. (It does happen, at conventions.) Admiring her fine points with visual or tactile intensity would alarm her. How would I feel if I were in her place? Nervous as hell. So I try to keep my eyes off the finely sculptured contours of her tight sweater and jeans, and my hands to myself, not because I lack interest, but because I appreciate her feelings in this regard. Empathy. With luck she’ll recognize my name badge and turn out to be a fan: “Oh, I read all three of your books!” Then I can look at her as I talk to her, fine points and all, without generating nervousness. I have become known and theoretically safe. My empathy has prevented me from making a nice ass of myself, I hope.

But, OldPhoenix says, a person’s significant other can do much to alleviate problems. Humor me, dear; just say “fine” when asked how you are doing, and you hope it won’t rain, and pretend you are enjoying the party; such little favors please me. When we’re alone you can relax again and I’ll make it up to you. AS understands deal making, if not the pointless little nuances.

And, OldPhoenix says, in my novel Macroscope, my genius sociopath Schön has Aspergers. Wow–I didn’t know that, but it does fit.

I received a snail mail ad for WATERDANCE in North Carolina. It’s a gated scenic community in the Blue Ridge Mountains, lots from $79,000 to $400,000, and you build your own house. I know it’s lovely country there; we considered moving to that area before coming here. But I’m satisfied to be in backwoods Florida.

PARADOX, the magazine of historical and speculative fiction, has an interview with me in their Issue 3, Autumn 2003. It relates mostly to historical fiction, of course. It’s a print magazine, with a lovely bare nymph on the cover, but the web site is http://home.nyc.rr.com/paradoxmag/index.html. Subscription is $15 for a four issue year. Elsewhere, I am told there is an audio interview with me dating from 1987 at www.wiredforbooks.org/swaim/ . I tried to check it, but it required me to download RealPlayer for a two week trial and I didn’t trust that, so I haven’t verified. But the interview could be legitimate.

More on bullying: I learned of a relevant site: www.preventchildabuse.org. I’d rather see bullies sent to prison, instead of marijuana smokers.

The first Apollo Project put a man on the moon. Now there is the Apollo Alliance, consisting of twelve of the country’s biggest unions, endorsed by environmental groups. Its intent is to achieve energy independence from foreign oil. Converting to hydrogen powered cars is one way. I’m for it.

I hardly credit many of the claims made by health magazine ads, but I consider them, just in case. It’s an inconvenient function of open mindedness. HEALTH SCIENCES INSTITUTE says that a “magic bullet” treatment for cancer has been discovered, ten thousand times as strong as chemotherapy, with zero side effects, but it has been hushed up by a drug giant. Now stories have abounded for decades about things like a magic carburetor that doubles car gas mileage, bought up and suppressed by the oil industry. Rebuttals abound too. But the fact is corporations do go for profits, and they aren’t eager to see their profits tank. So there is a rationale for suppression, and sometimes cases are documented. One was the stainless steel razor blade, before the era of powered shavers. American companies sold only blades that wore down quickly, keeping replacement sales up, until finally a British company marketed the one that held its sharpness for, I don’t know, maybe twenty times as long. So if there is a cheap, effective, safe treatment for cancer that will gut profits, don’t hold your breath waiting for corporations to tell you about it. I think that’s the main reason the medical establishment remains largely willfully blind to the way Vitamin C stifles the common cold, saving those of us who know about it much grief. Still, I suspect most such claims are bogus. This is one is for Graviola extract, from an Amazon rainforest tree. Subscribe, and they’ll tell you about it.

Article in THE ECONOMIST “How to run a company well.” The first commandment is “A sound ethical compass.” Too bad; as discussed above, corporations orient on profits, not ethics. One insight is offered by the news report of the two million dollar party that the chief executive of Tyco International threw for his trophy wife’s birthday: on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, with a Roman Empire theme (how fitting!) with scantily clad models and Roman centurions. It seems the top officers looted the company of $600 million, and this is an indication how they spent it. No, I wasn’t invited, but it’s interesting to see how the elite live.

Maybe related is a NEW SCIENTIST article on pleasure. Seems there was once on experiment to see if electrical stimulation of the brain’s pleasure centers could cure depression, chronic pain, schizophrenia, addiction, and even homosexuality, which was then regarded as a psychiatric disorder. (Some are still arguing that case.) The results were fuzzy; it may be that it was desire rather than pleasure being stimulated. Pleasure can’t be maintained at high intensity very long, but desire is never ending. The human brain remains too complicated for scientists to completely fathom.

Newspaper feature on comedian Al Franken’s irreverent take on politics that endears him to the left and alienates him from the right. Okay, I’ll check; I have his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them–A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, and some day when I have a chance to read it I’ll report further.

Newspaper ran a Mensa mini-quiz. Mensa is theoretically the smartest one per cent or so of our population. Now I never sought to join Mensa. This was in part because I don’t feel the urge to proclaim my supposed superiority to others; I’m more the dull ogre type, socially. Ogres are justifiably proud of their stupidity, but they know more than they let on, and some bright folk know less than they think. But also, I have a chronic problem with tests; I tend to come up with different answers. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong; it’s apt to mean the keyed test answer is wrong, or that there are alternate solutions. Sometimes the bright folk seem downright stupid. There are examples in this quiz. One relates to the discovery of a coin marked 99 B.C. Of course it’s fake; how could they know the Christian Era was coming in 99 years? But consider this: the initials might stand for Billion Cents, the country having suffered recent hyper inflation. Or it could come from the personal marked collection of Bill Clinton. Or be a token for the purchase of ninety nine Bullion Cubes. Can you say that’s not so, this being an unfamiliar coin? Evidently Mensa didn’t think of that. Until you know what the initials stand for, you don’t know whether the coin is valid or fake. Bum question. Another question is counting from zero, what is the first number that contains the letter “a”? Okay, their answer is one thousand. But I say they are wrong. They didn’t say to count in whole numbers, so it could be one half. They didn’t say which direction to count, so it could be minus one hundred and one. They didn’t say what language to count in; I believe three in Chinese is “san.” It could have a thousand answers, depending how you define “number.” As such, it may be an unanswerable question. Mensa wasn’t smart enough to know that? But don’t get me started; I have a lifetime of different answers in many situations. I really did test as subnormal early in life because of it. I am, I repeat, open minded, and that opens up other worlds, but standard folk typically don’t get it. So I tend to stay clear and go my own ornery way. Writing fantastic fiction is comfortable exercise for my festering brain, and it’s nice that so many readers like to join me there. Who would have thought there could be so many square pegs?

News item: there are now thirty million nones. No, I’m not misspelling nuns; these are the folk who answer “None” when queried about their religious preference. I’ve been a none all along; now it seems I have company. The article says that to folk in the Bible Belt a none is a Satanist or a communist. Yes, I’ve been called a Satanist. 17% are Republicans, 30% Democrats, and 43% independents, so I’m with the plurality there. Nones tend to be young; I’m not, but I have young readers. Does that count? So why did I never join a religion? It’s not antipathy, as I was raised as a Quaker, and married a Unitarian-Universalist minister’s daughter. It’s that I looked at religion, saw the hypocrisy in it, concluded that it was not an ennobling force, and declined to participate. Religion did not meet my standards of personal integrity and tolerance. Sure there are many sects, with many variations of belief and practice, and they are killing each other over their differences. But I figure I can live a decent life without being directed by the sanctimonious hierarchy of some unfathomable entity, and that is what I try to do.

SCIENCE NEWS had an item on a study relating racism to mental performance. The results “suggest that harboring racial bias may be maladaptive to optimal cognitive functioning.” Um, let me translate that: racism is stupid.

WORLD WATCH is a top public service organization. It usually depresses me to read their publications, because they track the ongoing degradation of our global environment. But sometimes there is hope. A letter in their November/December 2003 issue by Guy Dauncey remarks on the parable of Easter Island. I am familiar with that: the islanders had a virtual paradise, but their greed and shortsightedness destroyed it, decimating their population. They were carving huge statues instead of conserving their resources. That’s what America and other nations are doing now, and the result will be similar destruction. But this letter points out another parable: the island of Tikopia, where they saw similar disaster coming, so they acted to prevent it. They limited their population, using abortion and infanticide (today we could do it considerably more kindly with birth control) so as to have zero population growth. They shifted from slash and burn agriculture to permaculture, growing multi-storied orchards of fruit and nuts and carefully managed garden plots. They built walls in the sea to trap fish at low tide. They gave up keeping and eating pigs, because those animals did too much damage. And they survived in what is said to be like a Garden of Eden. They did what was necessary–as we could, if we ever got the right leadership. Which example will we follow?

Let’s conclude on a positive note: newspaper had a feature on a bestselling nineteen year old fantasy author, Christopher Paolini. His novel Eragon was published by Knopf, and made the hardcover children’s bestseller list. Good for him. Here’s a bit of the rest of the story: he self published his novel, promoted it assiduously, and it came to the attention of a traditional editor. He was offered a nice five figure sum for a trilogy. He wrote to me: what should he do? I said GET AN AGENT, and argued my point: an agent might double the advance and get better terms, being well worth his commission. First time writers normally can’t get agents, but with a publisher’s offer in hand, yes, then it is possible. He did, and while the specific figure of the eventual deal wasn’t given, it was mid six figures. Now Paolini is really on his way. I’m glad my advice worked.

Until two months hence–

The Drip: our kitchen tap gets a lot of use, and protests by leaking. We discussed it with a plumber, who said he’d come and tackle it and other plumbing problems. That was months ago, and he never came. The heat exchanger he connected has never worked, and now there’s a suspicion it was connected backwards: the cold water outlet to the hot water inlet. That would explain a lot. But we’d like to get it fixed. I get griped all out of proportion, paying $800 for something that doesn’t work. Welcome to Mundania! Meanwhile the Drip continues. The trick is to adjust the tap to stop it. It’s a challenge. There is one special setting of the handle that is effective, but this setting changes hour by hour, and the Drip resumes. So I spend time resetting it. Because if ignored it just gets worse, until it’s not a drip but a stream, wasting water galore. Thus minutes pass as I try different variants, trying to find the seemingly random one spot that works for that moment.

Speaking of spots: our house in our tree farm sits at an angle to the sun. About one moment a year a ray of sunlight angles in through my study, down the hall, and makes it to the stairway wall as a little square. I’ve learned to watch for it. This time it occurred just after 8 AM, Jamboree 28. Then the angle changed and the square spot on the wall was gone. I’ll watch for it again next year.

As long as I’m at it, here’s another nuisance: my nose. When we moved to Florida in 1959 I became allergic to something, and my nose started dripping in much the manner of the tap. As with the tap, ignoring it is no good; I’d be dripping into my lap. Once I was sitting on the couch reading, and it got bad, and wasn’t helped by the fresh air blowing in through the open window. My wife thought it might be the curtains, so she took them down and replaced them. Only after repeated sieges did we catch on that it wasn’t the curtains, but the air: when the wind is from the north east I faucet. At other times I’m okay. I’m still sorry about those curtains, which were falsely blamed; I hate it when innocents get condemned. Okay: this continued until 1992, with sieges ranging from one hour to three days, usually worst in late fall, but they could happen any time. Then I had nose surgery for a deviated septum. That made my breathing a bit easier, and incidentally cured my allergy: I no longer got the Drip. But now it’s a decade later and maybe some tissue is growing back; I had a couple of half day sieges. Frustrated, I timed them. As I put it in one of my weekly letters to Jenny, every five to six minutes I would pause to blow out another pint of snot. But I haven’t had a siege in the past month; maybe the wind changed.

I also had spot minor surgery: my wife thought I wasn’t washing a spot on the side of my face. Well, I was, but it was darkening anyway. So I checked with the doctor, and it was something starting, like a tumor. He did what he called a scraping to take it off, and it turned out to be benign. This is just to spike any rumors: that was a scraping, not scrapie. I did not get mad sheep disease. Nor did I get mad cow disease, colloquially known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy; vegetarians don’t get it. Sorry, critics; you’ll need some other explanation for the awfulness of my writing.

I read an article on hair. I’m interested in hair, as it is the defining trait of mammals. No, I don’t know why mammaries are not the defining trait; maybe it’s because men don’t have them as prominently, while both genders have hair. The article remarked on the way folk mess with their hair, trying to get more of it some places, and less of it other places. For example, pubic hair: it seems some women “wax” themselves to eliminate the excess hair. As I understand it, this consists of putting soft wax on it, letting it harden, then yanking it off, ripping out the embedded hair by the roots so it won’t grow back. Ouch! In such manner they can form their pubic hair into different shapes, such as hearts or what they call the Landing Strip. Hm. Wasn’t there a book about sex titled The Fear of Flying? Those who fly like to have secure landing strips. Suddenly it all makes sense.

So I put a heart shaped pubic region on a girl in a story, just to show I’m halfway up with the times. I’ve been reading novels and writing stories for a couple months before getting serious on a novel of my own. These are stories that have banged around the hollows of my cranium for days, months, or up to ten years. I summarize each as it occurs and put it in my Idea file, then check that file when I need something. I regard myself as a natural story writer; the reason I have done more novels than stories, literally, is that I can sell my novels, while stories are iffy. Editors are choosy idiots, as every aspiring writer knows. So the notions pile up; my computer says my Idea file is over 57,000 words long. Normally they are fantasy ideas, and they find their way into fantasy novels, in due course. But some stories don’t make it; the poor things languish. Why? Because they are mainstream notions. What use are they to a fantasy writer? Finally I hawe had enough of this unfairness, and I am writing those stories, to make up a story collection titled Relationships. I have 8 stories now, massing close to 50,000 words, and in the course of FeBlueberry I expect to write enough more to make up a reasonable volume. I’ll send it to my agent, and when it doesn’t sell I’ll see about small press publishing or self publishing it. You thought I was promoting small press and self publishing just for the benefit of aspiring writers? I use them myself. Its the way to get around the resistance of Parnassus to readable or provocative fiction. These are, by no special coincidence, stories about people and how they relate to each other, generally male and female, sometimes intense, often concerning love and/or sex. They range in length from a scant 1,500 words to a scant 20,000 words. For example, “For Real” concerns a college boy who is assigned a sample live-in companion whose whole mission is to be the best possible girlfriend he could have. She truly tries; any college boy would like her, though she’s not big breasted or beautiful. But at the end of her assignment she’ll be gone; the relation is temporary, not for real. Another is “Basket Ball,” wherein a straight male player interacts in unusual fashion with a team of lesbian players, to surprising mutual advantage. The long one is “The Hot Game,” which may be too hotly sexual for standard publication; you haven’t seen a game like this before, and not just because it is set in a military prison. Another short one is “The Key,” which is simply an intense nonsexual dialogue between two women. So that must be pretty boring, eh? Maybe I’ll hear from female readers, when. There are all types here, whatever my imagination conceives. All are crafted to be the best I can write; there is nothing cheap or offhand about them. I’m writing for me, and maybe to show what kind of writer I could have been, had there been a market.

Every so often I update you folk on my archery. Would you believe, a few of you are interested. Right handed I have gradually worked up to positive scores: that is, at 150 feet striking the one square foot center more often than I miss the four square foot target entirely. But left handed continues problematical. If the arrow didn’t fall off the two filament wires of the arrow rest while drawing, it could still get dumped right, left, or down when being loosed. I would be left staring at the center of the target while the arrow sailed two feet away from it. I was sure I wasn’t doing it, but how could I prove it? Then I saw a new kind of arrow rest in a CABALA’S catalog: shaped like a cone. I ordered it and tried it. Okay, it completely solved the first problem: since it entirely surrounds the arrow, the arrow can’t fall off, even if the bow is held upside down. I love that. But I still have problems with wild shots. I got smart and when an arrow flung out on its own course I retrieved it and loosed it again. The second time it would strike the target, or the center, or miss on the other side. That established that it was neither cone nor arrow at fault; it was me. I was unconsciously twisting the bow as I loosed. When I stopped doing that, the arrow went true. Except when it didn’t. So I’m still not making great scores, but I think I’ll be doing better now. My most recent session, the day I edited this column, was 2-3 right handed, and 3-3 left handed, the three left handed misses forming a nice triangle a foot right of the target. So they were either on the target, or well wide of it, as if an invisible hand wrenched them off-track; no middle ground. I find that suspicious. But until I actually catch the invisible genie grabbing them, I have to take the blame for bad aim.

I like Linux and like Openoffice/StarOffice, but there have been wrinkles to iron out. Things went mysteriously wrong and I couldn’t fix them. I messaged my geek, but he has disappeared. Sigh; I think geeks are another form of genie. So we brought in my daughter’s friend Tim, who fixed the problems. Now I’m set up with StarOffice 7, and have macros, and it will automatically call up whatever files I have on when I close, though it scrambles their order. So do I recommend it for others? Well, I think Linux still needs an influx of user friendliness, but any who are curious can try StarOffice on a Windows system and see how it is. You can get it for a nominal price, something like $80 for on a disk for several systems, or download the OpenOffice version free. I think this is the beginning of the end for the MacroHard monopoly, and maybe the beginning of the end for the necessity to use geeks to get into Linux.

Which for some devious reason reminds me of politics. It’s Primary Season, and the heads are starting to roll. I grew up and went to college in Vermont, so of course I favor Howard “I have a scream” Dean. But I could support one of the others if he doesn’t make it. I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative, which means I detest what’s going on with our government now. I’d like to see a balanced budget, universal health care, preservation of our environment, and freedom and justice for all. The so-called Patriot Act reminds me of the saying that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. The whole business reminds me of Orwell’s novel 1984, that spelled out the way folk are convinced that war is peace, lies are truth, and so on. Unfortunately there seem to be a multitude of fools who believe it. As has been said by others, the current administration has the semblance of a coup, and present policies represent a kind of looting of our nation. Instead of a surplus we have deficits extending beyond the horizon, and we have alienated much of the rest of the world. If we don’t clean up our own act soon, others may do it for us. We won’t like that.

We saw the movie Return of the King. It was good, but I’m less impressed than most. I saw much violent action, armies marching and fighting with no supplies, a severed finger that was mysteriously restored without explanation, that sort of thing. But there were some great battle scenes. As it happened, we saw a rerun of Titanic on TV the same day, and its structure, focus, and attention to detail made the fantasy movie look inferior in comparison. Other things being equal, which they seldom are, I’d rather see fantasy than mainstream, but I’d rather see quality than sloppiness. We also saw the movie Paycheck, which had fast action and a truly horrendous threat, but was a bit confusing in places. A reader gave me the Anime video Spirited Away, and we watched that Christmas Day. It was confusing in places, but well worth watching. If I ran the world, movies would make sure they were intelligible to viewers throughout, so as to have best effect.

All of which reminds me of my own motion picture prospects. Where would I be if I didn’t have chains of thought? The option contracts with Disney for On a Pale Horse have now been completed, so maybe that movie will come to pass. The prior option on Xanth faded, but there is strong new interest, so that too may happen. We’ll see. I’d like to have a movie or series of movies; for one thing that would probably put me back on the best seller lists. I’d love to revisit that territory before I croak, on general principles. In my arrogance I like to think that if a movie causes ten times as many people to sample my novels, I’ll take permanent possession of half of them. Because, critics to the contrary, I do know how to tell a good story. But no, if they do make movies from my works, they won’t consult me about making them intelligible, so don’t expect it. I’ll follow the standard advice: take the money and run.

I’m a sucker for MOVIES UNLIMITED video sales, and keep buying hot old movies that like as not turn out to be clunkers. I never learn. For example I bought Ebony Ivory & Jade, hoping for a fast moving story of three sexy babes. Well, it was, in its fashion, but the acting was amateurish, the photography was so dark I could hardly see it, and the story line was nonsensical. In contrast one I thought would be junk, Lolida 2000, delivered exactly what I like: three sexy inset stories whose brief story lines could be followed, for all that the point is not the story but the magnificent female nudity. Meanwhile my video collection is taking up space, so I assembled a wooden video rack, that of course was improperly made so we had to buy new screws that fit and struggle with drilling to get it together. Can’t blame American workers for this one; it was made in southeast Asia. But it did free up some chronically jammed study space. In time I hope to start re-watching those I liked best, like What Dreams May Come and Starship Troopers. But now that I have the videos shelved, my video player seems to have forgotten how to rewind at the end. Sigh.

I don’t pay a lot of attention to TV, but do like some. One is Las Vegas, because it is overflowing with scantily clad full breasted sweet faced brown haired women and has a reasonable semblance of story lines. I realize those girls are probably all implanted galore, but they do look luscious. In a similar vein, collaborator JoAnne Taeusch sent me a Bettie Page doll whose arms and legs can be positioned; she’s a full fleshed creature in scanty removable attire. One thing she has that I miss elsewhere: hips. Have you noticed how today’s clothing models have amble bosoms but hips like those of men? Whatever happened to the nether section of women? In the old days 36-24-36 meant something; now it seems more like 44-30-32. I guess what they’re doing is putting big breasts on thin women, not caring about proper proportioning.

I’ve also been reading. I seldom read just for pleasure, but neither do I read for displeasure; I’m no critic. I read what publishers send me for blurbing, I read manuscripts of aspiring writers, and in Jamboree I read the three finalists in the DOUBLE DRAGON fantasy contest. I won’t comment this time on those, as it’s too soon for news of the winner. But the others are available. I read several stories in the anthology Fantasy Readers Wanted–Apply Within, edited by Nick Aires and James Richey. One of the naughtiest was “A Damsel in this Dress,” by Ralan Conley, known for his remarkable web site that lists every conceivable relevant site for writers. The damsel is so feisty she seduces the dragon who abducts her, but her dress doesn’t fit well, and keeps baring embarrassing portions of her anatomy. More fun. There are serious stories too; those who like fantasy stories should enjoy them. I read The one Who Would Be King by Gareth Blackmore, the first novel of a fantasy adventure series for young folk. I read Caring for God’s Laptop by Rakesh Biswas, wherein (to simplify drastically) God comes to earth in the form of a laptop computer and forgets His nature. This novel has aspects of medicine, romance, sex, computing, and who knows what else; it’s probably of greater interest to intelligent readers than those who prefer pure adventure. I read Peacemaker, by Daniel J. Ronco, and this is a powerhouse of computer adventure, with scheming programmers galore and control over the world in the balance. But the last two impressed me most. One was Midnight Rain by J. Newman, a mainstream thriller featuring a twelve year old boy. It’s no juvenile. You see, the boy happens to witness the murder of a girl by the town sheriff, then lives in fear that the murderer will be after him next. There’s an amazing series of revelations as the boy tries to figure out what to do. What impressed me most was the aptness of the writing and figures of speech. For example the boy describes the forbidding librarian as more disagreeable than a rabid Tasmanian Devil with a rusty knife up its butt and something in its eye. I love this, not only because it is clever, but because that is the kind of exaggerated imagery a rebellious twelve year old boy would employ. Characterization is on target throughout. So this is mainstream; I still recommend it as a great piece of writing. Finally, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon, the title uncapitalized. This is about an autistic fifteen year old boy who discovers a murdered dog and decides to find out who did it. This, too, leads to amazing revelations as he searches. But mainly, it’s the portrayal of autism. I winced as I saw described some traits I recognized in my father, and some in myself. I’m not autistic, as far as I know, but I have some aspects that if taken further would be that. Such as an obsession with numbers, records, getting things exactly straight. When I say I may be the best documented writer on the current fantasy genre scene, I’m not bragging, I’m describing one of those aspects. I try to curb it, but I have records of just about every aspect of my writing, dating back to 1966. I can identify what I was working on any day of my career, how much I wrote, what I read, what I researched, what else I did, and have sent to university archives dated pages of it. When Jerry Pournelle falsely accused me of sending him a letter calling him a Nazi, I was able to identify our correspondence and show there was no such letter. I save letters too, you see: incoming and copies of my outgoing. My career, as it forms in the archives, is an open book, as it were. I’m also almost as bad trying to travel as that boy is, which is why I really do avoid it whenever possible. Normal folk aren’t that way. But for you normal folk, I recommend this novel as a fascinating way to learn about autism. It’s actually a pretty good story regardless, with a number of surprises along the way.

Recent TV–Dateline, I think–had a show that was an eye-opener for normal folk. It pointed out that people can miss the obvious when focusing on a particular thing. It proved it. There were six basketball players, three in white, three in black. The challenge was to count the number of passes the white players made. The group was all mixed up, moving around; it was tricky to catch them, and I did miss several, though my wife got the correct score. They showed it twice, so we could verify our answers. Then they pulled the surprise: we had missed the black gorilla that walked through the throng, mugged the camera, and moved on. It was absolutely obvious, impossible to miss–yet we had missed it, and I suspect most of the TV audience did. That makes me wonder how much else obvious I may be missing when I focus, as I often do. Autistics can really fo–now stop that!

I encountered an intriguing legal concept: false light. That’s when your facts and statements may be accurate, but you phrase them in such a way as to give a false impression. I teased Jenny that way once, saying that her mother tried to make a living computer programming, and lost all her teeth. Both true, but only coincidentally. A prominent example may be the current administration’s habit of mentioning terrorism and Iraq together. They never said Saddam was responsible for 9/11, yet about half the population came to believe it, though it was false. It seems that a person can be convicted in a trial for that sort of thing, if it leads to a miscarriage of justice. I remember when I was told by a lawyer that if I publicized how a publisher cheated me, I could be sued for libel and lose–even though what I said was true. I was disgusted, but maybe false light was what he was thinking of. Truth is not always a sufficient defense. Of course today I worry less about that, because not only am I well documented, I can afford the kind of lawyers who will make my case stick. So today I go ahead and expose the machinations of publishers, and if any should sue, they will discover the proof of that. But I do try to be careful what I say, and to be sure that not only is it true in detail and implication, but that I can prove it. And that my lawyer is of larger caliber than theirs.

Last column I posed two questions to readers, and now the votes are in. Should I wrote the eighth Incarnations of Immortality novel, about Nox? The vote is 36 to 1 in favor, and one maybe. Accordingly I expect to start writing it the beginning of Marsh, allowing six months before I write the next Xanth novel, Stork Naked. We’ll see how it turns out, and what sort of market there is for it. Since Disney looks serious on the first novel in the series, On a Pale Horse, I suspect some publisher will be interested; a movie would enhance the sales of all the novels. The second question is whether to have a gay male character in Xanth. The vote is 22-16 in favor, and two maybe. That’s too big a negative; I don’t want to alienate one third of my readers, so I don’t plan to do it. It seems that the world is not yet ready for such a step.

I saw an interesting news item: the happiness of lottery winners is similar to that of recent accident victims. I never won a lottery, but did have a car rollover in 1956, one of my closest risks of death. But I regard the way I became a bestseller, by getting into fantasy by chance just as fantasy was about to take off for the stratosphere, as like winning a lottery. I’m more depressive than I am happy; do those events explain it?

Sometimes stupid questions turn out to be otherwise. A reader asked me whether Mount Pinatuba, the one that blew its top with a great Oom-PAH! and cooled all Xanth by one degree (obviously far-fetched fantasy that would never happen in drear Mundania), is north or south of the Gap Chasm. It’s south, of course. Then why, Robert Elsner inquired innocently, does page 149 of Harpy Thyme suggest it is north? Uh, well, does some other reader have a reasonable answer? All I can think of (my lack of imagination is well known to critics) is that maybe the mountain got bored where it was and moved. Smart readers have pulled me out of the hole before; can any rescue me from getting barbecued (again) by lurking critics?

Norton advised us that it was time to get a new package, rather than simply updating the old one. Since we get a lot of mail, and many viruses come in, we did so at the turn of the year, and almost wish we hadn’t. We had immediate complications, such as not being able to get online. We’ve hammered them out mostly, but still have to reset the system when my wife and I want to change users. I use the Dvorak keyboard, she uses QWERTY, for example. Sigh; software just doesn’t like to let you have anything easy; there’s always got to be a side effect that pokes you in the eye. If I ran computerdom–oh, never mind, no one’s listening anyway.

Pete Rose: I’m not much of a baseball fan, but I recognized the name when it hit the news. Essentially, he played a great game, made records for hits, games played, and times at bat, and earned a place in the Hall of Fame. But because he bet on some games, they banned him. I feel that halls of fame should be determined by the merits of the cases, not by political correctness or whether a person is doing something others don’t like. I remember when Cassius Clay–Mohammed Ali–was the boxing champion, but they didn’t like his religion, which forbade him being drafted, so they took away his crown, and it took years before the Supreme Court finally said that was wrong. Duh! If you don’t like a person’s religion, don’t join it, but don’t deny him what he has fairly earned. If Pete Rose broke a law by gambling, punish him for that, but don’t try to pretend that he never made the records he did. It seems that now he admits he gambled, they may let him in. That strikes me as a bit like plea bargaining: admit you did the crime, and they’ll reduce the sentence. Deny it, and they’ll bury you forever. Thus some innocent people plead guilty, out of expediency. Similarly those who are tortured will confess, regardless of innocence, just to make it stop. I hope I’m not the only one who has a problem with this. I suspect Pete Rose is guilty, but the reasoning still bothers me.

I received an email: “We are happy to inform you that your DarkProfits.com Sales Order has been successfully completed.” It says my credit card was charged $149.95 for one month Child Porn Unlimited Online Access. I doubt it; I don’t do business online and have no interest in Child Porn despite the fanatic accusations of some readers who object to Panties in Xanth. I presume this is an effort to get me to contact them, if some joker didn’t fake my name. Maybe they plan to ask for my credit card number as “verification” of an error, so that they can then really rip me off. Maybe they want me to call their 877 number to cancel; is that the one that charges a thousand dollars a minute? Or will they change to the expensive number when anyone calls? These devious come-ons are bad enough; I think I invoked the Mydoom Worm, thinking it was a communication from my server. Fortunately Norton antivirus caught it, though it was not yet on the Norton virus list. There are sharks in those waters.

I trash most spam, but one amused me. It said (I’m cleaning up the language) that the average girl’s rectum can stretch up to three inches in diameter, while the average horse’s member is five inches in diameter. Apparently the site shows stallions painfully buggering girls. It says I won’t believe it. Right on: I don’t believe it. If I were a stallion, my sexual interest would be in the vagina of a mare in heat, not the rectum of a hominid. But each according to his taste. Not directly related: there was news of the discovery of 425 million year old fossil they named Colymbosathon ecplecticos, which translates into “Astounding Swimmer with a Large Penis.” Maybe he needed to swim well enough to catch a female with a small rectum.

I heard from Ranking.com, saying HiPiers was ranked #296,822 among the 900,000 most visited sites on the Internet. Gee, that high? Maybe if I say something provocative I’ll make it all the way up to #295,000! They offered to provide a free weekly service if I subscribed. It seemed legitimate, so I did, and they verified it. And I never heard from them again. Well, I guess you get what you pay for. That puts them down around 900,000+1 on my list. Meanwhile a report from a legitimate service showed that in early Dismember HiPiers was averaging over 15,000 hits per day, which translated to 725 visitors per day, the average visitor making 21 hits. I feel black and blue.

Back circa 1980 we bought some AT&T; shares just before the company broke up into Snow White and the 7 giant dwarves, as a convenient way to diversify. But two decades of further splits and recombinations have made the picture too complicated to decipher. So we’re trying to simplify, and sold our Agere Systems stock. Agere of course is French for Ogre.

One of my interests is the derivation and evolution of mankind, and I’ve done a good deal of research over the decades. A recent item suggests that we adopted clothing 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, when we ventured into the world beyond warm Africa. They determined this by tracing body lice, which live in clothing. Maybe. But as I see it, mankind more likely evolved clothing in conjunction with losing body fur, maybe millions of years ago. So the lice are more recent; so maybe a tribe took a communal bath and washed clothing at the same time, eliminating the lice, who then had to start from scratch, as it were. Something not everyone wants to admit is that mankind of 100,000+ years ago was just as smart as now. He just hadn’t yet developed the software to go with his brain hardware, or got all the bugs out, as it were.

Discovery of the universe continues. Now they figure it is 73% Dark energy, 23% Dark Matter, 4% nonluminous ordinary matter like planets and dust, and 0.4% luminous matter, like stars, nebulae, and galaxies. That does seem to put us in our place: everything we can see directly is less than half a per cent of the total. Of course it could be that they simply don’t understand the long-range nature of gravity. I hope I live long enough to see the answer.

Collaborator Cliff Pickover, author of numerous nonfiction books, asked me for my ten favorite words. Those may change day by day or minute by minute, but for that minute I sent him these: Honor, Empathy, Realism, Imagination, Sex, Pantheism, Magic, Chocolate, Idealism, Verisimilitude. I see you all wondering about one of them, so let me discuss that further: Pantheism. The Humanist related magazine FREE INQUIRY has many interesting articles, one of which by Richard Dawkins clarified the definitions of some of us who are agnostically inclined. It says a theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who answers prayers, punishes sins, performs miracles, etc. That seems to cover most formal religions. A deist figures that a supernatural intelligence set up the universe with its laws and left it alone thereafter, like watching a windup toy go. Pantheists believe in nature and the universe, nothing supernatural. Dawkins says that pantheism is sexed-up atheism, and deism is watered down theism. That intrigues me. Now, again, for those of you who don’t get the distinction between atheism and agnosticism: an atheist says there is no god. An agnostic says he’s not sure. I’m agnostic, and I figure if there is a god, it’s the pantheistic version. Maybe agnosticism is wishy-washy atheism. But I prefer to phrase it this way: I don’t presume to claim to know the nature of God. My not-so-subtle implication is that religious folk and atheists do so presume. It’s one hell of a presumption.

Meanwhile THE HUMANIST, which seems to me like a sister magazine, has an article saying Americans don’t really believe in the Ten Commandments, and makes a persuasive case. We don’t figure other folk are wrong because they don’t directly worship Yahweh, we do make graven images galore, we do take God’s name in vain, lord yes, we are busy seven days a week, we don’t necessarily honor our parents, we do kill, commit adultery, steal, lie, and covet our neighbor’s possessions. We’re a sorry lot, and hypocritical. If we really practiced the Ten Commandments we’d have a rather different society. The same magazine has an article on the new electronic voting. One company, Diebold, has a CEO who is a Republican fund raiser. After his company got the contract in Georgia, the Republican party scored a series of remarkable upset victories in that state’s 2002 elections, giving Republicans the governorship and control of the US Senate. I wonder why some of us prefer to have a verifiable paper trail? Maybe because we want our votes counted the way we voted, next time.

I did some study cleaning up–it happens on rare occasion when I need elbow room–and came across a Dear Abby clipping I saved in 1999. It told of two women talking on a bus, and one was surprised to learn the other was 46. A nearby young man said “Yeah, you’d be a real knockout of an older woman if you’d lose some weight.” The woman then told him that she was a knockout, and that what he thought did not concern her. The other passengers broke into applause, and the young man soon got off the bus. This exchange was given as an example of the righteous putting down of a crude man. Oh, yeah? I have quite a different take on it. The man lacked sophistication, but evidently intended to compliment the woman. For that he got bawled out by the woman, who plainly did care what he thought, and in effect by the other passengers. I suspect that what he said was true: she could have been quite impressive for her age, if she lost some weight. Instead of taking that to heart and losing weight, she cut him down, and the others abetted her. She should have simply said “Thank you,” instead of making a bragging shrew of herself. So why is this minor incident sufficient to arouse my reaction? Because I remember being the victim of a similar situation. At the 1966 Milford Conference, where a score or so of SF/Fantasy genre writers gathered to discuss their fiction and the state of the genre, I raised a question I had seen in print: Should a writer write a first person narrative featuring the other gender? Because that might spoil the effect; it can’t really be a teen girl talking if you know the author is a middle aged man. I did not get an answer; I got a lecture from John Brunner, who questioned my own sexuality for even raising the question. And the other writers broke into applause. Okay, I didn’t argue the case, and proceeded with my own career thereafter, which in terms of sales (not critical acceptance) was to eclipse that of all the others then present except perhaps Anne McCaffrey. I’m pleased that seldom has any woman ever objected to the way I portray women as protagonists in my fiction; indeed, most tell me I have it right. But I still think it was a valid question that deserved an answer, not an applauded attack on me. I like to think that the reluctance of the other writers to address a valid question about writing signaled their subsequent lack of success compared to mine; they preferred condemnation to consideration. I was more seriously interested in writing than they were, or maybe just luckier. I dare say those others might not agree with this assessment, but the episode speaks for itself. I never attended another Milford Conference; they surely thought Good Riddance. I think they just didn’t get it. And I tend to bridle when a group gangs up on an individual for speaking a truth they don’t want to consider. The very idea of exploring a question about writing at a writing conference!

Speaking of female reactions: another paper found dates from 1998: an email from a woman I now quote in its entirety: “Sexist male pig! Try writing about a strong woman for once! After all, not all women are easy, beautiful, thin, air-headed bimbos! We don’t all aspire to being married and having kids! We don’t all wear short, cleavage-showing, scanty dresses and jump in bed with every half-wit male that happens to come along! Stop stereotyping women in your writing you disgusting horny parasite!” Gee, I wonder which of my novels she was thinking of? All she needs is for all the other readers of this column to break into applause. Perhaps relevant is a current newspaper ad featuring beautiful air-headed bimbos in cleavage-showing bras and panties that are on sale this week, $11.99 for the former, $2.99 for the latter. Doubtless those models have breast implants, but they do look good. What gets me, though, is the lack of hips, as noted above. Maybe they are harder to fake. They just don’t seem to make women as they used to, in the opinion of this disgusting horny parasite.

Another years-old item I saved is a piece titled “The Inflation Scam.” It says that in the ’80s they changed the rules to make monetary inflation seem lower. When official inflation reached 5%, a giant accounting firm recalculated it using the old rules–and it came to 15%. Now you know why government figures don’t reflect your personal reality. I’ve suspected it for a long time.

There was also a copy of the Jewel-Lye & AwGhost 1993 issue of the HI PIERS newsletter. (I did say my study seldom gets cleaned up?) This was back in the days when Hi Piers was a bookseller; we weren’t then online. I did a relatively brief column, reported on my attendance at events in Gainesville Florida, reported on my afternoon with the winners of the Characters contest, and ran a brief excerpt from my historical novel Isle of Woman. In time we shut HiPiers down, as it was losing money at a horrendous rate, and my activity moved to HiPiers.com. Times do change.

THE ECONOMIST had a nice article on language: they have discovered one without nouns or verbs. This challenges Noam Chomsky’s thesis that we are hard-wired for a particular language format. (I have resisted the urge to have a Gnome in Xanth named Chomsky; I don’t think Dr. Chomsky would see the humor.) I never agreed with that; the evidence of pidgin or creole languages having similar rules merely shows that they are compounded from different languages that already have those rules. The larger question is whether the languages we speak affect our mode of thinking. Jack Vance addressed that in his novel The Languages of Pao, wherein those raised on warlike languages became warriors, for example. I don’t know whether there’s anything to it in real life, but it’s an intriguing hypothesis.

I received an ad inviting me to subscribe to Realms of Fantasy. Their literature shows one of their covers with my name on it. You might think from that that I am represented therein. No. The editor solicited a story from me before the magazine started up, years ago, and I agreed, but had no clue what kind of fantasy was wanted. The editor was going to get in touch with me but never did, so I finally wrote a vanilla story without elements to annoy any potential readers and sent it in. That’s really not my style, but I was shooting blind. Months passed, and finally the editor rejected it, after she had closed out the first issue, so that there was no chance to write another that better met her undefined criteria. I can write for a market if I have any hint what it wants, as perhaps my larger career indicates. There was nothing; the editor clearly wasn’t interested and I can’t say I was interested either. I received no word, no further request; I have never seen an issue. But here’s the kicker: ever since, from the outset on, my name has been used in their advertising to promote that magazine. I have to conclude that all they wanted was my name, not my participation. I am not pleased, but I doubt I could sue them for false advertising. You can bet that I’ll never write for them, however.

Another newspaper article on the connection between learning and sleep, as science inches toward what I described years ago in Shame of Man: we process memories in our sleep, during the brain’s downtime. Now they are finding that it’s not just dreams; elements are set up in deep sleep too. I’m still waiting for someone to win the Nobel Prize for Science for such a discovery; maybe it will help the sales of my novel when I point out who thought of it first.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW had an article on ten technologies that refuse to die. You know they’re right; some outdated ones don’t die. They mention analog watches, dot matrix printers, typewriters, vacuum tubes and others. Well, I do wear an analog watch, and believe the day of analog is not close to being done.

CENSORSHIP NEWS had an interesting article on the connection between violent video games and violence in the people who play them. It seems there is none. Prior studies have been incomplete and faulty; it is apparent that players are no more violent than those who don’t play. That intrigues me, because my concern is the effect of written fiction on the readers: if I write a violent scene, does it encourage violence? If I write a sexy scene, does it cause readers to go looking for sex? If I mention rape, do they then do it? I have seen no evidence that they do, but the case has never been certain. This informal game survey suggest that I don’t need to worry. Yet can all the advertisers be wrong about the effect of their ads on public taste?

I have other clippings, but yet again I have to call a halt somewhere. Let’s all take a break for two months to watch the primaries.

I brought it inside and made a crude nest from paper in a box; at least it had the limited comfort of warmth. When the temperature rose outside I took the box out and put it near a tree. I left it, and next morning the mouse was gone. Did its mother find it? Was it able to move out and forage for itself? More likely a snake came by and swallowed it. I am surely happier not knowing. But the question remains: what can a person do in such a circumstance?

Three days later the news was of a Tampa science teacher who found two day-old rabbits, shunned by their mother and near death. She knew they couldn’t live on their own, and decided the kindest thing was to kill them quickly. She had her students dig a hole, and she dismembered the bunnies with a shovel. Now she’s charged with two counts of animal cruelty, and facing a fine of $620. Yet would it have been less cruel to let them die of exposure and hunger? Should she have contacted an animal welfare organization? I don’t want to be too blunt here, but typically those folk have better things to do than rush to the aid of dying baby bunnies.

What do you do when confronted by a situation for which there seems to be no kind solution? I don’t have a pat answer, and it bothers me. I couldn’t bring myself to kill that mouse cleanly, yet that might have been the kindest answer. People who can answer such questions without wincing are a pain in the soul.

On to another dilemma: I maintain an ongoing survey of electronic publishers and services, elsewhere on this site. I started it because I wanted to have an answer for aspiring writers whose dreams get trodden on by the spike-nailed boots of traditional publishers. Those publishers are mostly corporations, and a corporation doesn’t give half a fart whether you live or die unless it affects their markets. Dreams are like baby animals, harmless, easily hurt, and unable to survive long without assistance–yet with the potential to move mountains if they survive, mature, and find their leverage. Some are beautiful; some are ugly; most are in the indifferent middle range. Regardless, each one deserves some kind of chance.

Electronic publishing offers that chance to ten times as many writers as does traditional publishing (Parnassus), and self publishing can accommodate about ten times as many again; all the remainder. But the sharks prowl these waters also, and some kind of guidance is helpful. I don’t claim to be expert here, and my survey has no authority other than my observation. I have had several decades of mixed experience, and am known by a good many readers, so I make my list and comment candidly for anyone who is interested. They don’t have to be my readers; it’s a public service. I am receiving feedback that suggests it is indeed helpful for writers. That justifies the effort. I have done very well as a writer, and am satisfied to give back some for others.

But the moment I make a negative comment about a publisher, the hornets are roused. They remonstrate, they plead, they threaten. That’s another reason I do it: I am beyond blacklisting, having survived that decades ago. I don’t need any electronic publisher, and anyone familiar with my career knows it. So I can speak truth without effective retaliation. Aspiring writers can’t, and publishers use their clout to silence anyone they can. Thus not many negative exposes get publicized. That means in turn that new writers continue to get ripped off by unscrupulous outfits. Someone needs to speak out, and so I do it because I can. It’s not fun, but necessary. My survey is dedicated to the truth, whatever it may be, regardless of those who want it suppressed. And yes, I do also run negative comments on those with whom I have had positive interaction, such as Xlibris and Double-Dragon, if I receive them, and positive feedback on some I may not like. There may be errors in my listing, but no deliberate bias.

Okay, all fine and noble. But there’s nevertheless a problem: I don’t always know the truth. I could speak in generalities, as there have been several cases, but this time I’ll use a specific. In my FeBlueberry update I said of NEW CONCEPTS PUBLISHING (NCP) “But I have a very bad report on their sloppiness and nonresponsiveness and possible cheating of authors.” I did; I don’t make such things up. Naturally that brought the publisher down on my neck, and I had a fair amount of dialogue with their representative “Madris” and three complainants whose anonymity I protect. The first said it took her a year to get their contract, and the book did not come out by the time another year had passed. She queried but got no answer. Then nine months after that, she learned that it had been published two months before, when she saw it listed at the site. She had not been notified. She ordered copies. It took four months for the books to arrive, and there were errors, such as the title being misspelled on the copyright page. She sent a list of errors, asking that they be corrected for future printings. No response. And the royalty statements showed no sales. She queried, and was told they would check on it. Then, suddenly, without notice to her, her book was gone, though there were two years left on her contract. She queried again, but received no answer. So she withdrew her book, citing NCP’s violation of her contract, and demanded that any owed royalties be paid. Then she received a “Dear Authors” missive announcing that Young Adult category books had been dropped, and the rights were returned to her. But the book remained on sale at a number of outlets. She wondered if she would ever get her royalties. At that point she wrote to me. Now you know my basis for my “very bad” report. That was just the first of three similar reports, from three different writers.

So was this bad publishing, followed by blacklisting when she queried? Publishers don’t openly post blacklists; they might get sued. They just find other reasons to exclude the author from any participation, so there is seldom any tangible evidence. But word gets around, and others know, and many other publishers honor the blacklist, and other writers get the word about what happens to troublemakers who get uppity about their rights. I have been the route, as my published autobiography documents. It is my private pleasure that in time I prospered and all my blacklisters washed out, in one lovely case because he had not been able to develop successful authors like me. That publisher who named me didn’t know that their own editor had been blacklisting me, refusing to consider novels and series I offered him that subsequently did well elsewhere; that’s what made it so exquisite. I hadn’t done anything directly; I had simply proved my potential, that would have worked for him had he edited by merit instead of by spite. But that kind of outcome is prohibitively rare; I’m the only case I know of. Most other victims are finished. But that’s also why the fur rises on the back of my neck when I smell blacklisting or cheating. That’s why a publisher under suspicion of that will find me unyielding in my pursuit of the truth, though I try to mask the blood on my teeth. I have gone after traditional publishers with lawyers, and have made my case, though for some reason they don’t seem to like to publicize my victories.

Okay. Madris began “One of our customers forwarded the information that you had posted derogatory, if not down right defamatory, remarks about my company on your site. How DARE YOU POST UNSUBSTIANTED REMARKS like THIS?” This was not her smartest opening; that music you hear in my background is the theme from Jaws. Madris blithely continued: “As it happens, I can trace this exactly to its source. Why? Because I do NOT cheat my authors. I not only pay my authors well, but within my limited abilities–yes we are overworked, understaffed and, as a small company, do occasionally have cash flow problems–pay my authors on time EVERY DAMNED CENT THEY HAVE EARNED, and quite often, money that I haven’t even collected yet–if there’s another publisher in the world who does so, I’d like to know it.” Okay, if other electronic publishers care to write to me about this, I’ll name them in my next, JeJune 2004, column. Offhand, I can name Xlibris and Mundania, two publishers in which I have a financial interest; I suspect there are others. She also said: “Now, regarding THE author who wrote you. It has been my unfortunate experience having been in business since 1996 to occasionally run across people who WILL NOT BE HAPPY.” Okay, one useful device I have found is to ask the publisher to name the writer. Sometimes they can, which is persuasive. I did once delete a bad report. Sometimes they can’t. This case wasn’t that easy, as there were three, though I had announced only the first; the other two came in after the column was posted. She concluded “If you’re not satisfied, I’m sorry to hear it. But I’m going to sue the hell out of the next person who posts ANY accusations about my company when they haven’t even bothered to contact me and ask me any questions.”

Well, the last time I was sued, I made the suer pay me. I did that so other potential suers would get the word, in the manner of a blacklist. It’s not nice to rile the ogre. About the only thing a bully understands is superior force. Yes, I have not been sued since, though that may be coincidence. But this shows why I protect the anonymity of my informants, and why I generally don’t check with publishers first: they are not about to admit fault, and are more likely to go after the wronged writer or the messenger, me. As I mentioned, I have been the route, and emerged snarling. Whoso sueth me today will get his bottom chomped, but regular writers can’t afford the lawyers I can. And yes, it cost me more in legal fees than I got from the suing party; it was a pyrrhic victory, but it made the point and I’d do it again. The other party had to pay its legal fees and the money to me, so surely got the message. I don’t get into legal action for the fun of it. And yes, had I been fairly treated originally, I would not now have it in for errant publishers. It does come around.

There was a good deal more to her letter, but I trust this shows that the publisher’s view was quite different from the writers’ views. It was enough to suggest to me that this was not a clear-cut case of publisher malfeasance. I repeat: my interest is in the truth, whatever it may be, even if personally I’d like to lay waste some geography. How DARE I, indeed! How little she knew. I have been in business as an ornery pro writer since 1962, and have occasionally encountered publishers who WILL NOT BE FAIR to writers and who react to legitimate queries with foaming muzzles. But I responded mildly: “Nevertheless, I have several complaints. I know that confusions are possible and that some writers have unrealistic expectations. But the details these writers have provided me are persuasive and damning. Perhaps some things are going on that you don’t know about.” Sometimes the top brass does get torpedoed by malfeasance of an underling.

Our dialogue continued, and tones moderated. I recognized the possibility (this was my own thought, not a charge by the publisher) that a single aggrieved writer might be trying to smear the publisher by sending complaints under several bylines. I do not wish to be used by anyone in that manner. But how could I fathom the truth while preserving anonymity? That was the dilemma. So I asked the publisher to list the authors she had had trouble with, and I asked the authors to list their titles with this publisher. Both cooperated, somewhat to my surprise. The publisher did name one of my three, and all three authors named their titles. One even listed a number of sites where her book remained on sale, and I verified this. But the publisher deleted the authors from its listing when it closed down that line of books, so couldn’t name them. So I was satisfied that both sides had some merit: if the publisher routinely wronged its authors, it would not have been able to name even one special case; but there were three different authors, showing it wasn’t limited to one, and they seemed to have been treated outrageously.

So what was the real situation here? My conclusion is that it really is mostly a case of tardy performance and misunderstanding. NCP really is understaffed, so queries can get passed over or lost. It found it was not doing well with a certain line of books, so it shut it down. To the authors it may look like retaliation, but in my judgment it wasn’t. The publisher said that writers whose books were selling well were happy, and those whose books were not selling well were unhappy. This seems to have been the case here. The publisher was arrogant and neglectful about properly informing the authors concerned, but it wasn’t cheating or punishing them. So what about those books still on sale after being withdrawn? NCP had withdrawn the books from sale, but the outlets didn’t update their listings. I believe no sales were actually made there. Similarly some outlets that were selling books before were slow in relaying payments–months slow. That explains why known sales were not yet listed. It does happen; this is an advantage of my 40 years dealing with publishers: I have seen it before. So while I can’t say I really like the attitude of NCP, I also can’t say they are deliberately wronging their authors, other than by foul-ups and maddening insensitivity to complaints. There’s a whole lot of that going around; just about every publisher has surely been guilty to some degree at some point. Should other writers do business with NCP? Yes, with the hope that the publisher will after this run-in ameliorate its attitude and shore up its responses to queries. I say once more: this is no unique case; many publishers are similar.

I’ll finish with a report from a satisfied named author: Ellen Fisher ellenfisher@erols.com, who has in the past been published by Bantam, a solid traditional publisher. “I sold my second historical romance to New Concepts in March 2003. It was issued in October and since then I’ve had two more romances released by them. I received my first royalty statement this spring and have no reason to believe they haven’t sent me everything I’ve earned. They strike me overall as a very good little company trying very hard to increase their customer base. They recently established a discussion loop for their authors, which has led to a lot of good ideas for promotion being developed. Like most e-publishers, NCP is understaffed and overworked, and they don’t always respond as quickly as I’d like. In addition, much of the promotion is up to the authors (which is true for a lot of New York-published authors nowadays too, if you’re a new author!) but NCP has released all my books on schedule, with no formatting problems, no introduced typos, and with really great covers that rival New York quality romance covers. Sales are low, but that is expected in e-publishing, and NCP is doing their best to increase sales. NCP’s site was hacked at the end of last year, which meant it was offline for over a month. Naturally there was some ‘unresponsiveness’ during this time, as the employees worked to get the entire site moved to a new server. This was unfortunate, but a risk of doing most of your business online. There are some NCP authors that are annoyed they have been cut from NCP’s list–but most of their books were not selling, and they were no longer actively producing books for NCP. NCP’s decision to focus on the books that are selling, and the authors who are committed to the company, makes sense to me. I also know some children’s and YA authors are irked because NCP is no longer selling these lines. But again, a small company needs to focus on what sells, and children’s books have not sold well in e-format. I don’t know what the story is behind the author(s) that wrote you, and won’t speculate. But there are lots of romance and fantasy authors currently writing for NCP who are quite happy with the company.” Actually, I did hear from several of them.

So there you have it: a single case history, similar to others. I have amplified aspects so that I won’t have to do so again; I’ll refer future folk to this discussion. Now you know some of what goes on behind the scenes in my Survey, and perhaps have a better notion of the issues that distinguish publishers from authors. My recommendation to publishers is to KEEP YOUR AUTHORS INFORMED, and to writers to do what these three did: query, try to work it out with the publisher, be patient, and when that fails, contact an outfit like Ask Ann, Preditors and Editors, The National Writers Union, EPIC, or me, depending on your membership and mood. Aggrieved poets can check Elite Skills; my Survey has a link. Such entities can, if they choose, make publishers respond or be sorry. Not that my career has been noted for patience with publishers, as the tone of this discussion suggests. Being fair minded can be a real chore.

On to other things. A reader complained that I typically have huge long paragraphs so it’s hard to keep one’s place. HOW DARE–oops, I’m out of that section; I have to be polite. Now as a commercial writer I know about paragraphing; in fact I think my sense of it is sharper that that of many other writers I see. You will seldom see a cumbersome paragraph in my published fiction. It’s something of a spot science. But this column isn’t commercial, it’s just my ramblings on assorted subjects, a sort of blog, so I have tried to group all of particular subjects into single paragraphs. Still, having been jogged by a reader, I am reconsidering, and this column is more responsively parsed, as it were. If readers prefer this, I’ll continue.

Hipiers.com receives a good deal of email, most of it spam. We dump the spam, and I look at everything else. Lately we have been getting multiple copies of legitimate letters, because the server sends back “undeliverable” messages while actually forwarding the mail here. We objected, but it’s like complaining to a publisher: you get ignored, or a bug letter, and nothing changes. We have been generally satisfied with our server, hitherto; I hope this doesn’t reach the stage where we have to change servers to make our point.

I write these columns in the last days of the month preceding the column dates, then edit them on the first of the month. Last time I did so efficiently–I do prefer efficiency when I can manage it–and finished editing the 7,600 words of it before supper. Sigh: that meant I didn’t get to comment on the Superbowl. Think of the fun I could have had with Janet “I have a Breast” Jackson making a clean breast of her wardrobe malfunction. Now I’ll never have the chance. However, I can mention that later the British magazine THE ECONOMIST deplored the depths to which other publications sank by publishing pictures of the exposure. To demonstrate that depth, THE ECONOMIST published one of those pictures, tongue in cheek. It was a much better angle than that provided by the brief TV shot; the girl has quite a figure. Good thing THE ECONOMIST has a higher standard. So how was the football game? Oh, there was football?

Several decades back we subscribed to CONSUMER REPORTS magazine, the one that tests and rates assorted products, you know, a bit like my electronic publishing survey. They can get sued when they make a negative report, too. We dropped CR then, because their check-rated product seemed seldom to be on sale locally, while what was on sale wasn’t rated. Once I even sent in a description of a portable radio I had bought and liked, that they didn’t rate in their radio survey. They replied that if they had tested it they would have listed it. Duh! My point was that they were not addressing local consumer needs. Well, time has passed so we’re trying them again; maybe they have finally learned how to do it. And the first thing I noticed was that they flunked the Vitamin C test. There are two classes of people in the world: those who know that C does not stop the common cold vs. those who have actually properly tried it. That is, one gram per waking hour at the onset of cold symptoms, continued until the cold fades out; meanwhile all you feel is a slight roughness in the throat, no running nose, no coughing, no fatigue. There can be some mild digestive disturbance–a gram an hour is one hell of a lot of C–but that’s about it. I’m a hard case; it takes three days to stifle a typical cold, but others can do it in less. A single one gram dose used to work for my mother. The medical profession seems reluctant to actually test C. Oh there have been trials, limited to something like a fifth of a gram a day, which is like trying to dam the tide with a child’s toy shovel. I understand that once they tried a double blind study with the proper amount, but that immediately the subjects knew who was getting the C, because their colds were stifled, while the others suffered full symptoms. So the anonymity was ruined, and they stopped the test. Since it was incomplete, there were no official results, and they continued reporting that there was no proof that Vitamin C worked. I think they’re in thrall to the expensive commercial nostrums that treat symptoms alone. I’m sorry to see CONSUMER’S UNION parrot that line. Dammit, they should have tested C themselves. Do they accept Ford’s word that its cars are superior the the junk GM puts out, or do they actually drive the cars? Why do they accept popular wisdom here, instead of verifying the case? So they flunked that test, in more than one sense, and that makes me wary of their other judgments, as I was thirty years ago. I’m sorry to see it. (To C it?) Note to readers: C will stop a cold, but not the flu; if you’re running a fever, get help.

As most readers of this column know, in the past few years I have changed from Windows computer software to Linux. I don’t yet recommend that route to others, because Linux still has too many Geek-sensitive features. (Could that be the origin of the age-old complaint “It’s Geek to me”?) Once they fix it so you can put in the installation disk, let it percolate, then run Linux programs without hassle, it will be ready. If you want to sign up for AOL you can do that, so it should be possible for Linux. At any rate, having struggled through the process, along the way utilizing the services of three separate geeks, I am quite pleased with StarOffice 7 and Linux in general; my only remaining significant problem is that I have to print out a novel in 50 page segments, because it will neither do a full novel nor accept a chain of smaller files in a queue. It used to; its the recent versions that don’t. But apart from that, I am in love with StarOffice/OpenOffice (they are variants of each other, the latter being the development phase of the former) and figure to continue using it until I croak. So it seemed time to take the last step: going to the Linux database. I’ve been using the Windows Access, my last Windows connection. I dreaded the change, knowing that it would be a horrible hassle on my own. Did I mention needing geeks for Linux? Well, it was. StarOffice makes it a point to read Word files, but it couldn’t read Access files. Access is a relational database; both Linux and StarOffice have relational databases. But it seems the one can’t read the content of the other. Finally we broke the Access component files into separate entities and translated them to StarOffice files on a Windows system, then translated those to my Linux system. It’s not relational; I’m tempted to wonder whether the Linux folk actually know what relational is. But it works. It takes three minutes to call up. But it works. So I have it here in my Linux system. Maybe some day I’ll fetch in another geek and see if it can be translated to a full functioning relational database. For the rest of you my advice remains the same: not yet. I think too many of the Linux folk are refugees from Microsoft, and bring that user-be-damned attitude with them. In time, I hope, that will pass. Then Linux will conquer the world.

And I practice my archery. After my last column comment on the conic arrow-rest, I received two reader comments. One suggested that I use a bow sling. This is a strap that holds the bow to the hand, so that the hand does to grasp it at all, and no twist is applied as you loose the arrow, making for more accurate aim. I experimented, liking the idea, but discovered that my bows are top heavy–probably from the weight of the sights–so will tilt up or down if not held in place, spoiling my aim. The other recommended drawing the bowstring with the tips of the fingers, rather than curling knuckles around it. But my bows, right and left, are set at about 57 pounds draw weight. I can’t do that with my fingertips. Remember, I’m pushing 70; I’m not the physical specimen I might once have had the potential to be. So I use knuckles like other ogres. I concluded that I simply have to learn to hold the left side bow firmly but without twist, as I do with the right side. I’m working on it. One Sunday I made a combined score of +9. That is, nine more arrows struck the one square foot center, at the 150 foot range, than missed the target entirely. I loose a total of 24 arrows, 12 for each side. Meanwhile my cone started dropping arrows into the ground. I concluded that since that was the light version, the warmer spring weather must be making the plastic more flexible, and my heavy arrows are weighing it down. So I swapped it for the heavier cone–and suddenly I was missing them all high. That was more confirmation than I liked. I adjusted, and missed them all low. So on that session, my right side had two centers and two misses, 2-2. My left side had 0-11. I think I have a bit more zeroing in to do. You can see why I use baffle targets on all sides, lest I lose that many arrows. But I also think I’m on the right track. I like the cone, as I like Linux; it just requires some adjustment.

I am now writing Incarnations of Immortality #8, Under a Velvet Cloak, featuring Nox, the Incarnation of Night. I am slavishly following the outline made by Stephen Smith, and am about 26,000 words into it. This is the first time I have written a novel outlined by someone else. But it’s a good outline, and should make a decent novel. Stephen Smith was the same one who suggested the bow sling. It seems readers can have more than one interest.

We saw a sale in a catalog: Seiko kinetic watch, list price $375, for less than half price. So we splurged and bought two of them, his and hers, as it were. Kinetic means that it doesn’t need battery replacement; it is powered by the ordinary motion of the wrists. They are good watches; I’m checking accuracy by the hourly time beeps on the radio, and mine seems to gain about 3.5 seconds a month. Since all they claim is to be within 15 seconds, I’m pleased. I hope they last a decade without mischief. That may assuage my underlying guilt for buying an expensive watch when I already had a good one. I don’t like to waste money or things; I still wear the blue jeans I’ve had for decades, though my original 30 inch waist has expanded to about 33 inches (my weight hasn’t changed, but some sand has shifted with age) and I can no longer button the tops. I surely look like a hayseed; well…

Reader Sam Reeves had to do a research paper for Freshman Composition, so asked to interview me. I try to oblige such requests on general principle, as I’d like to get more of my books into schools and colleges, and email is easy. I also liked his attitude:

The subject of my paper is why the literati should not denounce science fiction and fantasy as inferior to traditional “literature” taught in American schools. I believe this elitist literary community often levels a blanket judgment against science fiction without regard to the quality of material contained in the pages, possibly without even reading it.

I list three reasons for why the literati should not denounce sf & f unilaterally. First, when one looks past the ray guns, the bug-eyed monsters, and the rest of the WWII-era clichés, human themes, as worthy as those found in mainstream, can be found; the material is just presented in a different way. In fact, the outré conventions of genre fiction can draw an audience that a tamer story could not. Second, exclusion of science fiction and fantasy in schools and national award ceremonies propagates a subtle form of censorship that narrows the American mindset as to what is respectable fiction to the opinion of a single group. In this respect, I equate terms such as “potboiler” with racial epithets. Last, I state that writing talents can be genre-specific. If one is brainwashed into believing his or her favorite genre is unworthy, a talent can be ruined because it has been misdirected.

I’m sure any genre writer will agree that this attitude is worthy of support. So I answered his questions, and because I feel the interview deserves more exposure than an audience of one–his professor–I am running it here, with Sam’s permission.

Interview Questions:

1. The Left Hand of Darkness was once criticized by The New York Review of Books because of its use of “funny names.” Yale professor Harold Bloom said of Stephen King when he won the National Book Award for lifetime achievement in 2003, “He [King] is a man who writes what used to be called ‘penny dreadfuls.’ . . . That [members of the National Book Foundation] could believe there is any literary value there or any aesthetic accomplishment or signs of an inventive human intelligence is simply testimony to their own idiocy.” Have any of your stories been met with hostility simply because they were labeled genre? Explain.

Worse, speaking generally; there are always exceptions. Mine have been met with hostility by SF/F reviewers and critics simply because I became a best-selling writer. My most successful fantasy series, Xanth, is routinely trashed, and never appears even on any “recommended” list for fantasy in genre magazines. It is claimed that I am merely a writer of frivolous fantasy, while my serious fiction, such as the GEODYSSEY series, is ignored. Thus the ignorant and spiteful mainstream attitudes are mirrored within the genre. Critics just don’t seem to appreciate readable, interesting fiction. Fortunately readers do, which is why there is a disconnect between critically approved and commercially successful fiction.

2. What motives do you believe could lie behind this herd mentality of instinctively rejecting genre fiction?

It is difficult to see any reasonable motives. It seems to be masked jealousy of success. Deliberate ignorance contributes.

3. More and more, I see professional writers of speculative fiction make self-belittling remarks such as, “I’m just a story teller.” An old saying rooted in the slavery era is “Tell a man he is stupid enough times and he begins to believe it himself.” Remarks of modesty can start out as shields against criticism, but they also can grow into a self-concept in time, bolstered by negative judgments of the literati. Has your ability to write ever been undermined simply because of genre-specific criticisms, and/or have you witnessed aspirant science fiction or fantasy writers give up because they believed to be respected they must produce mainstream?

No and No. I am a commercial writer, which means I write what readers like to read, qualified by my intellectual interests. I reject the tacit bigotry of the critics, and I believe most genre writers do. The acceptance of readers is a considerable counter to the rejection of literati who really don’t seem to know much about the real nature of writing.

4. What is your opinion toward the common phrase that genre writers are “simply in it for the money”?

That is at best a half truth. Most writers could make more money bricklaying, and know it. The ideal is to earn one’s living doing what one loves, and that’s writing. So we write what will sell, preferring to be commercial about writing rather than commercial about bricklaying. That does not mean we write junk; literary elements are there, unnoticed.

5. What benefits could you imagine if science fiction and fantasy were equally respected alongside mainstream?

In the motion picture industry, they are, and it is leading to some real success for genre writers. But I suspect mainstream critics will never be satisfied with anything less than effective racism, with genre fiction shut into closed enclaves. However, I do believe in categories, separate but equal, so that readers can readily locate their preferences, whether fantasy, western, mystery, romance, erotic, or, yes, literary.

Okay, back to main text. I mentioned motion pictures: I now have serious options on the Xanth, Incarnations of Immortality, and Adept series. By serious I mean not only are they paying healthy money, they are doing things like hiring script writers, directors, and pondering actors. Few options get exercised–that is, result in actual movies–but I believe my chances of coming out of this with one or more movies are better than even. Stay tuned.

There was a bad scene in Sarasota, Florida, the southern edge of the Sun coast. An eleven year old girl disappeared. This sort of thing happens distressingly often, but this time it was caught on an outdoor security camera, so there was a video of the man intercepting the girl, taking her by the hand, and leading her away. They got the man, who had a record, but by then the girl had been raped and killed. So what’s my take? That we need better sex education. There is no lower age limit for sexual predation, so there should be no lower limit for protective education. To be female (and sometimes young male) is to be a target. Those who campaign to stop realistic sexual education in schools are contributing to exactly this kind of murder. That girl should have known not to just go with any man who pretended to be official. She should have protested, and if he grabbed her, screamed, kicked, bit, and fled. He wouldn’t be able to chase her far without attracting attention, and it could save her life. I also feel that all women should carry the Impact Kerambit I have discussed before, the L shaped plastic device that enables a person to break the hand or face of an attacker. Hit him and run, screaming. It might save more than your virginity.

I completed my Relationships collection of mainstream stories, at about 80,000 words. A dozen stories ranging from 1,000 to 20,000 words long, mostly about boy meets girl or vice versa, but the frameworks vary and some are shockers. The only one with any hint of the supernatural is “Dragon Girl,” and it’s no sweet trifle. The dragon represents the vicious side of a sweet girl’s nature, which turns out to be amply justified. But other stories, like “Bully,” are nice: he’s a not-bright reforming school bully, she’s a near-genius freaked-out victim of rape, but each turns out to be exactly what the other needs. Some stories are suitable for maiden aunts; others are X-rated sexual. A wide range, in short. I figured there would not be much traditional print market for this–“Piers Anthony? Mainstream stories? Get real, idiot!”–so asked my agent to let me offer it to electronic publishers. But he said there might be a market, so he’s checking. So I can’t do my bold experiment of soliciting Internet publishers via this column. If any are interested–and none are barred from consideration, even those I’ve fought with–they can let me know and I’ll make a little list for such time as my agent gives up on Parnassus. The thing is, I don’t write fiction to be hidden in buried files; I want it read, and I am not in financial need. And I’m proud of these stories, which show what I can do independent of genre. There are no potboilers here.

I’ve been reading. I’m a slow reader, and it cuts into my writing time, but when I’m not on a book deadline I do try to read. Also, there are galleys of my own books that I have to read. So gives with an abbreviated summary of these last two months reading. Medalon, by Jennifer Fallon. This is a forthcoming fantasy novel from TOR, sent me for blurbing, which I did. The days of gentle children’s fantasy by lady writers have given way to savage adult fantasy by lady writers, and this is an example. There are political scheming, levels of mystery, ugly combat, difficult romance, and yes, magic, well enough done; readers who like getting into well-realized realms should find this worthwhile. Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. This is the one I mentioned last column, where I said GET AN AGENT, and it may have made a six figure difference. It’s a rousing good boy and dragon story and another well-realized fantasy realm; this is clearly a writer who will be known. Lowly Origins, by Jonathan Kingdon. Nonfiction, about what happened when our ancestors first stood on their hind legs. This is a subject that has interested me for some time, as my GEODYSSEY historical series shows. The author is phenomenally knowledgeable, yet somehow misses key aspects as I see them: how two footedness led to the phenomenal visual sexual appeal of women, how it led to man’s development of the most effective body cooling mechanism in the animal kingdom, and exactly how it lead to the giant brain. Still, this volume is worthwhile for those interested in paleontology and the derivation of mankind.

Then I read Omvivore, my 1968 science fiction novel of alien contact, galleys for the Mundania Press republication. So how does it look to me, 35 years later? I was pleasantly surprised; this is well done, with literary touches and a theme I haven’t seen elsewhere: sapient development of the third kingdom, which is the fungus realm. Then my more recent novel, Key to Destiny, Mundania galleys, third in the ChroMagic fantasy series. To my surprise, this seemed to start slow, with a good deal of review of prior material. That’s necessary for readers who haven’t read or don’t remember earlier novels in the series, but not normally my style. However, the complex conclusion wraps up the trilogy in style, and makes me want to get into the fourth novel, as I love this setting and its characters, one of whom is only about three months old, yet who must contest for global dominance with a monstrous sapient machine. So what will baby Voila (pronounced vwa-LAH) be like when she’s a teen?

Daydreams Undertaken, by Stephen L. Antczak. This is a collection of 15 science fiction stories by a lesser-known Florida writer my daughters knew, sent for blurbing. Some stories are challenging, such as “Reality,” about a weird large sculpture that people can walk through and whimsically change. But when they do, it changes reality; some people disappear, human nature shifts, Earth’s second moon vanishes, that sort of thing. So folk get a bit wary. “Captain Asimov” has a dull household robot don a cape and go out anonymously to right wrongs and rescue folk in trouble. Possibly there’s a screw loose, but he’s fun. Other stories range all over. This is far from spaceships and ray guns; it’s the thinking man’s science fiction, mentally and emotionally challenging.

And of course earlier I read the three finalists for the Double Dragon contest. This turned out to be awkward, because I had read one of them before, when a small publisher sent it to me for blurbing; I had declined to blurb it, then, but it turned out to be the winner, this time: The Steel of Enadia, by Kevin Hile. I had hoped it wouldn’t be the best, but of the others one was historical rather than fantasy, and the other had too much violence and not enough magic for my taste in fantasy. So my limited experience being a contest judge leaves me not entirely satisfied. Oh, the winner is readable, with plenty of good fantasy elements; you’ll enjoy it. I just wish I hadn’t read it before, as that may have queered my objectivity.

And I saw movies and videos. Hidalgo, routine man and horse adventure with a save-the-mustangs theme I agree with; much action, no real romance. The video anime Princess Mononoke, demonstrating that story lines and characterization in this sub-genre are getting more complicated, with an ecological theme I like. (I looked up “anime” in the dictionary, and learned it is a part of medieval armor, and also an ingredient in varnish. Nothing about movies. I wonder what politically correct fantasy purists make of that?) Video Spanking the Monkey, whose title phrase I didn’t understand until my daughter clued me in: it means masturbation. This is actually about a young man who has to take care of his mother, who has a broken leg, during his father’s absence, and winds up having sex with her. Well enough done, not really my type. And I got a Betty Page Pin Up Queen video, because of the Bettie Page (yes, spelled differently) doll I mentioned last time; I wanted to know who she was. Apparently she was the top pin-up queen of the 50s. I graduated from high school and college and got married and spent two years in the US Army in the 50s, but somehow never was aware of her; maybe I had other things on my mind. I haven’t watched the video yet. My VCP (video cassette player) stopped rewinding tapes, so my wife found a full VCR/DVD on sale and got it, and it works, but I can’t play DVDs on it because the cheap little TV I have lacks the connections. Our propensity for shopping the sales can lead to mischief. But I can play DVDs on my computer system. I just don’t like wasting capacity.

Family matters: There was a fire at one relative’s house, seriously disrupting their home life. He is a chemist, and was experimenting with cocoa beans; his stock got inadvertently roasted in the fire. So those interested in obtaining incorrectly roasted cocoa beans can check him at www.chocolatealchemy.com. He’ll restock, so in due course there will be correct chocolate. No, no one was hurt; the fire occurred when they were out, gutting the house. At almost the same time, another relative had a son, whose middle name is after me: Piers. In the past readers have named a cat and a horse after me; perhaps I am moving up.

Last time I asked readers to help me explain the change in location of Mount Pinatuba. They came through: Jason Kincaid said it might be on a tectonic saucer, more mobile than a tectonic plate, and Steve Fisher suggested that it might have found a mustard seed’s faith, so the mountain moved. These should do, and I’ll explain in a future novel, with credits to them. Steve Fisher also advised me of a nice site to view: www.domai.com, dedicated to esthetic nude women. No sex, no porno, just nice nudes. No clothing at all, no artful covering up, merely artfully displayed. Apparently the girls send them in, much as readers send me puns. That’s my type of site.

I saw a newspaper article about a man’s crusade for a low-cost hearing aid. It says they could be made for $100, but required standards bring the average cost to $2,200. “The prices are obscene” one authority says. I agree; they are ripping off folk who might do just fine with a simple sound magnifier, just as some can make out small print with a magnifying glass and don’t need expensive prescription glasses. My wife suggested that I check the archery catalog. Sure enough, you can get sound magnifying hunting aids for around $100. The article mentions that: they played two recordings before an audience of 50 audiologists. One was by a $149 sporting goods device, the other by a $2000 digital hearing aid. The audience rated the $149 device as having clearer sound. So maybe all you need is a sporting goods catalog to make your hearing aid affordable.

Another newspaper article says that women and girls really are more depressive than the male gender. It’s partly genetic, partly circumstantial; many women are abused. Pre-menstrual and postpartum depression are two that men don’t encounter, too. It is complicated by the fact that women tend to internalize, to dwell on it more. So is there anything they can do to alleviate it, short of medication? Yes: stay active physically, as that is a distraction and has physiological benefits. Cultivate friends; sympathetic discussion can help, and if a major relationship is lost, there is something to fall back on. My interest of course is two fold: I have experienced just enough depression myself to have a serious respect for it, and I hear from a number of depressive girls and want to find the words to help them. Of related interest: item in US NEWS & WORLD REPORT discusses hypergraphia: the driving compulsion to write. Its opposite is writer’s block. Alice Flaherty birthed twin boys who died, and she went into postpartum depression. Then some emotional switch flipped, and she was bursting with ideas and had to write. She wrote a book, The Midnight Disease, exploring these extremes of the creative process. They may be related to mental disease. What is written isn’t necessarily great literature; in fact the author says much of it is cringingly embarrassing garbage. But the writing compulsion will not be denied. Hm–maybe that explains both my output and the critic’s reaction to it. Except for one thing: I don’t recall ever suffering from postpartum depression.

I was sent a link to a site that sells the Netti Pot. This is a little device that looks like Aladdin’s Lamp, used for washing out the nose to ease allergies. You put warm salt water in it, put it to one nostril, tilt your head to the side, and pour in the solution so that it flows through and out the lower nostril. Nice, but it occurs to me that similar could be done without the pot. When I had nose surgery in 1992 I had to rinse with a salt solution by tilting a cup to my nose, sniffing it up, and spitting it out. A little practice and it became routine. Next time I suffer a siege of the sneezes, I’ll try it.

Another article is on the rules of attraction: lust, romantic love, and attachment, something I have read about and commented on before. It says that love is not an emotion but a drive, like the craving for food and water. That’s what’s new to me; I always thought it was an emotion. It seems that chemistry underlies it, and it is suppressed during a long-term relationship. That explains why that first phenomenal flush of fantastic feeling does not last. There was also an article in NEW SCIENTIST with further insights. It says the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. I hadn’t thought of that, but probably agree. It says the sex drive evolved to enable our ancestors to seek intercourse with any remotely appropriate individual. Romantic love developed to enable our forebears to focus their attention on preferred partners instead of wasting their energy randomly. And long-term attachment evolved to motivate mates to rear their babies as a team. So now you know. I think the author of the newspaper article had read this one. Another item says that the three states of lust, love, and attachment can happen in scrambled order, or with different partners at the same time. Hoo–isn’t that a formula for mischief! Of related interest: an item in SCIENCE NEWS says that a mathematical model can predict whether a marriage will end in divorce with 94% accuracy. They videotaped 15 minute conversations about things like sex and finances, analyzed them, made predictions, then checked four years later. So what’s the secret? In destined-to-be-successful marriages, positive interactions like joking and laughing outnumbered negative ones by 5-1. If one partner showed contempt as the other spoke, doom. Interesting. My wife and I don’t argue about sex or money, and we laugh often. I like to say we have an old fashioned marriage: I make the money, she spends it. I take care of the big things, she the little things. Big things are global policy and whether boy gets girl in my current novel. Little things are where we go, what we eat, and everything else. We’re coming up on our 48th anniversary this year.

I tried five health newsletters, and gradually over the course of years whittled them down to one: ALTERNATIVES, by Dr. David C Williams. Of recent interest is his statement that as much as 80% of stroke damage can be reduced by administering an experimental drug called Caffeinol within two hours. He says this is a combination of caffeine and alcohol; neither component helps, but in combination they work well. Similar protection could be achieved by consuming two or three cups of strong coffee and a cocktail. Or Irish coffee. Mix 2 cups strong black coffee, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 2 ounces of Irish whiskey and stir well. Alcohol opens up blood vessels, and caffeine increases blood flow. So if you have a stroke, this may be a way to reduce its damage while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. He says cranberry juice may also help. I’m not a coffee or a whiskey drinker, but this interests me. Another issue quotes a poem seen on a T-shirt to which I can relate: “The Golden Years Have Come at Last/ I cannot see, / I cannot pee, / I cannot chew, / I cannot do. / My memory shrinks, / My hearing stinks. / No sense of smell, / I look like hell. / My body’s drooping, / Got trouble pooping. / The Golden Years Have Come at Last.” Sigh.

The email keeps me busy on a daily basis, mostly with the reading and brief responses. Some are interviews, as shown above; I try to oblige, though if the amount should increase I might have to cut back. If, for example, any of those movie options pan out, I could suddenly have ten or a hundred times the business on this site, and would have to hire a secretary. (Confucius say: “Secretary not permanent fixture until screwed on desk.”) I typically answer the questions, then forget to check online to see if the material is run. I did remember in one case, so can say that the new publisher www.keepitcoming.net posted my interview at its site, and if the length of this column doesn’t leave you surfeit, you can go there for more. This does not imply any support for this publisher; it doesn’t have a track record. No, you gutter minded jokers, it is not a porn site; it’s the fiction that keeps coming, in the form of serial stories. See my Survey. Meanwhile I received an email saying “It has come to my attention that you are being under police investigation. Is that true? Have you really committed such crimes?” And a link. I didn’t click it; this is obviously a fake, despite what critics may say.

I read some of the daily comics, like Curtis, Doonesbury, Luann and such. Foxtrot had one I appreciated: they got hold of a Windows source code leak, which went IF browser_type = “Internet_Explorer” THEN smooth sailing ELSE IF (browser type = “Netscape”) AND (justice_department NOT looking) THEN REPEAT crash (random). I have oft noted the Windows tendency to poke its finger in the eye of competitive programs running on the Windows base so that if you want reliable performance, better stick to Macrohard. It is one of the reasons I don’t have any Windows on my main system, which does not connect to the Windows based email system. Linux, essentially, doesn’t crash. Sometimes it does supernatural things, but no crashes.

Every so often we hear from someone who likes the HiPiers site but finds it stodgy, and would like to jazz it up. Sorry, no; this is intended as a public service (the electronic publishing survey), as information on my works (biblio, Xanth database, etc.), and a place for me to express my unfettered opinionations (our current political mess is because they put a kid in charge of the candy store). I don’t want something that takes forever to load, or dazzles with special effects, or is larded with commercials; I want it to be fairly clean and easy to use. So we are satisfied as we are.

There’s a new social fashion: flexitarianism. That’s part-time vegetarianism. That is, there are the great majority of ilk who are omnivores, eating everything from snails (escargot) to bee regurgitation (honey), and there are the vegetarians who skip the cooked corpses, and now those who stay clear of most carrion but do like some. So how do I, as a strict ovo-lacto vegetarian (I do eat eggs and milk), feel about this? I approve it. Here’s the rationale: I avoid butchered flesh because I don’t like hurting animals; that’s a personal credo. When they start growing meat on trees, I’ll reconsider. It doesn’t hurt that vegetarianism is healthy, despite what critics say–statistics aren’t available, but I suspect I would be in the top ten per cent of all men my age for physical and mental health, though there is more to it than vegetarianism–but that’s not the reason. My interest is in saving as many lambs, bunnies, and chicks as feasible from the brutal grinder. So if more people eat less dead meat, that saves more innocent creatures from the bloodstained ax. As meat substitutes become more versatile, it will be easier for more folk to shift entirely into the light. Then fewer fawns will lose their fathers. (I trust readers appreciate the obviously unbiased nature of this discussion.)

Margo Hammond, book editor of the ST PETERSBURG TIMES had an article on reviewing. She once interviewed me and didn’t torpedo me, so I respect her. This time she discussed a literary leak: somehow the names of thousands of anonymous reviewers on Amazon.com were outed, and it turned out that some were friends of the authors, or relatives, or even the authors themselves. Others were arch enemies of the authors, intent on destroying them. Wow! That explains a lot. I never knew I had so few friends and so many enemies. Ms. Hammond concludes “Buyer beware.” Amen. I have railed for years about reviews that do not reflect the quality of author’s works; this vindicates my attitude. No, the reviews I get are not universally negative; that’s just my pose as the aggrieved writer. I forget whether I have mentioned this here before (memory is one of the things age damages) so my grudging apology if I am repeating: there was once an interview with the disgusted wife of a writer. She said that if he got a good review, that washed out the rest of the day. But if he got a bad review, that washed out the rest of the week. My reaction is, well of course: he’s a writer; what do you expect? But it remains true that reviewing is an act that needs to be cleaned up, beginning with anonymity.

It turns out that Dr. Atkins, of the Atkins Diet, died last year weighing 258 pounds with a heart condition at age 72. That figures; I have always regard that diet as faddish nonsense, and curse the day my father discovered it and suffered its degenerate effects. Sure, the Atkins folk claim that diet had nothing to do with the doctor’s obesity and bad heart, just as the Bush administration claims that starving the poor to benefit the rich has nothing to do with the country’s economic problems. About all the Atkins diet proves is that you can lose weight on anything, even fat, if you cut your overall intake down far enough. And that you won’t keep it off in good health unless you develop a consistently healthy life style. Duh!

Eric Smith, of Hot Damn! Design sent a frightening expose of the current political and voting scene. It’s not just that the party in power has triple the money to spend on campaigning, but that they are fighting dirty. Gerrymandering, impeachment, recess judicial appointments, and now they have made it a crime for third parties to criticize the president during the election’s critical phase, while they blatantly misrepresent the opponent’s record. More than a quarter of the vote will be tallied on electronic voting machines that can be hacked to fix the results, without trace. Yes, that bothers me; it was clear in 2000 that a majority of the people who voted in Florida tried to vote for Gore, but various devices and foul-ups nullified their votes, and when it seemed that he’d win anyway, the Supreme Court stepped in to prevent the full tally being used. That did give the Republicans the election they had lost. I believe a greater majority of Floridians will vote against the current regime this year, but I am not at all sure their votes will count. So this is a call to activism, and if you are interested, the address is snowdog@juno.ocn.ne.jp. It has been said that the current administration answers the description of a coup, and what is occurring is a form of looting. It scares me. No, I’m not a Democrat; I’m a registered independent. My interest is in seeing an honest election, whatever way it goes.

Amnesty International is the watchdog for man’s inhumanity to man. Their literature is always depressing. This time they are campaigning against violence against women. It’s a global phenomenon. In Russia 14,000 women die every year at the hands of their partners. Every two minutes in England there is a call for help from a woman threatened with violence. There is rampant abduction and rape of women in occupied Iraq that goes mainly unreported and unpunished because women fear they will be killed by male relatives for besmirching family “honor.” Around a hundred million women are at risk of genital mutilation. www.amnestyusa.org. Actually there is violence by women against men too, a problem that goes largely unrecognized, but in general men have more physical, economic and political power, so the women get the brunt. I deplore it all, and am ashamed of my species.

We put in an $800 heat exchanger last fall, to make our air conditioning more efficient, putting the heat from the air into the hot water. But it was misconnected, and never worked. Finally today, Apull 1, as I edited this column, they came and fixed it. We should be set for the summer. We hope. No fooling.

And so another long column, over 10,000 words, crunches to an awkward halt. Have a nice two month respite before I get going on the JeJune effort.

I hope in these columns I project an aura of ornery knowledgeable fair-mindedness, regardless of my true state. Typical is the amendment I’m making this time to my ongoing Survey of electronic publishers and services: I do not check with publishers before running positive or negative feedback on them; this survey is of the nature of a review, and anonymity of sources is maintained. If I may summarize the general gist of publisher responses to bad reviews, it is “You’re a liar! We’ll sue! Tell us who blabbed so we can destroy them. Who the hell are you to make such judgments anyway?!” To which I reply “Tough feces, folk. Clean up your act.” But when, on rare occasion, the publisher turns out to have the right of it, I will grudgingly amend my entry next update. Okay, the ogre persona is fun, but sometimes I really do foul up. This time I discovered that I hadn’t listed Preditors & Editors. That site gave me an award back before I started this survey, and I checked it out then. Since then it has enhanced its features enormously, including vast publisher and agent listings and ratings. So I’m adding it this time, hoping no one will notice that I was remiss for so long.

I get feedback from readers of this column, and sometimes that makes a difference. For example, Charles Borner noted that I was unable to play DVDs on my primitive little TV set because it lacked the proper connections. He told me about the RF Modulator, which is essentially a device to fix such problems. Plug your VCR/DVD player into it, and plug it into your TV, and lo, you have it all. So my wife bought one at the local department store, and I connected it, and voila! I could play both on the TV. Maybe everyone else in the world knew of this fix decades ago; I didn’t. Thank you, Charles.

Remember Patty Page, the doll JoAnne Taeusch, my collaborator on The Secret of Spring sent me? I love those curves, and have her posed bare-breasted with one bare leg lifted toward me. (I am referring to the doll, not JoAnne; that wasn’t clear?) I finally watched the video I bought to find out just who Patty was. She is said to be the leading pin-up girl of the 1960s. Well, she has the body, but those video scenes are feeble peanuts compared to today’s norm. She’s never unclothed, has a limited repertoire of motions, and some sequences are grainy in the fashion of bad TV reception. So I love the doll, but won’t be watching the video again.

My wife found some little pots of phlox on sale, so bought them and we planted them. Phlox is a small flower that grows and blooms in the spring along our local roads with pretty multi-colored flowers. We planted them around our front birdbath–those baths get a lot of business, especially in drought times–and they are doing nicely. The pots were hopelessly root-bound, so we used knives to slice them like three dimensional pies and make six clumps. I feared that I had inadvertently severed the roots of one clump, but it never even wilted, so evidently that wasn’t the case. Our flowers range from pure white to pure purple, with several combinations between, such as purple centers with white fringes, as well as red and blue. Because the wild rabbits have been voracious, we bought fine-mesh chicken wire and made a fence around the flowers. That was a bare area of our lawn; now the grass is growing vigorously within the little enclosure, and is absent outside it. Too bad we can’t rabbit-proof the rest of our yard; our entire sodded back yard is gone, and only fenced tomatoes and potatoes survive. Those plum tomatoes are doing well; they come up from our kitchen garbage and I protect them and water them when I see them appear. We are now eating their fruits. I like to think that we are contributing to their life cycle rather than destroying it. One got chewed off, maybe by a rabbit that reached up, just as it was starting to fruit; I put the stem in the pool and it endured for several weeks, but basically that plant was destroyed. The rabbit didn’t eat it, just bit it off. I hate that.

A decade or so back there was a giant hornet’s nest in a tree by our back yard. I admired it and left it alone, even after the hornets left, but birds or squirrels then tore it apart, perhaps looking for honey. That bothered me; it was a kind of work of natural art. This past year there has been another, by our drive, so when it seemed it was no longer in business I used the extensible pruning hook to bring it carefully down and save it. It measures 1.5 feet long by one foot thick, which may not sound big, but it feels giant when you figure how many hornets could have lived in it. It has twisty curls of gray paper and an off-center entry hole that make it remind me of the planet Jupiter.

Last year a flock of birds nested in our chimney, making constant noise; once in a while one would fly too low and get trapped in the closed off fireplace, and we had to let it out, catch it in a butterfly net, and let it go outside. They are back this year, same story. We pored over our bird books to identify them; not chimney swifts, not wrens (they nest everywhere else around the house), maybe tree swallows. This year I thought to check the nesting range: tree swallows are here, but nest north. Sigh. Best bet now is purple martins. We wish them well. As I have mentioned, we moved to the forest to share it with forest creatures, not to displace them.

Meanwhile there are the magnolia trees. Our long drive has many of them, as we did our best to save the ones that were there first, including especially the little one I spied when the bulldozer operator was clearing the way for the drive. I had him go around it, and I still give it organic nitrogen when I pass it in the morning (translation for those who don’t know ogre ways: I piss on it) and two years ago it had its first flower. Last year it had six flowers, and this year it has had 20 so far. I love that. Of course the more established magnolias are doing better. One near our house had seven flowers in one day. But the Little Magnolia is special; it’s the one I tell paralyzed Jenny about. And for those interested: she remains paralyzed; that’s why I don’t say a lot here. This spring we have discovered a number of persimmon trees along our drive also; we welcome them too. They don’t count as a crop for the tree farm, but we value them. Our crop is slash pines, the kind that die in droughts and fall across the drive, providing me with involuntary additional exercise. Had we owned this property at the outset we would have planted longleaf pines.

I continue to struggle with my archery. Twice a week I loose twelve arrows right handed and twelve left handed at the tiny-seeming two foot square target 150 feet distant. One point for the marked one square foot center; minus one when I miss the whole target. Last sessions before this column were +4 right side, -5 left side, typically in negative territory overall, and +5 right, -4 left, squeaking into rare positive territory. I have tried to figure out the problem, and conclude that on the left side the arrows simply are not going where I’m aiming them. That of course sounds like bad self-serving logic, but my conviction is growing that this is the case. I aim at the center, careful not to twist the bow with my hand, but they fling out wildly left and right. I don’t see the misses, but hear them thwack, while the ones hitting center I do see. I am of course looking where I am aiming, by definition; when I am left looking at a spot the arrow doesn’t hit, I know it has not gone where I aimed. The conic arrow-rest I got solved the problem of arrows falling off as I draw, but hasn’t solved the wildly erratic strikes. So I’ll try yet another kind of arrow-rest, and if that doesn’t help, I’ll have to figure it’s me. I am getting older, but if I’m that unsteady, how come I’m scoring okay on the right side? As far as I can tell, I am as steady left side as right side. There will be a subsequent report; this bugs me. Readers have offered advice, such as drawing the string with the tips of my fingers or using a sling so I don’t have to grasp the bow, but I have found these unworkable. I have to do it ham-fisted like any other ogre.

There was another Shroud of Turin report on TV. Now I have no belief in the supernatural; I regard it as fantasy, and I earn my living writing fantasy. A primary tenet of my philosophy is Realism; I try to get at the reality of whatever I encounter. So you might figure I’d be a Shroud skeptic. Well, I am, but that doesn’t mean I reject it out of hand. As I see it, there could have been a man called Jesus who preached as described in the New Testament of the Bible, and could have been executed by torture. I studied Jesus when I wrote Tarot; I believe in him. I did not go to see The Passion, because I am turned off by gratuitous torture, but it could have happened to Jesus. There could have been a shroud, saved by his disciples, surviving to this time. Back when the issue was hot, I was more impressed by the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church than I was by the skeptics, because the Church was open minded about the validity of the Shroud, while the skeptics were not; they knew it was a fraud from the outset. I am wary of anyone who knows the answer before he reads the question. At that time, according to my imperfect memory, radio carbon dating did suggest that the Shroud dated from medieval times, not the time of Jesus. Okay. But more recent research has unsettled that conclusion. The kind of material and the kind of weave turn out to be typical of the earlier time and place, not the later ones. The pattern imprinted on it turns out to be not from paints, but from body contact. There are seeds in it from the region where Jesus lived. The sample taken for the dating was from a contaminated edge, not the center, and could be wrong. If this is a fake, it’s an amazingly intricate one. It just might be authentic. That does not mean that Jesus was a supernatural being, just that he was a mortal prophet who inadvertently started one of the world’s great religions, and was executed for it. My sympathy is with him; he was grievously treated. And the Shroud remains, like Vitamin C, which I tried and verified, one of my private tests for objectivity: those who are too damned sure it is either divine or a fraud are flirting with subtle or unsubtle bigotry.

We bought two bug zappers shaped like little tennis rackets some time back. The idea is that you swing them at a mosquito and its wings contact the electrically charged mesh, making a shortcut, and ZAP! it is electrocuted with a spark or pop. Well, they work, and I have eliminated the mosquitoes that cluster near our doors in the hope of intercepting succulent living meat. So we bought two more, of a different brand, and they work too. We’re in a drought and the mosquitoes have largely faded; but I found enough to verify the new bats. Come the rains, I’m sure I’ll have far more use for them. Meanwhile, for those elsewhere who are plagued but don’t want douse themselves in bug spray, I recommend these zappers. They are easy, fast, and satisfying.

I said last time that after months we finally had our new heat exchanger working. I spoke too soon; it wasn’t. I hate having temperatures in the 90s and still having to heat our water the old fashioned way, while the device intended to transfer the air heat to the water, doesn’t.

I’ve been watching videos, and we’ve been seeing movies. My movie-freak daughter sees to that. We saw Hellboy, Van Helsing, Troy, and Shrek 2. The first two were fun but not for the ages, though I did like the flying nude vampire Brides in the second, whose wings became robes when they landed, just in time to conceal their shapely bodies from close view. The last was great fun, flatulence humor and all, and is equivalent to the first Shrek movie. Maybe there will be a third, when they have an ogret. I’m something of a fan of ogres, for some reason my thick head can’t quite fathom. My only caveat is that I didn’t pick up on why Puss ‘n Boots thought Shrek saved his life; I must have blinked. But let me comment a bit more on Troy. That’s based on the Iliad, the Greek story of the siege of Troy that I had to struggle through in high school. Um, no, I wasn’t in high school in ancient Greek times; I mean it was part of the curriculum, like Latin. I still hate Latin, and am fond of the joke: Teacher: “What was the greatest achievement of the Romans?” Student: “Learning to speak Latin.” I wasted three years barely passing two years of Latin, and am proud to say that I never learned to speak it. I’m just not good at language, as critics have said all along. Anyway, as a movie it’s a lot more interesting, a great ancient adventure concocted mostly of myth, though the movie sensibly deleted the considerable supernatural background. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the god Zeus assumed the form of a swan and raped the mortal woman Leda, who then laid two eggs, from one of which hatched Helen, the most beautiful woman of the world who triggered the siege of Troy. Anyway, my interest is that the same folk who made that movie are working on a Xanth movie. That is, Warner Brothers, producer Wolfgang Peterson, screenwriter David Benioff, and Diana Rathbun of Radiant Prods, though they may be supervising this one rather than doing it directly. They hint they want to make Xanth as successful as Harry Potter. Since Warner also did the Harry Potter movies, this looks promising. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, of course, the moment it was announced in the trade newspaper DAILY VARIETY reactions started coming in: is this wonderful thing true? from fans, and from a critic: “For those of you who don’t know, there are 30 Xanth books, each more aggressively juvenile than the last…The Xanth books were sort of a blast when I was 12, and the first few don’t actually suck as much as they’re just sort of cringe-inducing–heck, Centaur Isle [sic–he means Centaur Aisle] isn’t that bad at all. But as films? Here’s hoping they’re making these as cartoons.” Actually I haven’t yet written the 30th Xanth novel, but the critics are already cringing in anticipation, as is evident.

The videos were Snaker, a Thai fantasy about a human woman who falls for a big snake, and her crossbreed daughter. It has English subtitles; after a while I just sort of heard the dialogue without being conscious of visually translating it. And The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which I got because I remembered the song from 40 years ago and was curious. It turns out to be one of the greatest Westerns ever made. No sex of course, precious little romance; I’ve already commented on the 1960s ideas of such things. One wonders how the species ever propagated before 1980. But it’s a great violent adventure with a surprise ending. And Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore’s anti-gun treatise. This is fairly simple and straightforward, making a devastating case against America’s gun-totin’ attitude. Other first world countries have gun homicide rates above and below 100 per year; America’s is above 100,000. If more guns make for safety, Moore says, we should be the safest nation on Earth. Yet underneath things are not straightforward, as it also shows. Other nations watch violent TV, and have access to guns, yet don’t blow away their neighbors at anywhere near the same rate. Why not? He asked Charleton Heston that, and he couldn’t answer with certainty, and finally walked away. I’m essentially anti-gun, but I’m with Heston on this: he declined to give an answer to a question that as yet has no answer, and departed peacefully when Moore wouldn’t stop bugging him. What else can you do with a pushy nut, on any issue? I’ve had nuts come at me on Arab/Israeli relations, homosexuality, politics, religion, whatever; I have to limit the time I waste on closed minds.

Last Christmas my daughter the video freak gave me the collected first three seasons of FAMILY GUY. Out here in the back woods, physically and intellectually, we don’t have cable or satellite, so are ignorant of whatever is current. I have now watched several episodes of this adult cartoon feature, and you know, I like it. The animation is primitive, but colorful, and of course the point is the story. It features a family of six: fat jerky father, svelte decent mother, jerky teen son, innocent teen daughter, malicious genius baby with a football-shaped head, and a talking dog. What’s not to like? It is free with adult language and references to natural functions, some wild stories, and has oddball and often naughty humor. Trust my daughter to know my tastes. For example, baby remembers his genesis: he was in a sperm cell like a spaceship, zapping other sperm ships into oblivion so as to be first to reach the egg. Then he suffered 9 months incarceration in the womb, to his enormous disgust. Daughter joins a social group that turns out to be a suicide cult with poisoned punch, and never realizes what she’s missing. Dog stands on two feet before a fire hydrant, making like at a urinal. Yes I find this funny; this is my kind of warp. So I’ll be watching more of it.

Remember the orphaned baby mouse last time? Collaborator Alfred Tella, The Willing Spirit, sent me a link www.rmca.org/Aarticles/orphans.htm that covers the situation, explaining exactly how to care for such creatures. (I think the rmca stands for Rat & Mouse, Care Of.) It’s really not a five minute business; you pretty well have to be prepared with rehydrating solution, syringe, heating pad, bedding, special powdered milk replacement, distilled water, and a gram scale. But it can be done if you’re dedicated.

I am of the ardently liberal persuasion, and tend to think that it is difficult to be a conservative and intelligent or honest. I try to keep my politics out of my fiction, as I do my religion; you wouldn’t know from the Incarnations of Immortality novels that I do not believe in the Afterlife, Heaven, Hell, or God. As an agnostic I don’t claim that none of these exist, the way an atheist would; merely that to date I have seen no persuasive evidence. As a registered Independent from 1959 on (I was not an American citizen before 1958) I reserve the right to pick and choose. But it is true that the Republicans seldom put up candidates I can stomach. Yet sometimes there are odd juxtapositions. Stephen Smith sent me his proposed outline for the 8th Incarnations novel, featuring Nox, Under a Velvet Cloak, and I have now completed a 99,000 word first draft of that and will be editing it in JeJune. But Stephen Smith’s politics are not mine. Rather than argue at length with him, taking time I wanted to write the novel, I elected to see if I could get a reader to take up the cause. Here is the conclusion of his long letter:

In conclusion, I found that the democrats and Vice-President Al Gore did knowingly try to steal the election by selectively recounting only democrat counties, while refusing to recount republican counties, by selectively trying to declare illegal thousands of legal votes (predominately republican, but also containing thousands of democrat votes), by using laws which benefitted them, even when clearly unconstitutional, by purposely delaying the election certification, thereby drastically shortening the period in which a contest of the election could occur, denying the republicans the chance to respond, was willing to risk disenfrachising the more than six million voters in Florida by placing their electoral votes in jeopardy, and possibly bring about a situation in which the deciding votes for President and Vice-President would be cast by Al Gore and Joe Lieberman. They repeatedly tried to deceive the American people by loudly proclaiming they wanted to make sure every vote was counted, while their actions clearly showed they only wanted to count democrat votes. They repeatedly attacked the republicans, saying they were only trying to stop the recounts because they were afraid to let the will of the people be heard. They violated their Oath of office: “To support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And they showed they clearly felt democrat votes and democrat voters were more important than republican votes or republican voters and deserved preferential treatment. George Bush and the republicans, on the other hand, never tried to declare any democrat vote illegal, they continually pointed out the injustices being inflicted by the use of unconstitutional laws, but never accused any democrat of wrongdoing, they tried to get the recounts stopped because they were unjust, unfair, and unconstitutional, they defended both republican and democrat votes from attempts to get them declared illegal. They chose to support the US Constitution, the rights of both democrat and republican voters, did their duties as concientiously as possible, and seemed to behave with much less anger against democrats than the democrats were displaying towards them. In their press releases and speeches, they did not try to conceal their actions, and did not attempt to deceive the American people by saying one thing in public and doing the opposite in the courts. Even when the other four close elections were decided in favor of Gore, they did not dispute those elections, showing they were willing to accept the will of the people. I don’t know if both sides would have behaved differently if the situation had been reversed. It takes little courage to defend justice when doing so helps you and your side. It takes greater courage to choose to defend justice when it hurts you and your side. Doing the right thing often takes great will power to resist the temptations set in your path. During the election of 2000, Al Gore and the democrats (with the exception of the Florida Supreme Court who tried their best to bring some justice out of an unjust situation) failed to show the courage and will power needed to resist temptation and defend justice.

So, I have given you the evidence to support my conclusion that Gore tried to steal the election. I failed to find any evidence that Bush stole the election. If you have any evidence to support your conclusion that Bush stole the election, I’d love to hear it.

There you have it. To say I disagree violently is to understate the case. I have voluminous notes saved from the year 2000, but feel my time is better spent on writing fiction. If there is a knowledgeable person out there who would like to tackle this, in refutation, agreement, or other, get in touch and I’ll send the full letter presenting the case, without Stephen Smith’s address. What we want here is a reasoned discussion, as his is, not invective. Cases and statistics, facts and insights. I will relay such responses to Mr. Smith, similarly anonymous if that is desired, and try to assemble a quotable conclusion for the next column. Meanwhile, those concerned about the next election may want to check http://petition.democracyforamerica.com/page/p/verify/30183. It is a petition to count every vote, next time, to be sure there is no fraud; you can make your position felt if you wish.

I have also read some books. For Us the Living, by Robert Heinlein–his first novel, unpublished until recently. It’s mostly a lecture, presenting ideas that he later developed more thoroughly and interestingly in stories and novels. As fiction it’s dull; as an insight into the development of one of the finest writers of the science fiction genre, it’s instructive. Heinlein hadn’t ripened at this stage, but shows potential. North of Sunset by Lisa Maliga. She’s the one listed in my Survey as I’m a Published Novelist Ha Ha! Ha!, a pertinent warning for starry-eyed aspiring writers. Her web site www.lisamaliga.com/ is worth checking similarly; she tells it as it is. If you took a few decades off my age and changed my gender, the result might resemble Lisa. North of Sunset is fun, about a Hollywood producer and his temporary secretary, showing a good deal of what I presume is reality. It is written with the omniscient viewpoint, which I dislike, but it held my interest regardless. Transmigrant Blues, by IM Chatter. This one is different. It has excellent thoughts, particularly on alternate lifestyles, is well written, and might do well if it can find its market. The problem is to get through to an editor who might recognize its qualities. It concerns a kind of lesbian girl who shares a body with a reincarnated man; there was a plan, but it got fouled up. There is a phenomenal lesbian sex scene that I found interesting though I am very far from that persuasion. Blue Light, by Walter Mosley. I bought this for three dollars from DAEDALUS because it looked interesting: a blue light from afar comes to our solar system, transforming those it strikes so that they rapidly evolve to become all that they can be. In that respect it is disappointing; what they turn out to be is a rag-tag collection of losers who gather around a Christlike figure who then gets killed by a devil like figure, and the others go to a private forest to work things out. It’s weird in various ways, but does have a nice orchestra of giant trees. Split Infinity, the screenplay–the adaptation of that novel for a movie. I like it, because it hews as closely as is feasible to the original. A book has lots more room than a movie does, so much has to be cut, but they are saving the key aspects, such as near-nude serfs, a small protagonist, a lovely lady robot, the Game Grid, and the musical unicorns. I feel the twin worlds of science Proton and fantasy Phaze could make a stunning movie, and maybe it will happen; these folk seem to be dedicated. Currant Events, the galley proofs for Xanth #28. I started reading it just after seeing Troy, and it seemed tame, but next day it seemed fine, and builds to a solid denouement. So maybe I was simply unable to come down from blockbuster movie mode to regular print mode right away. That novel features Clio the Muse of History, who has to search for a red berry, the currant, and finds rather more than she anticipated, including several slews of dragons. Look for it in hardcover this OctOgre.

As I have mentioned before, much of my mail now comes as email. I pencil answers on the printouts, which are then transcribed and sent. If they run a hundred words or more I count them as letters and list them in my letter list. Most answers are shorter, so I can keep up without dedicating my life to the mail. Sometimes one of these impromptu scribbles rises to the level of public interest. Here is an example: Tovi Spero is writing a fantasy novel and asked for some writing tips. I replied:

There’s no easy formula. You just have to try it and see how it flows, then revise and amend until it gets where you want it. In general you should try to have a main character who an ordinary reader can identify with, and a story that interests you and other readers. Rather than have a whole lot happen, try to make it realistic. Yes, even in fantasy you want realism, so that it seems as if a regular person is stepping into an amazing realm. You have surely read many fantasy novels; study them with this in mind to see how they do it, then try to do it better. Here’s one oddity: the passages that read as if they came to the author in a lovely dream may actually have been a great struggle to write and revise. As with a smooth highway, there’s a great deal more effort making it than using it.

Irene L Pynn had to discuss deliberate rule breaking in writing. “What suggestions do you have for new writers who are just learning the rules? What experiences have you had with these issues?” I replied:

I think new writers should follow the rules until they can write well enough to start breaking them. Otherwise it will simply seem like bad writing.

Meanwhile I have my own rules, to which the same rule applies: follow them until you know how to get away with not following them. First, clarity: write intelligibly, so that the average reader can readily understand. If he/she gets lost early, he’ll never get to the rest of it. Second, have interesting characters; they can be quirky or eccentric, but have to be so in ways the reader will appreciate. The dullest scenes can become interesting if the characters live. I have an example from my own experience: I had three men exploring an alien planet in my novel Omnivore, but it wasn’t working because despite my care in working them out, they were just, well, men. Then I tried changing the middle one to a beautiful, conflicted woman–and it transformed my scene and my novel. If any readers are curious, they can look at Omnivore and think about how it would read if the woman Aquilon were a man. I think that would make the point. The dynamics of male-female interplay are important, even when there is no romance. Third, do try to write a story that interests you, the writer. If it bores you, it’s likely to bore the reader. I spend a lot of time trying to find compelling stories that make sense. Bang-bang you’re dead doesn’t do it for me.

R J Neil said “I was wondering, what 10 books have been the most influential in your life?” That sort of question generally stumps me; my vaunted imagination disappears when I have to pick favorite books or gifts for relatives. It’s an ogre thing. But I tried:

That’s hard to say. I was truly impressed by The World We Live In, a TIME/LIFE book that showed past creatures including the dinosaurs. I really liked The Hobbitby Tolkien; it showed me what fantasy could be. The first book I read on my own was The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade and it really moved me. I loved City by Clifford Simak and The Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov, and they surely affected by view of science fiction. Rationale of the Dirty Joke by G Legman, which gives thousands of dirty jokes and discusses how they show underlying truths about human nature, I regard as one of the most significant nonfiction books ever. African Genesis by Robert Ardrey satisfied me that human beings evolved in Africa, and I have believed that ever since. Others have clarified my understanding of Dark Matter, Plate Tectonics, Evolution, and many other sciences.

Actually my own books have been influential [in my life]. A Spell for Chameleonstarted the Xanth series that put me on the best-seller lists and made me a truly successful writer. On a Pale Horse addressed the topic of Death, helping me deal with it, and may become my first movie. Chthon as my first published novel established me as a novelist.

Sometimes what looks like spam turns out to be otherwise. I quote from one: “We all know that it is a sin for an Islamic male to see any woman other than his wife naked, and that he must commit suicide if he does. So this Sunday at 4:00 PM Eastern time all American women are asked to walk out of their house completely naked to help weed out any neighborhood terrorists. Circling your block for one hour is recommended for this anti-terrorist effort.” It works for me.

Three items from the Sunday supplement PARADE: Why is Ralph Nader running for president again? Doesn’t he know he might help re-elect Mr. Bush? “Nader, 70, knows–and he doesn’t care. In recent years, Nader’s old crusading spirit has been buried under a mountain of megalomania.” A reader whose girlfriend readily floats on water, but he sinks. How come? Answer: he has little body fat so is denser than water; his girlfriend has fat in places so is less dense. Yes, when I was a child I had trouble learning to swim, because I simply sank to the bottom. Others had the trick of floating, but it didn’t work for me. Only when I got older could I float. Now I know why: I was lean and dense. Today I am less so. And a feature on the danger of hospitals: how you can protect yourself. It seems that overworked, minimally trained staff, a shortage of nurses, and tight budgets degrade the quality of care. The number of patients dying after common surgeries in hospitals jumps when there are more than four patients per nurse. It rises 7% at 5-1, and 31% at 8-1. So what can you do? Check out the hospital in advance, if you can; some are worse than others. Designate an advocate: a person to speak for you if you are confused or unconscious. Know your pills, and balk if you get the wrong ones. Check to be sure doctors wash their hands before handling you; the last your doctor touched might be dying of loathsome sepsis. Learn all you can about your case ahead of time, and complain if there is pain or swelling. In sum: be prepared and alert. It might save your life.

Newspaper items: in 2003 the average CEO of a major company received $9.2 million in compensation, while the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour provides employees a gross annual income of $10,712. The CEOs earned more than 300 times as much as the average worker, and the differential is growing. The number of American millionaire households is 3.8 million. Of course a million dollars isn’t what it used to be. I learn from the National Writers Union that salaries have dropped 21% on average (I suspect that is in Constant Dollars), and writers are losing their writing income; only 6% of Americans earn enough for a comfortable life. A 20 year old Tampa Bay girl, Stephanie Oliveira, has become a sex columnist. She writes about things like sex toys and anal sex and seems well informed. Spam scams are mushrooming; they trick folk into giving private financial information to what they think is a legitimate outfit, like their bank, but isn’t. A columnist followed up on another spam ad: “Find out the truth about anyone.” He found that for $29 he got nothing; the service couldn’t even find the folk who gave it nice blurbs. His conclusion: stick to Google. How long do writers live? Globally poets average 62.2 years, playwrights 63.4, novelists 66, nonfiction writers 67.9. Hm; I am 69, pushing 70; as a novelist I am evidently living on borrowed time. Another article says that the life expectancy of white males born in 2000 is 74.9 years, and 68.6 for black males. For all American men born in 1940, it’s 65.5. They are thinking of raising the age for collecting Social Security from 65 to 67. Guess where that leaves you folk drawing nigh retirement. On average, you’ll be dead a year and a half before you get any SS payment.

I do slum some on TV, and have watched all the Survivor episodes. Sure they have stupid contests and the liars beat the honest folk. But they also show some nice girl flesh, supposedly incidentally, and there is a certain frisson waiting for the vote on who gets skunked next. In the final four of the all-star session, whatever possessed Jenna to turn against Rupert, her one ally? Naturally the foolish girl sealed her own doom as well as his. But I was pleased to see Rupert get the bonus million; he was the most deserving competitor.

One of my prime concerns is population: there are too many people in the world, and it’s getting worse. We are squeezing out most other creatures, except for those that prey on us like mosquitoes or bedbugs. But an item says that fertility is falling, leading to a general aging of populations. So will the problem be self correcting? Surely so, but not in a benign fashion. AIDS is burgeoning, depleting populations in Africa and Asia, and they haven’t yet stopped malaria, and hunger stalks large areas. The survivors will inherit a world largely stripped of worthwhile natural things. Fortunately I won’t live to see the worst of it, though I fear my descendants will.

Case in point: the halfway point of an oil field is known as “The Hubbert Peak”; after that it gets harder and more expensive to draw the oil out. Most of the US fields have passed that point. We need to get seriously into alternate energy, preferably renewable and nonpolluting, like wind, geothermal, and solar. Liberals can appreciate that; conservatives, it seems, can’t. President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. Ronald Reagan’s first official act was to remove them. Then he repealed Carter’s tax incentives for renewable energy. Thus long after we should have acted, we remain dependent on oil from the mid-east, and American blood is being shed in what seems to be a largely futile struggle to get more of it. It’s not mere ignorance, it’s a determined drive toward disaster, for the sake of oil profiteering. It isn’t just oil; the current administration is easing up on dangerous mercury pollution that is infiltrating our food chain, largely from fish. I’m glad I’m a vegetarian.

Items on prison abuse, as outrage in Iraq makes the news. Unfortunately it is nothing new, nor is it limited to Iraq. Power corrupts, and prison is a power situation. Yet many criminals should not be released back into the population. I don’t know the answer, though I think more should be done with rehabilitation. Heinlein had a notion of Coventry, where the seriously asocial folk were banished to a lawless region reserved for them. That intrigues me, though I fear a closer examination would vitiate its appeal.

I work the daily newspaper chess puzzles, but sometimes they annoy me. The one for Apull 4, 2004, asked for White’s Worst move, and said it was too easy for a hint. Its answer was a move that allowed outmanned Black to achieve a draw by stalemate. My answer was KD5, which allowed Black to Queen a pawn and put White’s king in check, giving Black a likely win. Makes me wonder about the common sense of the folk who make up these puzzles.

Here in Florida they don’t allow catalogs of seriously erotic videos. Fortunately a reader obtained some for me–I was curious about things like sex toys, after reading an Ellora’s Cave erotic romance (I sent them The Magic Fart in exchange, and never heard back; maybe they had thought I was joking about violating taboos, and freaked out)–and I got to see the toys in action, as it were. Now I learn from the British ECONOMIST what I didn’t from the American press: one of the “performers” in the California porn industry tested positive for HIV. That made 13 women freak out. Reminds me of an old joke: three secretaries were talking, and one said “I played a joke on the boss: I put three condoms in his desk.” The second secretary said “I saw those condoms, and I took a pin and poked three holes in them.” The third secretary fainted. Anyway, they had to quarantine about 40 “second generation” porn actors–those who had been with those first 13, and now there’s a regulation: gotta use condoms. This threatens to drive out a three billion dollar industry. In future, porn films, too, may be outsourced to countries less sensitive about health. I also received a solicitation to join the InsightOut book club, featuring all manner of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender books like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or Men Are Pigs, But We Love Bacon. Sorry, but my pig eye is for the panties of the opposite gender. Meanwhile there is growing evidence that marriage of man and man or woman and woman is good, not bad for the institution of marriage. Why are some folk so eager to stop other folk from uniting in love?

In my snail junk mail came a push-poll by NAACP, remarking somewhat sourly on elected officials who openly long for “the good old days” of segregation. They say that a Gallup Poll indicates that the average American thinks that 18% of all Americans are Jewish, when it’s really 3%; that 20% are Hispanic, when it’s 13%; that 32% are black, when it’s 12%. Ignorance, thy name is America.

Matt Holcomb saw my prior comment on the Impact Kerambit, that L shaped hard plastic that women can use to beat off molestors. He put me on to the Wild Kats & Dogs Keychains www.selfdefenseproducts.com which look like cute dogs or cats, but their hard plastic pointed ears can be devastating. Think of brass knuckles with spikes; you put two fingers through the eye-holes and punch. The man will let you go, girls. Matt also mentioned www.escapeschool.com, which is not for kids to play hooky, but lessons on how to escape captivity if you need to.

Article in NEW SCIENTIST suggests that the war on obesity is based not on sound science, but on cultural hysteria, and that fat may be healthier than thin. You mean I have spent a lifetime staying lean for no purpose? Sigh; I’m too old to change now. But they do make a case; solid evidence that fat is bad may be lacking. (Inadvertent pun there; I’ll take it.) Another article suggests that folk with chronic depression may be brain damaged, so it’s not about chemistry at all. Again: now they tell me? Can the critics have been right about the state of my brain all along? And one titled “Flower Power.” No, it’s not about gardening. Plants do something we have not fathomed how to duplicate: they convert sunlight into power by splitting water molecules into oxygen, hydrogen ions, and electrons. You see, hydrogen power may be the coming thing, but it takes more energy to split up the water molecules than is obtained when they merge again. If we could change that, what a non-polluting energy ball we could have. Plants do it via photosynthesis. If we could only do likewise. Well, now at last we are getting close to photosynthetic water splitting. That could change everything.

NEW SCIENTIST ran information on Quack Watch, www.quackwatch.org, a site that blows holes in countless quack cures and such. But later came a warning: it is medically conservative and dismisses all forms of therapy that isn’t orthodox. I wonder if that means it doesn’t believe in Vitamin C? So check it out, but remember that some quackery is orthodox. Another letter remarks on those who compare corporations to psychopaths, and points out that that’s wrong. Psychopaths are, well, crazy. Corporations are not. They are sociopathic. A sociopath lacks all capacity for empathy, is relentlessly self-interested, and feels no remorse. Doesn’t that describe your neighborhood CEO?

Shorter items: in the 2000 election Gore carried 9 of the top 10 states in IQ, while Bush swept all 10 lowest IQ states. Why does that not surprise me? Photograph of the prices listed at a gasoline filling station: Regular–$2.33.9; Plus–ARM.9; Premium–LEG.9.

The greatest known global extinction was not the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but the Permian, 250 million years ago, taking out 90% of all species. If it was the result of a meteor impact, where’s the crater? Now they may have found it in northwest Australia. Some say it’s not impacts but volcanic eruptions responsible. I say it is both: a meteor impact on one side of the globe, whose shock transmits around and through and causes a lava blowout at the opposite side. Think of the kind of head injury motorcyclists get: it may look bad outside, but worse is the way the shaken brain gets splatted against the back of the skull, the rear injury being worse than the fore injury. My wife says that’s true in the shaken-baby syndrome, too. Now picture our Earth’s skull getting clonked on one side, its viscous interior then splatting against the far side so that basalt forges up and oozes out through whatever crevices and holes exist. It takes some time for that massive injury to heal, and much of surface life is rendered extinct by the extensive lava flows and heat. Too bad about that incidental corollary damage; it was just a hard knock on the noggin. This process seems elementary to me, but scientists still are mystified by the seeming coincidence of meteor strikes on one side of the globe, and volcanic activity on the far side. Duh! However I have confidence that one day science will wake up and catch up with me, in this and perhaps other respects, such as the way the mammals survived the dinosaurs because they were small and lived in protected deep caves, or the nature of dreams as a cross-referencing process for memories. Still, don’t hold your breath waiting for science to acknowledge that a dull ogre thought of it first.

The morning of the editing of this column, Jejune 1, I rode my recumbent bike through drought-dried sand at a curve; the rear wheel skidded out and dumped me on the drive. Don’t believe those other stories about how I skinned my knuckles.

Thus my thoughts for this time. I remind readers that this is of the nature of a blog, lacking authority other than my own experience and opinionation.

I try to keep these columns reasonably brief, but must lack self control; this one is more than 12,500 words. Ah, well; skip over the parts that bore you. Maybe the OctOgre one will be shorter.

Here’s a little riddle I evolved while navigating puddles along our three quarter mile long driveway after rain: the more it rains, the fewer puddles there are. How come? Answer: many small puddles merge into one big one. But there’s more about rain and riddles. Circa a decade ago, when I attended the wedding of a niece (it’s a wider Family thing), some preliminary music came on, and I was struck by its beauty. The melody was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Da-dum! Da-da-da-dum, and on. What was it? No one know; it was just incidental, one of several orchestral pieces. So for years I wondered; my ogre mind won’t let go of minor mysteries. Then it rained at dawn, as I was about to ride my bike out to fetch the newspapers. I don’t like to wet down the twelve foot long chain on the recumbent bike; trouble there is like the proverbial giraffe’s sore throat. So I drove out in the Saturn–sorry, they don’t make a car called Xanth or Phaze, so a science fiction brand is as close as I can get, and it is a good car, one of the most crashworthy on the road–as happens every six months or so. The radio came on automatically, as my wife has it set that way, tuned to WJUF. I should explain that we can receive WUFT, which stands for Which: University of Florida Transmitter, but it broadcasts from Gainesville and is just at the fringe of our range, so they have a relay station WJUF: Which: Junior University of Florida, and that comes in perfectly. Except when it doesn’t; at this moment a glitch had taken it off the air. So I punched buttons, looking for something that would come in, and got WUSF, or Which: University of Science Fiction–um, let me rephrase, University of South Florida, where my Piers Anthony papers go. That’s really out of our range too, in Tampa, but we hadn’t gotten around to removing the setting, and lo: it came in perfectly. The announcer said the next piece was Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony, and it started. And there was my mystery melody! Of course I have heard it many times; I just couldn’t place it out of context. So by sheer serendipitous coincidence I found it. Maybe there is a God.

Last year chimney swifts nested in our unused chimney, and twice one got down into the closed off fireplace and had to be rescued. It seems they can stray too low, get below the flu, and be lost. It took us some time to identify them, but this year we did. And five more got lost in the fireplace, then a sixth turned up, dead. When we hear or see one we open the fireplace and try to chase it down with a butterfly net and loose it outside, but this year worked out a better way: we close doors to other rooms, open the front door, darken the house, and the bird flies toward the light, out the door. That we hope saves it from suffering freakout, delayed stress syndrome, and all those unswiftly slowdowns. But next year we expect to close off the chimney with mesh, as it is evidently too dangerous for them. Yes, I do feel guilty about the prospect of denying the next generation of swifts their ancestral home.

We’re Senior citizens, and about the time this column sees the light of the site I’ll have my 70th birthday, so it is perhaps not surprising that we retain some quaint old fogy ways that strain the indulgence of our more with-it children. We still watch broadcast TV, though we have been pondering Satellite for a decade or so and may eventually make up our minds. We still use a land-line telephone, though we do have remote units connected to it so we can receive calls wherever we are, such as in the yard or on the pot. Old fogies spent a lot of time on such pursuits. I once wrote a hilarious story in a monthly Family letter about a conservative friend who thought a person was in the bathroom while receiving his call, judging by the background sounds; actually he was in the kitchen while the family was washing the big dog in a tub, with all the grunting, whomping, woofing, spraying, splashing and spillage on the floor; to this day I’m not sure why my conservative Quaker family letter recipients did not laugh. I was the most liberal family member BP: that is, Before Penny, my Daughter #1 the Doula, feminist, antiwar activist, wearing multiple liberal causes on her sleeve, who finds me too stodgy conservative. Such are the crosses of fogydom. We have been pondering trying a cell phone, because every so often I have to travel, and flights mess up and pay phones don’t work for me and I get lost; fogies don’t travel well, so a cell phone might make sense. I could call my wife in Florida and say “I’m stranded; can you come pick me up?” “Where are you?” “Hong Kong, I think.” Penny has been cellular since the last century but the idea of paying thirty or more dollars a month and paying for all outgoing and incoming calls by the precious minute turns us off. I was born during the Great Depression; I don’t like wasting money. As I put it to my daughters when they were pre-school age, in terms they could understand: I wouldn’t pay two cents for a one-cent gum-ball. Never mind that today that gum-ball costs a quarter; I still won’t buy it. Then I saw a Virgin Mobile ad for a pre-pay as you go cell phone: buy a card that gives you so many minutes, and use those minutes, no other charges. That appeals, but we feared a catch. For one thing, they didn’t say how much that Virgin costs per minute. A dime? A dollar? Does she expect commitment? Fogies can be paranoid, being too old to remember what virginity is. So while we were hemming and hawing, Daughter #2 Cheryl the Newspaperwoman saw a sale on a Nokia cell phone, getting it for something like $20 after rebates, bought a $25 AT&T; Wireless time card, set it all up with programmed numbers such as ours, both Daughters numbers, and AAA emergency for when we get lost on the highway–all the necessary things fogies don’t know how to do for themselves–and gave it to us. Thus suddenly we are in the cell phone scene. We are slowly learning the ropes. It does work, and costs 25¢ a minute, or you can buy a $100 time card and be charged 15¢ a minute. Nothing else. That’s getting down into our price range. So we’ll see. I like it so far. It’s one of the non-fliptop units that I understand has gone out of fashion, so Nokia must be selling them off cheap. That’s fine for us; it has indicators showing how good the reception is and how much charge remains on the battery, and when you call, a voice tells you how many minutes remain on your card, so you won’t try to talk for an hour and get cut off after three minutes. I appreciate that. But I still don’t want to travel.

Speaking of newfangled gimmicks: ever since we upgraded Norton Antivirus at the turn of the year on our Windows 98 system we’ve been having a willful ornery computer. It wants to go online constantly. Since our normal state is offline, we close the dialog box–and another appears, just as urgent, preventing other normal activity. Close that, another comes. Once there were a hundred in succession before we lost count. Sometimes rebooting clears it for a while. So we tried downloading Spybot. It said yes, there were 4 spywares, and it cleaned them out. But that didn’t fix the problem. Well, that system is now 5 years old and we’ll replace it when we get up the energy; maybe that will stop the rampaging dialup boxes. Maybe. Meanwhile, as with piranha fish, sometimes it is less vicious and we can use the computer to catch up on letters. My Linux writing computer system is entirely separate, of course; you can see why. As far as I know, hackers have not yet figured out how to take over a computer that is not online, so my deathless prose is halfway safe.

Harlan Ellison sent me a check. He’s a well known story writer and liberal columnist, three months my senior, whose natural environment is said to be hot water. If my remarks seem too tame for you, move on to him for the hard stuff. I don’t think Fate makes them quite like us anymore. Harlan and I go back to 1966 and I applaud most of his efforts, but I regard him as a loose cannon and keep our friendship nominal rather than personal. When he got enmeshed in the KICK Internet Piracy fight to stop thieves from stealing his stories, I took notice. I have had my own problems with Internet piracy; one site at Yahoo! listed something like 60 of my novels for downloading. I coordinated with DEL REY / RANDOM HOUSE, whose lawyer made a call, and poof! the site was gone. But of course others pop up like poisonous toadstools. (You’ve heard the joke? How do toadstool cookies taste? Depends on the toad.) You folk who figure piracy is all right as long as the downloads are free–have you considered how you’d like to have your property stolen and given away to others free? How does anyone earn a living if what he does is considered unworthy of recompense? Is it okay to lift stuff from a store and give it to your friends as long as you don’t charge them for it? I don’t think so. Harlan was getting run broke fighting the good fight, and writer’s organizations were not flocking to his aid–I know that route, having gotten blacklisted instead of supported when I protested when a publisher cheated me, decades ago, and I make no secret of my chronic outrage on that score–so I kicked in to the KICK kitty, never expecting to see that money again. It was a matter of principle. Well, Harlan won, getting a settlement, and now he’s repaying the money. I’m amazed and gratified, not for the money per se, but for the victory and his attitude. Good job, Harlan.

Roberto Fuentes died July 8, 2004. He was my age, my collaborator on seven books: the time travel science fiction novel Dead Morn and six martial arts novels. I first got in touch with him when a fanzine published his letter criticizing me. I wrote to him, not to protest but because I was intrigued: was he Spanish? I once lived in Spain. No, he replied, he was Cuban, and his letter had had praise of my works too, only the fanzine editor had cut that out. Fan-eds are like that; they have agendas, and make things fit, for good or ill. That species is slowly dying out, being replaced by online sites that can be just as nice or nasty: a new vessel for ancient wine. Which is one reason that I no longer contribute much to other folks’ sites; I have my own, where I am uncensored. Oh, you noticed? Our correspondence continued, developing into a friendship. Roberto was once the judo champion of Cuba, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of martial arts. Then Fidel Castro took over Cuba and promptly reneged on many of his pre-power commitments, just like any politician, and instituted a de facto Communist dictatorship. Roberto fought it, becoming a terrorist. Yes, he really did bomb buildings; he said there could be an almost orgasmic joy in seeing the explosion. He also said that it can be a treacherous route: you use certain means, such as bombing, to achieve certain ends, such as recovering the freedom of your country. But sometimes the means become the ends, and you are in it for the bombing. There’s a lesson folk dedicated to any cause should take to heart, the possible corruption of motives. I suspect we are seeing it today in Iraq and elsewhere. We got into collaborations because he knew so much about martial arts and terrorism, and I knew how to write. We collaborated on Dead Morn, and later we met. He took me to a dojo, which is a martial arts instruction center, and I got an idea for a judo story. It went on from there. I believe our Jason Striker series was generally considered to be the best of a number of such series, because it was well written and accurate in detail, though the protagonist got into pretty fantastic sexual and supernatural exploits. It’s now out of print, but you can find it at my site at Xlibris.com where I self re-published it together with some new material. We wanted to do the story of his fabulous life, Bio of a Terrorist, but traditional publishers weren’t interested in terrorism thirty years ago. We tried to warn the world of what the world now knows, that terrorism is the ugly wave of the future, from the mouth of a former terrorist. Anyway, the editor said the martial arts series was doing well and he wanted more, so we were writing the sixth novel. Then a hostile editor took over and immediately shut it down, saying it wasn’t selling well. Uh-huh. Roberto had been in New Jersey; after that happened he went to Florida, became I believe an insurance salesman, did very well, but the stress got to him and he got into cocaine. He knew better, as it is a subject addressed in the series, but it happened. He was sent to prison for five years. And the editor who had axed the series on a grudge later wondered why I wasn’t interested in making up. That would be complicated to explain to that type. Roberto’s later life was quieter as his health declined and finally ended. Damn.

I have a correspondent a decade older than I who doesn’t go online. Acting on my advice, he published his novel at Xlibris. Now I understand the average book there sells 150 copies, but that’s because the author solicits family and friends, whipping up a bunch of sales. What happens if you don’t do that? Robert Woods found out: he got zero sales. Nobody knows of his book. I had read part of his novel, which as I recall perhaps imperfectly was about a family with a telepathic collie dog and it was okay. Last month I learned he was going into the hospital, and has a number of age-related problems, so wasn’t certain of the outcome. Which made me ponder: is he likely to pass from this world with nobody else reading the novel he put so much effort into? That bothers me; I trust I don’t need to explain why. So I mention it here: it is Adventures of Scott Nolan by Robert Woods, trade paperback $19.54. If anyone buys it, reads it, and has a comment, let me know and I’ll relay the comment here.

As I fairly frequently mention, I do duffer archery for exercise, along with dumbbells, jogging, and biking. Right side I can generally hit the target at 150 feet, but left side I tend to miss it as often as I hit it. The arrows were flinging randomly right and left, not going where I aimed them. So I tried with yet another arrow-rest. This one is the Whisker Biscuit, consisting of a ring with multiple fibers pointing inward to form an arrow-shaft sized hole. This couldn’tdistort the arrow flight, I reasoned. Okay, it took forever to zero it in; the rule seems to be that if you miss them all to the right, adjust it one smidgeon and then miss them all to the left. There seems to be no in-between measure. But now I have it about right, and my left side is becoming remotely parallel to my right side, in a lesser way. As I edited this column on Sunday my archery score was 6-3 right side, 2-4 left side. So maybe my problem is solved. Maybe.

I think I have fans in obscure places. I continue to watch episodes of “Family Guy” from the DVD set Daughter #2 gave me. In this period I saw an episode “Death is a Bitch” wherein there was a confusion, the Guy was listed as dying, and Death came to collect him. He tried to explain it was an error, but Death was chasing him. Then Death strained his ankle and had to recover at their house. So Guy had to go out and do a mission for Death. Why do I suspect the author of that episode read On a Pale Horse? There was an incidental scene, wherein someone ran over a pedestrian who looked vaguely familiar. “Are you Stephen King?” “No–Dean Koontz.” So they ran over him again. Hm; was it a critic who wrote that scene?

I have commented on looking for a song I heard once upon a time, about a worker named Manuel, who loved the lady of the house but knew it was futile. Well a reader from Thailand, Somchai Chantananad, ran it down for me and sent me CD ROMs with the song on it: San Miguel, sung by Lonnie Donegan, circa 1955-1967. I never heard of Lonnie Donegan, but obviously I had heard the song thirty years ago.

I suffered a Senior Moment last time and typed Patty Page when it was Betty Page. Patty is a singer; Betty is a pinup girl whose doll figure I have kicking up her heel by my desk, gift of JoAnne Taeusch. I clarified before that it was the doll showing her lifted leg, not JoAnne. Nevertheless several folk got all fussed up and emailed JoAnne about the reference. I can’t think why she should get her panties in a pinch over it; I’m sure they’re as nice as the doll’s.

We get weather on occasion, surprising as that may seem. We had a storm that dropped some hailstones on our drive, for the second time since we moved here in 1988. It also seems to have torn off the top thirty feet of a tree in our back yard. The top half is now on the ground, while the bottom half still stands. It looks as if a giant hand caught hold and twisted it off, literally. So I wonder: did we have a tornado? In Florida they generally don’t get as big and fierce as they do out west, as with rattlesnakes, but they can still fling a car around or rip apart a tree. I don’t see what else could have done it.

My wife and I had our 48th anniversary without event, June 23. It made me ponder what makes an enduring marriage. I conclude it’s a bit like publishing a novel. You need to write well, and persevere, and have a significant dollop of luck. I don’t believe that every marriage that fails is a mistake. When we married I was 21, she 19. We are two different people today, 69 and 67, with different resources. We were young, now we are old; we were poor; now wealthy; unsettled, now secure. The luck is to grow in such a way that the changes remain compatible. Some grow apart and can no longer make it together; they may have been perfect for each other when they married, but not when they are 40 or 60. They lose their youthful sex appeal, of course, and if that’s all that they had in common, it’s likely doom for the union. Some get success, fame, or money, and that breaks them up as they develop resources to pursue their own wills more competently. I am pleased that the significant changes that occurred with us did not change our marriage. I like to say we handle our money the old fashioned way: I earn it, she spends it. But in reality it is hardly that simple; we consult on anything significant. In fact we are in constant communication, which is surely one of the secrets. I am the public figure, but it really is true that I could not have made it without her support. Few fans know how thoroughly my wife is involved in my career, because she prefers relative anonymity. That’s why she is seldom mentioned here. And yes, when that song “You are the wind beneath my wings” plays, I do think of her.

I did a phone interview with Kelli Ballard of KEEP IT COMING, a publisher listed in the Survey. One thing I said that drew a listener response was that publishers neither know nor care what readers want. I realize that seems like an ignorant slam by a disaffected writer. Well, it’s a slam, but not ignorant. Publishers today are generally searching for the next best-selling book, and they literally don’t care what’s in it. If a former president played sex games with an intern, they know that will sell many copies and they want his book, and it does sell and make money. The average man likes to read and dream what he could do with a cigar and a willing woman. A truly educational book on the philosophy of a failed marriage will not sell many copies and they don’t want it. Publishers aren’t against quality; they are for sales, and if a quality book can sell copies, okay. So it really is true that they want the million copy selling junk rather than the ten copy selling quality piece. They also want the million copy quality book, and not the ten copy junk book. Quality is irrelevant; sales govern their desire. Also, they want to publish fewer books and sell more copies, saving editing and production costs. So ideally each publisher would put out a single book in a year, and it would sell forty million copies. But is that what the readers want? Hardly. They may buy that single book because there is nothing else in the store, but they’d rather have a broad panoply to choose from. If there were a hundred thousand books selling a total of fifty million copies they would be happier. But the publishers wouldn’t be, because that’s 500 copies per book, and they’d take losses. So given a choice between one book selling 40 million, and 100,000 books selling 50 million, they’ll take the former even though it shrinks the total market. It’s a business decision. So I repeat: publishers don’t know or care what the readers want. It’s not malice or even ignorance; it’s the bottom line. I would rather see the arts–writing is one of the arts–be in other hands than the purely commercial corporations. But I don’t run the world, so I make it in the world that exists. I don’t believe that makes me a hypocrite so much as a realist. I am that rare species, a disaffected successful writer. I write what sells, but I also white what doesn’t, and not because I don’t know the difference.

Here are examples of each: I completed and edited Under a Velvet Cloak, the 8th Incarnations of Immortality novel featuring Nox, Incarnation of Night, 108,000 words, and sent it out to two readers for comment. I have valuable feedback from one and am waiting on the other. I expect the novel to sell in due course and do well. I also edited last year’s project, Alfred, the 100,000 word biography of my father. That’s noncommercial, and I doubt that many readers would be interested other than completists who want to see where I came from. At this point I expect to self publish it at Xlibris, not looking for a regular publisher, unless my agent objects. It represents in its fashion a study of the Asperger’s syndrome, which does seem to fit. As I mention on occasion, I am alert for signals of that syndrome in myself, and do have some aspects, but I think not enough to make a diagnosis. As they say, approximately, if you are mentally messed up and poor, you’re crazy, but if you are mentally messed up and wealthy, you are merely neurotic. I’m in between.

Ronald Reagan died. I could say a lot about the illusion the Republicans have made of him; in fact two years into his presidency he was one of the least popular presidents extant. Then the Fed started pumping money into the system, inflating it, and business boomed, the stock market rose, and Reagan got popular though his monetary policy tripled our national debt and his administration was marked by scandal. 138 of his officials were investigated for misconduct, indicted, or convicted by the end of his term. Still, let me give one example where I agreed with his policies, just so you know I’m not locked in: when the Air Controllers went on strike, they did so in violation of the law, their signed oaths, and the public interest. They thought they had leverage, and to hell with how the airplanes got out of the sky. Something had to be done. Reagan did it: he begged them to end the strike, he extended the time limit, and when they still balked, he fired them. I regard that as a necessary thing. There’s more, much more, mostly negative, but I’ll confine this to our personal experience. When Reagan ran for the Republican nomination in 1975 he visited St. Petersburg, Florida, and the route of his caravan took him past our house in Gulfport. Daughter #1 Penny, then 8 years old, waved to him–and he waved back. I do appreciate that curtesy.

Assorted TV: I don’t pay a lot of attention, but do notice items. 60 Minutes had a devastating expose on the Patriot missile, only ten per cent effective against enemy planes, and it also shoots down our own planes by mistake. Is that like the Patriot Act, that seems more dangerous to the American Constitution than to any external threat? In an episode of Cold Case was a flashback to ballroom dancing girls. Wow–those slender shapely creatures are exactly my taste in eye candy, even though I know that today their figures owe more to surgery and technology than to nature. I’d like to see a woman wearing a T-shirt saying YES–THEY ARE IMPLANTS; male eyes would still be on her, and she’d gain a point for honesty. Men (I am one, so I know) don’t much care what’s under the skin as long as the outline is appealing. A movie on TV was The Cider House Rules, much better than I expected, starting slow but getting there. The point was that the posted rules bore no relation to reality, just as the established social rules didn’t; that was the lesson the protagonist had to learn. I also watched a video, Girl, Interrupted, that was better than anticipated. I once worked in a mental hospital, so have a notion how things are, and this was realistic for a high-class hospital.

I tackled a chore that had been building for years: cleaning out old magazines. I didn’t like to throw away wonderful magazines like NEW SCIENTIST, DISCOVER, and many beautiful nature magazines, but they were piling up too deep. So I went through them systematically, tearing out articles I wanted to save, and boxing the remainder to help form a barrier for my stray arrows when I practice archery. The worst was NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, glued and solidly stapled so that tearing an issue apart was a struggle. What pain to destroy such well made and beautiful magazines! But I did get the job done, and there is now more room in the house. In the process, I uncovered a couple of old catalogs. One had books and videos for defending oneself against a knife attack or rape, so I ordered them. The other had a large-wheel adult scooter, so I ordered that; it should arrive by my next column. So my cleanup chore yielded some serendipitous benefits.

Let me focus for a moment on the rape videos. Yes, I’m an old man, so am not much at risk for that as either perpetrator or victim. But I hear constantly from young women, and they are at risk. So I want to know how they can defend themselves if they have to. Here is how, in the down and dirty when the situation is way beyond politeness. The tapes are narrated by and demonstrated by Melissa Soalt, aka Dr. Ruthless, and she does a good job. If you (a woman) are attacked when on your feet, scream, strike with your hands, kick, and get rapidly away from there. If he grabs you and you are facing him, jam the heel of your hand into his chin or your fingers into his eyes. It’s not a time for niceness; you need to make him let go so you can flee. If he grabs you from behind, kick back, or, in a nice move, swing your hips to one side and strike back at his groin with your hand. Spin out of his remaining grasp and get out of there. If you are caught on the ground, pinned down, it is more difficult, but there are ways. If you are on your back, get one knee up, plant your foot on the ground, and this braced, heave your hip up to roll him off you. Then kick; the video demonstrates several effective kicks performed while lying on the ground including “The Ax,” which can be lethal. If his torso is pinning your head, bite. If you are on your stomach, draw up a knee and brace to get your hip up to lever him off. If he is holding your hands above your head, slide one hand up over your head on the ground, the other down toward your neck, unbalancing him as he holds on, and twist your body around to get out from under. The tapes show the techniques; they remind me of judo matwork and look effective, but of course you need to practice to get them right. If you are securely pinned and can’t get loose, don’t fight; you can’t match his strength, so should seem submissive, making him think he has cowed you. Relax while coiling internally, waiting your opportunity to fight. If he is intent on rape, he will have to let go of one of your hands in order to open his trousers; when your hand is free, strike, scratch, gouge his face. If he gets you on and hands and knees, to have access to your bare bottom, which of course is his objective, there are some effective kicks that can be engineered from that position as he gears for the key action. There is bound to be a vulnerable target near; that’s the nature of rape, after all. So bide your time, then attack explosively, such as when he’s pulling down your pants, his hands occupied, his face near your feet. You don’t have to get raped if you are ready to fight and know what you are doing. His arms may be stronger than yours, but your legs are as strong as anything he has, and can really hurt his face or crotch. At the end they have an outtake: she’s in a car, the man comes up. “Open the fucking door!” She scoots across the seats to the far door to escape, then cries “Oh shit! It’s locked!” and they both burst into laughter. The emphasis throughout is on getting away; don’t try to be heroic, lest you get screwed. So I do recommend this video; it could save some woman’s life or well-being. This summary description is no substitute for seeing it in action. I ordered it from DELTA PRESS Ltd.; you can find them at www.deltapress.com, $59.95 plus shipping. Of course I still recommend the impact kerambit I have discussed here before, to strike and escape.

We saw movies. Chronicles of Riddick is a sequel to Pitch Black, but rather different in type, being more of a strong man tackles the odds science fantasy adventure. Not great, but my kind of junk. Harry Potter 3 is better, a nice straight fantasy adventure including a spot of time travel nicely integrated. Spiderman 2 is great; I really like the romantic resolution too, which seems both realistic and satisfying. Then there’s Fahrenheit 9-11, which is an attack on the Bush administration and partisan in that respect; it overstates the case, but it does have a case and is devastating. Critics say it has misstatements, but my impression is that those are quibbles and that the major thrust is on target. I suspect that Republicans will simply try to pretend it doesn’t exist, so they don’t have to face unpleasant truths. I do have one spot defense of W Bush; while I regard him as the kid in charge of the candy store, gobbling up all the stock with his friends with no thought of the morrow, the charge that he looked like a deer caught in headlights when he learned of the 9/11 attack seems unfair. He was participating in a grade school reading; what was he supposed to do, jump up screaming “The world is ending!” and freak out the children? It was more sensible to carry on without spreading alarm, until more was known. That’s what he did. The Bourne Supremacy–fast action movie not as satisfying as the first one, in part because they kill off his girlfriend early and don’t replace her. I wanted to see Catwoman, but it didn’t turn on my wife and daughter in quite the same way for some reason, and indications are that there’s not much there apart from Halle Berry’s tight fitting costume, so I’ll catch it in video later. One wag says that much of the hundred million dollar budget was spent squeezing her into a smaller outfit. Well, that does turn me on.

And, in this interregnum between the writing of my own books, I read a number of others. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, published fifty years ago, now reissued. It’s a mystery about British history: who killed the fabled princes in the tower? It makes a case that the wrong person was blamed. This one appealed to my intellectual taste, and there’s real insight there.

The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene. This was perhaps the most significant nature-of-the-universe book I’ve read in years. I can’t cover 500 dense pages competently here (but a recent DISCOVER magazine is devoted to Einstein and has quite a bit on Relativity, so check that for a briefer presentation), so will merely remark on thin slices, simplifying ludicrously. For years I have wondered about the Big Bang: theoretically the universe started as a point source, and explosively expanded to its present size, and is still expanding. My mental picture was of a dynamite blast: in a moment everything is blown apart and there’s nothing left in the center. So is our universe a gigantic shell, thin inside and outside? And what of this residual radiation they are analyzing, to get a picture of the early universe? Shouldn’t that radiation have long since escaped at light speed, leaving no trace? So it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. This book answers such questions. The explosion is not like dynamite; it’s an expansion of the whole, like magnifying the image on your computer screen from 1 point print to 50 point print. The whole thing expands in proportion. So what was a compact universe becomes a diffuse universe–with the same proportions. And the radiation is still here because there’s nowhere else for it to go. Like a trip around the world, it can only retrace similar territory. The universe has no end, no edge; you would merely loop it and return to your starting point, thinking you were going straight. Okay, a popular question I’ve heard is that if you doubled the size of everything in the universe, would there be any noticeable difference? Many folk figure there wouldn’t be, because the world would be twice as big but so would the people. My father thought that, and had difficulty understanding why I thought otherwise. Here’s the thing: if you doubled the diameter of the world, it would multiply its mass by eight, and all those giant people would be crushed by overwhelming gravity. Light would take twice as long to reach the earth from the sun, which would also be much bigger and hotter; Earth’s orbit and climate would be seriously affected. And so on; everything would change drastically. The main reason you wouldn’t notice the difference is that you’d be instantly dead. Well, the inflation theory of the universe has that happening, in a manner; it did way more than double in size. But with a difference: the size of space doubled (let’s focus on that figure for the moment) but the mass in that space did not. So our galaxy clings to its original size and shape, roughly, but is now twice as far away from most other galaxies, and eventually won’t be able to see them at all as the expansion continues. And with the expansion came cooling; that’s part of why the hot original energy coalesced into matter, forming dust clouds, stars, planets and whatnot. So yes it makes a difference; we wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. So what about Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and all the other fascinating stuff we can’t see or feel but figure is there because its gravity affects us? This book tackles that too, and makes some sense of it. Dark Matter seems likely to be billions of particles zipping through our bodies every second without being felt, in what is termed a weak interaction. Think of your grandpa’s gold tooth and that F you made on your physics term paper; there may be a connection between the two, but it’s a weak one. A weak interaction. But the gravity of those billions of particles adds up, amounting to more than the gravity of all the matter we can directly fathom in the universe. Another question I have had is about the Higgs boson, that supposedly carries mass to objects. It seems ludicrous to me that the watch on my wrist doesn’t have mass unless Higgs carries mass to it. I once teased Jenny in a letter: maybe it was time for her to give the scientists that Higgs boson she kept hidden under her pillow. This book clarifies that: Higgs, like light, is not exactly a particle or a force; it’s more like the inheritor of the original aether that supposedly permeated space, that Einstein’s Relativity rendered unnecessary. Higgs is like an ocean surrounding and permeating everything, and it tends to stabilize things. If a planet is in a spot, Higgs keeps it there; if an object is moving, Higgs tries to keep it moving. Inertia. But if an object tries to change its velocity or direction, Higgs resists. Think of swimming: you can float in place, you can slide through the water, but you feel its resistance; you can’t dodge around in it without expending a lot of energy. The water is passive, but it affects you. Thus mass is the extent to which something is dragged by Higgs. It’s not little particles carrying shipments of mass so much as a pervasive field that makes its resistance felt only when you try to change course. I repeat: inertia. Aether under a new name. I’m glad to see it; I always liked aether. What of the big dustup between Einstein and the proponents of quantum physics? It does seem that Einstein lost that one; the weirdities of Quantum are being documented by experiment. What of String Theory that may unify relativity and quantum? This book begins to make some sense of it. Think of a tiny vibrating string as the basic unit of matter, its rate of vibration determining its qualities, billions of them building into the things we know on the macrocosmic scale. I have a crude analogy for the difference between the microscopic and macroscopic scales: flip a coin, and you can’t be sure whether it will be heads or tails; it’s random. But flip a million coins, and it stops being random; half will be heads, half tails. Thus scale does change the nature of the effect. What of the ten or eleven dimensions string theory requires, some of them curled up so as to be out of the way? Then what is the point? That nonsense begins to emerge as likely reality. The book has a nice analogy: say a man is walking a tightrope. That rope is like one dimension. But if you look closely at it, you’ll see that it really is round in cross section; a microscopic ant could make a right angle turn and go around it, returning to its starting point. That’s a curled up dimension. The tightrope walker may not be aware of that, and not care, but it’s there and necessary. Thus the tiny hidden extra dimensions that make the reality we know possible. What of this business of the mere looking at something fixing it in place, another ridiculous claim? Or not being able to measure position and velocity at the some time? Crazy! Again, it may really be so. I have a another crude spot analogy of my own: flip a coin. Is it head or tails? Say you can’t wait until it bounces on the floor and rolls under the furniture; you want to know now. Well, you can use a flash camera to catch it in mid air, and the moment of that flash picture fixes it in place as it is at that instant and you have your answer. But that doesn’t measure the velocity of the spin, because you stopped it moving. If you want to measure the velocity, you can’t measure heads or tails, because it isn’t fixed until that coin stops moving. Thus the paradox: you can’t have both, because that’s not the nature of the beast. I have simple minded analogies for a number of difficult concepts, but you really ought to go to someone who knows something, and that’s Brian Greene. So I recommend this book for those who want their mind stretched; it makes sense of what I have trouble clarifying. If you have the mind for it.

Eats Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss is another good book for those not locked into pure entertainment. It’s about punctuation, but it makes it interesting. It comments on how until very recently typists were taught to leave two or even three spaces after a full stop–that is, a period, the dot ending a sentence–but now word processing programs automatically reduce the gap to one space. Yes, but publishers are the last to make advances in such things, so I still use the two space format as I have to deal with them. Electronic publishers that insist on one space may be forcing writers to put their manuscripts into a format traditional publishers won’t accept. That could be costly, because the big money still is with tradition. It makes an analogy of punctuation with good manners: to invisibly ease the way for others without drawing attention to themselves. Amen; I believe it was novelist Vardis Fisher who remarked that all the writers noted for their style had bad style, almost by definition. I wish critics of my style would realize that it is supposed to be invisible, and that there is a reason readers find my writing easy to follow, and that reason is not bad writing. (But of course critics are hopeless cases, again almost by definition. If they really knew how to write good novels, they’d be doing it, instead of poking into the steaming guts of other writers’ novels like ancient priests doing divinations.) It shows how lack of the possessive apostrophe can mess up the meaning: “Dicks in tray.” And the female author credits Aldus Manutius (1450-1515) with inventing the italic typeface and key punctuation marks: “I am now absolutely kicking myself that I never volunteered to have his babies.” In sum, if you want to brush up on punctuation without strain and be entertained along the way, this is the book. It’s a easy read.

Paul the Pillow Monster by Brian Clopper–This is a children’s book about a monster who is assigned to haunt a child’s pillow, a low-grade placement he resents. But it quickly gets into adventure in a magical land with dangers aplenty and is a fun read regardless of age. It’s good to have other writers taking up the cause of monsters; monsters are people too, you know.

Absolute Values, by Andrew R. Menard is a first novel, surprisingly competent. It is hard-science alien contact, featuring a very smart but socially awkward fifteen year old girl who plays with an advanced computer she doesn’t understand as well as she thinks, and accidentally transports herself to an alternate Earth where human beings don’t exist, but another kind of sapient creature does. When I say hard science, perhaps it will help if I mention that my prior reading of The Fabric of the Cosmos stood me in good stead; the author is obviously conversant with modern cosmology, and has his own take on it. (i. e. the smallest unit of matter may not be the vibrating string, but a tiny process.) The girl, Anaba, is well drawn, and the aliens (to us; it is actually their realm) and their culture are very well realized. If you think original notions aren’t being written any more, try this one and be satisfied that they exist, but traditional publishers aren’t interested. I think this one deserves recognition as one of the best first novels of the genre. I would fault it only for an inconclusive ending, but I suspect there is more to come.

Against All Enemies by Richard A. Clarke. This is the expose of the Bush administration’s determined bungling of international relations, putting America in unnecessary jeopardy. I saw a political cartoon showing an airplane labeled as this book crashed into the White House, and from the latter came a voice saying “See if we can blame this on Iraq.” The author was there, in the intelligence community. He tried to get both the Clinton and Bush administrations to take al Qaeda seriously, but the first was only moderately interested, and the second not interested at all–until 9/11. Then Clarke realized with almost physical pain that the Bush crowd was going to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq. They had been pushing for that from the outset. He doesn’t mince words. “The decision to invade Iraq, largely unilaterally, in 2003 was both mistaken and costly. The costs were in lives, in money, but even more important, in opportunities lost, and in future problems created or aggravated.” Naturally the Bush administration, rather than clean up its act, mounted an attack on Clarke. Just like kids hurling hard candies at anyone who tries to suggest that they should take better care of the store.

I get feedback from readers. About 99% is positive, so it’s the negative ones I notice. Often I get valuable leads for the survey and the column. Here is a mixed sampling: “I have been a fan of Mr. Anthony for many a long year now, and collected most of his works. … How then could such a gifted writer compose the atrocity that is Firefly? … You are a sick and perverted individual who should seek therapy for underlying psychological illness. No normal man could have come up with the scenes you have described without at least some first hand experience and to think that you have daughters?? MY GOD!!” So I have lost a reader, who assumes that a writer must practice whatever he writes about. Murder mystery writers beware. Another tells me of www.PublicPeopleFinder.com that helped him locate his long-lost daughter. Fortunately my daughters aren’t lost. Another does a parody of “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”: “The hole is greater than the sum of its farts.” Oops, I may have just lost another reader, who thinks I stink. Another read three Xanth novels and concluded I was his kind of man. Then he read my last column, and was alienated because I object to the way CEOs make millions while their employees lose out. He lectured me about all the taxes the government takes, concluding that my ideas are dangerous to the survival of mankind. “Shame,” he concludes, and he won’t buy any more of my books unless they are used, so that I won’t get any royalties. He describes himself as a radical independent and demands who is fooling whom? “It was cute of you to put your most vile ideas further down in the newsletter and keep the least damning ones at the top. …Tricky. Very tricky. But I’m wise to you now.” Well now; what has tax policy, which I did not comment on, have to do with the way some CEOs rip off their companies, employees, and the nation (think Enron)? I recognized his tax discussion as a set piece I first heard decades ago from the radio news commentator Paul Harvey: essentially, taxation = mugging. Eventually I gave up on Harvey, though I admired his use of the language, when he became too blatantly partisan. The point is, this was not individual original thinking but a canned conservative lecture. Actually I am socially liberal, fiscally conservative, a registered independent (since 1959), and a flat-tax advocate, which is a whole other subject; I don’t take guff like this from pseudo independents lying down. I am not against a person making money, but against him doing it dishonestly or by cheating others or jimmying the system, as is the case when a CEO makes more and more while running his company into the ground. He sure as hell isn’t doing it on merit, and doesn’t deserve millions simply because he can safely raid the till. I’d prefer to see a ratio, like 10 to 1, CEO to lowest paid company worker, so that if the CEO makes a million, the worker makes $100,000. At present that ratio is more like 400 to 1 and rising, which is obscene. Here is my response to this reader, self explanatory, mirroring his expressions: “I am my own CEO. I make my living from royalties on copies of my books sold. I am good at commercial writing, so get good royalties. The government takes about 40% of that money when I earn it, and doesn’t understand why I object to its taking another 55% of the remainder when I die. You, evidently of a different philosophy, seek to deny me even those royalties. Who is fooling whom? More specifically, you read my column, saw my condemnation of CEOs enriching themselves at the expense of their productive element–the workers–attributed to me a philosophy I do not have, and condemned me for that. For shame. Next time try to read more carefully; cookie-cutter thinking does not become you. It is neither radical nor independent.” Naturally I didn’t hear from him again. Meanwhile, when I get proxies from the several companies whose stock I own, I fill out the ballots voting for a limit. Such reforms often come up as shareholder initiatives, and are always opposed by the executive boards, who want no limit on their greed. I hope I am part of a growing wave of reform that will eventually put some decent limits on executive pay and link it to actual performance and a set ratio, as mentioned above.

A reader sent a collection of elderly jokes. In one, a friend sees a suppository in Mabel’s left ear. Mabel replied “Ethel I’m glad you saw this thing. Now I think I know where my hearing aid is.” Ah, the joys of fogyhood! Another forwarded a paper titled “Pertaining to Same Sex Marriage.” It suggests that the US has moved from Judeo/Christianity towards Nihilism, which is the belief in nothing at all, and thus is reducing the human species’ ability to survive. It mentions the trends of abortion, divorce, homosexuality, and feminism, evidently disgusted with them. It feels that Natural Selection should be applied morally as well as physically, without mentioning how modern medicine saves the ill and injured that natural selection would otherwise destroy. In short it seems to be a diatribe. Is there a purpose to the promotion of such attitudes aside from bigotry? Yes; politicians prefer to tie up congress debating same-sex marriage to divert the public eye from the real problems of the day, such as the disaster of a wrongheaded war. They hope you’ll cast your ballot for the one who promises to crack down on gays, instead of the one who objects to sending American soldiers to unnecessary death. And a warning: don’t ever dial area code 809, 284, or 876. You may receive a message on your answering machine saying a family member is ill or has been arrested, or you have won a prize, and to call the 809 number. If you do, you may be charged $2425 per minute. This is legal because the 809 area code is located in the British Virgin Islands and is not covered by US regulations.

Another reader sent a link for www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com. It’s a series of essays advocating voting for Kerry this fall. Another sent a link to the Online Review of Books, www.onlinereviewofbooks.com, with an essay titled “Loyalty, Lies and Lots of Loot Link ‘Badfellas’ of Bush Administration.” It asks whether you have ever heard any high-profile born-again Christians like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson lambaste corporate America for exploiting the poor or soaking the middle class? Or vilify CEOs like Ken Lay for bilking their employees out of their life savings? “Somehow, the born-again crowd only believes it’s a sin if it has to do with personal issues, like abortion or homosexuality. If money is involved, especially corporate money, they suddenly make like a statue.” Am I losing more readers for quoting that? Well, I’ll keep trying.

Some readers ask me for advice. I have opninionations on many things but don’t pretend to be expert in many. I do, however, know something about writing. I remember when I was coming up, and it seemed that the mechanisms of writing and submitting fiction were a big secret; even a query about them risked bringing a reproof because you weren’t supposed to have to ask. Sort of like a Rolls Royce: if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford the car. This annoyed me, so I don’t give that kind of response to querents. If someone is just starting out and has no idea what comes first, and asks, I don’t lecture, I answer. Sometimes this amounts to a spot beginner’s course on writing. So be it; I thought that some of my correspondence with one girl might be of interest more generally, so here are excerpts.

Q: How many pages should a book be? What is the minimum?
A: A book can be any length, but generally the publishing range is 40,000 to 120,000 words, with 75,000 being a convenient compromise. That is, 160 to 500 manuscript pages. Quality counts more than length, however.

Q: What is a query? What publishers can I try? How do you tell how long a story is?
A: A query is a letter asking a publisher whether is would like to see your manuscript, for consideration for publication. It should contain a brief description of the book such as ‘This is an 80,000 word fantasy novel about a girl who gets accidentally turned into a mermaid and isn’t happy.’ Check my list of electronic publishers at hipiers.com, and click the links for any that interest you. You’ll find a wealth of information that should help you proceed. When you type a regular page of text, it should have lines 60 to 65 characters long, including spaces, and be in Courier, font size 12. That gives you 10 words per line. Double spaced (as print publishers demand) it should be about 25 lines, making 250 words to a page. Ignore partial lines; they count as full lines. So ten pages would be 2,500 words. [Note for this column: this information may seem too elementary to repeat, but I have encountered even editors who didn’t know it. And of course electronic publishers can have different formats, so you have to check their requirements at their sites.]

Q: Can you give me an example what a query letter would look like? And do you send it to many publishers or only wait to hear a response from one publisher?
A: Traditional publishers prefer one publisher at a time, but you don’t have to be bound by that. A query letter might be like this:

Dear Publisher (editor’s name if you have it):

     I am the author of Sojourn in Hell, a book about my mother’s cooking. It is 75,000 words long and intended as humor. Please let me know whether you would like to see chapter and summary, or the full manuscript.

     If I do not hear from you within a month, I will assume you are not interested, and will query elsewhere.

Sincerely,
(your name and address)

[Another column note: that last sentence in the query letter is to prevent the publisher from sitting on your query indefinitely, thus tying up your promising manuscript for months or years with no commitment on the publisher’s part. You have to set a limit, or you will be mercilessly exploited. Get this through your innocent noggin: publishers are corporations. They have no heart.]

A newspaper column by Nicholas D. Kristof tells of a horrendous incident: a US soldier was asked to pretend to be a prisoner in Guantanamo in a training drill. So he put on an orange prison jump suit over his uniform and crawled under a prison bunk so the authorities could practice extracting an uncooperative inmate. Well, they treated him so roughly that he wound up in the hospital, was given a medical discharge, and began suffering seizures. And a military investigation concluded that no misconduct was involved, but it can’t find the videotape made of the proceedings. Uh-huh. So if that’s how an American soldier is treated, how do you think foreigners are treated? Abu Ghraib should be no surprise. Indeed, Molly Ivins shows that Abu Ghraib is not an isolated instance; torture in several prisons has resulted in 25 deaths now under investigation. Official American objection to human rights abuses is likely to become laughable; it is coming clear that torture has been fostered by this administration from the top down. In fact those in power at the moment seem to have a subtle but abiding hostility to the American Constitution, trying to amend the notorious Patriot Act to further curtail our constitutional rights. Arrests with no charges, no access to defense lawyers, no accountability for treatment of prisoners, though some die of the interrogation? The thing about torture is that it continues until the subject confesses; if he is innocent he may be tortured to death, seeking that false confession. This is appallingly unAmerican. So we think the Geneva Convention is passé? Guess how American prisoners will be treated hereafter by other nations.

When I was cleaning up old magazines I came across my Year 2000 subscription to Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street. I had seen him on TV and been favorably impressed; he seemed like my kind of curmudgeon. Remember, this was just before the great dot com bust that still hasn’t recovered. The issues are filled with assurances that everything is going well, don’t sell your stocks, the recovery is incipient. So he was in fact more like a mouthpiece for the establishment than a truth teller. I let it drop.

Article in WORLD WATCH says that meat eating is becoming a problem for everyone on the planet, because of deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease. Because of the number of grazing cows. Fortunately I’m a vegetarian, so I don’t contribute to that. As I see it, in time vegetarianism will conquer the world, because when it comes to mass starvation with meat, or food for all without it, the majority will choose to survive. Today 70% of the grain the US grows is fed to livestock. It takes 3.3 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of protein from grain for human consumption, and 28 calories to produce 1 calorie of meat for the same purpose. A person on a vegan diet requires 300 gallons of water a day, but 4,200 gallons all told by the time it is run through the cows. You may save more water by not eating a pound of beef than by not showering for six months. Okay, meat-eaters typically are unmoved by such statistics; they like the taste and that’s it. Too bad about the planet, but taste comes first. But here’s the thing: there are substitutes that taste the same as meat, and the nutrition can be made equivalent. So where’s their excuse? Albert Einstein said “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” So maybe you think World Watch is just a bunch of tree huggers; you’re mistaken, though I’m proud to be a tree hugger (I live on my own tree farm). Vegetarianism makes sense in terms of human survival. Do you really want to promote the continued massive slaughter of animals when it is plainly unnecessary and globally harmful?

NEW SCIENTIST has an article by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT on technology trends: why haven’t computer systems become a lot cheaper and easier to use? He says it is “featuritis”: you get ten different ways to do the same thing, few of them intuitive. “The result is obese software that consumes all the benefits (and more) of the speed and memory improvements of the hardware.” And “The short-term solution to bloated systems is good design combined with a diet: cutting down on options and features.” Well, Microsoft obviously isn’t listening, but there’s hope for Linux.

When cleaning up magazines I uncovered a star chart dingus I got a decade back: rotate the chart, orient it on date and time, and it shows the stars you can see at which hour of the night. Okay, I was curious about a giant bow I saw to the northeast at 5:30 AM: what constellation was that? I had trouble matching chart to sky–I mentioned old fogy incompetence?–because it seemed to be backwards. Finally I realized that the chart is of the sky as seen from below; when I laid it on the desk I had it upside down. Then I started connecting. What I saw was parts of the Great Square of the constellations Pegasus (the winged horse), and Andromeda (the chained maiden–yes I refer to her in my novel Chaining the Lady, presently out of print); fainter stars were washed out, so what remained resembled a bow formed of four bright stars. It’s nice to get it straight.

Song on the radio as I typed this column: “While the wheel is turning, turning, turning…” I remember when I was in high school, and my roommate was a bird watcher, who got me started in that pursuit. I parodied the song as “While the tern is wheeling, wheeling, wheeling…” I fear he didn’t find it funny. Nobody found me funny until I got into Xanth. Except the critics, who were laughing not with me but at me.

Newspaper item about foreign lotteries: are they legitimate? No; they are illegal, and dangerous rip-offs. Another about the locks of Scotland, in this case the Falkirk Wheel, a huge rotating device that lifts boats 85 feet to the higher level. It may not sound like much, but the pictures show it as a giant futuristic structure I’d love to see if I’m ever in Scotland. Item on FCAT, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the bane of students. A student asked the governor to name the angles on a 3-4-5 triangle. That daunted him; he guessed 125, 90, and whatever remains in 180. (That would be -35. Interesting angle.) She said no, it was 30, 60 and 90. I had a problem with it too, concluding that there were fractional figures. As it turned out, both governor and girl were wrong; it’s 90, 53.13 and 36.87 rounded off degrees. So is this really one of the FCAT questions? No one knows, because those are kept secret. I think I can see why.

Another consequence of getting old is that you have to take Social Security. I postponed it when I was 65 as I was still working. I’m still working at nigh-70, but they won’t let me put it off any more. So here is a condensed version of a letter they sent me, minus the figures: “We changed your monthly benefit to $$$ beginning January 2003 because you earned credit for working. Your monthly benefit is $$$ for January 2003 through November 2003. We cannot pay you monthly benefits for those months. We raised your monthly benefit to $$$ beginning December 2003 because the cost of living has increased. Your monthly benefit is $$$ for December 2003. We cannot pay you monthly benefits for this month. We changed your monthly benefit to $$$ beginning January 2004 because you earned credit for working. Your monthly benefit is $$$ for January 2004 through July 2004. We cannot pay you monthly benefits for these months. Based on the information we have, we can pay benefits beginning August 2004. We changed your monthly benefit to $$$ beginning August 2004 because you continue to earn credit for working.” Got it straight now?

In a prior column I mentioned Caring for God’s Laptop by Rakesh Biswas. Now you can read it free at www.important.ca/godslaptop.

On occasion I receive emails advising me that users are attempting to share experiences and opinions about me via a particular website. So recently I checked, and it’s just a listing of folk willing to share information on me, who say they know me very well. Maybe they do; I wouldn’t know. But I’m not sure why someone wanting to know about me wouldn’t just come here to HiPiers.com and get it from the horse’s mouth.

I never enjoy reading the publications of Amnesty International as they chronicle man’s inhumanity to man, such as torture practiced around the globe including America, or the situation in Sudan. But I do read them. Their summer 2004 issue of Amnesty NOW has a report on violence and the spread of AIDS. “He wouldn’t use condoms. He would have beaten me.” It says that 42 per cent of college-educated women report forced sexual contact or attempted rape. I believe it is worse elsewhere, where women may have few if any rights. I can be similarly depressed by reading reports by FSEEE–Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, which shows how Orwell’s 1984 novel accurately shows the way: “Clear Skies Initiative” threatens the air we breathe with worse pollution, and “Healthy Forests initiative” threatens to steamroll environmental protection. Our present administration seems to have no shame. Consider how it claimed it would bring polite language back to government; then Dick Cheney told Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to go fuck himself. I have a thing for Vermont, having grown up there; it’s Cheney who needs to fuck himself. It’s a marvelous response when you can’t answer an honest question. I saw a political cartoon where he addresses a huge audience, saying “That’s what this administration is all about, and ya can all go **** yourselves, every last one of ya!” Precisely.

Movies.com has notices about two of my movie prospects: On a Pale Horse is listed for 2005 or 2006, and A Spell For Chameleon for 2006. The first is Disney, with Jamie Foxx as producer and star, and the screenwriter Paul Guay. The second is Warner Brothers, the screenwriter David Benioff, the production company Radiant productions. That’s most of what I know; I learned of the site when readers started telling me more than I knew about these options. I hope they work out well. If you haven’t heard of me yet, 2006 may be your year to discover me. I can hardly wait for the folk who ban Harry Potter for sorcery to discover the panties of Xanth. They will surely freak out.

My subscription to THE ECONOMIST seems to have ended. No notice, no warnings, no pleas to resubscribe; the issues simply stopped coming. I guess they don’t want me as a subscriber. But there was an interesting item in a June issue: two books suggest that Affirmative Action does more harm than good. I support A A, so this is intriguing; have I been on the wrong side? Or is THE ECONOMIST simply too conservative for me?

I watched some of the Wimbledon tennis finals. I enjoyed seeing Maria Sharapova play, especially when she was waiting to receive the serve, her low halter nicely showing her breasts. I was amazed to see that a seventeen year old model could play that well.

The editor of PARADOX , the magazine of historical and speculative fiction, http://home.nyc.rr.com/paradoxmag nicely sent me a copy of the issue wherein he discussed the Spanish Civil War. I have an interest there. My parents did relief work there, and I lived in Spain for a year as a child, before the dictator kicked my family out. This is perhaps another of the forgotten wars whose significance should not be lost to history. Essentially, Spain’s own army turned against it and invaded it, and the fascist powers supported General Franco with arms, testing them for future use, and Russia supported Spain’s defenders, as did many volunteers from America and around the world, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. This presaged World War Two, and indeed, that 1936-39 conflict was followed immediately by World War Two, with the fascists against Russia and America again. An ugly scene, all around. I was too young at the time to understand what was going on, but in time I learned, and I retain an abiding aversion to dictatorships, wherever they manifest. It is an irony that had the fascists not kicked my family out (on false grounds), I probably would not have made it to America and become an American writer.

From the AARP BULLETIN: there are now green graveyards, where you can be allowed to rot, returning your substance to nature. Okay, though I think I still prefer cremation.

Columnist Molly Ivins had an item on electronic voting machines, which may be designed for fraud. Some pooh-pooh the idea, but it bothers me. Given an administration that sees no honorable way to win the next election, but is determined not to give up power, what can we expect? On the other hand, I understand that though the voting machine company CEOs may try to set up machines that will favor their constituency, the other side surely has hackers at lower levels that can reverse it. We may see some very interesting results that have little to do with how the people actually vote. According to THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR, the Bush administration considered canceling the election, but word got out and that notion had to be publicly rejected.

Jim Hightower, of the Hightower Lowdown, radical liberal commentator, has an interesting story of the origin of the phrase “the naked truth.” He says its from a fable about two goddesses, Truth and Falsehood, who went skinny-dipping. Falsehood emerged first and put on Truth’s clothes and left. When Truth came out, she refused to don Falsehood’s clothes, preferring to go home naked. He also says that this administration’s “No Child Left Behind” budget provides just enough money to reach half the eligible children, and the Early Head Start program is budgeted to serve only five per cent of those eligible. “That’s a lot of children left behind,” he remarks.

But let’s take a look at something more uplifting: it seems that today teen girls are getting breast implants. The newspaper had a picture of two of the girls, and they really do look good. I marvel that nature seems no longer to be good enough. I suppose it is that nature provides girls with varying amounts of breast tissue and other qualities, and those with larger breasts attract more male attention. So they enhance them artificially, and it works. Now if they could just do similar for their minds. Scant hope: item in PARADE says a new study finds that 34% of America’s teachers have considered quitting, because school discipline has broken down. Yes; I quit teaching in 1966, and have been writing ever since; it was discipline that made it not worthwhile, and indications are that the situation is worse today. It’s hard to teach students who don’t want to learn and have no respect for authority.

Howard Troxler is a columnist for the ST PETERSBURG TIMES, one of the sharpest. Recently he did a humorous (I think) column about why felons should like Republicans. Felons need a tax break, and may be huge supporters of cutting the tax on capital gains, and want to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax that supposedly prevents anyone from using deductions to eliminate tax entirely. What about organized crime? “That’s so liberal. Any idiot knows that the Mafia doesn’t pay taxes, it just passes the tax along to its customers. To sum it all up, all taxes do are stifle innovation in our economy.” Lower taxes, less government, more freedom–felons really understand the benefits of less government. As I said, I think this is humor, despite hearing from the reader who regards taxes themselves as a felony. But then what about Enron?

A letter in the newspaper asks “When did ‘liberal’ become a bad label?” Good question. I am proud to be socially liberal, and marvel at those who throw the word around as if it is a curse. What are they thinking of? I would ask in turn, when did the word “conservative” become a synonym for masked racism, destruction of the environment, contempt for the Constitution, and shameless profiteering?

We have a hurricane repulsion spell on our region of Florida. That is because every hurricane opens its eye and orients on us, then heads directly for us. We don’t like hurricanes, so we have to fend them off. This season has been typical. Charley crossed Cuba and we were in the center of its path. Then he hit the spell and diverted across south and central Florida, missing except for his long trailing tail. Frances tried it from the other side of the state, and she was really determined. She wouldn’t divert, and kept fighting the spell, losing strength in the process, finally passing us as a tropical storm. This was a storm the size of Texas covering Florida. Ivan revved up to 165 miles per hour winds, a Category 5 storm, and tried Charley’s path, with us centered. But he miscalculated and swung too wide, and hit Alabama instead. He even reached the Atlantic, looped around, and crossed Florida again, but couldn’t catch us and finally plowed into Texas. A storm the size of Florida haunting Texas. They never learn, being air-heads. Then Jeanne tried Frances’ route, with a little more oomph, and came reasonably close. But the spell is like the speed of light: the closer you get to it, the harder it is to make it the rest of the way. We never got hurricane force winds, only gale force. So even this record effort–four hurricanes hitting Florida in two months–was not enough to blow away this ornery writer.

Still, it is hard to maintain the spell when it’s constantly being tested. Magic isn’t cheap, and we did feel the impact. I keep records of our rainfall–it’s one of those Asperger syndrome type compulsive things–and with Frances we had consecutive days with 4.4 and 4.3 inches for a tree farm record 8.7 in two days. Jeanne, moving through faster, had a bigger single day, 6.95 inches, but wasn’t a bigger rain event. But that was only part of it. We lost our electric power during Frances for a full week. That was an ordeal. We were prepared with flashlights, batteries, windup radio, and a dozen gallons of potable water stored for the past decade, but that didn’t stop the heat. We sweltered. The high temperature for that event was 92°F, the low 76°. We have become used to air conditioning–it makes Florida livable–and without it we had to sleep in an 82° bedroom. We opened windows but it hardly helped. We longed for a woosh of wind, but once the storm passed there was no breath of breeze. We had no hot meals or cold ones; everything was room temperature. We took no showers; the electric well pump was off with the power, though the damned kitchen tap still dripped; we had to turn it off below the sink. We dipped buckets of water from the pool to flush toilets. We washed up with washcloth alone, rinsing the cloth with half cups of water, but that didn’t do for washing hair, and we felt constantly grubby. We maintained a sort of standing pot of dishwater, and rinsed what we needed with more half cups of water. Same with brushing teeth. Potable water was precious, because we did not know when we would have more, so we rationed it.

We slogged through. It was especially hard on my wife and the dog, whose healths are not great. My wife was adversely affected by her blood pressure medication, lost strength in her legs, and she fell several times. I was elsewhere and didn’t hear her call. She had to crawl to her chair and haul herself up. The dog, Obsidian, is now older than we are, in dog years, weight about 95 pounds, and is feeble on her feet. She tried to climb the stairs as usual to join my wife, made it to the top step, ran out of power, and slid back down to the first floor. As for me–well, I had a backache that developed around the turn of the year and didn’t pass, so I finally broached the matter to my doctor’s office, got X-rays, and was diagnosed with severe degenerative disk disease just before Hurricane Frances came. That means it won’t be getting better. I was wary of aggravating it by overexerting myself, but things needed to be done, like clearing the long driveway of debris, and I did them. That drive had become a green carpet of fallen branches and pine needles, turning brown in later days. So we were not in great shape, but apart from that, we survived satisfactorily. I now accompany my wife for things like grocery shopping, just in case. I let her push the shopping cart around herself, though I could move it more readily, because it’s like a walker: support as she walks. We don’t need any more problems.

What about evacuation? Sections of Florida were under mandatory evacuation; we weren’t, but probably wouldn’t have gone anyway, though Hurricane Ivan really scared us, for a time threatening to come ashore near us with 150 mph winds. There are two big problems the authorities affect not to be aware of: most shelters don’t allow pets, and we were not about to leave our dog to die alone in a hurricane. It would have been hard to take her with us anyway, because she’s too weak on her feet to get into the car, despite loving car rides. I made a ramp of bricks and boards, and she can use that, but where would that be away from home? Even without pets, those shelters are far from ideal; some lost their roofs to the hurricanes, some had inadequate toilet facilities, and people had to sleep all across the floors. A shelter can become a stinking hole. The other thing is the looters, who come out the moment neighborhoods are evacuated. Folk return days later to find their houses broken into and their TVs, computers, or whatever else gone. Small wonder they don’t want to go.

So what did we do, that wearing week, cut off from TV, email, meaningful work? We listened to the radios, tuned to news of the storms, we read by lamplight, and caught up on stray chores. We spent hours clearing everything out of the refrigerator, and washed it. I cleaned up areas of the house that seldom knew cleanups. I also penciled a couple thousand words notes on my interrupted Xanth novel, #30 Stork Naked, having plenty of time to ponder details while unable to type. We went out shopping; what a blessing a car can be! We visited our daughter when her power finally came back on, to take showers. And of course we slept. In sweat. What the body touched tended to stick, such as paper, chair covers, and of course the bedsheets. I would wake to find the adhering shaped sheets ripped off the corners and wadded up as I turned in my sleep. By day it was hard to get a sweat-glued T-shirt off. One of the trials was the lack of information. Hurricane Ivan was coming, taking dead aim on us of course, but the radio reports were vague about his progress, especially with respect to those of us living in the hinterlands. We kept hoping for power restoration that didn’t come, for garbage collection that wasn’t, even for the UPS delivery we knew was in process. But a cable was down across the road and they couldn’t get through. My wife finally called the cable TV company, though we don’t have cable, and they fixed their cable, and then other services resumed. The one service that carried through without interruption was the phone. Not the new cell phone, which lost its signal; the land line. That was another significant blessing. Well, almost; I received phoned news of a formidable investment reversal that struck by surprise and probably can’t be fixed. Sigh.

It was wearing emotionally as well as physically. As the days passed the refrigerator thawed and the spoiling food began to stink. We ate what we could, but had to throw the rest out. I buried it in the garden: sixteen whole eggs, eight to ten apples, fruitcake loaf we had been given and were saving for the right occasion. Assorted leftovers, some forgotten for months, hidden behind other things; you know how it is. Some were hardened into unidentifiable rocks, while old yogurt had festered into fresh vomit. Squash seeds we had saved for planting, carrots, lettuce, nuts, sliced cheese, ice cream. Unopened packages of frozen foods. Now, days later, we have new things sprouting in that garden. We are restocking, but I hated all that waste. At least Jeanne spared us the power outage; her worst was ten seconds. We are grateful. Our barometer went down to about 29.2 with Frances, and off the scale with Jeanne, about 28.8; we’ve never seen that before at the tree farm. After Frances a man from FEMA checked by; somehow I thought it should be a woman, because of the FEM. We lost one metal tile from our roof with each storm; otherwise no physical damage to the house.

So was that all for this period? Not entirely. I have taken care of my teeth in recent decades, and now brush them carefully four times a day, use an additional little Christmas-tree brush to get in the crevices once a day, rinse my mouth for a minute with dilute hydrogen peroxide once a day, and floss once a week. I have visited dentist and hygienist regularly. I don’t eat between meals; my mouth is clean. Still my teeth decay. It seems my saliva is corrosive; I have had more than a dozen root canals, many on teeth that had onlays (crowns) that did not protect them. My dentist proposes a treatment program of fillings and crown replacements that will come to more than five thousand dollars, this time, saying that my teeth decay because I don’t floss. I pondered that during the power outage, and concluded that enough is enough. I may have spent $50,000 in constant dollars on my teeth over my lifetime, trying to maintain the originals; this is to continue year after year while I get blamed for the failure of modern dentistry to safeguard my teeth? I believe I will start letting them go, rather than devote my remaining life to trying to maintain them. Let’s face it: I’m starting my seventies; how many years am I likely to have the use of expensive repairs? Dentures may be less trouble. Meanwhile I’m trying something new that I read about: I’m brushing my teeth with bar soap, per the advice of a medical newsletter. It’s cheaper than toothpaste, and may clean them better. I’m using the bar of coconut flavored soap Lisa Maliga sent me; I’m saving the chocolate flavored soap for some more special occasion. What would it be like to have a chocolate soap shower with Lisa? Oops–did that daydream come out in print? I’ll be in trouble. Again.

I also received a summons for jury duty. I was ready to honor it, being civic minded, but with my wife’s condition and my degenerate disks I yielded and pleaded the excuse of being too old: 70. I’m not too old at that age, but the real reasons they wouldn’t understand. I suspect the storms have postponed that service anyway; schools were temporarily closed and I think the courthouse too. At any rate, taken as a whole, these past two months have not been my greatest.

Let’s move on to more positive items. I like trees; that’s one reason I live on a tree farm. It is mostly planted slash pine and naturally growing oaks; we value the other trees appearing here and there, like magnolias, dogwood, red cedar, cypress, and hickory. Our lone little sand pine near Ogre Corner I have watched and encouraged for fifteen years; the storms brought other trees down around and on it, so I sawed and clipped them clear, and now it is bent over but surviving, and has a whole lot more light where the fallen trees were, so I think will prosper. Both volunteer red cedar trees along the drive had narrow escapes over the years but are now doing well. And we spied a little mulberry, identifying it in the tree book by its leaves, which are shaped somewhat like the clubs of a deck of cards. But it was too close to the transformer, and when the crews came to restore our power their trucks flattened it. So I realized that it could not survive where it was, and I did it more damage by digging it up and transplanting it to a more favored place in sight of the house. It was about five feet tall, and its roots reached out far afield, bright carrot orange, lodged in the limestone gravel of the side of the drive, so there was no gentle way to get it out. Of course it lost its leaves, but I hoped it would survive and I would take good care of it thereafter. For a week it suffered. Then I saw that one tiny leaf survived near the ground, and little leaf buds showed along two of its branches. Now it is definite: new leaves are starting. That thrills me all out of proportion. It hurts me to cut down trees that encroach along the drive; after all, they are only innocently seeking light. But the occasional special one I can save is great.

You have surely seen those Levitra ads, with the lovely young wife so happy that her man can stiffen his resolve (or whatever) again, thanks to the pills. Listen, honey–any man with a lovely obliging woman like you in his bed needs no pills.

I had occasion to use the word “het,” as in he got all het up, so I looked it up to be sure of its usage. I have the dictionary habit with a vengeance; I love words almost as much as trees. Well, well–the big Random House and Webster’s dictionaries don’t list it. My big old Funk & Wagnalls, the one I got for my tenth birthday, says it’s a form of “heat.” That makes sense. The Oxford English Dictionary supplement doesn’t seem to define it but does list a paragraph of sentences using it. Interesting.

Mundania Press, which republished Pornucopia, send me a doll modeled on its cover: Suzie Succubus, smolderingly sexy. In the sequel, The Magic Fart, Suzie has become a kind of girlfriend for the male protagonist. She pretends he’s asleep, as required for her kind, and he pretends she’s human. Thus they serve each other’s needs well enough: hers for human appreciation–succubi don’t get much respect–and his for sex. No, I believe it’s a one of a kind doll, not on the market.

We viewed the Olympics. I watched selectively, appreciating the women’s volleyball. Can’t think why any man would want to watch bikini-clad healthy young women vigorously bouncing. But of course the judging of other events was of the usual Olympic quality, which means it wouldn’t necessarily pass muster in a high school competition, and they seem loath to correct obvious errors. Protocol seems more important than fair play.

I sent the 8th Incarnations of Immortality novel to my agent, and he tried it on an interested editor, but it bounced. It may be that it wasn’t properly understood, not being Xanth, or that it is not up to the standard of the others in the series. It is difficult for a writer to judge his own work; that’s why editors exist, a necessary evil. If it does not achieve traditional publication, in time I will go to small press or self publication, so readers can judge for themselves.

In the dark morning I look at the sky, and often see the stars. Orion’s Belt has finally reappeared, a familiar constellation. When my little girl was two I would sit outside with her and show her the three bright stars of the belt: Alnilac, Alnitac, and Mintaka, as I remember. Thus Melody of Mintaka in Chaining the Lady. Which reminds me: the folk at first grade school knew when I did my daughter’s hair, because she would have three or five braids. I was always sort of a maverick. Now she’s doing her daughter’s hair with three braids. See? Dad’s do influence daughters.

My scooter finally arrived, dumped at our gate in the rain, no instructions, no warranty, no nothing. Fortunately it’s a pretty simple device, and I was able to put on the handlebars. It works fine, but I discovered that I use more energy with it than with the recumbent bike, so can’t use it to scoot the mile and a half gate round drip lest I have to change my sweat sodden clothes. But as the weather cools, then I will. The scooter is easy to start and stop or to lay on the ground, so may be more convenient than the bike at times. With the wetness from the storms I skidded on the bike and fell, bruising my right hand. I don’t like falling; I’m not twelve any more. So I’ll be using the bike less in wet weather. Age is a bitch.

I subscribed for a year of PLAYBOY magazine, mainly because it cost only $12 and a video of nude playmates was included. I subscribed for three years thirty years ago because I liked the Playboy Philosophy and the sexy Little Annie Fanny comic. But the philosophy became derivative and Annie faded out, and I had more on my mind than bare girls, much as I like them. Well, the video is nice, with full nudity, and there are girls galore in the magazine. But I think not enough more to warrant more than a year of it.

Last column I mentioned The Adventures of Scott Nolan by Robert Woods, offering to run any comments on it here. Well, to my delight, Marilyn Peake followed up on that, buying the Xlibris book, reading it, and reviewing it. Here is her review:

Review of ADVENTURES OF SCOTT NOLAN by Robert Woods Reviewer: Marilyn Peake, Author of THE FISHERMAN’S SON and THE CITY OF THE GOLDEN SUN http://www.marilynpeake.com

ADVENTURES OF SCOTT NOLAN by Robert Woods features the main character, Scott Nolan, and his unusual dog named Whisper. Whisper is the apparently cloned offspring of a collie named Sigh. Sigh and Whisper are, indeed, just that: a sigh and a whisper about their possible alien roots. Robert Woods describes Sigh in this way:

“Sigh was a large dog; resembling an English collie, yet with a shorter, blunter nose. However, what made her stand out from other dogs was her brilliant emerald green eyes. They reflected the light, at night, like two large green glow bulbs.” (page 15)

The author describes Whisper’s eyes as follows: “What gorgeous green eyes, Walter thought. Hey! Dogs don’t have green eyes. He did a double take, and examined her eyes more closely. Yes, without a doubt – her eyes were lime green.” (page 17)

However, green eyes are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what separates Sigh and Whisper from other dogs. When they bond as puppies with a human being, a slight electric charge enters the human. Eventually, the dog and its human counterpart communicate telepathically. Due to this ability, additional “talents,” and certain changes in their bodies including youthfulness in older people and increased sexuality, Scott and his family come to believe that they have been chosen to begin a new race of human beings. In this new order, there would be world peace due to humans’ telepathic understanding of one another.

ADVENTURES OF SCOTT NOLAN should be tighter in terms of bringing story elements together. In a number of places, preaching should be eliminated. The grammar needs some editing. But, in my opinion, Robert Woods should continue to write. He is very good at description. The settings in his book stuck with me. His portraits of young, sexually-charged love are vivid. His descriptions of the great outdoors are beautiful and inviting.

There are possibilities within this book that suggest adapting the story for comic books. A boy and a telepathic dog with lime green eyes, sent apparently from outer space to change the human race, would make a great superhero series!

Overall, ADVENTURES OF SCOTT NOLAN was a good read. I enjoyed it very much!

Mr. Woods emerged safely from the hospital and liked the review, as you might imagine. His novel is no longer anonymous. Thus a justification for self publishing, something I have worked hard to make available for every writer who is effectively shut out of Parnassus. Yes, amateur writers lack the polish of seasoned professionals, but they can be worth reading in terms of substance.

Movies: I got to see the movie Catwoman after all, because it was at a convenient time for the wife and daughter who decide on these things. It was fun, but I wish more of Halle Berry’s evocative figure had been allowed to show. The story was vaguely reminiscent of the first Spiderman movie, only she developed cat powers instead of spider powers. The movie did not do all that well commercially, which is too bad, because it seems to me they could do much better on a sequel, now that the introductory poor-dull-girl material is done. I also watched videos. I save them, planning to re-watch my favorites, and the first I re-watched was What Dreams May Come, with Robin Williams in a serious role. This is the story of an ordinary family that suffers first the tragic loss of its two children, then the husband. The wife, in double grief, commits suicide. Then it gets interesting. Robin finds himself in Heaven, an original and beautiful conception, with scenes the colors of paintings, that smear when rubbed. It turns out that each person generates his own Heavenly scene. His children are there, of course, and he gets to know them better. But when the wife dies, that’s a sin, and she is bound for Hell. He must rescue her. That’s when it gets beautifully ugly. I, as an agnostic, have no belief in an Afterlife until someone proves it to me, and no one has, but if I did believe, this is what I would like. A reader sent me Bubba Ho-Tep, a weird story of Elvis Presley (or someone who believes he is Elvis) at an assisted-living facility for old folk, grinding down toward helplessness and death. Elvis was five months younger than I; doesn’t that put me in a category! Then a zombie comes, and starts harvesting the souls of other residents. It has to be stopped, but how, when our hero is feeble and no one believes? A pretty good horror adventure. Another reader lent me Urusei Yatsuri, animae, which is essentially a shallow young man being pursued romantically by two lovely powerful alien princesses. Nonsense, of course, but fun, with nice scenes and songs.

Politics and such: you know how the fanatics who took down the World Trade Center buildings were promised 72 virgins in the Afterlife? More rigorous scholarship reveals that it’s a misunderstanding. The Koran says 72 “whites,” which were taken to mean white virgins, but really meant white grapes. Imagine their disappointment when they got there and were granted 72 white grapes. That would be enough to drive a virile man to drink, and of course that’s forbidden to Muslims. Pardon me if I snigger. Not that our side is any good example. It seems Iraq is governed by American imposed “100 orders” that control the economy, a number of which are illegal according to international law. Essentially, Iraqi resources are funneled into American companies. And we wonder why they hate us. Iraq is a disaster area, well into a revolution against the occupying forces, its full nature muted in the pussycat American press, just as is the indication that 70% of the world now fairly despises us. The threat of nuclear terrorism is also growing; that is ignored at our dire peril. Meanwhile, remember how Florida decided the 2000 presidential election? The Supreme Court stepped in with partisan fervor to prevent the votes from being properly tallied, afraid with reason that a true count would not favor Bush. Well, now they are working to take Florida again, regardless of the will of the people, with partisan officials stifling reform. State police officers have been going into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando who have been trying to get out the vote, intimidating them. If they know what’s good for them, they’ll stay home election day. Blacks tend to vote Democratic, you see. That is not encouraged. Meanwhile a corrupted felons list barred many blacks unfairly from voting, but not Cubans, who tend to vote Republican. The attitude seems to be “So we cheated in 2000; we had to, to win the election, and we’ll do it again. Get over it.” You don’t have to lack a sense of fair play to be a political conservative, but it evidently helps. CBS messed up with an unsubstantiated piece about President’s Bush’s military service; the documentation could not be proven legitimate, apparently because the original documents that said the same thing were destroyed. The evidence indicates that the information is correct, just not the documents. Nice trick. Letter in the ST PETE TIMES says that warranted an apology by CBS, but where is the Bush apology for invading Iraq based on false intelligence? Good point. Republican outrage does seem selective. On the other hand, now there’s an email bombardment of college students saying that if Bush is reelected, he’ll bring back the draft. That is surely dirty pool by the other side. There was a draft in my day, and I served my time, but I suspect it’s now another third rail politically. Um, for those too young to catch the reference: electric trains used to have a third rail to carry the current: touch it and you die. Yet another article says that if America is to keep 140,000 troops in Iraq for the next five years, there will be no alternative to reinstating conscription. After the election. So we may see it regardless who wins. Paul Krugman says that Bush has no positive achievements to run on but can’t afford to lose, lest the public learn the truth about cooked intelligence, profiteering, and more. Thus a campaign of “garbage and lies,” such as the swift boat attack. That does seem to make political sense, if you have no scruples: if the truth does not favor you, then use lies. What bothers me is the eagerness of partisans to believe those lies. Honest politics may be an oxymoron, but how blatant does it have to get? Meanwhile one of the incidents that did not make headlines was a demonstration by 100 women draped in American flags and wearing “protest panties” who performed a “mass flash” near the Republican convention. They were arrested. I wish I had been there to see that, but I can’t say my reason is purely political.

Robyn Blumner, feisty local newspaper columnist, had a column titled “I’m an atheist–so what?” That set off a minor tempest, as you might imagine. I’m agnostic, which means I regard the case as unproven, but I’m much closer to the atheist position than to the theist one. Blumner says she rejects the existence of God, Satan, Afterlife, psychic power, astrology, predestination, and any soul outside of a functioning brain. Right on. She remarks on a Tampa City Council meeting where three council members walked out rather than hear an atheist give the invocation. Remember the Constitutional injunction about the separation of church and state? These folk evidently will walk out rather than lose the religious invocation. I call that bigotry. Regardless, their religion belongs with their persons and their churches, not in city council. She reports that one survey showed that 29 million Americans identify with no religion. Sigh; so I’m not one of a kind. Subsequently published letters were fairly mild; maybe they didn’t publish the worst. One remarked that Jesus was the greatest liberal who ever lived, and that he and Blumner should see eye to eye. But another said that atheists are in for a shock when they reach the hereafter and are held accountable to God. Blumner reported that her mail was surprisingly supportive. Some offered to pray for her. My take on it is that if there is after all an Afterlife and God, He would have more respect for honest independent cusses than for the masses who pray to Him merely to save their own selfish souls. Why should God like ass kissing?

A NEWSWEEK solicitation shows a graph indicating that when it comes to awards, NEWSWEEK far outstrips TIME and US NEWS. Interesting; I subscribed to all three magazines decades ago, comparing, and found US NEWS the best by a substantial margin. I rather doubt that things have changed, regardless of rigged award results.

Do you know what a push-poll is? I received one from the Democratic National Headquarters. “Since George W Bush took office, over 2 million American jobs have been lost. How would you grade President Bush’s record on jobs?” “Bush has tried to cut combat pay, limit health care and reduce family benefits for America’s soldiers who are risking their lives to serve this country. How would you grade President Bush’s record of taking care of our men and women in uniform?” Now do you know what a push-poll is?

In On a Pale Horse I have Hell running ads to attract souls there, such as a little devil peeking under the skirt of a luscious young woman, with the words “You won’t see that in Heaven.” Well, it seems that now the US Army is running ads to attract recruits. “The Army has a career waiting for you.” The chance to qualify for 150 careers, guaranteed training in the one you choose. Up to $20,000 enlistment bonus. Up to $50,000 for college after you serve. And so on. No mention of war, bloodshed, “stop-loss” captivity. I served two years in the peacetime Army, and was open to the notion of making it a career, but it spent two years convincing me I shouldn’t. I (and the battery) was punished when I did not “volunteer” to sign up for the US Savings Bond program at 2.5% interest (I needed the money to live on); I was barred from promotion, removed as a math instructor, and put to work pulling weeds. There was more, but you get the idea. Anyone who signs up for the Army for other than pure patriotism is desperate or a fool. When I arrived for training, a cadreman yelled “Send your heart home; your ass belongs to me.” He meant it.

Fans send me interesting links. I correspond with a small collection of teen girls, prisoners, and aspiring writers–no, the categories aren’t identical, and no I’m not trying to get my hands on young flesh so I can be sent to prison and have time to write. In time the teens disappear into adulthood, prisoners disappear into civilian life, and writers disappear into nonentity, and few are heard from again. Anyway, one girl told me of www.dhmo.org, which I list here without comment; you’ll see why. That in turn had an ad for Acme Klein bottles with nice pictures. The Klein bottle is a three dimensional Mobius strip with one surface, inside and outside. The notion dates from circa 1940, but I regard it as a put-on, because any cup with a rounded rim has the same property: an unbroken line can be drawn passing across outside and inside and returning to itself. A cup is a deformed sphere, topologically similar. So if you are keen to own a decorative Klien bottle, you can order one here for $30, $40, or $50 depending on size. About prisoners: while I have little doubt that most deserve to be where they are, I also have little doubt that conditions often are abusive and their rights can be abridged. I know that attractive female prisoners and young males are raped without recourse. It’s a dirty little secret that more men may get raped than women, because of prison conditions. Some may complain, and wind up as unexplained “suicides.” Medical attention can be inferior. AMNESTY NOW magazine has an article on it titled “Hidden Hell.” Wherever there is power and secrecy, abuses flourish, as we have seen at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. America’s hands are hardly clean in this respect.

Perhaps related: a local man was just sentenced to life in prison plus 415 years for having sex with a boy and possessing child pornography. I lose track of the statistics, but I think the average cold-blooded murderer gets out in 13 years. In another local case, one boy bullied another, the victim’s mother interceded, and the bully’s mother came after her with a broken bottle and sliced her throat nearly from ear to ear, left her bleeding on the ground amid her four young children, and showed no remorse. Like mother, like son. Jury found her guilty of aggravated battery, but the judge bawled out the victim and gave the assailant seven years probation and withheld adjudication on the charge. In effect, no penalty. So if you want leniency, kill people, or slit their throats; don’t have sex with them or watch dirty movies. Isn’t there something wrong here? Here is one site with input in Ohio, for any who are interested: www.paroleboardprisoners.com. But sexual assault against women exists in the armed services too. That is, against female soldiers, by male soldiers, and the victims have trouble getting recognition, let alone justice. As for writers–the rest of this HiPiers site is dedicated to them. As I like to put it, writers, like dogs, sometimes have their day. I’m trying to help them get their fifteen seconds of fleeting fame. Another link was sent by Tammy the Dragonfly woman that is fascinating: www.grandmatrix.com/forums/non-cgi/images/arms12.swf. Just move your cursor around and see what happens.

Newspaper article on wolves in Yellowstone Park has interesting revelations. When they extirpated the wolves as a menace, the elk multiplied, denuding the region of vegetation. Without trees, beavers disappeared, and without their dams the succulent plants that grizzly bears eat in the spring were gone. Coyotes multiplied, taking out voles, mice and other rodents. That was hard on red fox and raptors. It was a cascade of effects. When they brought back the wolves, the elk spent less time eating and more time watching out; trees and willows rebounded, trout returned, coyotes diminished, rodents multiplied, foxes and raptors gained. Everything from bears to song birds profited. We mess with nature at our peril.

Which by no particular coincidence brings me to the globe’s top predator, mankind. Articles in the August/September FREE INQUIRY magazine, one of the mouthpieces of humanism–if I’m anything, I’m a humanist–address the carrying capacity of the world. Some right wing idiots would have it that we can keep right on increasing our population and exploitation of resources forever. More sensible minds want to know what the limits are, before we strike the willfully unseen iceberg and sink. The magazine does not seem to come to a conclusion, but the implication is that we are already in trouble. So I offer my more succinct thought: the world needs universal effective contraception, so that no unwanted babies are conceived. That would be a start. I regard the Catholic Church’s stance on this as heresy; I doubt God wants mankind to drown in his own wastes after rendering all other species extinct.

There is a curious subsection of our kind that keeps diaries, or equivalent. I am in that group. These bloggy columns amount to a novel’s worth of wordage each year, for example. But I don’t stop there; I keep private notes that amount to twice that much. No, they aren’t like My Secret Life; they’re just ongoing notes on what I’m working on, what I do, what I react to, what I hope for, and spot chains of thought, surely unbearably tedious for any outside reader. If I ever need to know exactly what day and hour I took a spill on my bike, it’s there. The times of all my exercise runs, the scores of all my archery sessions, the amount I write each day, the number of letters I answer, and so on. Dullsville. But here’s the relevance: a new study suggests that diarists are more likely to suffer from a slew of ills including headaches, insomnia, and social awkwardness. The healthy well-adjusted folk don’t keep diaries. Well, I seldom suffer headaches or insomnia, but I don’t regard myself as socially adept, and I am mildly depressive. Without my wife I would have trouble functioning. I’m one of those inept men who needs an ept woman to run his life. Now you know. No, I won’t give up my diaristic ways; I’m locked into my ill nature.

During the writing of this column we went to see a movie, the first since the storms: Sky King and the World of Tomorrow. This is a deliberately archaic styled effort, 1930s America, heroine with low tilted hat, loud red lipstick and long skirt, with that Buck Rogers science fiction stuff. I loved it. Ten story robots tramping grandly through the streets of New York, flying machines with flapping wings, airplanes that can dive into water like submarines, an evil genius, Shangri-La, an Ark spaceship leaving Earth, which is about to be destroyed, impossible coincidences–what more could any old-timer want?

They discovered a new long-necked swimming dinosaur fossil, and don’t know what to make of it. Maybe I can help: it’s obviously a plesiosaur, related to the Loch Ness monster. Duh.

I get a slew and a half of solicitations. All are for good and worthy causes, but I ignore most. Every so often I review why, here. For example, there’s Carnegie Stout Public Library in Dubuque, Iowa. Iowa cut funding, so they are fund raising. Reading ability is declining among young folk, so they are trying to reverse that. Surely a worthy aim. Would I please help by donating something? No I won’t, because there are thousands of libraries in this country, and I can’t support them all; they need to go to their own communities. As I have said before, it’s a pyramid; if every library and other good cause solicited every other, and all contributed to all, there would be a tremendous exchange of resources, but no one would come out ahead. Only those who received without contributing, which is what these folk are trying to do.

I don’t like bullies. This dates from my school experience, being the smallest member of my class, male or female. Later I grew to above average height, and it stopped, but I remember. I thought girls were nicer. A newspaper article describes how today’s technology is used by girl bullies. An eighth grade girl stole a pencil case filled with makeup, and the victim reported it. That was her “crime”: reporting the theft. That day instant messages popped up on her computer screen, calling her a tattle-tale and liar, a stuck-up bitch, and increasingly ugly epithets. There were more than 50–the limit of her system’s capacity. If I ran things, I’d trace those messages and deprive the perpetrators of their ability to send any more until they attended remedial classes, and have them on probation thereafter. And how about teaching them that theft is wrong?

Article in NEW SCIENTIST says that Americans eat an astounding amount of meat–averaging one medium steak a day. Nine billion animals are killed and consumed per year. This is leading to environmental health problems, such as arsenic from chicken feed leaching into surface water and ammonia released into the air. I’m glad I’m a vegetarian. There’s an interesting mode of comparison of prices: the hamburger standard. If the Big Mac costs $2.90 in the USA, the cost of living elsewhere can be judged by the price of a similar hamburger. It seems you can get it for about $1.23 in the Philippines, or $4.90 in Switzerland.

Assorted other notes: In Denmark they are making a bamboo bicycle. Not the wheels and chain, but the frame. A survey shows that the top seven states in average IQ all voted for Gore in 2000. The bottom seven voted for Bush. A woman wrote to me saying the her son was taken from her and she needs help getting him back. I am not conversant with the details, but anyone who is interested can find them at www.geocities.com/shadodragonette.

I continue to struggle with my archery. Nothing seemed to work, left side. Finally I decided to try gripping the bow tightly, making my wrist rigid so it can’t bend. And that, by gum, seems to be working. I missed several sessions because of the hurricanes–winds and rain are hell on accuracy and equipment–but my last two had the left side about even. That is, making as many as I missed. We’ll see.

I have mentioned my formula before: SOP = SOD. That is, Standard Operating Procedure is Shitting On Dreams. I’m talking about publishers, of course. Folk think I exaggerate, until they try writing and get experience with publishers. Case in point: www.officialdarajoy.com tells the story of a writer who got her books published by Dorchester Publishing, which I believe is a traditional publisher rather than electronic. Dara Joy inquired about unreported editions and unreported royalties–and the publisher sued her. So now she’s embroiled in a legal case, because she wanted straight information. The publisher is trying to silence her, rather than pay up. Does this seem far-fetched? Well, when I asked politely for accurate statements of account, early in my career, and was ignored, then demanded them, I got condemned, threatened, and blacklisted for six years, until the publisher changed ownership, and a number of other publishers joined in the blacklist, as did a writer’s organization, tacitly, with some of its officers badmouthing me, in an attempt to destroy my career. I survived, but never got those statements. That’s why I am so ornery about it today, and have taken legal action against more than one publisher. I have been there, and now I have the will and the means to enforce my case. More power to you, Dara. I did not sign your guest book; this is my more public support.

However, it is not necessarily easy to know when you have a case. A writer asked me about DOUBLE DRAGON: how to keep tabs on sales? Not long ago I listed a complaint against that electronic publisher, and alienated a correspondent thereby; folk sometimes choose not to understand that I don’t play favorites. DD is one of the best, perhaps THE best, of the electronic publishers, and I have cordial relations with it and judged one of its fantasy novel contests. I felt the complaint lacked justice, but it was made and I listed it. I have also listed complaints against Xlibris, where I have a considerable financial investment. My commentary would be worthless if I catered to my friends. But sometimes a writer simply needs to know more about publishing. Most publishers issue periodic statements of account, and pay the royalties owed at that time. The information isn’t available before then; it’s still in the distribution and payment pipeline. Unless a publisher posts ongoing sales, you just have to wait. This is no signal of dishonesty; things have to be done in their turn, for the sake of efficiency. So you need patience. If time passes, and you smell a rat, you can require an audit. That’s why you need a good audit clause in your contract. A competent audit is like putting that publisher naked on a stage; there will be no secrets. But you don’t have to do it officially; on occasion I have queried informally, the publisher has checked, and paid what it overlooked in an honest error. In one case that was almost a hundred thousand dollars, straightened out without ill feeling; a file had been mislaid. So I would say a general rule is wait a while, query gently if that seems warranted, and if not satisfied, then proceed to the harder line. Remember that electronic sales are likely to be low; my experience has been with traditional publishers, where real money exists.

One ongoing tragedy and outrage is Darfur, in Sudan in Africa, south of Egypt. It seems the Sudan government wants to eliminate three tribes so Arabs can take their land. So they are marching in and killing people wholesale, trying for genocide. Naturally folk are fleeing. This has generated terrific disruption. Eighty per cent of the children in one camp are malnourished, there are no toilets, and girls are taken by guards to be raped. As people starve, food aid is diverted to feet the guards’ camels. Of course relief efforts are being made, but this bothers me. How about going after those who are doing the raping and killing? Apparently that would involve expensive troops and international complications, so no one wants to do it. There’s no oil in Darfur.

From a column by that savvy commentator Molly Ivins: in Canada they watch our politics with amazement. “Are you people actually going to re-elect that nincompoop?” I have a problem with that: how can you re-elect someone who was not elected in the first place? According to a Blumner column, “Blatant partisanship was what made Bush vs. Gore such a blow to the integrity of the Supreme Court. In any number of ways the justices in the majority contorted the law and normative court procedure to reach the result they wanted.” After cheating in Florida to make it close enough for the courts to step in.

My wife gave me a neat book for my birthday: THE GREAT BOOK OF OPTICAL ILLUSIONS. I paged through it during the blackout, and the pictures are challenging and mind-bending. Now I am reading Clarion of Midnight by Kristina O’Donnelly, the other Inverness novelist. This focuses on the politics of Turkey, which are as wild and dirty as elsewhere, and conflicted love. It’s interesting; she does about as good a job showing male sexual interest as any female writer does. Find the author at www.ladyliterature.com. For those interested in my own books, the third ChroMagic novel Key to Destiny is now available at www.mundania.com, and the 28th Xanth novel Currant Events is coming out in hardcover from TOR, and #27 Cube Route in paperback. I am now writing #30 Stork Naked, wherein Surprise Golem, now 18, is expecting a delivery, but the stork concludes she is only 13 and takes her baby away. The thing is, Surprise was delivered late herself, and was five years old when Grundy Golem and Rapunzel Elf received her. It seems the paperwork got confused, so now she’s on a remarkable tour trying to recover her baby from the alternate universe where it wound up. The storm interrupted this, but I’ll finish it on schedule.

An “In the Beachers” cartoon: “Now let me get this straight. This accident occurred in front of your eyes, but no one saw what happened?” Above is a banner: ANNUAL UMPIRE PICNIC.

Enough; I could opinionate forever, but must quit.

P.S. The Dismember column will probably be about a week late because our webmistress will be away. P.A

Maybe it was a mistake to turn 70. Suddenly the penalties of age are manifesting. A thoughtful reader sent me a poem that scans the alphabet of the problem of aging, starting with A for arthritis and B for the bad back. Right on, alas. I had a MRI–Magnetic Resonance Imaging–for my spine. It took 45 minutes while I lay in what seemed to be a spaceship capsule, feeling no acceleration (such ships have so-called massless drive, so you can reach light-speed without getting squished) as the ship clanked and buzzed around me, taking 80 pictures of slices of my backbone. I understand it is a thousand dollar test, covered by Medicare. They gave me a courtesy print to take to my doctor, but the doctor’s office didn’t want it, having no place to store sheets that size, so I still have it. It looks to my untrained eye as if all my disks are fat and sassy except the lowest, which resembles a flat tire. That is surely the problem.

So they prescribed physical therapy. This turned out to consist of hot pad treatments, sonic heat treatments, spine massages, and instruction in assorted leg lifts and stretches, all supervised by young women. I learned the stretches and did them twice a day. None of it had any apparent effect, and after two weeks they let me go. I think the problem is that I’m not your average creaky overweight oldster; I eat lean, exercise seriously and my limbs are in good condition. I’m still doing the exercises at home, still with no effect. A reader told me of a book that really helped him, The Mind-Body Prescription by John Sarno, but so far I have not found it.

Meanwhile my PSA blood test was suddenly rising, suggesting a problem with my prostate. Men and women have parallel organs; what becomes the uterus in the female becomes the prostate in the male. So women have uterine uncertainties and men have prostate problems. A digital exam–you know, “up yours” with the finger, literally–confirmed that it has enlarged. So it was off to the urologist, who will recheck in three months and we’ll see. Considering the young-woman therapy for the spine problem, I wonder what prostate therapy would be?

And I got another implant. Okay, cease your sniggering, you buxom young women who found my three prior implants humorous. These are teeth. My dentist planned to put a crown on a front tooth, #9, but I could feel that tooth, and since it had had a root canal, that meant that something was percolating in the ground beneath it, as it were. I was afraid there was an infection that would take out the tooth along with its expensive new crown. So I elected instead to have it replaced by an implant. My prior ones have given me no trouble, so this seems the best bet, though expensive; the implant cost over $2000, and of course that would have to have a crown too. But my hope was that it would be permanent. Well, not quite; in three weeks it fell out. I think my suspicion of subterranean pollution was well grounded, and it dissolved the underlying bone and took out the implant. So now I have had a bone graft, and after half a year or so that will serve as the basis for a replacement implant. And I have a hole in my face that freaks out bystanders when I smile. I’ll see about getting a false tooth for the interim to cover that up.

And of course my wife and I were unable to get flu shots. You would think that with a supply of vaccine cut in half, they would give the shots first to those most at risk: the small children, the senior citizens, and those with special health problems. My wife’s health is precarious; I truly fear the flu for her. I don’t know who did get the shots, but our story is familiar: there were none available. We simply have to hope that the flu does not come to our area this season. A life may depend on it.

So was it worth turning 70? Would any of this have happened if I hadn’t?

Well, on to other matters. Our little mulberry tree seems to be flourishing. Remember, I transplanted it because it was getting run over where it was. The moving damaged it and it dropped its leaves. But in one week I found one tiny leaf and buds for new ones. In two weeks the buds were swelling. In three they expanded into leaf clusters, and in a month they turned out not to be leaves but new branches. The original leaf finally browned and fell off–I’m sorry for it–but the others are doing well. All I knew of mulberries before was a story about Mulberry Lane, but now I am a mulberry fan. Those leaves are sculptured works of art, with one lobe, two, three, four, five, six lobes, and a few leaves are trying for seven. The outside of each leaf is serrated, but the deep indents between lobes are smooth, as if cut by a knife. The larger pattern of leaves is fractal; I wonder whether a common underlying law of nature governs the fantabulous Mandelbrot set and the mulberry leaves? Mathematics and nature do relate, sometimes artistically.

Remember how our daughter the newspaperwoman gave us a cell phone? That is working out well, with one exception. My wife keeps it with her so if she falls or gets stranded she can call me. This is a real concern, so we are glad to have the phone. But an aspect of the billing annoyed us. If you renew the card, your unused minutes get extended to the end of the new card. We had about half an hour left, so planned to extend just before the time expired. But it turned out the time started a week before we got the phone, and we missed the cut by two days and lost the minutes. AT&T Wireless had been buzzing us with special offers; you’d think they might do us the courtesy of also buzzing us when expiration was nigh. No such luck; I guess making us waste some money was more important than winning friends. We did renew, as the phone is useful, but that annoyance remains. It’s not that we didn’t know that corporations are out to screw the common man; it’s that we don’t like having them get away with it. What do they think this is–politics?

I continue with my duffer archery, part of my exercise program, loosing 12 arrows each side at 150 feet. Right side continues to do okay, but the left side continues to mess up. The arrows simply don’t go where I aim them. It has to be the twist my hand puts on the bow as I loose the arrow. I tried stiffening my hand and wrist, and thought that helped, but soon the arrows were missing as usual. So I tried holding the bow loose, as I do right handed, but the arrows missed worse. So I’m still trying to find the right level of stiffness. (Stop that giggling, you naughty girls. I’m not that old. Quite.) Originally I bought two dozen arrows for the left side bow, but with loss and breakage those are down to seven, so now I’m using the right handed arrows for both bows. The circular arrow-rest I use now can handle any kind of arrow. I have 48 right-side arrows; it will take me a while to lose enough of those to need more. And no, you would-be grammarians: I’m not misspelling. To “loose” is to fire an arrow; to “lose” is to mislay it. Sometimes I do both at once. Such is the state of dufferdum.

I still do watch Survivor on TV, mainly for the nice peeks it so carefully provides of healthy female breasts and bottoms. But it had one episode I really liked: when the girls won the prize of a day of the time and expertise of the native expert on foraging. That supposedly primitive man really knew his stiff, from coconuts to sugar cane, and those civilized girls were in legitimate awe of his knowledge. That was a nice reminder that what seems advanced or backward depends on your situation; in that jungle the girls were idiots and the man a genius.

There was a local sale for a computer. I have a good Linux system for my paying work that does not connect to the inferior Windows system I use for correspondence. After five and a half years that W system is getting cranky, and needs replacement. So we bought a $500 Compaq system and set it up. Naturally they did not give us the papers for the send-in rebate; those had to be sent for separately, and never arrived. We knew they’d stiff us on that; it’s in the big book of corporate rebate rules: how to lose friends and alienate people. I believe I have already mentioned how corporations would rather have your money than your good will. The advertised floppy drive was absent; this was a different model with a larger hard drive instead. Par for that course. We bought an external floppy to plug in. We also have to change the keyboard to my variant of Dvorak so I can use it, and download a new Eudora mail handler. These things are fraught with complications we can’t readily navigate. So the new system sits unused. Par for that course too. We need a native primitive who knows how to harvest computer coconuts. I remember when someone on the Linux circuit said he wanted a system that would run out of the box, and two others bawled him out for even wanting that. Well, I’m with him; I don’t really like having to pay more for geek assistance than I do for the hardware.

PLAYBOY had a cheap offer, as I think I mentioned in a prior column, so I’m trying it for a year. Many lovely color pictures of hugely enhanced girls, some articles of substance. I also made a deal with a reader to get some XXX videos, as it seems Florida doesn’t allow XXX catalogs to be sent. Something I note they have in common: anal sex. Even a decade ago that seemed hardly to exist; now PLAYBOY has an article by a woman lauding it as something really special. Seems her vagina is more or less a public highway, but she reserves her anus for only the most special men. The videos in contrast seem to regard the anus as a second vagina and exploit the two interchangeably. To each his own. I merely wonder whether men who prefer anal sex wouldn’t be as well off with other men. Meanwhile THE HUMANIST had an article by Valerie White on polyamory: loving and/or having sex with more than one person without deception or betrayal. The author says you can love more than one child at a time, so why should adult relationships be exclusive? She mentions Robert Heinlein and Robert Rimmer, both redoubtable writers who practiced polyamory before it had the name, and advocated it in their novels. She makes the point that it’s really not about sex, but love. I can see it. Another article in the issue is titled “Why I’m Glad My Daughter Had Underage Sex.” It is a critique of the repressive unrealistic abstinence-only attitude of conservatives. “I don’t want my children to regard sex merely as a jungle full of deadly dangers, mined with disease and punishment. They need and deserve to indulge in passion and celebrate its delights.” I think all these articles have some real sense underneath the provocative headings, though I feel youths should be shielded from adult passions until capable of handling them.

Which brings me to children: how they are educated sexually is the prerogative of their parents, for good or ill. But there are other types of abuses, and every so often I get riled up enough to protest them. Here is a letter I sent to a student in another state:

Today I received your solicitation for some unwanted item for your school to auction to raise funds for your Rain Forest Project. I have two comments that your teacher may not appreciate, but perhaps you will.

First, there are too many solicitations like this, from schools, libraries, community clubs, and other worthy causes all over the world. If I sent something to each, I would soon enough run out of incidentals, because there are hundreds of such requests. This is actually a variant of what is called a pyramid scheme, where every participant assumes there is an infinite number of others to petition. So as a general rule I have stopped sending things.

Second, I dislike the way children are used, because people don’t like to say no to children and hurt their feelings. As a child yourself, you need to realize this. It is actually adults running the show, with children as fronts. It reminds me of the way the Germans handled the Russian defensive mine fields in World War Two: they captured the wives and children of the Russian partisans and forced them to walk ahead of the German troops, so that they would be the first to get blown up. It was a very ugly business. Children should not be used to protect the hides of the adults in power.

I am enclosing, as a minimal gesture, two signed bookplates, one of which is specifically for you. I hope you will consider what I have said here and discuss it with your family, as this will explain why most of your school’s solicitations probably get ignored.

So did that have any effect? I don’t know. It is quite possible that the school authorities never let the girl have the letter or bookplate, preferring to let her think I never answered.

Sometimes incidental thoughts become mind-benders. I heard a rain prediction of 40% during the day and 30% in the evening. Good, I thought, that’s a 70% chance of rain overall. Then I thought wait, how can it be? Maybe it’s the average, a 35% chance of rain. But how could the longer period come to less chance than the shorter one? But adding them doesn’t make sense either, because there might be a 60% chance followed by a 50%, and there never was a 110% chance of rain. I finally got all bollixed up and am not sure what the real chance for rain is when it’s 40%-30% as described. Does anyone out there know? Maybe 40% plus 30% of the remaining 60%, making the total about 58%? Or is is simply impossible to merge them meaningfully?

As my wife has increasing trouble getting around–complications of age and medication–I am accompanying her on shopping trips, heaving the heavier items, reaching for the reachier ones, and so on. This is the give and take of marriage; I’ve had a good several decades writing time while she handled the household, and now it’s my turn to start contributing more than an income. This takes me out to the Post Orifice and grocery store among others. I bring something to read during the interstices, but I also notice peripheral things. Such as women: when they are in their prime they can be rare and lovely flowers, but how soon they spoil! It’s as if they mind their figures just long enough to nab their men, then go eagerly to pot. It seems a shame. Would the divorce rate drop if both men and women had more care for their physical conditions? A bit of self discipline might spare much mischief.

Another magazine we are trying, again mentioned in a prior column, is CONSUMER REPORTS. Our cars are now over eight years old and we are thinking about a replacement. We’re interested in the new hybrids, which are more environment-friendly. The Toyota Prius seems good, but the local sticker price is $27,000 and there’s a two year wait, and its posted 60 mpg city milage turns out to be 35 mpg when realistically tested. We are not much amused. So we wanted to look up the CU report on the Ford Escape hybrid, as the local Ford dealer had no car and no literature on it. We discovered that we had every issue for the year 2004 except October, the one with the Escape. Apparently that one got lost in the mails during the hurricanes. Then came the annual, and it turns out they didn’t cover the hybrid, just the conventional Escape car. So one way or another, CU is not proving to be useful enough to stick with. As was the case when we tried it several decades ago. They seem to know what we want, and arrange not to cover it.

And the election. Sigh. Those who are sick of it all should skip these next three paragraphs. It had seemed to me that there was no way in Hell that Bush or the Republicans could win a legitimate election; my concern was that they would cheat. There is evidence that was the case, though it is not conclusive. The exit polls showed a landslide for Kerry. Then, somehow, the tallied votes went the other way. What happened? Were the exit polls wrong? In 2000 as it turned out the exit polls were right, but the votes weren’t counted; remember, the Supreme Court stepped in to prevent a proper recount, and Florida, which had actually voted for Gore, was assigned to Bush. That made all the difference. The Bush administration has been arguably the worst in the history of the nation, alienating most of the world–one poll showed 98% against him in Egypt–and a significant number in America. He stood to lose votes, not gain them. So what happened?

There are two or more answers. Let’s assume for the moment that the election was legitimate and Bush and the Republicans really did win. What was their secret? Apparently it was their appeal to bigotry. One letter in the ST PETE TIMES spelled it out: he knew that the Republicans were not good for him economically, but his Christian faith required him to vote for them. I guess he just had to see that those gays did not get to marry, even if the poor folk Jesus actually cared for are further deprived. This was the “values” theme: stop gay marriage, guarantee guns for all, stop abortions, and the marks won’t notice that you are destroying their livelihoods, the environment, the financial base of the nation, the Constitution, and our global reputation. Only idiots should fall for that, and apparently they did in throngs. As another letter put it, Jesus taught mercy, love, and respect for others, but the religious right shows little of any of those. Another pointed out how many professed Christians claim to have high moral values, but don’t follow the basic tenets of the faith: love, humility, understanding, and tolerance. In fact they cherry-pick the morals in the Bible, ignoring inconvenient ones like not committing adultery and not killing. Did Jesus condemn gays or support the death penalty? But they do vote. There was also a pattern in Florida and surely elsewhere of rural regions going for Bush, and urban ones going for Kerry, and the more overtly religious voting Republican. A possible explanation is that in rural Florida many people register as Democrats but vote Republican, so there are more Republican votes than the registrations suggest.

Writer Andrew B. Schmookler put it nicely: “What’s not noticed is that while the leaders just keep these hot-button moral issues (such as abortion and gay rights) festering, unresolved, they make sure that the agenda of the rich and powerful (the regressive tax cuts, the dismantling of environmental regulation, etc.) actually gets accomplished.” As does newspaperman Jay Bookman: “…Americans who are themselves insulated against inconvenient facts and hear only what they want to hear. It’s hard to see that as anything but willful self-delusion. Deep in their hearts, many Bush supporters have to know that the pre-war case for invading Iraq has collapsed, leaving us with a looming disaster. But they don’t dare admit that fact, not to themselves, not to others, and certainly not to a pollster on the telephone. They know where that would lead. They know that once they let that little bit of reality penetrate their bubble, they would be forced to confront the even more daunting fact that they had been fooled and misled by the president, a man in whom they placed so much faith. … Admitting the truth about him seems like disloyalty. And so, they do what they must.”

Or the election was not legitimate. We know the Republicans were ready to cheat; their “morals” seem not to apply to that. In Ohio tens of thousands of new voters were sent registered letters by the state Republican Party. If they weren’t home to sign a receipt–after all, some folk have to work in the day–they were left a note saying they would have to go to the post office to sign for and receive the campaign literature. Naturally 35,000 did not bother, being already deluged with campaign literature. The Republican Party then filed legal challenges against their right to vote, claiming they didn’t exist or didn’t live there. Thus those folk would really have to work to prevent being disenfranchised. Well, that outraged the people, and the stink got so bad that this ploy was soon abandoned. But that shows just one official effort in a key state. There’s much more. In one suburb near Columbus the electronic touch-screen voting machines tallied 3,893 votes for Bush–in a precinct with only 800 registered voters. But it is suspected that a larger systematic computer-shifting of the tallies was rigged to be sure Bush won, regardless; certain types of voting machines seemed almost guaranteed to vote Republican even in majority-Democrat registered areas. And no paper trail to enable a recount. In the southern states, black votes were three times as likely to be challenged as whites. In Florida new voters registering as Democrats were switched to Republican status and their addresses changed; there was a stink about that. When some tried to vote for Kerry, the machine registered Bush; sometimes it took several tries and action by the officials to make a Kerry vote stick. Those were the ones the voters caught; what of those who didn’t double-check before leaving? What of those switched after the tally was moved off-screen? Anyone with computer experience knows that programs don’t have to be WYSIWYG. In Pittsburgh Pennsylvania an official-looking flier told voters that due to the immense turnout expected, Republicans should vote Tuesday, and Democrats Wednesday. A criminal investigation has been launched on that one. But what of those who believed it? Their votes are lost. In several states it turns out that employees of both parties destroyed registrations by the other party. In Wisconsin a flier circulated in black neighborhoods said anyone who had already voted in any election this year could not vote in the presidential election, and threatened ten years in prison for violators. But there is a more disturbing possibility relating to the machines as mentioned above: Kathy Dopp compiled the official Florida state information into a table http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm and noticed something startling: the touch-screen voting machines produced results similar to the registered Republican/Democrat ratios, but counties using optically scanned paper ballots (the kind used in my county) there were anomalies. In the areas served by optical scanners only, solidly Democratic counties went solidly for Bush. The only variable determining the swing toward Bush was the use of optical scan machines. Several states using these machines tended to produce vote tallies inconsistent with exit poll numbers. Exit polls have hitherto been the gold standard for accuracy, almost never wrong. This suggests again that the exit polls were right, and the official vote tallies wrong. The exit polls indicated that Kerry would win Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa–but all were tallied for Bush. The indication is that it hardly matters how the people actually vote; what counts is the tally as the far flung precincts are sent to the central computer for totaling. If the vote is hacked, that’s where it occurs. However, as a liberal independent, I try to be fair minded–that’s one of the differences between liberals and conservatives–and have to say that another article reports that The Miami Herald checked three North Florida counties where this effect was pronounced: overwhelmingly Democratic in registration, but went for Bush. It found that though more than 75% of the voters are registered as Democrats, they did go more than two to one for Bush. As noted above, they register Democratic to participate in local elections, but are solidly Bible-Belt conservative and vote Republican for president. So that particular case is disproved. Why then the difference between types of voting machines? Maybe because the poor counties that vote this way also go for the cheaper machines. It’s not cheating so much as two effects stemming from a more fundamental root. Thus the machines were not the only variable. Of course that doesn’t explain the exit polls. Did Kerry voters vote early, and Bush voters late, after the exit pollers departed? Maybe.

Still it is suspicious. I have to wonder whether the pre-election polls that jury-rigged the “likely voters” to make Republicans seem ahead in regions where there were more registered Democrats were part of the effort, so that a fixed tally would not seem faked. Polls show that a majority of Bush voters still believe that Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda and 9/11, and that the US found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Naturally they are eager to believe Bush won. Kerry voters, in contrast, were generally straight on the issues. An internet circulated discussion suggests that the majority of two million ballots tossed out were cast by black folks. That if an accurate recount could be held in Ohio it would show that Kerry won that state, and thus the election. Ohio, hell; Florida alone is enough to tilt the election either way, as it did in 2000 before the cheating got more sophisticated. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the recounts; this isn’t Ukraine. So what is my conclusion? That neither party is pristine, but the Republicans had their hands on more levers, and were less scrupulous, so their cheating succeeded, and they have their coup. Yes, I suspect the election was stolen. Again. As much by deception as by voting irregularities. But I can’t prove it. We seem to be doomed to four more years of economic, social, and constitutional disaster. Hillary will likely inherit the wreckage in 2008, assuming that by then the votes are honestly counted and the Democrats find a way to counter the dirty campaigning and the blind bigot vote. Column by Robyn Blumner says people do not necessarily vote their self interest; they vote their identity, their values. 35-40% believe in black/white right and wrong with God as the father figure smiting the wicked, such as the malingering poor or those whose sexual identity differs from the norm. These tend to vote Republican. Another 35-40% believe in a nurturant parental government promoting fairness, freedom, and personal fulfillment regardless of social or sexual orientation. These tend to vote Democrat. The Republican party has been better at revving up its base than the Democrat party has been. Or as I see it, when truth is not an object, it is easier to be persuasive, especially to the eager sheep. End of political diatribe.

Last column I mentioned the story that the Bush administration planned to reinstate the draft if it won. I discredited that. A reader sent me a link, and I got a lot more information. There was indeed a bill in Congress, put in by a Democrat. But when the stink of exposure welled up, they quickly abolished it 402-2. So now there is no bill, but there are those who believe there will indeed be a renewal of the selective service system. They have to get cannon fodder somewhere.

Newspaper article says that teens are really getting into blogging. That is, pouring out their feelings on their Web sites. I think this bimonthly column of mine is technically a blog. Well, I once was a teen.

Nuisance dept.: I’m still getting emails and answering them, and having some bounce with the message NOT ACCEPTING MAIL FROM THIS SENDER. Folk, if you want me to answer, make it possible. Maybe sometimes the email is sent to Piers Anthony, and bounces a reply from Hipiers.com. The current case was a query about Gloha Goblin-Harpy from Charles Mossell. He may have wondered why he received no reply. Another example is a bookseller who asked to exchange links, but the link he gave me led nowhere, wasting my time. When I pointed that out, he became sarcastic, evidently not knowing my nature, but did not fix the link. As a general rule I don’t exchange links with booksellers; there are too many of them, and it seems some have attitudes.

Some time back I had a note on Clare Hanrahan, who was imprisoned for protesting the notorious American training center for terrorism. (Let’s call a spade a spade.) You can check her site at www.celticwordcraft.com and order Conscience & Consequence: a Prison Memoirif you are interested. Also: this column is not a personal ad space, but on rare occasion I try to do something for someone. Jack Frederick is a prisoner whose fiancee left him–prison is hard on romance–and lonely. If anyone is interested in corresponding, his snail address is Jack L. Frederick 305-424, PO Box 5500 CCI, Chillicothe Ohio 45601-0990. The usual cautions about corresponding with prisoners apply, but as far as I know Jack is legitimate. That is, not out to corrupt or bilk money from anyone. He would just like some contact with a world other than what he knows in prison. I haven’t asked what he’s in for.

The Allred Unit is a tough Texas prison where inmates go by macho male names like Monster. Gay prisoners must take women’s names, be addressed as female, and are given to the gangs as sex slaves, bought, sold, and rented out. The authorities think it’s funny. Now at last there’s a court case that may help bring prison rape into the open. I have remarked before that there is evidence that more men get raped than women, because of the intensity of the prison rape culture. And an unrelated note on homosexuality: why does it persist, since it is obviously a nonreproductive strategy? They may have part of an answer: it seems the gene not only makes men attracted to men, it makes women more attracted to men, so they bear more children, propagating the species. This may account for 14%, at any rate. Another prison case is that of Mumia Abu, who was an African-American columnist who relentlessly exposed police brutality as the Voice of the Voiceless. The authorities don’t like that. I am not clear on what he did, but they sentenced him to death. I received an appeal to contribute to his defense after 22 years in prison. I am sympathetic, but I wish the solicitation had given me enough information to make a decision.

Alexandra Wilson called my attention to her situation, presented on the Internet. One of her friends was diagnosed with terminal cancer, with a life expectancy of five years. She researched the medicinal use of marijuana, which sometimes seems to be about the only thing that can abate intractable pain. She had no money, so harvested it from roadside plants, and it did help him. She returned to school in her thirties, trying to make something of her life. Things seemed to be going well. Then her daughter, 16, joined an online group, mentioning the marijuana. An online friend tried to get her to agree to sell him some, or to meet him; she did neither. Well, the “friend” was a deputy sheriff. Failing to trick the girl into breaking the law, he armed himself with an Affidavit Requesting a Search Warrant and raided the house, arresting six people and handcuffing Alexandra’s ten year old son. All except Alexandra plea-bargained guilty to a misdemeanor. She did not, not believing she was guilty of any crime, so she was charged with Felony Possession with Intent to Distribute, with the possibility of 3-10 years in prison. The authorities don’t like folk standing on their rights, which is one reason the innocent can get punished more harshly than the guilty. I had experience with this sort of thing in the military. Thus American justice. http://altruisticdad.blogspot.com/2004/10/alexandra-wilson-story.html.

WORLD WATCH is an environmentalist organization, with perhaps the best coverage of the subject. It makes for depressing reading, but sometimes there are incidental eye-openers. Number of unique visitors to the five largest news sites per day: 2 to 3 million. To porn websites: 23 to 60 million. Email beats first class snail mail similarly, 968 billion to 102 billion per day. A global study shows that the rights of women differ widely in the world: in answer to the question “When jobs are scarce, do men have more rights than women to a job?” In Sweden 2% agree, 93% disagree. In Egypt 90% agree, none disagree. In the US, 10% agree, 82% disagree. Did you wonder why some big name environmental organizations are silent on things like Global Warming? It is not that it doesn’t exist; the evidence is overwhelming, and the effect is accelerating. When big corporations contribute heavily to environmental organizations, they get seats on their boards, and–surprise–those organizations stop criticizing the environmental records of their corporate board members. Duh.

I understand that pyramid solicitations are illegal, but they still circulate. I received one headed FULFILL YOUR DREAMS. You send one dollar to each of the seven names. Remove the #1 name and add yours at #7. Purchase a mailing list of 200 names from the outfit they recommend, and send each name a copy of the solicitation. Then wait to get rich. It says “This is NOT a chain letter… NOR is it a pyramid.” It is lying. I trust I don’t need to review the fallacy of this deal for folk of the intellect I expect from my readers.

Newspaper article: have they found the female Viagra? A testosterone hormone patch boosts the female sex drive. Women on the patch have four times as much sex as before. The patch is called Intrinsa. Of course the women do grow excess facial hair. Another article clarifies what women really mean. If she says “It’s your decision,” she means “I told you what I want; why are we still debating?” If she says “No, I’m not upset,” she means “Of course I’m upset, you clueless jackass!” And if she says “I hope we never stop surprising each other,” she means “I’m having an affair with your brother.” Sigh; now after 48 years of marriage I learn the code.

But it turns out that there are some fork who really aren’t interested in sex. No, I mean men too. Article in NEW SCIENTIST about the asexual who are quite normal, just not interested. Sort of the way I’m not interested in eating live slugs or knitting fancy doilies. It’s a formerly unrecognized category.

Earlier this year I was the final judge of the Grabber contest, reading just the first page or so of entries to see which ones grabbed me the most. Now those winners are posted at Ralan Conley’s www.spectravaganza.com/. Look them up. Maybe Ralan will get a more competent judge next year and you’ll win the contest.

Last column I ran Marylyn Peake’s review of Robert Woods’ self published novel. Here is another, by the founder of Apollo’s Lyre, listed in my Electronic Publishing and Services survey:

“Adventures of Scott Nolan” by Robert Woods
Published by Xlibris.
Reviewed by Lea Schizas

Friendship, coming-of-age, and love are three elements that grace the pages of Robert Woods’ book “Adventures of Scott Nolan”. It is the tale of a young lad born into a family with the uncanny ability to communicate telepathically with their beloved dogs, Whisper and Sigh.

While slow at times in the beginning, with dialogue a bit mundane and not necessary, it is these very spots that you feel Woods’ need to connect his main players to you. I analyzed it carefully coming to the conclusion that without these little tidbits of unfounded info, the overall personae of a character would never have been achieved.

Fifteen-year old Scott Nolan meets the girl of his dreams, Elaine Collins. The whole story concentrates on his feelings and their ‘sexual awakening’. Through their strong bond of love, the couple is able to achieve an extraordinary ability of telepathic communication with one another. A bit of sleuthing carried out by the ‘Friends for Life’ club, Scott’s immediate childhood friends, brings the reading to a level of the Hardy Boys in one instant with the same bonding one felt while watching the movie “Stand by Me” in another.

Robert Woods crafts an unusual and at times ‘out of this world’ tale of connection between owner and pet. Whisper bonds with you in the same fashion as the age-old hero of yesterday, Lassie. This connection only staples the whole theme behind Woods’ book of a new race of humans who are sensitive and aware of their surroundings by their ability to telepathically connect. Scott and Elaine will use their sixth sense on more than one occasion when a few sticky situations arise.

Robert Woods takes us ‘out of the box’ of the high-beaming, horn-tooting monopolizing lifestyle of the city into the calm serenity of a countryside where everyone knows and helps one another. A concept perhaps forgotten by many who live a hectic city life nowadays.

Even for someone whose choice of books leans more towards the horror genre, “The Adventures of Scott Nolan” piqued my curiosity. It also provided a nostalgic reminder of my own teen years and a pang of regret for not having kept up with my childhood friends.

“The Adventures of Scott Nolan” is a good read for anyone interested in remembering the feelings and tingling of the senses associated with the meaning of friendship and first love.

All in all, even with the excess wording that could have been eliminated, a few grammatical errors here and there, Robert Woods has an interesting and unusual fantasy story. This book is suitable for the YA age group.

Author’s bio:

Lea Schizas, a short story competition winner, lives in Montreal with her husband Jimmy and five children. She is the co-founder and Editor in Chief of the Preditors and Editors award-winning Zine ‘Apollo’s Lyre’, founder of the online writing critique club ‘The MuseItUp Club’ and publicist for the small press nontraditional publishing house Star Publish. She is a member of the Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), The Writing Village University (WVU), and Senior Editor of the new 2005 print magazine Coffee Cramp Magazine.

Her YA fantasy novel ‘The Rock of Realm’ will be released in 2005 by Star Publish.

You can read more of Lea’s bio and accomplishments at:
http://pages.ivillage.com/rockofrealm
http://www.apolloslyre.com
http://starpublish.com

I don’t undertake to run reviews of other books. Robert Woods’ novel is a special case, where I felt that a writer who had taken my advice on faith and self published at Xlibris, only to have zero sales, deserved to get at least a token response from readers. I happen to know how much labor and love go into a novel; it’s a shame to have it wasted. So I offered to run any reviews I encountered of this one book. Now he has several sales of the book, and is receiving royalties. I’d love it if the book had further success, but that depends on the vagaries of fate. Yes, it means a bit of publicity for the reviewers too; so be it. I wish everyone well, in this soul-shredding business.

I try to read at least one book a month. You’d think a writer would read a lot. Well, I do, but much of it is news and science magazines, the newspaper, and the ever-flowing mail. I spend most of my time writing and tending to mundane matters as life gets in the way. So I am not well informed even on the fantasy scene. But I do make a feeble effort. I read God Drug by Stephen L. Antczak, published by MARIETTA www.mariettapublishing.com. This is a wild novel. Suppose there were a hallucinogenic drug whose impact lasted days or weeks, putting you into a shared alternate reality with its own rules that you can’t escape? It’s like an extremely violent game, where the denizens compete for supremacy by destroying each other. In one case a man opens his mouth and swallows another. A dragon helicopter attacks, wiping out bystanders, razing buildings. Very few safe havens, and those may have other kinds of threats. There are nice crude-line illustrations throughout, where a few brush strokes convey the evocative essence. This is a compelling, disturbing exploration of a dark side.

And I read Legions of Space by Keith Laumer, BAEN BOOKS, discovering it in the grocery store along with my Cube Route. For those who don’t know my history with Laumer, a spot reprise: He lived near me, I knew him, we got along. Then he had a stroke that seemed to cut out his niceness circuit and I think destroyed his career. And I inherited his reputation as an ogre, as others willfully confused the two of us. That’s how I adopted the Ogre persona, making something of what I was already stuck with. He really was the ogre in person, as I am not. So how good a writer was he, before that? This is a collection of some of his pieces written in the 1960s ranging from short story to novel length. They are fast reading, well organized, compelling, but not deep; Laumer was not much of a message man. He sticks to single character viewpoint, straight-ahead narrative, with something constantly happening, and women peripheral, romance largely nonexistent. In short, good, typical 1960s science fiction of the kind I found constricting for my own work. The last entry is a short novel done in collaboration with Gordon Dickson, another writer with whom I have a modest history. I have said that typically a lady writer leads the reader by the hand to see her wonders, while a male writer grabs him by collar and crotch and hurls him into the action. Planet Run is an example. Actually some female writers can hurl too, and some males be gentle, but the stereotypes remain.

Meanwhile I completed Xanth #30 Stork Naked which should appear in print two years hence, featuring Surprise Golem’s quest for her lost baby, and am starting on ChroMagic #4 Key to Liberty, where Earth comes to reclaim her thousand-year-lost colony. Two complications: the colony does not want to be reclaimed, and the Earthers don’t believe in magic. It should be quite a contest. Now a small mystery: a reader tells me that my novel Shade of the Treeappeared several years ago in one of the slick women’s magazines, like THE LADIES HOME JOURNAL. I have no record of this, and wasn’t paid for it. Is this a confusion? I wouldn’t want to think that any loyal reader of mine was confused. Does anyone know anything about it?

Once I got the Xanth novel done, so I was free of a deadline, I did my best to relax, though as a workaholic that’s not much. I watched some movies and videos. We liked The Incrediblesand Polar Express, and I watched 1 Night in Paris, the notorious sex video about Paris Hilton. It wasn’t much, actually, but its supplementary features were hot triple X. I watched Lara Croft: The Cradle of Life twice, not from devotion but because the first time was after one of the tooth episodes, when the residual effects of the anesthesia blotted out my short term memory. What’s the point in watching a movie if I have no memory of it? I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was a fascinatingly weird love story about a man and woman who choose to wipe their affair from memory, then change their minds after the erasure treatment has started. And I watched some oldies I remembered from decades ago: The Best of Benny Hill, who was really fun as a dirty old man. Popeye the Sailor Man, some cartoons dating from 1936 but better than some contemporary ones. And Have Gun–Will Travel, a half hour TV series that ran in the 1950s. I’m not a Western fan, but there was something special about this one, with Richard Boone as Paladin, a hired gun with a conscience. The episodes are simple, but the flavor is there. This is the collected first season, while I think I didn’t see it originally until the second or third season, which may have had better episodes. I remember one where Paladin was required to be the defense lawyer in an obviously corrupt trial. One juror owed the sheriff money, so had to vote his way. Paladin openly paid off his debt so he could vote freely. Another did not want to have to meet the sheriff in a gunfight in the street after the trial. Paladin held up a silver dollar, then flipped it over his head, whirled, drew and fired his gun. When the dust settled they recovered the dollar: it had the bullet hole through its center. Then Paladin said “Now after the trial, you’ll have to decide whether you want to meet him–or me.” How’s that for uncorrupting a jury?

The media are drenched with cell phone ads, with none of the deals as good as the one we got for our time-card phone, and I mostly ignore them. In my youth I was a hopeful artist; I gave that up to be a writer, but still do appreciate art where I find it. Cingular has been running a series of “More bars in more places” ads, bars being the indication of the quality of reception available in any given area. Four bars is good; one bar is minimal; mostly you settle for two or three bars. That’s routine. What isn’t is the imagination and art of their ads, showing different scenes representing five bars: five pine trees of increasing heights rising by a lake, five buildings similarly rising, five columns of flying birds in the orange sky, five members of a family walking a trestle over water, and so on. Each picture is a work of art in its own right. They should promote the one who devised that concept; it’s apt.

I am getting old, as mentioned above, and awareness of mortality is threatening. I have accomplished much of what I desired in life, such as having a long compatible marriage and family, good success as a writer, and I have helped make it possible for just about anyone to get published without getting ripped off, via my ongoing survey of electronic publishing and my investments in small and/or self publishing. There is a reasonable prospect for one or more movies to be made from my books, which could lead to a significant enhancement of my success as a writer, through no particular virtue of mine. So now I am pondering what else I should like to accomplish before leaving the scene. And I think it is this: to have a role developing things that will truly benefit the world, according to my definition. I am a writer, yes, but also a humanist, an environmentalist, and a vegetarian. I try not to proselytize in my fiction–indeed, I may present concepts with which I don’t agree–but do so freely here in my column. There’s really not much doubt about where I stand on issues. I would like to develop a vegetable source of food that could emulate meat in aspect, taste, and nutrition so perfectly that it could not be distinguished beyond the laboratory, and be significantly cheaper. That would eliminate the need to slaughter innocent animals for their flesh. It would have a beneficial effect on the environment, as range land and the deep sea could be returned to wilderness, giving the other creatures who share our planet their chance to avoid extinction. I would like to develop the perfect source of energy, convenient, cheap and nonpolluting, so that the air we breathe could be cleaned up and global warming would stop. And I would like to develop the perfect contraceptive, so that never again would an unwanted baby be conceived. That would eliminate abortion and ease the overpopulation that is causing our species to crowd out most others. Naturally these ambitions will evoke the wrath of the special interests that now dominate the world, profiteering from the degradation of the planet, and their hostile mouthpieces will be sounding loudly. But if I should garner any portion of the resources required to advance any of these causes, I will do it, and hope to see some progress before I die. It seems a worthy wish, even for an ogre.

P.S. The Dismember column will probably be about a week late because our webmistress will be away. P.A.

I am coming to appreciate things about grocery stores. For example the local Publix where my wife shops for groceries three times a week. When Hurricane Frances left us without power for a week, that store stocked huge amounts of exactly what we needed: batteries and bottled water. Now that my wife has difficulty getting around, we use the six wheeled grocery cart they provide that has a seat for one adult passenger, and I push her around the store and out to the car with the groceries so that she never has to walk. It feels like steering a semi-trailer truck backwards but it is ideal; she tells me where to go and I take her there. Because what I know about grocery shopping is typical of men, which is to say that I may have forgotten more about it than I ever knew. So it’s a viable collaboration, and we get the job done without straining her body or my brain. At other times a wheelchair helps. And that is about all I will say about that; my wife is a private person and is largely anonymous here because she prefers to be, as do my daughters. I am the expressive one in my family, and sometimes they wish I would just stifle it.

Which reminds me, deviously: I saw a reference in a novel to a “wife beater” T-shirt. I never heard of this, and can’t figure why anyone would want to wear a garment with such a name. Maybe my dotage is showing. Here are some other brief items, of no special importance: I got a “flipper” for the missing tooth. That’s a device that fits in my mouth to support a fake tooth, while my jaw recovers enough to put in another implant. It is so difficult to get out that I figured out how to use a little spoon we have with a hooked handle; about four careful pries normally does it. It’s not a real tooth, you see, so I can’t eat with it in place. On a cold day I donned warm socks, and realized that these were argyles that my mother knitted for me when I was in college; I have had them for over 50 years. I read that the folk of assorted professions live different amounts of time, on average. Novelists live 66 years. Oops–I have already overshot my quota. Meanwhile we finally got our flu shots, as supplies dribbled in so that doctors started having them. But I still wonder what happened to the 60 million shots they started with, that didn’t go to the old folk or, I suspect, to the small children; who the hell got them? With a little effort I could probably come up with a political conspiracy theory: if only those pledged to a particular party are safe from flu… And I took a blood test to determine my allergy, and it turned out to be dust mites. But that doesn’t explain why my nose faucets only when the wind is from the northeast.

Readers have caught an error in Xanth #28 Currant Events: when the Clio, the Muse of History, has a pun contest with the dragons, the scoring is wrong, and she wins when actually the dragons should have won. Sigh; I don’t know how I missed that, and the copyeditor missed it too. What did I think it was, a presidential election? Well, I’ll just have to explain in the next Xanth I write. #31 Air Apparent, that the dragons really wanted her to win, so made sure she did.

This column is really a bimonthly blog, and I speak my mind. I receive many reader responses agreeing, and some disagreeing. Naturally the agreements seem more intelligent and fair minded than the disagreements. Here in capsule summary is the essence of one of the latter: a woman asked whether I had any proof of my statements about the election. I said not first hand; I drew from published material. She said then I was a liar and unpatriotic. She didn’t offer to refute any of it with evidence of her own; maybe she was too certain of herself to need proof. What bothers me is that the last election showed that there are about fifty million more like her, who believe what they chose, whether it is that the world was created in six days six thousand years ago, or that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Faith is a great substitute for reality, for some folk, especially when reality is not to their liking. I guess I’m just not much for faith. I do believe in Vitamin C, but beyond that the doubt encroaches. As a naturalized citizen I take the American Constitution and Bill of Rights seriously, and I detest the way the current authorities evidently regard it as an obstacle to their purposes. They are the unpatriotic ones, by my definition. Meanwhile, here is a first hand example of election irregularity, this one from Iowa: “When I ‘voted’ I had a voting experience I hadn’t had before… when I voted I pressed the button for a straight Democrat ticket. The way this voting machine works for a straight ticket is that you then have to pull a lever after pushing the button. My lever didn’t move. I got the old gal at the desk, she went in the booth and came out to tell me it was now ‘all right.’ Did I really vote? Many local people complained of having had the same experience. A county supervisor said, and I don’t think he was kidding, ‘If you vote Democrat it doesn’t work, but if you vote Republican it does.’ I believe most areas all across the state had similar complaints from people voting (?) for Kerry.” That could explain a lot. There were similar cases in Florida, as mentioned last column. So yes, I remain suspicious that the election was stolen, again. Spot rechecks have verified the accuracy of questioned counts, but that can be only what the machines have recorded, which may not be what the voters tried to choose. In this respect the exit polls are likely to be more accurate, and their differences from recorded votes remain troubling.

My mind automatically tunes out most TV commercials, which are repetitive and dull. But some few I notice, and watch again. An example is one of the Capital One credit card ads, with all the warriors charging in to destroy the unwary user of some competitive card. Hyperbole, of course: humorous exaggeration. But this one has a nice woman in green spritzing customers with perfume or whatever. When the warriors come, she’s bravely smiling and spritzing them too. I find that unutterably cute. I’d like to kiss her, but she’d probably spritz me. Another commercial I saw only once, and always hope to see again: a woman chasing an empty pair of blue jeans, that I think represent what she can no longer fit into. Those are the sexiest jeans! I also like the one for cat food, with all the cats converging on the house, right up to a majestic lion.

I was going to take Dismember off and catch up on reading, videos and such, but I found I just couldn’t say away from writing, so started in on ChroMagic #4, Key to Liberty. That’s about when Earth, after a thousand years, sends a spaceship to reclaim her lost colony of Charm. There are a couple of problems: first, Earthers don’t believe in magic, because only Science Magic works on their home planet and they think that’s all there is. Second, Charm doesn’t want to be reclaimed. Well, Earth puts a planet-buster bomb in orbit about Charm to enforce its presence, and takes King Havoc’s four teen-age children hostage. As Bugs Bunny has been known to say, of course you realize this means war. After that it gets complicated, and naturally Earth soon enough regrets getting into this, as those teens seed Earth’s volcanoes to convert them to many other Chroma, making colored magic work on Earth. You see those kids are Glamors, the most strongly magical people there are, and they have powers hitherto undreamed of on Earth. I love this novel; in two months I have written over half of the 250,000 word total. And yes, I regard traditional print publishers as being idiots for not being interested in this sexy series, which I regard as my best fantasy. In time I hope to prove that once again they passed up exactly the sort of winner they claim to be looking for. But as the 19th century American poet Sidney Lanier said, swinehood has no remedy.

Speaking of which: PublishAmerica is on my ongoing survey of electronic publishers and services, with mixed reports. At one point it denigrated science fiction and fantasy writers as having no clue about writing and marketing real-life stories. This of course meant war, again. So a group of that ilk put together an utterly unprofessional and unsalable book and submitted it–and PA accepted it. Then they gleefully spread the word on various Web sites. PA tried to cover, but it was too late. The moral, as the report on http://journals.aol.com/johnmscalzi/bytheway/entries/3500 says is don’t make SF authors angry; you wouldn’t like them when they’re angry. (That’s adapted from The Incredible Hulk: make the nice young doctor angry and he becomes the mayhem-minded green Hulk. I have on occasion done my own parodies, such as what do they serve at convention banquets? Inedible bulk.) The one whose link I provide, John Scalzi is a free-lance writer whose online journal runs such items. But you know, the thing about self publishing is that you can indeed have it your way, for a price; quality is not an issue. Only when an outfit claims to be a straight publisher, and is really a self publisher; then the feces can hit the fan.

Jenny Elf of Xanth is based on a girl who was paralyzed by a drunk driver, as clarified in Letters To Jenny. Readers often inquire about how Jenny Mundane is doing. I haven’t said much because there hasn’t been much to report; she remains almost completely paralyzed. I still write her every week, for fifteen years now, but she can’t answer. However I have word from her mother that she is now taking college classes, having found a college that can handle it, and is doing well in art and even in math, which she always hated. Meanwhile Jenny Elf in Xanth, a wolf rider, married the prince of werewolves in Zombie Lover, the best of both worlds.

I have read some books. I don’t comment on everything I read; this is not a book review column, but some I deem to be of general interest. An example is Thickened Flied Lice, by Annette Robidoux and Jim Sommerfeldt. My blurb is on the back: “It’s disgusting. Children will love it.” I had read the text before; this time I have the full illustrated book. It’s an Xlibris volume, and an example of the idiocy of traditional publishers who pass up potentially successful books because the authors are unknown. This little book is sheer naughty fun. The heroine “Eunice O’Reilly Mc Jean/ Was thin as a dried up string bean.” She goes to a new diner and gets talked into trying the house specialty, Thick Flied Lice. It seems better than other menu entrees like Centipede Toes, Shredded Cod Eyes, Breaded Chameleon Nose, or Tsetse Fly Steak. The stuff is absolutely awful, but she makes a valiant effort–and regrets it. “The flavor so vile/ Like recycled bile!” More fun. The full color illustrations by Christian Olsen are perfect for the story, with Eunice reminding me of Popeye the Sailor’s girlfriend Olive Oyl. She has a companion, a cute little snake that resembles a piece of her scarf. So if you want a book to read to your meal-picky children, this is the one; they’ll probably demand that you serve them Thickened Flied Lice. I’m ordering copies to send to my grandchild’s generation.

Robert Tralins is an old time writer, eight years my senior, who has published more novels than I have, albeit it in other genres. We exchanged books and he sent me a wall clock that runs backward, that is, counter clockwise. He says it may enable me to grow younger. We’ll see. I read his novel Android Armageddon (a title the publisher foisted off on it–publishers like to crap on titles, just because they can). This is an otherwise routine dystopia story, a supposedly perfect society with no freedom for ordinary folk, which naturally our hero opposes. It’s well enough done, but not special. But a portion is uncannily relevant; see if you recognize the allusion. “The tragedy of it all is that a handful of madmen have somehow managed to seize power and gain control of this entire planet. They’ve managed this through chicanery and subterfuge, by subverting our freedoms and turning our free states into police states.” And “He recalled the downfall of America, how the people refused to believe they were being destroyed by enemies from within, fellow travelers who aided and abetted that nation’s traitors, until it was too late to stop the divisiveness, the destruction of all its great institutions.” And “Our society contented itself to surrender more and more of its freedoms as time went by. The sin of omission was committed each time the citizens of [the planet] remained away from the polls at election time.” So how soon do you think the author will be arrested without charge and sent to Guantanamo, never to be heard from again? It’s about due, considering that the novel was published in 1974.

I read Phoenix Tales by Gregory Bernard Banks. This is a collection of seventeen stories published by WheelMan Press, serviced by Lulu (see my entry on them in the Electronic Publishing Survey). As a general rule publishers aren’t much interested in collections unless the author is a Name; thus small press, electronic, and self publishing provide a necessary service to literature. The author has marvelous figures of speech; I don’t think I’ve seen it as thick and apt since the early career of Roger Zelazny. Death is a central theme; one of the stories, “A Cup of Time,” has death agents reminiscent of the Incarnations in my novel On A Pale Horse. That’s not to suggest it is any copy of mine; the death agent here is a luscious young-looking woman. (It can be hard to tell a woman’s age, especially when she’s immortal.) The lead story, “Escape Velocity,” sets the tone: folk are kept alive interminably, and some really want to escape that fate. That is, to die. It makes perfect sense to me. So the adventure is how he manages to escape to death. “Touched” made me remember Olaf Stapleton’s Odd John. Some are slice of life (or death) pieces, with human insights. The stories aren’t perfect, for my taste; there are loose ends, and the author is not strong on plot. But for an experience in description and emotion, this is good.

I don’t like rehearsing my own history too often, but some of it relates to Anarquia, by Brad Linaweaver and J Kent Hastings. The title is “Anarchy” in Spanish. I was born in England in 1934, but really don’t remember my parents from that time. They went to Spain in 1936 and did Quaker relief work during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, feeding starving children. My sister and I joined them when that war was over, but then my father was arrested without charge–you can see why I am sensitive to this sort of corruption–and the Franco dictatorship wouldn’t even admit they had him, until he smuggled out a note and with that and the threat of a cutoff of food supplies from England, my mother was able to get him out. But rather than admit their mistake, the authorities kicked him out of the country. Totalitarian governments can’t admit to error, as we know in America. That is how my family came to America in 1940, on the last passenger ship out before World War Two cut off such commerce–the same voyage that brought the former King of England to Bermuda. Otherwise I would have grown up in Spain or England, and probably not married an American girl or become a writer, and you would not be reading this column. I am here because of Spanish politics. Well, this novel is all Spanish politics, 1936-38, “An alternate history of the Spanish Civil War.” Few folk today seem to appreciate the passion of that war or its relevance to world events. It was a seething pool of conflicting ideologies ranging from Anarchist to Capitalism. General Franco was using Spain’s own army to conquer the country, and the Axis powers were using it as a testing ground for their new weapons, and the Soviet Union was using it for its own purposes. Freedom lovers and fellow travelers across the world were outraged, and flocked to Spain to oppose the conquest. In the end they were unsuccessful; the forces of darkness had more hardware. Once they had it worked out, the rehearsal done, the Axis powers proceeded to World War Two. Among those coming to Spain were a number of literary figures, such as Ernest Hemingway, John dos Passos, and George Orwell. Would Animal Farm or 1984 have been written without that involvement? Certainly Pablo Picasso would not have painted the famous Guernica. Well, Anarquia has fun casting those and others, such as actress Hedy Lamarr, in new roles, participating in an effort that introduces an obscure new weapon and enables the anarchists to save Spain from Fascism and Communism. It’s not a story so much as an exploration of what was going on, replete with hundreds of little pictures. Read it not for “that Flash Gordon stuff” but for insight into the passions of that day and time. I think it’s safe to say there is not another book like this one. But my family’s experience with the anarchists of Spain suggests that they were not ideal either; for one thing they didn’t like uppity women, and enforced their preferences with guns. Hedy Lamarr would not have liked the real anarchists.

I get a lot of mail, partly as a penalty for participating in dialogues with my readers. Some of it perplexes me. Just after the turn of the year I received a package from Hawaii with $12.15 postage on it. It was an ad for a fancy Hawaiian home, with a cover letter, a sample Sales Agreement, a DVD video, and thirteen copies of a fancy slick color 20 page brochure. It’s some house, with almost 12,000 square feet of living area, four bedrooms, a 4,000 square foot master suite, two kitchens, four full baths, three half baths, office, exercise room, salon, a baby grand piano, an 80 foot swimming pool with cascading waterfalls, elevator, life-size nude statuary, and a breathtaking Hawaiian view. Looks interesting as an example of how the other kind lives, but no price is listed. Sure: if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. But why those 13 copies? Maybe to pass out to my family and friends? I’ll think about it. Meanwhile I’m satisfied to remain on my storm-battered tree farm.

When updating my ongoing Survey of electronic Publishers I checked my name in FICTIONWISE. They have half a slew of my titles now, with little bar graphs showing the ratings by readers. That’s nice. They have little blackface letters such as L and VL, but they don’t explain what those letters mean; that’s not nice. Maybe Loud and Very Loud?

Contraception: conservatives say that abstinence is best. But studies show that pledges of abstinence have very little positive impact, and some negative: pledgees are less likely to use contraceptives when they do have sex. I have a question for the abstinence-only birth control folk: how does abstinence work on weight control? On alcoholism? Drugs? Illicit riches? Maybe we should have more of it. Meanwhile if a fat person wants to lecture me on abstinence, I’ll be cynical.

My mind wanders during routine chores like biking out to fetch the newspapers. One time I wondered why women’s breasts and buttocks are so similar, and I concluded it was like poisonous butterflies. No, my fevered brain has not finally overflowed the pot and gone up in stenchy smoke. Here’s the connection: naturalists at one time thought that one species of yellow butterfly was poisonous, and a similarly colored species was imitating it so as to protect itself from predation by birds. Then they discovered that the second species was also poisonous. Since it could obviously protect itself, why did it evolve to resemble the other species? And after some cogitation they realized that it benefited both species to resemble each other, because then any bird that ate one yellow butterfly and upchucked would thereafter avoid all yellow butterflies, regardless which species it sampled. Thus a single inedible butterfly sacrifice could protect both species, instead of each species having to do its own dirty work. Twice the bang for the buck, as it were. Okay, so what’s the purpose of ladies’ breasts and bottoms, apart from certain natural functions we need not mention here? To attract the male of the species. It is evidently an evolutionary advantage for a woman to be able to compel the attention of a man from any angle. What would be the use if her front side turned him on, but her back side turned him off? But given the limited intellect of the male, it’s best to make a single signal do the job, rather than make him have to somehow learn two signals. So her front attractions came to resemble her back attractions, both being paired globs of fat that jiggle and flex with her motions. Such glimpses turn on the watching men, who are programmed to respond by drooling. More bang for the buck, again. (Yes, that’s a pun.)

I received an email protesting notions promoted in the movie The Da Vinci Code, such as the idea that Jesus was only a man, not a god, that he married Mary Magdalene and had a daughter. Well, I haven’t seen the movie or read the book, but as an agnostic I have no problem with these notions. I don’t recall Jesus ever claiming to be a god, and it would be a shame for him to live his life celibate; surely God made man and woman to love each other and propagate the species together, the man abreast of the woman’s assets; so why would he deny Jesus that? I’d certainly rather believe such things, than that professed-born-again Christians would fake evidence to invade a nation without reason.

However, that does not mean I am ripe to be converted to somebody’s church. I received an email from someone who wrote to me out of professed care and concern, and shared some Biblical scriptures. Several relate to the emptiness apart from Him (that is, God), and how God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Okay, enough; I object to those who believe that any selfish turd who speaks the words of belief and praise goes to Heaven, and any great human being who doesn’t speak those words goes to Hell. I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell, but if I did, this is not the kind of Heaven I’d care to go to, and not the kind of narrowly narcissistic deity I’d care to worship. I sure as hell would not sacrifice my child so that readers would worship me.

I read the Ask Marilyn column in the Sunday paper each week. For a bright girl she pulls some boners. January 23, 2005, she featured a statement by a reader that the term “gullible” does not exist and is not in the dictionary. Marilyn said readers might also look up “gotcha.” Well, I did, and both words are in the OED–that’s the Oxford English Dictionary, the global standard–and the big Random House Dictionary. I suppose this is like political conservatives, who prefer to believe that if a concept is not in their limited lexicon, it doesn’t exist. Faith is of limited use when it comes to verifiable things, like the existence of words.

Last column I remarked on the 40% day and 30% night chance of rain: what was the overall chance? I had several feedbacks on that, with perhaps the most thorough by Erin Schram, who explained that the prediction lacked some information, so it wasn’t possible to get a definite probability, but that some bounds could be established. He gave some probability tables, which, crudely boiled down, suggest that the chances are 40-58%. He also remarked on my remarks on the presidential election, when I wondered how there could be such a difference between the exit polls and the official tallies. He said early polls did give Kerry the advantage, but as the day progressed that changed. However, he feels there were some statistical irregularities that might warrant recounts. Later analysis indicated that the morals aspect has been debunked and did not contribute significantly; the main issue was the war in Iraq, and a majority support it. (That suggests to me that the majority is boneheaded.) He also made the interesting comment that the religious right is a political movement, not to be confused with Christianity; that would explain a lot. And he said that the World Watch comparison of visitors to news sites being dwarfed by those visiting porn sites isn’t statistically valid; they should compare the five largest news sites with the five largest porn sites. That makes sense to me. Rodger R Owen also has a comprehensive discussion. My simple thought turns out to be not simple in practice.

I heard from Susie Lee, who runs a small nonprofit small domestic animal shelter that takes care mainly of ferrets and doves. Check it at www.angelfire.com/theforce/ferret_rescuer/ . She has many stories of rescues of individual animals. Here is a recent example of one of her email updates: “And so we come to little Sandy LeQuick Ferret, whose ‘before-and-after’ photos are on the web-page from the second time she’d had her Lupron shot for adrenal cancer symptoms. Sandy LeQuick was purchased from a now-defunct privately run pet store back in 1998, as a then six-month old. She was adopted out as a two-year-old and returned to us with her first bout of adrenal cancer symptoms when Lupron was new and even ‘iffy’ as a treatment. Yet Sandy LeQuick responded supremely well to each of the three Lupron shots over the course of four years, making a complete and spectacular recovery each time. She has lived far longer on the Lupron treatments for her adrenal cancer than any other ferret who’s been and gone from this facility. And on Jan 27th she went to sleep and didn’t waken. At nearly eight years of age, Sandy LeQuick Ferret had gone gently in the arms of her angels to be with her brother, Spanky LeBeau Ferret and her best friend, Harley Davidson Ferret, away into the brightly green Ferret’s Summerlands.”

A local sanctuary for abandoned, abused, or neglected farm animals has a nice story. It has about 15 geese, 34 goats, 3 turkeys, assorted other birds, a foul-tempered cow, a horse, and one sheep the goats reject. And a new old goose, ostracized by the existing geese who excluded the newcomer. Then the lonely goose and lonely sheep hit it off, and now they are firm friends, always together. When the sheep eats alfalfa and timothy, the goose pretends to eat too. When the sheep’s fleece gets thick, the goose cleans it. If a goat tries to butt the sheep, the goose fiercely pecks and flaps her wings, driving the goat away. This is what you do for a friend.

There is also Tintota, a friendly site for young folk that includes business websites, dating services, pen-pals, stories, poems, help for writers., and other things. Find it at www.tintota.com/ .

Spam is getting more specific. I received one saying that Cheating House Wife has matched four names in my area, living 8 to 12 miles from me: Courtney, Emily, Ashley, Rachel, with weights, heights, bra sizes, and nights of availability, all with good proportions and waiting to speak with me. Photos and webcams available. Gee; I hope they aren’t too mad about the way I’m ignoring them. Bear in mind that Piers Anthony is my literary pseudonym, a fictional identity. But as an old married man I’m not keen on cheating spouses.

Yvonne Barber sent me several of her poems. I don’t claim to be any judge of poetry; I’m a I-know-what-I-like guy. I did publish a number of poems by my readers in How Precious Was That While, and I think some of those are classics. But I think poetry, more than other firms of literature, is a personal taste thing. I have significant sympathy for those who feel alone, having hated being alone myself. At any rate, here is a sample:

Blind

they have eyes… but they are blind eyes
they see the hate… but they are blind
they hear the cries… but they are deaf
they feel the pain… but they are numb
they know the struggle… but they can’t think
they take in the world… but they shut the door

I have eyes… I can see
I see the hate… I guard against it
I hear the cries… I am listening
I feel the pain… I cry to share it
I know the struggle… I am trying to fight
I want the world… but they shut me out

they locked me in… with word and labels
I fight with all my strength… but am doomed to fail
they fear my weakness… I try to control it
I cry for help… they condemn me
they will not touch me… I can’t reach
I beg for love… but they have stone hearts

Alone in my prison that they made me…

I weep

I read an article lamenting the fact that so many folk see no reason to learn math. “Your mind doesn’t think abstractly unless it is asked to–and it needs to be asked to from a relatively young age.” That’s easy to agree with, so naturally I have a problem with it. As it happens I do use basic math often enough; I’m one of those relatively rare creative types who have imagination and practical sense, and that combination has surely helped my career. But the logic of forcing children to learn things because it may be good for them can lead to mischief. You see, I hated basic math, but when I discovered algebra and higher math I loved it. I might have had a future as a mathematician. I did teach it for a while in the US Army. But in school I was required to set it aside in favor of four years of languages: Latin and German. Language was supposed to help discipline the mind. I’m a linguistic ignoramus, and it almost flunked me out of high school, and I have had precious little use for those languages in life. That essentially destroyed my math prospects, and in college I finally went instead to a secondary preference, writing. Okay, that was like a light turning on, and I have loved writing ever since; it was surely the best of choices for me. I do indeed use language now, and use it well: English. But I was lucky to have found my way after conventional education had crippled my horizons. I am mindful also of my experiences as a picky eater in childhood: today the only foods I can’t stand are the ones I was forced to eat despite my aversion. Other foods I didn’t like, such as raw onions, I now love. I was never forced to eat them, so the dislike was never truly set. So I do think mastering math is good, but I am wary of cramming it into reluctant children. It may just guarantee that they forever hate it.

The metric system makes a lot more sense than our hodgepodge of feet, ounces, miles, gallons, and whatnot. So why have we in America never converted to it? It could be inertia, as it is with the qwerty keyboard; folk would rather continue getting carpal tunnel syndrome from the inefficient arrangement they first learned, than make the effort to change to a better one, like Dvorak. I changed, but I’m ornery. Now I type touch Dvorak on a keyboard marked for qwerty, having learned to tune out the markings. But I still use those hodgepodge measurements. What’s the matter with me? Well, I finally saw a newspaper article that explains it. The metric system is marvelously orderly and consistent, but its measurements make little note of the convenience of the user. It’s like that attitude of Macrohard: it is laid out, and you have to damn well like it that way, because you have no real choice. You really can’t have it your way, when push comes to shove. I speak as one who finally left Doors in my ornery effort to have it my way, and still have not completely succeeded. When you want to measure a bit of food, which is more convenient: a cup of sugar or 240 milliliters? A teaspoon or 5 milliliters? A pound of cheese or 450 grams? A pint of beer or 470 milliliters? Our fudgy system is geared to our mundane convenience in a way the metric system is not. And that’s why it survives.

US NEWS & WORLD REPORT had a fun editorial by its editor in chief Mortimer B Zuckerman: what people should have said. Hillary Clinton: “If the world were a logical place, men would ride horses sidesaddle.” AARP: “Don’t worry about avoiding temptation; as you grow older it will avoid you.” Sex and the City: “Men are like parking spaces: All the good ones are taken; the rest are for the handicapped.” The Republicans on Democratic Minority leader Nancy Pelosi: “She has all the qualities of leadership, except followers.” The media on Bush’s stump speech: “It has deja moo–the feeling you have heard this bull before.”

A reader told me about The Rejection Hotline: if, say, you’re a girl, and some boy is pestering you for your phone number, and you don’t want to give it but don’t want to make an ugly scene, you give him a special number. When he calls it says “Hello, this is not the person you were trying to reach…” and he gets the message. They say they received more than 13 million calls in 2004. They also have Rejection E-mail Addresses, Rejection Business Cards, Rejection Shirts, and Rejection Hotline Events. Www.rejectionhotline.com/ .

Several readers commented on my concluding wish-list of projects–the things I would try to accomplish, or at least tackle, before I kick the croak. Man-Kit Kwan says it seems a waste of time and energy to grow an entire cow just to get a couple of steaks. Just grow the tissue in a test tube. But this turns out to be complicated in practice; test tubes don’t have all the amenities of cows. So grow a vegetable to emulate meat. He mentions Star corn with a gene that expresses a human protein. But if we ate it that might trigger an auto-immune response. For that and other reasons, this too gets complicated. As for energy, the person who found a way to build cheap fusion reactors would have a near monopoly on global power generation. No government would like that, especially ones with power-hungry tyrants; that man would not live long.

It seems that Hollywood doesn’t want older writers, thinking that they can’t write for young folk. Turn 45 and you’re quietly out. Now there’s a lawsuit. I wish it well. Fiction writers have less of a problem, not because publishers are any less stupid or nasty but because such writers can use pseudonyms to conceal their nature, as I do. My biggest audience is teenage; where would I be if my publisher discovered my age? Shh, teen readers: don’t tell.

Conservatives don’t like government; it gets in their way by mandating things like safe products and fair play. They especially hate government programs that work. So they have it in for Social Security, perhaps the most successful and efficient government program ever; 99% of its money goes to the recipients. They want to destroy it, first replacing it with a privatized system with maybe a 20% overhead, then cutting benefits to match. But it’s a third rail; regular folk will never tolerate being openly defrauded of the benefits they have been paying into all their lives. What to do? Claim SS is in crisis and must be privatized to save it. It’s a lie, but let’s face it, a similar campaign worked to justify an invasion of Iraq. It will be interesting to watch this campaign unfold; I doubt the populace will care to be hoodwinked again, but the effort will be made. Campaigning is easy if you don’t care about the truth and folk are gullible. We’ll see.

Interesting political statistic: how many of the incumbents in the Florida Legislature were defeated in the last election? None. Districts have been gerrymandered to make them incumbent-secure, so the legislators are no longer answerable to the people. That’s why significant reforms have to be done by initiatives amending the Florida Constitution. So now the legislators want to restrict such petitions. As I type this, the news is fresh of a 60% voter turnout in Iraq, a resounding success. How long will it be before those elected catch on to the American way, so the people lose whatever freedom of choice of representatives they have?

Biggest news item of this period is the tsunami, with maybe a quarter million folk extinguished. Some are asking in what way this indicates the will of God. I suspect believers are privately squirming, regardless what they say in public. But I as an agnostic don’t have a problem with it: there may be no God, or there may be a God who doesn’t care, or his ways may indeed be devious. Maybe he is trying to get folk’s attention. But I doubt people will reform. It must be very frustrating, being God; in the Old Testament God railed at the feckless folk, but he might as well have saved his breath.

NEW SCIENTIST says there are four words in the English language with no rhymes: silver, purple, orange, and month. That gets me looking, foolish as it may be. Maybe Bilver should slurple a dorange for lonth. NS also says that human decision making is driven predominantly not by rationality but by emotions, which are seated in our ancient animal brain. That explains a lot of what’s happening today: the animals are in charge.

A “Doonesbury” comic strip made me wonder. It mentioned evident administration policy on torture. “So welcome to the world of riding the dog, pop-top, burning hair, juice ball, double dipping and pounding the marbles.” “What about dating the walrus?” “No, that’s still covered by Geneva.” As a liberal I am too weak-livered to know the lingo of torture; is there a conservative out there who can explain these terms to me?

Radical leftist Jim Hightower–I subscribe to his newsletter THE HIGHTOWER LOWDOWN and agree with most of it–has a neat notion: let’s outsource CEOs. We could get competent personnel much cheaper from abroad. Why not? He also suggests that clean money campaigns in Arizona, Maine, and North Carolina are worth emulating. They have authorized full public financing for candidates who agree to run “clean”–accepting no special interest money, so as not to be beholden to the special interests. In short, no more bought politicians. What a housecleaning that would mean in Florida!

FSEEE stands for Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. It does good work, standing up for this aspect of the environment. It quotes Robert F Kennedy Jr.: “Flat-earthers within the Bush administration–aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals–are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition…. The Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration’s corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda.”

On FeBlueberry 9 I will participate in a panel at the University of South Florida with Harry Harrison and Joe Haldeman, moderated by Rick Wilber. It will be at the University Ballroom in the Marshall Center (Student Union) from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon. I don’t make many public appearances these days, not out of any shyness but because my wife and I are getting older and it is harder to manage. I have no others scheduled this year.

My writing is suffering. December I started in on ChroMagic #4, Key to Liberty, about the world of Charm with the colored magic volcanoes when Earth comes to reclaim her colony. I’m writing it as a labor of love, without a contract. December I wrote 78,000 words, a really great month. January I wrote 50,000 words, which will do. February it was 18,000, and March, 17,000. The future is likely to continue low. I am also losing weight, and getting behind on reading, sleep, and relaxation. What happened?

Well, I became a house husband. I have taken over the meals, dishes, mail runs, grocery shopping, laundry, housekeeping, dog care, and the other chores my wife was handling. She did for me for several decades; now it’s my turn to do for her. It’s the nature of marriage. It’s an adventure. Would you believe, I didn’t know how to buy gasoline with a debit card, or get money from a machine similarly; such newfangled modernistic devices did not exist in my day. I didn’t know where the stores were in town. She handled all that, while I focused on writing. Getting gasoline I am reminded of an ad I saw, with the male car marrying the female gas pump. But it seems to me that’s backwards; if ever there were male and female anatomy, its the pump male and the car female. Thrust the big long hard nozzle into the recessed round hole, pull the trigger, and squeeze out gallons of high octane fluid. Don’t quit until she’s ready to overflow. That’s sex. The pump even proudly chalks up his conquest in numbers of gallons ejaculated, while the car just takes it all in, satisfied. He may get to service a hundred cars in a day, and be paid $2 a gallon for it. Talk of ideal employments! I wonder whether conservatives, religious fundamentalists, feminists, old maids, and other sex-aversive folk have trouble pumping gas? What weird thoughts pass through their craniums as they push the thing in to full depth and feel the virile flow? Do they keep their knees tight together? Or do they patronize only those stations where the personnel handle those censored details? I may get some angry emails about my supposedly filthy mind, as if a sexual analogy is dirty. As if sex itself is dirty.

So how is grocery shopping? Prices are outrageous, of course, but my parameters were set in 1970 when my wife’s complicated pregnancy had me doing the shopping. Two pounds of bananas for 29 cents, that sort of thing, just as I first remember gasoline at 29 cents a gallon. Cheapest tomatoes now at two dollars a pound?! Today I can spend over $70 on a routine shopping. They pretend inflation has been tamed; don’t believe it. I also wonder whether that store doesn’t see me coming and remove key items from the shelf. Sometimes I use the cell phone to call my wife, who then directs me to the secret niches where the stuff is hiding. But sometimes even that doesn’t avail; our kind of Publix dried milk has been gone for a week as I type this. Making out my wife’s shopping list can be tricky, too. Once there was 1% yogurt listed , so I bought yogurt cups with 1% fat content. Turned out the 1% meant 1% milk, which I didn’t get, not the yogurt, which I had bought wrong. But mainly it’s just that there will be what looks like a thousand brands of an item on the shelf–all except the brand specified. I dare not get the wrong one. Once the shopping list said 3-cheese frozen meal, but all they had was 1-cheese, 4-cheese, or 5-cheese. So I bought 5-cheese. I won’t do that again. Once when I bought something I focused on putting away my change and walked away without the item I had just paid for. I forgot to get cash from the presto machine and feared I would not be able to pay for my basket full. I left the basket it the aisle, went out to the money machine, got money, returned, and then took the cart through the checkout counter. And it turned out I would have had just enough money anyway. No, no one laughed out loud, though I picked up a look or two. I think I see a thousand husbandly heads nodding; they’ve been through similar. Or will, when they get there. I have learned to pick over produce, too. There may be bugs on the inner leaves of the lettuce, bruises on tomatoes, dead stems on the onions. I check a carton of eggs before taking them, as there can be cracked or leaking ones therein. I check sell-by dates. I fear I am becoming more like a woman every day.

I had a prostate biopsy, because both blood test and digital exam indicated swelling of the organ. I think about half of all men my age have prostate trouble, so it’s not surprising. That was a spot adventure. In my mind’s eye it would be simply a matter of “Drop your pants. Bend over.” “Ouch!” What a place to get the needle! No such luck. I had to go to a clinic, strip, be granted a towel about the size of a doily to cover my midriff, or maybe it was one of those bottom-baring hospital nighties, get set up with an IV, and be wheeled into the operating room–where three women ranging in age from maybe 20 to 30 stood as tittering spectators. Old fogies don’t get no respect. I had forgotten to put in my “flipper” false tooth so had a gap in my mouth, but I doubt anyone noticed; it was my rosy red rectum that interested them. I had to roll into my side and present my bare anus to the ladies up close. What was this, a petting zoo? Kiss my ass. Then I felt the sting of the anesthetic coursing into my vein–and then a nurse was waking me, the procedure done. So whatever remarks there were had to be left to my imagination. “You call that a rectum? I’ve seen a better pucker on my pet dog!” “Wow–look at the TV image. What an ugly colon that fogie has.” “Yes, he ought to put a brush in there and clean out some of the crap.” “Are you sure you’re sticking that long needle in the right spot? That looks more like a gizzard to me.” “Oops–don’t make me laugh while I’m doing it; now I’ll have to stick him again.” “Well, he’s seventy years old; what does he need it for anyway?” Then I learned that following a prostate biopsy my ejaculate would be red. It was–well, brown, anyway. Like old menstrual blood, my wife suggested. I’m glad I was warned; it would have freaked me out worse otherwise, not to mention my wife’s reaction, being on the receiving end. No pain, just color. After several weeks it faded, fortunately. So what was the result? No cancer; the swelling is from inflammation. Why the inflammation? I don’t know.

I participated in a speculative fiction panel at the University of South Florida, sharing the stage with veteran genre writers Harry Harrison and Joe Haldeman. There were maybe 150 people there, and it went well enough. That may be the last public event I do for some time, as I can no longer commit to leaving home for more than an hour at a time. They tell me that I can’t legally leave my wife alone in the house at all, but then who would do the shopping?

Last time I remarked on the “Gullible” bit in an “Ask Marilyn” column. Several readers emailed me: didn’t I realize it was a joke? No, I hadn’t realized, and so I’ll explain why. I made my fortune on humor; I fancy I know a bit about it. To me, something that depends on an untruth is not necessarily funny, just as with jokes that depend on a black man being embarrassed, a fat man slipping on a banana peel, the anatomy of a Jew, a homosexual person’s love, or a woman being awkwardly exposed. Indeed, some don’t find my frequent fond references to panties to be funny. (The rule is, panties aren’t the best thing in life, just next to it.) I have the dictionary habit, and look up words daily, not depending on my fallible memory. I like to be clear-cut with words, as with Humpty Dumpty, except that I don’t define their meanings so much as I verify them. I regard them as precision tools. A fellow writer once challenged me on “ploy”; he thought I had made it up. Then there’s “bloviation,” which means loud, defiant, boastful talk, blowing, like that in this column; see if you can find that in your dictionary. (I know, I know: it is spelled T H A T.) And would you believe it really is true that there is no such word as “Mundania.” Not in Mundania, there isn’t, except among fans. So I looked up gullible, to make absolutely sure, and verified that my memory was correct. So that makes me foolish? Let’s extend the principle beyond the dictionary: “Your house is on fire–gotcha!” “Your child was just abducted and killed by a terrorist–gotcha.” “There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq–gotcha.” “Social Security is in imminent peril–gotcha.” (Actually it’s Medicare/aid in more immediate trouble.) Are we laughing yet? As it happened, a librarian queried Marilyn, also not seeing the humor. Marilyn said she herself had looked up the word, and, evidently discovering what it meant, laughed out loud and passed the joke along. But she won’t do it any more. I suspect she got too much feedback like mine, and she’s not stupid.

I received a query about my attitude on Gypsies, especially as evinced in the Incarnations of Immortality series. In fact an article was forwarded to me, accusing me of writing inaccurately and prejudicially about them. Well, considering what I just said about what I don’t consider funny, and my accuracy with words, this is fighting language. Rather than go into this erroneous charge again, let me quote at length from the Mayhem/JeJune issue of HI PIERS #18, the printed predecessor to this online column. Here it is:

On Mayhem 7, 1994, I received an undated letter from Sam Connick, secretary for the INTERNATIONAL ROMA FEDERATION, INC, evidently an organization of Gypsies. The name Gypsy is sometimes considered to be denigrating, but historically it derives from Egypt. When these traveling folk appeared in Europe, they said they had come from Egypt, so they became knows as Egypsies, Gypsies. If the Egyptians don’t object, no one else should. Actually they weren’t from there; they originated in India. So now they generally prefer to be called Roma, as in Romania, but this too is partial; they did stay there for some time, however. Gypsy remains the common term, and I shall use it.

I think “fair use” entitles me to quote from Mr. Connick’s letter: “Your book, Being a Green Mother, is a very damaging piece of racist, anti-Gypsy fiction.” He went on to suggest that I would not have depicted Jews or Irish or anyone else in so hateful a manner. He enclosed material that named me and quoted from my novel, as an example of my anti-Gypsy prejudice, part of “white racist attitudes.”

Well, now. Folk who know anything about me know better than to come at me so. The fact is that my portrayal of Gypsies in the Incarnations of Immortality series is favorable. My protagonist in Green Mother, Orb (later the Incarnation of Nature), when searching for the fabulous song called the Llano, seeks out the Gypsies, in the hope that they will have information on it. Gradually she comes to understand their ways. She travels from band to band, inquiring, until stopping in Basque country, in southern France/northern Spain. But they hide from her. So she goes to the center of the village and plays her magic harp, and that so charms them that they appear and form a circle around her. She is summoned to meet Nicolai, a local elder, who presents her with his blind daughter Tinka. “Teach my child your music,” he says. She does, and in the process changes Tinka into a lovely and desirable young woman. In this manner she gains the favor of the Gypsy community. Nicolai dances with her in public, something he has not done since Tinka’s mother died. “Tonight there is only one more lovely than my child,” he murmurs. Orb looks around, but sees no woman more lovely than Tinka. She doesn’t realize that he has paid her his ultimate compliment: Orb herself is the lovelier one, because of what she has done for Tinka. Tinka remains Orb’s close friend for the rest of the series, even caring for her baby later, and Orb likes the other Gypsies too.

But Sam Connick, who evidently had not read the novel, called it racist, anti-Gypsy fiction. He assumed that because I showed anti-Gypsies accurately at the beginning, that the whole novel was similar. I replied in part “You are acting like bigots of exactly the stripe you thought to condemn. I suggest you reform your attitude before you approach another author as ignorantly and maliciously as this. You surely have enough trouble with your enemies, without pointlessly alienating your friends.”

So did Sam Connick take the trouble to read my novel and discover its true nature? No. Like a true bigot, he clung to his misinformation. He said he stood by his prior statements, and that my book would remain on their blacklist. Thus no one else in his group could read it and ascertain its true nature, either. Then he repeated his charges, and suggested that I was deluding myself. And he enclosed some more material, in the form of an article by Chris Purvis that evidently saw publication, “Media and the Gypsy.” It named Being a Green Mother as one of the publications that perpetuate the damaging stereotype of Gypsies. Purvis evidently did read the novel, and shows some respect for it. He quotes a description from it, not questioning the accuracy (I did research my material) but calling it a stereotype. He questioned my description of the origin of the Gypsies. Well, I should explain: the Incarnations series of novels are not set in our “real” world, but in a parallel realm where magic and science both work. For that fictive realm, my origin of Gypsies is correct. It is the conjecture of my main reference, though it is not generally accepted now. He strives to make his case that my novel’s larger effect is negative toward Gypsies, and calls out “errors”: “There is no Llano nor a tanana dance in the Romani culture.” Obviously there is no Llano in the Gypsy or any other culture of the real world, because I made it up, and today there may be no tanana dance–but there was such a dance in earlier times, as my reference documents. If my reference was mistaken, then so am I–but, frankly, I think it is Mr. Purvis who is mistaken, or is being overly technical in order to make an essentially invalid point. He also says I don’t “make one mention of the years of slavery in Romania, or of the genocide during the holocaust.”

Well, Mr. Purvis didn’t read far enough. In the next novel, For Love of Evil, my main character Parry taunts Chronos until the Incarnation of Time changes an aspect of history, causing the holocaust never to have happened, thus saving both the Jews and the Gypsies. That’s why the Gypsies are far more common in Europe now (in my fiction) than they are in reality. In Chapter 14 of that novel Parry says “And every Gypsy too. Do you know about the Gypsies? They are named that because they claimed to have come to the west via Egypt, but actually they came through Romania and are better called Romani.” Then in the final Incarnations novel, And Eternity, Tinka’s father Nicolai becomes in aspect of Fate, and thus an Incarnation. So now the gypsies are represented among the powers that govern the universe.

So I challenged Mr. Connick to a debate on this matter in the pages of HI PIERS and whatever other publication he wished. So did he finally get the message? No, he remained true to his bigotry: “I certainly have no intention to get into a debate with you in the pages of a newsletter aimed at thirteen year olds. Evidently you find this issue rather a trivial one.” I suspect he was beginning to realize the likely consequences of such a debate, so he retreated in Parthian fashion, still slinging his barbs. Too bad; it was already too late for anything much on his part other than an apology. So I shall send him a copy of this issue, and will report his response, if any, in due course.

I hope that Sam Connick is not typical of contemporary Gypsies, because as I said in my last letter to him, he is doing his cause no good by such unfounded charges. I suspect he is instead typical of the lunatic fringe. Meanwhile, if any Gypsies among my readers care to comment, I’ll try to run their responses here. I believe in fairness.

I did send the issue. No readers commented; maybe I lack Gypsy readers. That blacklist, you know. Here is my comment in the following issue of HI PIERS:

My letter was rejected unopened, stamped OFFENSIVE TO GYPSIES. So I’ll just add for general consideration the dictionary definition of the term “bigot,” so readers can judge how well the shoe fits. “A person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.” RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY. Sam Connick came charging at me with provocative accusations, and literally refuses to look at my side of it. He is not interested in my opinion, or in the truth. He is a bigot. That doesn’t mean that all Gypsies are bigots, or even that any others are; I suspect they have experienced enough of the receiving end of bigotry to know better. But this guy is. It’s too bad, because there are intriguing aspects to Gypsy culture, and it could use a better press than characters like this one generate.

So now it seems to be starting again. The article that was forwarded to me is by Ian Hancock, first published in 1996, two years after my Hi Piers discussion quoted above. It quotes from Being a Green Mother “Gypsies! Beware–they steal children!” and says this is an indication of the depiction of Roma throughout the rest of the book. Well, that bit of dialogue does occur, but the rest of the statement is a lie. The first words are an accurate indication of the way ignorant folk view the Gypsies; the rest of the novel shows Orb’s discovery of their real nature, quite a different thing, as shown above. The novel remains in print; anyone can read it and verify this. Then this article takes off on my mention that the Gypsies had no words for “duty” or “possession.” Okay, my source for that was Gypsies Their Life, Lore, and Legends, by Konrad Bercovici, originally published in 1928. Mr. Bercovici, born in Rumania, made a lifelong study of the Gypsies, and clearly was well familiar with them; his book is fascinating and highly sympathetic. Frankly, for a later critic to come along and cite Mr. Bercovici’s statements as myths strikes me as in bad taste. It is possible that at the time the author wrote, there were no such words in the Gypsy language of Calo, and that they were added later, borrowed from another culture, after an issue was made. Or that the dialect Mr. Berkovici spoke was different from the dialect Mr. Hancock checked. Berkovici was pre-holocaust, remember; after one and a half million Gypsies died, the surviving remnants may have reconstituted a slightly different language and culture. My alternate reality version reflects the earlier culture, and I think is thus more true to the original.

Regardless, I will not accept inaccurate statements about my novels any more readily than I did before. If a critic can’t at least get right what he criticizes, his opinion is hardly authoritative and his other statements come into question. I do not tolerate fools gladly. Stay tuned; this may not be over.

Let’s move on to more pleasant matters. I get frequent queries about the movie prospects of my novels; I’ve lost count of the people who want to write, or actually have written, screenplays for On a Pale Horse. I have to tell them no, those rights are not available. Disney has a movie option on that novel, with Jamie Foxx working on it. Warner Pictures has an option on a Spell for Chamleon, with the Troy folk in charge, and seems to be moving ahead. Another party is working on Split Infinity; they showed me their screenplay, which largely follows the novel. All these options, of course, also reserve the rest of their series. Now options are notorious; maybe only one in twenty actually becomes a movie. So what do I think my chances are? I expect all three to be exercised and to become movies in the next two years. Stay tuned, again.

I have been reviewing the first three volumes of the ChroMagic fantasy series, as I write the fourth one. A proofreader has gone over them, and I have checked them, and we have found three quarters of a slew of typos. These have been sent in to the publisher, MUNDANIA, and corrections are promised. My apology to those of you who bought the volumes and found them riddled with errors; it is my theory that typos grow on the page after the proofreading. But look at it this way: those early volumes may become classics, their errors their proof of authenticity. You may get good prices for them on eBay.

Our daughter and four year old granddaughter visited. That was nice, but they brought us the ugly cold they had been suffering. It was a brute. I use Vitamin C to stave off colds, and have not had a cold in a decade or more. Those who try to tell you Vitamin C doesn’t work may be tools of the drugstore nostrums industry, who know that if everyone used Vitamin C, their sales would plummet. But some colds are tougher than others. Normally three days of one gram per waking hour does it for me. When I found myself still fighting it on the fifth day, I checked my temperature. Sure enough, I was running a half degree fever. Vitamin C doesn’t stop a fever, for me. So I did get a runny nose, and some coughing, but in a few more days that passed. I’m not quite back to normal; I have lost about five pounds, not from the cold, but rather, I think, from the fact that I am now doing more than I was, as discussed at the opening of this column, while I had not adjusted my diet accordingly. So I’m trying to eat a bit more. I maintain my weight at 150+ pounds clothed, 150- pounds bare.

I’m not saying much about my wife here, by her preference, but will mention one thing: she smoked for 50 years, unable to break the addiction. Now, suddenly she’s off the cigarettes. What’s the secret? Nicotrol inhalers. This is a prescription device, that looks like a cigarette mouthpiece, that provides nicotine when sucked on. So the body’s craving for that drug is satisfied without the smoke, tar, and pollution. The things aren’t perfectly easy to assemble and use–one broke rather than fit properly together–but once you have the knack, they do do the job, and I recommend them to others who want to stop smoking and can’t. They’re not cheap–our Medicare co-payment was $122–but that’s cheaper than the cigarettes they replace, in more than one way. And I think it fitting that it was a troll (nico-TROL) that accomplished it. Trolls have a bad press, and I know folk hate to see the signs saying STOP–PAY TROLL, but they do have their uses.

One day my six working files loaded without proper titles. They all said Piers, which is the title of my personal diary file, my thoughts not intended for publication or review. No, it’s dull; I note the temperature ranges, whether it rained, my archery scores, running times, and how I encountered illegal hunters on my tree farm and told them to get out. Also that knockout young woman I saw in the post office one Saturday: what was a creature like that doing here in the backwoods instead of Hollywood? So I’m 70; I’m not dead. I notice. What’s it to you? Anyway, it wondered about the glitch, but went ahead and retitled my other files. Then next day none of them called up. I searched: they no longer existed on my system. Uh-oh. I needed those files, and my backups were not current. It’s in the Big Book of life: backups are never current when files are lost. The infernal machine waits its opportunity to score. But I needed those files. One was my Xanth notes file, listing the hundreds of reader ideas and puns I’ll be using in the next Xanth novel; my backup was two months old and turned out to be corrupted, unrecoverable. The next most recent backup was five months old. Was I going to have to research through the 400 a month emails to ferret out all those notions, surely missing some? Another was my Idea file, where I note the ideas that occur to me while I’m doing something else. I may save ideas for years before using them when the right occasion comes. My backup was a year old. Ouch! Another was my daily work record. I note in one-line-a-day form what I’m working on, what I read, who visits, and so on. I do print out recent lines at the foot of my daily Piers file notes, so the information was there, but it would be tedious to type it all in again for the past eight months since the backup. One file was my table of contents for Key to Liberty; that backup was almost current and I simply remade it. The last was the ongoing survey of electronic publishers, the backup about a month old; I could probably recover that. But overall the prospect was appalling. My writing had already plummeted; this would take yet more time away from it. What to do?

Daughter Cheryl to the rescue. She had friends who knew computers and Linux. She prevailed on one to come from Orlando. He sat down at my computer, and in five minutes he had all my lost files recovered. He had simply known where to look to find the automatic backups StarOffice makes. I hadn’t known about that, not being a computer nerd. So he saved me. He wouldn’t take money for his lost day–remember, he had to get here from across the state. He had a better notion: he’s organizing next year’s Oasis Con in Orlando. Would I attend? Time in exchange for time. My daughter plans to attend anyway, and could drive me there. Sigh; now you know what it takes to get me to a convention these days. Expect to see me at Oasis in 2006, assuming the state of my wife’s health permits. That will, coincidentally, be around our 50th anniversary.

When I was marking corrections on Chromagic volumes, my red pens wouldn’t work. Two were new, unused, but apparently had clogged. So I tried soaking one in hot water. No luck. So I put it in the water, in the microwave oven for one minute. Yes, that’s a no-no; I got red ink splattered over the interior of the oven and my hands, which looked bloodstained. But after that the pen worked. I guess it realized what the ogre could do to it if it balked again.

Last time I mentioned some of the fun TV ads, and some readers wrote in agreeing with me. Here are a couple more: the bee with allergic congestion, so he can’t approach the flower; getting treated. “I have returned, my flower, a changed bee.” Now there’s a sequel, where he has a girlfriend, not quite as clever. Also there’s the hunter in the mighty jungle, a tawny cat in a garden. Then three birds sing a chorus; I think they are shrikes. I love the way the music fits their appearance.

Andre Norton died. She was 93, one of the few genre authors who have had more novels published than I have. She used to live in Florida, and I knew her. When my first novel, Chthon, was published, she wrote a comment that the central character needed to be compatible for the reader. Mine really wasn’t. I took that advice to heart, as the rest of my career indicates. A favorite memory of the Nashville fantasy convention I attended in 1987 was the three quiet breakfasts I had with her, chatting about agents, publishers, and whatnot. We were two early persons traveling with two late persons, so it was just us at that hour. No stress, just relaxing, though we were both guests of honor. I told her that I regarded the two of us as being in a contest to see who could attend the fewest conventions, and she smiled. Now I will carry on the few-convention tradition alone.

Reader input is mixed. There’s a lot of it, and sometimes it is a burden because it subtracts from my writing time, especially now, but I try to keep up with it. Most is positive, but there are exceptions. One wrote in relation to getting his novel published; I recommended the electronic publishers and referred him to my list; that’s why I put so much time into it. He wrote back “Thanks for no help at all.” I checked, and it turned out that he had written last year, and already had a publisher, so my answer was irrelevant. But his letter had been phrased like a first-timer, and I hadn’t checked for possible prior contacts, which as I mentioned pile up at about 400 a month; it would have been a hassle turning on the computer just for that, and I have other concerns taking my time. So I was mouse trapped after trying to help; had he had the courtesy to tell me of the prior contact I could have addressed his situation more relevantly. Then he sent his novel, unasked, for my comment. No, I did not torpedo it; I like to think that I am more mature than some of the readers and writers I encounter, and wa-a-ay more than the typical critics. I read 20 pages and commented on those. It’s a worthy novel. But this shows that writers are not necessarily more considerate than non-writing ilk; they can demand much while denigrating what they receive, taking no note of what else a busy writer like me might be trying to keep up with. All this is courtesy; I make my living writing and selling fiction, not by advising writers, for which I don’t charge. They could hardly afford the value of my time if I did.

In contrast there is Wendy. She cross-stitched a board game, XANTHOPOLY, that she worked out, and sent to me. It’s a cross between Monopoly and Xanth, with squares saying things like Pick up a Pun and Love Spring, with four Xanth castles in lieu of the railroads. It’s a nice job. Of course it couldn’t be commercial, because of infringing Monopoly or Xanth rights, but it’s lovely as a sort of tapestry.

And Susie Lee of the Ferret & Dove Sanctuary, that I mentioned last column, http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/ferret_rescuer/. She sent an ecstatic note: after my mention, in five days five ferrets were adopted out, apparently as a result. I had no idea that would happen; I mentioned it for human/ferret interest. It seems ferrets make excellent pets for those who understand them, and of course Susie Lee loves them all. She also mentions some of her dove names: Neysa Unicorn Dove, Karia Centaur Dove, and Stanley S Dragon Dove. For some reason I like those names.

In the interest of not boring readers with repetitive stuff, I skipped comment on my archery practice. So I received queries on it. Sigh. It remains typical. I count one point for each time I hit the one foot square center of the target, and subtract one for each time I miss the target entirely, at 150 feet. My last session before this column was 3-2 right handed, and 0-7 left handed, same arrows and target. The arrows simply are not going where I’m aiming them; apparently I put a slight twist on the bow, through I struggle not to, and that’s enough to through half the arrows well off the target. So my overall score was -6. Okay, I can already hear the critics saying that’s how my writing scores, too.

A reader sent me a link to a challenging commentary. You know how mild and peace-loving ogres are, so of course I enter this fray with reluctance. But some issues need to be aired. It seems that one Ward Churchill, a professor of American Indian Studies at the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder wrote an essay that set some teeth on edge. A member of the Board of regents said that this raises a fundamental question: what are the boundaries of free expression, academic freedom, and tenure protection? “This question is especially salient in the face of the most offensive–the most appalling–political expression, such as many of Professor Ward Churchill’s comments in his essay regarding the events of September 11.” Well, now; I’m on record as being appalled by that attack, as my published essay in one of the post 9/11 books indicates. That’s in My America edited by Hugh Downes, published on the one year anniversary of the tragedy. Governor Bill Owens wrote “Mr. Churchill’s views are not simply anti-American. They are at odds with simple decency, and antagonistic to the beliefs and conduct of civilized people around the world.” Okay, you get the gist. They don’t like what he said. So what, exactly, did this villain say? A couple of brief quotes from a considerably longer essay may convey the essence: “The men who flew the missions against the WTC were not ‘cowards.’” Indeed not; they willingly sacrificed their lives for their cause, which is a viable definition of bravery. Ignorant folk throw the word “coward” out promiscuously at anyone they don’t like. And: “Looking back, it will seem to future generations inexplicable why Americans were unable on their own, and in time to save themselves, to accept a rule of nature so basic that it could be mouthed by an actor, Lawrence Fishburn, in a movie, The Cotton Club. ‘You’ve got to learn,’ the line went, ‘that when you push people around, some people push back.’ As they should. As they must. And as they undoubtedly will. There is justice in symmetry.” Okay, Mr. Churchill is in a position to know in rather thorough detail just how the white man pushed around the red man and took his land, violating treaty after treaty and at one point destroying 95% of his population, though this was largely through the illness brought from Europe. My research for Tatham Mound acquainted me with some of this. It is far from the only example. America is a global bully, known in Latin America as the Colossus of the North. Iraq is merely a recent example. So Mr. Churchill called a spade a spade, as is his right. You may agree or disagree with him, but it is un-American to try to silence him merely because you don’t like his words. Or to try the same with me, as some religious or conservative types do; I do paste them back. I would have to study his essay more carefully to know to what extent I agree with him, and my time is pressed. But others are welcome to look up the discussion at www.politicalgateway.com/news/read.html?id=2739. You might also go to Google to look up Stephen Ambrose’s book Other Losses, which documents the manner in which America supervised the extermination of three quarters of a million disarmed German soldiers after World War Two was over, in an attempt to permanently cripple Germany’s war making ability. The Nazis weren’t the only butchers. Most folk prefer to pretend the book is fiction, but my researcher and I studied it carefully when I was researching my World War Two novel Volk, and concluded that it is accurate. That was America’s darkest hour of this century, so dark most folk are in denial about it, as some bigots are about the Holocaust. The New York Times ran a killer review by an Eisenhower supporter, but then came the responses from some of the few survivors of the atrocity, men who had actually been there. I am a naturalized American; I chose this country and I support it, but that does not make me blind to its faults. That’s one reason I’m so dead set against the current administration, which is almost openly contemptuous of our Constitution. I don’t want to see the true American values destroyed by those who preach patriotism and godliness while practicing opposite policies.

Another reader forwarded my some fantastic art. I can’t give a site because this was in email, but the pictures were of an aqueduct that becomes a line of sailing ships, a winter mountain scene that is also a herd of horses, a vase/face scene with the faces formed from courting Mexican villagers, a huge jigsaw puzzle on the floor that becomes a live scene to enter, a waterfall that becomes standing hooded monks, and so on. A family member also forwarded pictures of things like the pregnant belly of a woman with a baby footprint showing from contact inside. Remarkable.

Cute and punny pictures of “Tater People” can be found at www.americanbridge.com/taters.htm.

Another 809 area code scam warning: don’t ever dial it. You may receive a message that a family member has been arrested, or you won a prize, or something, and to call the 809 number right away. You can be charged $2,425 per minute for a long recording. Not every 809 number is a scam; most are legitimate. Just be sure you know whom you are calling.

US NEWS & WORLD REPORT had a nice special report on Abraham Lincoln, who was a much more ordinary man than the legends pretend. Some sources claim he was gay, but most deny that. He was not honorable early on, but after slandering an official and getting challenged to a duel, he discovered the virtues of honesty. He had a hugely successful law practice and became wealthy. Once he legally defended a slave owner, but later changed his mind about slavery. His first love was politics.

Research now suggests that some folk have a “God gene” that predisposes them toward religious faith. I must have been in the men’s room when that one was passed out. Ah, well.

New Scientist has an article asking whether there are two types of gravity. This is one of those theories, along with dark matter, that interest me. Could it be that there is no dark matter, but that we simply don’t properly understand gravity? At first it diminishes by the cube, but farther out only by the square, and farther out yet, it starts repelling instead of attracting? That would explain a lot. Stay tuned; it just may be. Discover Magazine conjectured what would happen if all the people suddenly disappeared from Earth. The answer: Earth would recover, in time.

Column in the local newspaper, the Citrus Chronicle says the president’s private investment scheme for social security is a clear example of his dishonesty. Oh? Since when has political dishonesty been news? Another reader in Pennsylvania tells me that voting machines in his area came pre-loaded with 1,000 Bush votes. I don’t know whether that’s true; it seems too obvious. The Washington Spectator says that there was a report that there was a bulge inside the back of Bush’s jacket during his first TV debate with John Kerry: a radio receiver designed to allow White House aides to cue an inarticulate Bush in his replies to Kerry. Apparently the New York Times was set up to run the story, but it was spiked by the paper’s top editors.

I received an ad for Newsweek that said it has won ten national magazine awards, Time has won seven, and US News two. Since US News is by far the best of those magazines, this is a curious statistic. Of course I have been disenchanted with awards in the SF/fantasy genre, after seeing how they were corrupted, and I suspect this is typical elsewhere. Even the Nobel prizes can be affected by politics, it seems.

I live in Citrus County, Florida, which is pretty much of a backwoods area, though it is filling in rapidly. It is predominantly conservative, but on occasion it makes the news. Such as the case of nine year old Jessica Lunsford, a cute girl who went to bed one night and was missing in the morning. There was a spreading search of the area that turned up nothing. Finally they identified a registered sex offender who had evaded observation and stayed at a house in sight of Jessica’s. Sure enough, he did it, abducting, raping, and killing her, then getting the hell out of town; they ran him down in Georgia. Now there’s a petition circulating to mandate 50 years in prison, no parole, no time off, for all sex offenders, and allow the death penalty. I didn’t sign it, because it is overkill that would likely generate more mischief than it abates. Say John is 18, Joan is 17, they’re in love, engaged, and having consensual sex. This is what loving couples do; we all know that. He could wind up in prison for 50 years because she’s underage? I do think that identified sex offenders should be kept the hell out of circulation, but a judge’s discretion is apt to be a better guide than a blunderbuss bill. And they need to track them better, obviously. This particular case has a personal aspect: a man at the grocery store told me I looked like the culprit, who was bearded at the time of his arrest. I assured him I was not. But in the climate following such a case, a chance resemblance could be dangerous to my health.

And in Tampa Bay the Terri Shiavo case made national headlines. Terri suffered from bulimia, brought her weight down from 200 to 110 pounds, then had a heart stoppage that deprived her brain of oxygen for just a little too long. Her body survived, but in a persistent vegetative state. She was fed through a tube while her brain slowly dissolved into spinal fluid. She had not wanted this, but had not written out a living will. Her husband tried to let her die as she had wanted, but her parents refused to acknowledge brain death as real death. After a decade her case attracted some notice, as repeated motions and appeals wended their way through the glacial court system. The Florida legislature passed a bill to keep her “alive,” but the courts nixed it. Now, about fifteen years after the onset, the last appeals have given out. The US Congress, in a pretty naked example of pandering to the religious right, passed a bill to keep her body going, and again the courts stopped it. Seventy per cent of the general public wanted to let her go. And so at last the feeding tube was removed, and in thirteen days the body expired. No what can we make of this? First, if you don’t want to be stuck brainless forever living off the tube, make out a living will. Second, I note that one of the few legislators who voted sensibly was our local representative Ginny Brown-Waite, for whom I have had no use. She investigated, talked with people, and decided it was wrong to artificially prolong the agony. Where does that leave me politically, when many of the liberals I support go wrong and a conservative I don’t support goes right? Third, why is it that the politicians who are systematically vitiating welfare and the needs of the poor are so supportive of a woman who has no chance for real life? That’s rhetorical; they are shamelessly catering to their political base, logic be damned.

Interesting views: The HUMANIST magazine mentions that the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote: “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” That is evidently still true. The Random House dictionary defines fascism as a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism. Others say it is simply the mergence of political and corporate power: government by the special interests. Why does that seem somehow familiar? And a Time magazine poll finds a big leap in happiness when a person passes the $35,000 income level. So it seems money can buy happiness. A Dartmouth College study indicates that increasing sex from once a month to once a week brings as much happiness as a $50,000 raise. So now we know: the secret of happiness is money and sex.

People: News anchor Dan Rather retired. I never watched him, ever since the network screwed Roger Mudd who had seemed to be in line for the job and seemed nicer. Sure enough, it went from #1 to #3. I hadn’t realized that my business would make quite that much difference. And as I write this Pope John-Paul II is fading. And he died as I edited this. I remember when the College of Cardinals met and struggled and came up with the wrong man, Pope John-Paul I. So God took him out in a month and sent them back to do it again. This time they got it right. It reminds me of a familiar question: if such folk truly believe what they preach, that there are significant rewards in the afterlife, why do they cling so determinedly to life? I suspect they know, deep down, that it’s all make-believe, and this is the only life they have.

Just say no: statistically those who pledge virginity get more sexually transmitted diseases than those who don’t. Why? Because they don’t take precautions when inevitably they succumb to the lure of sex. The underlying rule is if you can’t be good, be careful. We need better sex education, not unkeepable pledges.

Science News says that about a third of children have pretend-pals. Now that’s interesting. I always had a great imagination, but I never had a pretend companion. Think what I was missing! Maybe my fantasy writing career is a vain effort to make up for that.

I have piles of clippings and notes, but my time is curtailed, this column is already a day late, and I must cut it off somewhere. Future columns may be shorter, depending on my situation. Some readers may chafe at my slower, briefer email responses; can’t be helped. I simply have only about a quarter the working time I had before. I hope things will stabilize and maybe improve, but that remains to be seen. So, readers and fans, it’s not that I love you less, but that I love writing more.

Now I think it can be told. As I start this column, Mayhem 28, 2005, it is my wife’s 68th birthday. There were times when I suffered nagging little doubts that she would make it. She suffers from a progressive illness that slowly robbed her of her strength, until she was unable to walk or even stand, and could not use her hands well enough to type. I had to heave her in and out of the wheelchair and take over all the household chores, as described last column. She saw doctor after doctor, but the relentless malady continued. Her mind was unaffected, apart from the extraordinary frustration of being unable to do even simple things like washing herself, but she had essentially lost her body. Well, now we have a diagnosis: Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy, CIDP for short. That tongue-twister describes a rare (figures differ, ranging from one in a hundred thousand to one in a million) malady that vaguely resembles Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and Muscular Dystrophy, and Multiple Sclerosis, but is less deadly because there is a treatment for it. It may be considered the chronic form of the Guillame-Barre syndrome. In layman’s terms, the myelin, or fatty insulation around her nerves, was getting stripped, so that the nerve signals were not getting through to the muscles of her arms and legs, and the muscles were wasting away from disuse. Think of an old fashioned radio or TV set, with all the tubes and wires, with bugs eating away the insulation around the wires so they short out. Too much of that, and the set stops functioning well. This is not her only health problem, and of course I have my own, but it’s the one that we have had to reckon with at this time.

Fortunately, as mentioned, there is a treatment. It is, it seems, fabulously expensive–thousands of dollars per dose–but we are covered by Medicare. She was given five four-hour infusions of Immunoglobulin G in the hospital, and in a week her physical volition started to return. At this writing, two weeks after the treatment, she is able to move her arms and legs, to stand briefly, to wheel herself around the house, and to do the spot exercises the physical therapist requires. We hope that soon she will be able to walk again, perhaps with the walker, and to drive again. We don’t know how far her recovery will progress. She tires readily, and must rest for much of the day, but there is a reasonable prospect of sufficient recovery to enable her to live an almost normal life. She may have to have regular booster treatments once a month, but if they give her back her life, good enough. Medicare also helped with some home care; a procession of nurses, therapists, and an aide came to assist, and that made a significant difference in the darkest days. Our daughter also lent invaluable help; as I believe I have quoted before, “A son is a son until he takes a wife, but a daughter’s a daughter all of her life.” We had the wit to have daughters.

I still handle the household chores, and my time remains squeezed, but with the recovery of my wife, some of my working time is coming back. Last column I described how my novel writing went from 78,000 words in December to 17,000 in March. Well, in April it was 24,000, and in May, 30,000. I may even be able to write my next Xanth novel on schedule, and make its deadline. But this business has impressed on me the cold equations governing my livelihood. For decades my correspondence has taken approximately one third of my working time, not because I love writing letters, but because I feel it is part of the profession of writing to be reasonably responsive to one’s readers. But when my working time plummets, it can get to where I’m spending as much or more time on correspondence as on paying writing. Something has to give. No reader wants to be cut off; in fact this month when I directly answered one, he thought that some functionary had answered in my stead and sent a hurt missive. I told him politely to take his suspicions elsewhere; he apologized, and all is well. But this suggests the kind of response I would get if others really did take over my mail, as I understand is the case with most “celebrities.” I put that in quotes because I don’t regard myself as such. So it’s a problem. I have no staff. Hitherto my wife has downloaded my email, I have penciled brief answers, which she has transcribed to email answers. With her illness I had to learn how to do all that myself, so my letters were if anything even more personal than before–and surely riddled with more typos and confusions. It may be that if the movies based on my novels or series are made and do well, I really will become a celebrity, and my fan mail will expand to the point where I will have to hire folk to handle it. If that happens, I’ll let you know in this column.

Meanwhile I’m still plugging away, and pondering ways to save that huge chunk of time so I won’t overrun my deadline on Xanth. I suppose if I have to hurt feelings in order to get my paying work done, then that’s the way it will just have to be. I think I will have to shorten these bimonthly columns, and slow down on the survey of electronic publishers too; these things simply gobble time I can no longer afford. I fit reading in while waiting for my wife at the hospital or doctor’s or therapists offices, and sometimes made writing notes there so that if I got two hours at home alone I could buzz out a thousand words of fictive text, which would be it for that day, before returning to the hospital to pick her up. It isn’t just my writing that has slowed; I have excellent magazines like NEW SCIENTIST and US NEWS & WORLD REPORT that I really like to read, as I have a lively interest in the world around me, but these and others are piling up unread. My accounts haven’t been caught up in weeks. We had to request a postponement on our income tax, because it is complicated–there are dozens of supplementary sheets with their obscure instructions, requiring spot research into disordered piles of statements and receipts, and it is simply beyond our ability at present. We haven’t gone out to see a movie in months (and the statistics show it: box-office receipts are down), and even the videos I bought and want to watch sit untouched. Entertainment? That’s out, when my writing time sometimes comes at the cost of my sleep, there not being time enough for both. It hasn’t been a fun period. Our daughter gave me the first season of Family Business, and I watched the first few episodes and love this sexy humor, but that too got squeezed out unfinished.

Of course if my wife recovers fully, I’ll recover more time; but I suspect that I will never have the writing time I had before. I’m not going to let her drive into town alone until I’m sure she’s well enough, and that may not be soon if ever. She won’t be taking back the household chores until she’s ready. So I expect to continue for now. Actually I’m learning where things are in town and the grocery store; I’ve done more driving and shopping these past few months than I did in decades before. I’ve learned how to use the microwave oven, the toaster oven, and the big stove oven; how to make salad, how to wash dishes, use the rickety laundry washer and dryer, and so on, and I’m more efficient at these things than I was. But sometimes the hectic schedule of doctors, hospital, therapy, and assorted necessary shopping left no time for lunch, and I simply used “glop”: the nutritive supplements you can buy in cans or bottles, like Ensure, Nutrament, Boost, or the house brands that match them in food value at a cheaper price. I have managed to stabilize my weight, using these. Sometimes there’s even a bit of food fun. I’ll put a chocolate kiss on my wife’s plate when I serve a meal, a token. We have desserts now, as we did not before, like pudding, ice cream bars, or brownies. So maybe they aren’t the healthiest things, but when you are forced to contemplate the chance of there being no tomorrow, as it were, some indulgence seems warranted. Once when I brought her myriad required daily pills I slipped in an M&M, similar size and shape. Yes, she noticed. You see, every pill is color and shape coded, so a person doesn’t eat an emetic instead an anti-acid. I’ve learned how to cut pills in half, too; there’s a neat little tool, though it gets tricky on oblong pills. Once I made a smiley face on the peanut buttered bread she has with her late night pills, using the half-pills for eyes. It’s her penalty for marrying a creative person; she should have known better. There were other bits of humor: when her sister called, I held the phone near enough to be sure she could hear and called “It’s your stupid sister!” Old family joke. When the IV nurse at the hospital mentioned how expensive the medication was, and my wife mentioned that soon we’d get the report on her diagnosis-confirming muscle biopsy–that was a surgical procedure, not a mere needle stick–I said “Wouldn’t it been too bad if it turned out this is the wrong treatment–especially if it’s working.” I tend to make people laugh wherever I go, though I am largely anonymous by preference; they assume I’m simply a retired fogy who was once a teacher. Well…

Some readers have expressed surprise or gratification that I have tackled my wife’s situation as I have. It’s not as if there is a choice. Did they think I was going to put her in a ravine and leave her bones to the jackals? This is marriage, not a passing convenience, and she would have been doing the same for me were our positions reversed. Bear in mind that she’s the one who went to work, decades ago, so I could stay home and try to achieve my foolish dream of becoming a writer. Thus I became known while she remained anonymous. I have a very long memory for that sort of thing. I have read of young wives who give up their higher education and go to work so as to put their ambitious husbands through medical or law school or whatever; then when those men get successful they dump the wives and seek more educated ones. I’m sure there is a name for that sort of attitude, but it would be too obscene for this column. Yes, my wife never finished her college education, because of me, though having a higher IQ. We married for life, and death will us part–not soon, we hope. I have heard from several other house-husbands who sent their sympathy; obviously they also take their marriages seriously. I don’t mean to give the impression that it’s all fun and generosity; that is far from the case, and it has not been a vacation.

Perhaps related: from an article by Sheila Reed in the newspaper Seniority supplement: Communication is the key to a great marriage. “Many couples said that there needed to be a balance of humor, commitment, respect, compromise, friendship and trust.”

One incidental change is my hair style. My wife and I used to cut each other’s hair one a month or so, as barber and beauty shops are too awkward to reach and too expensive. She can no longer cut my hair, so it’s growing longer. So now I’m wearing a ponytail. It started pretty grubby, because it’s hard to do it with one inch of hair and my clumsy hands behind my head, and holding it in place was a struggle. So I shopped and found a set of little girls’ clips that look like miniature clamshell dredging buckets in pretty colors, and they work well. As my hair grows longer, it should get easier and neater, and I’ll look less like a refugee from a horror house. Now I notice men with ponytails, and there are a number, some with a foot or more of length. I am also jealous of women with their longer hair that all sweeps faultlessly into a perfect plume, without the messy straggles I inevitably have. Women have it easy. (Ooops–now comes the barrage of outrage from women. I was talking about hair, not sexist society. This time. Honest.)

What else is new? I boo-booed last column when I mentioned Other Losses, the book that exposes the way the allies killed a million disarmed German soldiers after World War Two was over, listing the reviewer as the author. The author is James Bacque, and it’s an idiotic mistake because I actually talked to him on the phone once.

I tried skipping my ongoing archery reports, figuring that readers would be bored, but some turned out to be interested. So here’s another report: I made a record of a sort. One day my right side score, counting when I hit the center minus when I miss the whole bleeping target, was 2-1. My left side score was 0-12. So of 24 arrows, I missed with 13. My last session, after starting this column, was 2-2 right side, and 1-10 left side. Par for the course. But here is the significance: since I’m missing more than half of them anyway, I decided to experiment. I have assumed that my hand twists the bow as I loose, and that sends the arrows wrong. So this time the arrows were clustering right and low. So I tried deliberately twisting the bow to the left. And it made no difference; I continued to miss right. So then I tried deliberately twisting it right–and one missed way left, two right, same as before. It made no difference how I twisted the bow. All this time I have been trying to correct a fault that made no difference. So what’s with the left side bow? I don’t know, but it seems it isn’t me. Which verifies what I’ve been saying: the arrows simply aren’t going where I’m aiming them. This seems supernatural, but there it is.

I got a new debit card, and it’s a blessing. It gives me cash, it pays for my gasoline, it pays for prescriptions and groceries. I had been using my wife’s, but we concluded it was time for me to have my own. But there’s one curios thing: it has a PIN number so that I can prove I’m me. But I can get gasoline just by giving my zip code. So if someone stole my card, all he’d have to do is know the local zip code and he could use it, no PIN necessary. So where is the safeguard? Am I missing something?

A quarter century ago we bought 200 AT&T shares, just before the company fissioned into Ma Bell and the seven Baby Bells. This was deliberate on our part; we wanted easy diversification. With all the further splits and mergers the picture is hopelessly confused now, complicating our taxes, and we’d just as soon cash them in and be done with it. Meanwhile we’re getting statements galore, and endless proxy votes. There’s always a single slate of directors you can vote for or against, sort of like Russian style democracy. They will have shareholder proposals relating to curbing runaway executive pay–does someone really need several million dollars a year and a platinum parachute to sit in an overpriced easy chair and watch the company lose money? Shouldn’t political contributions be subject to verification by the shareholders, who may not all be rich Republicans? Shouldn’t there be independent auditing, to avoid Enron style accounting? The directors inevitably argue against all the stockholder proposals, but I always vote for them as a matter of civic duty. Does it make any difference? I doubt it, but it’s the principle of the thing.

I don’t pay a lot of attention to television, mainly because I’m trying to make supper, catch up on a worthy magazine, or do some necessary chore. There are shows I’d like, if I could afford the time to pay much attention. I try to watch Las Vegas, because of all those scantily clad girls, and CSI for the intriguing crime mysteries, but don’t really succeed. But one that does command most of my attention is House, about the quirky irascible doctor who is nevertheless a genius in his profession. I guess I identify in some devious way with quirky irascible geniuses, or maybe with cases of mysterious incapacitating illnesses. I told my wife, before her diagnosis, that she should go see Dr. House. I wonder if he’s an Asperger? So I got caught up in his awkward romance with the young lady doctor, who is for my taste as lovely as any woman on TV, especially when they let her try.

I commented last column on the report that some children have imaginary friends, while I, perhaps unfortunately, did not. I have a further thought on that: I realized that many adults also have imaginary friends. They call them God, Allah, JHVH, Zoroaster, or some other term, and it is considered socially correct to walk with, talk with, and beg favors of these supernatural friends by means of prayer. Indeed, they try to persuade others to have the same friends, and can get violent when others don’t respond affirmatively. There may have been more war justified by religion than by any other motive. I remember a long ago statement by Paul Harvey: “All over the world, people are killing people in the name of religion.” It remains true. I remain agnostic.

Each year the chimney swifts colonize our unused chimney, and young ones get down into the fireplace and we have to help them out. We meant to screen the chimney off last winter, but got distracted by other things–see this column’s opening paragraph–and didn’t. Now they are back again. But recently I read an article saying that modern chimneys aren’t the same, being unsuitable for swifts, so they are suffering loss of habitat and are fading as a species. Sigh; we’ll let our chimney be.

As I age, my brain gets brittle. I try to exercise it by doing the daily newspaper chess and word jumble puzzles, and by writing challenging fiction, but it still ossifies around the edges. I lose track of words I know. I think it is that they are in my memory storage bank, but the access lines are getting clogged or demyelinated so I can’t always reach them. For example, I wanted the term for a place where criminals or other socially undesirable folk are sent to be put safely out of the way. You know, agnostics, liberals, feminists, novelists, retirees and similar ilk. No, not prison, not Reno, not Australia, not Hell. What is the word? Well, I remembered that Robert Heinlein–he was a noted science fiction writer, for you children who came on the scene recently and think the Ten Commandments were originally sent from Bill Gates by email–had a story that used that word as its title. So I went to my library and located the collection of his stories The Past Through Tomorrow, published the same year as my first novel, 1967, and looked through the table of contents, and there it was: “Coventry.” That’s what it took to run down that word. I should reread that story; it’s a good one. In fact I should probably reread the whole book. Now if I only had the time.

I have two books to comment on, that both relate to doing heavy writing in the space of a month. The first is First Draft in 30 Days by Karen S Wiesner, who does the annual Definitive Guide to Electronic Publishing that I have quarreled with because she was loath to include the self publishers that actually do about 90% of the books. She knows her stuff, though. Let’s say you are an aspiring writer, and you’re not concerned with being a best seller or famous, you just want to write your novel for the sheer satisfaction of it. You have no idea how to proceed, because you have tried several times but always stalled out, uncertain how to put it all together and not wanting to settle for less than your best. Well, this is the book for you. It is subtitled “A novel writer’s system for building a complete and cohesive manuscript,” and that’s what it is. I liken it to an income tax form: maybe a pain to fill out all those lines and boxes, but when you do, you have the job done: in this case, the job of organizing your novel. It is paced for one month, and at the end you will have so thorough a summary that you can write the thing at your own pace and be sure there will never be Writer’s Block. It really is an instruction manual for creative writing, oxymoronic as that may seem.

The other book is No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty, and it is complementary in nature. (Note the spelling: complEment, not complIment: it meshes nicely with the other book.) This is by the guy who started the fad of writing a 50,000 word novel in a single month, quality no object, just for the experience. It is all about motivation and making the time. Its schedule is as rigorous as Karen’s book, but the purpose differs significantly. Karen wants you to work out a good novel, maybe an award winner. Chris wants you just to bat it out; you’re a winner when you hit that 50,000th word, no matter what it is. His subtitle is “A low-stress, high-velocity guide to writing a novel in 30 days,” and that’s what it is. I have heard from my readers who have tried it; I think mine weren’t successful, in that they did not bat of the required wordage in the required time, but they still found it a formidable experience. So is there a point to writing without plot, characterization, theme, or anything? Yes, actually, because these things will come with your later revision, using the framework to build a better work. In that sense it is similar to Karen’s book: that first month is a way to set up for more careful work to come. You can do it from your detailed summary or from your wild and woolly complete text; in either case you have something substantial to work from. That may make a big difference.

So is either process the way I work? No. But you see, I have been writing novels for 40 years and have done over 130 of them; I have had a certain amount of experience and already know the ropes. I probably do the things described in both books, just not formally. They happen automatically as I write, the myriad elements constantly sifting into place. When you have been noveling (marvelous term from No Plot?) for several decades, then maybe you too will be able to wing it as I do. But if you are a beginner, this is good stuff to consider. Both books have nice comment and advice along the way. “There’s no wrong way to write a book–but there are ineffective ways of writing.” KW. “It’s fine to just start. And making it up as you go along does not require you to be a particularly gifted novelist.” CB “Sadly, too many authors believe that outlines are a last resort. They see writing as a magical series of epiphanies that somehow takes them from the first page of a novel to the last with little or no premeditation.” KW “Treating a novel like a hands-on writing classroom–where advancement relies as much on dramatic failures as it does on heroic successes–has been an amazingly liberating experience for me.” CB “Most of us have one thing in common: We come up with ideas in a chaotic, nonlinear way.” KS “Ray Bradbury said it best: ‘Your intuition knows what it wants to write, so get out of the way.’” CB I could continue with worthwhile quotes, but I trust this makes the point: if you want to write a novel, but somehow can’t, these books, singly or together, will get you there. Karen has advice for making your characters come to life–give them internal and external conflicts–while Chris has advice on motivation: “A little fear goes a long, long way.” That is, your fear of ridicule if you quit. Karen is practical on an intellectual plane; Chris is practical on a gut-level plane. Heaven and Hell, as it were. Both have their places in writing. Both books recommend brainstorming, which is thought or discussion in an effort to come up with ideas and solutions. Of the two, Karen is better for the serious writer, while Chris is more fun to read. Healthy nourishing salad vs. junk food.

When I dug into my files of old printed HiPiers issues to get the Gyspsy discussion last column, I made a serendipitous discovery of another piece I did that I’d like to share with you. Here it is, dating from just ten years ago:

A Little Something

Two years ago I was approached by an advertising agency: they had this great idea for a TV ad campaign for jeans, and was I interested? I considered their notion, and liked it, so I agreed, and referred the matter to my literary agent for handling. He was in the midst of negotiations when the jeans folk suddenly ceased communicating. No such ad campaign was run, as far as I know. My impression of ad agencies is bemused; I picture rare wild birds who take flight without notice. So I was left with the presentation I had worked up as a six part series, adapted from my Mode framework; it had nowhere to go. So now I present it to you, as an excerpt from what might have been. Try to visualize this as a series of one minute cliffhanger adventure TV sequences, with a handsome actor wearing clean fitted jeans, and a lovely actress in well-filled jeans that incidentally tend to catch the camera’s close eye. I think it would have sold a lot of jeans, had it come to be.

Jordache Mode

Chapter 1:
         Yon paused as he encountered the attractive young woman in jeans. The street was crowded, and they had almost collided on the sidewalk. In fact her chin brushed his shoulder as she twisted to avoid him. “Sorry,” she said, with an embarrassed little smile.
          “My pleasure,” he replied gallantly. He wondered whether he should say more, or just get out of her way.
         But before he could decide, rods of light appeared before him. He hesitated, then touched one with a finger, in case it was something dangerous, like a laser beam. He discovered to his surprise that it was solid, if translucent; it might look like light, but it was some kind of shining plastic bar.
          “It’s a cage!” the woman cried, frightened.
         Then the sidewalk vibrated, and the world beyond the bars flickered and disappeared. A new scene formed around them: a huge cave. Yon looked wildly around, and then up. Their cage was suspended from a stalactite, hanging above what looked like boiling lava.
          “We’ve got to get out of here,” Yon said, too surprised to be frightened. “Uh, I’m Yon, as in John only with a Y.”
          “I’m Alethea,” she replied. “Letha for short. How can we get out? These bars seem strong.”
         He took hold of one and wrenched it hard. It gave a little. “Maybe if we pull on it together.”
         Letha put both her small hands on the bar. Yon had to reach around her to get his own hands on it near hers. “I’m not getting fresh,” he said.
         She glanced down at his jeans. “I have to trust a man wearing my brand of jeans.”
         There was a noise like a deep gong being struck behind them. Startled they both looked back, their faces almost touching. A platform appeared, and on it was a huge horrible vaguely manlike shape with enormous insect eyes.
         Terrified, Yon and Letha hurled themselves at the shining wall of their cage. The bars splintered, and they lurched together out into the air. Letha screamed piercingly and clutched him as they fell. On any other occasion, Yon would have loved the experience.

Chapter 2:
         They landed in water. It was a rushing river, carrying them rapidly downstream. Yon, an experienced swimmer, righted himself in a moment, but then saw that Letha was in trouble. She was being carried through the rapids down toward what looked and sounded like the brink of a waterfall.
          “I can’t swim!” she gasped.
         Yon spied a tree leaning over the water. He threw up a hand and caught it. With his other hand he caught at Letha’s clothing. Then he drew himself to the base of the tree, out of the worst of the current. In a moment he could stand. Letha was still floundering, but he had a firm hold on a belt-loop of her jeans and was able to haul her to safety. He couldn’t help noticing that she filled those wet jeans very nicely.
         Then she got her own footing and stood beside him. “You saved me, Yon!” she exclaimed, hugging him.
          “Well, I had to, Letha,” he said, trying to make light of it. “You’re wearing my brand of jeans.”
         She smiled as she disengaged. Her hair was plastered against her head and shoulders and her clothing was soaking, but she looked quite good to him. “But how did we get out here in the wilderness? We were in a volcanic cave.”
          “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But maybe we can find our way back to civilization. Come on; I’ll help you up the bank.” He put his arm around her slender waist, no longer feeling awkward about it. They started up the steep bank of the river.
         There was the sound of a gong behind them. They both looked back, alarmed. There was the bug-eyed monster on its floating platform, coming after them. Letha screamed.
          “Run!” Yon cried, half yanking her along with him as he scrambled up the bank. But the monster was close behind.
         Suddenly the river bank disappeared. The two of them fell forward, stumbling.
         They were on a broad plain–and before them was a huge-fanged dinosaur.

Chapter 3:
          “Don’t scream, Letha,” Yon whispered urgently. “It may attack if it knows we’re afraid.”
         Indeed, the reptile seemed to be considering an attack anyway. It made a hissing growl and licked its snout, eying them. But it didn’t advance, so they had a little bit of leeway.
          “I’m dry!” Letha exclaimed, surprised. “So are you, Yon.”
         Yon glanced at her. She was right; her clothing was dry from blouse to jeans, and her hair was no longer matted. She looked just about perfect. He was no longer dripping, either. “This must be a–a new mode of existence,” he said. “Every ten feet or so we enter a new reality, and we don’t take anything from the old one.”
         She caught on quickly. “So if we can move ten feet, maybe that dinosaur will be gone!”
          “If I’m right. But then we’ll be in some other world, maybe worse than this one.”
          “I don’t think so. That thing is about to charge.”
         She was right. The dinosaur was settling into a crouch, as if about to spring at them. It looked big and strong enough to catch them if they tried to run–and Yon did not want to step back, because they might find themselves in the raging river again. “Maybe if we surprise it by diving under it as it pounces,” he said. “If we can get ten feet–”
          “Good idea,” she agreed. “But Yon, in case we don’t make it–” She drew her face up to his for a kiss.
         He obliged. It was amazingly sweet. Perhaps the tension of the occasion heightened the emotion.
         Then the dinosaur charged. The two of them dived directly toward it, and under its huge belly. They hit the ground, and scrambled–
         And they were on a tiny ledge, high up the sheer face of an impossibly high mountain, about to fall.

Chapter 4:
         Letha stifled her scream. Both of them grabbed for the bits of rocky outcropping within reach. Letha’s came away in her hand, and she started to fall outward from the mountain.
         But Yon’s hand had caught solidly. He flung his free arm around Letha and hauled her in. “Gotcha,” he gasped. “And I won’t let you go. Trust me, Letha.”
          “I do, Yon,” she said. She looked down, and closed her eyes, wincing. “Get me safely off this mountain and I’ll show you how much.”
         Yon would have been quite interested in the implication, if he weren’t so concerned for their situation. “I think we have to inch our way along for ten feet,” he said. “That should put us in a new reality mode–maybe a better one.”
          “I’m afraid of heights,” she said. “I don’t dare open my eyes.”
          “But if we don’t move–” he began.
          “Maybe ten feet down is as good as ten feet across,” she said. “Suppose we jump?”
          “But if you’re afraid of heights–”
          “I can do it with my eyes closed.”
          “Maybe I can move us along this ledge,” he said. “Keep your eyes closed; I’ll guide you. Now stretch your hand out. There’s a good ridge within reach.”
         She reached out. Then Yon saw the bug-eyed monster. It appeared on its platform, floating in the air at their level. It had some sort of device in its tentacle. It swung the nozzle around to point at them.
          “Jump!” Yon cried, suiting action to word.
         The two of them pushed away from the cliff face and plunged toward the distant ground.
         And landed on the cross-ties of a railroad track. But this was scant improvement, because there was a train bearing down on them.
         Now Letha felt free to scream.

Chapter 5:
         Yon searched desperately for a way off the tracks, but they were in a deep railroad cut with walls of granite rising steeply on either side. He knew that there would be no more clearance than necessary, because the railroad company would not have cared to spend the money blasting out extra rock. They were stuck directly in the path of the onrushing locomotive. He saw its head-lamp approaching at frightening velocity.
          “Letha, we must run ten feet,” Yon said. “To get into another mode.”
          “Right, Yon!” Letha agreed. They held hands and ran along the track, away from the train. But nothing changed. They must have gone in the wrong direction.
          “I think this is the end, Letha,” he said.
          “Maybe not,” she said. “I heard that there’s always some clearance under a train. Maybe if we lie down flat between the rails, it will pass over us.”
          “I never thought of that!” he said. “It’s our only chance.”
         They quickly got down between the rails, lying side by side. The ground shuddered with the mass of the approaching machine.
          “Want to know something weird?” Yon cried over the roar.
          “What could be weirder than this?” Letha cried back.
          “I think I love you.”
         She smiled wanly. “It must be my jeans.”
         Then the train was roaring over them, blotting out all other light and sound.
         When it passed, they picked themselves up. “About what you said–” Letha began.
          “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. We hardly know each other. Forget I said it.”
          “But is it true?”
         Yon was suddenly abashed. He tried to work up the courage to answer. Letha waited expectantly.
         There was the sound of a gong. The bug eyed monster appeared on its platform. Its tentacles twiddled with knobs on its sinister device.
          “Run the other way!” Yon cried.
          “Got it.”
         They ran between the rails in the direction opposite to that of the train. The bug eyed monster pursued them, aiming its device.
         Then they were in a chamber. There were bags marked with dollar signs all around.
          “We’re in a bank vault!” Letha cried, astonished.
         Behind them the massive vault door closed, sealing them in.

Chapter 6:
         Yon tried the vault door. It would not budge. There was no way to open it from inside. “Letha, we’re locked in!”
          “And we don’t have ten feet to move to another room,” Letha said. “Yon, I fear we’re done for this time.”
          “Maybe a bank official will let us out.”
          “Let’s hope so. Yon, about what you said–”
          “We’re probably going to die,” he said. “So I might as well admit it. Yes, it’s true; I think I love you, Letha.”
         She smiled. “And I think I love you, Yon. It has been a brief but intense association.”
         He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Even if we die, maybe it’s worth it.”
         There was a gong. The bug eyed monster floated in on its platform.
         Yon grabbed for a bag. “They say you can’t throw money at problems,” he said. “But I’ll try.” He heaved the bag at the monster, but missed.
         The creature twiddled with its device. Suddenly there was a new voice. “Wait, man creatures!” the device said. “I am here to help you!”
          “You and my tax auditor,” Letha snorted.
         Yon picked up another bag. “How are you going to help us?” he demanded.
          “We are saving two of the finest specimens of your species, male and female. Now you must come with me to the zoo, where you will be excellently cared for.”
          “How do you know we’re the finest?” Letha demanded.
          “By your youth, health, and quality apparel. We observe that only your most intelligent members wear that brand.” A light speared out and illuminated their jeans.
          “Okay,” Yon said. “I’ll give you that. We have good taste in apparel. But what are you saving us from?”
          “The imminent destruction of your planet by a meteor strike.”
         Yon looked at Letha, appalled. Could this be true? He had the sick suspicion that it was. Yet the notion of spending the rest of his life in a comfortable zoo with her had its insidious appeal.

*

Back to the dull present column. And I can’t help wondering whether Jordashe’s fortune might have been better, had they stayed around long enough to make and run those commercials. Ah, well.

As regular column readers know, I am politically liberal, and have a profound distrust of the machinations of conservatives. I remain suspicious of the last two presidential elections. Now a reader sent me a link to Black Box Voting at www.blackboxvoting.org/ , a nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to consumer protection for elections. It tells how a hack demonstrated how he could alter the election results by 100,000 votes, leaving no trace. “It calls into question the results of as many as 40 million votes in 30 states.” Exactly. If a hacker could do it without a trace, what about the company that makes the voting machines, openly dedicated to electing Republicans? A reader or two has assured me that there really wasn’t anything odd about the exit polls that didn’t match the election results; the Kerry folk voted early, so were better represented, is all. THE WASHINGTOR SPECTATOR had an article that relates. It seems some exit polls were altered after the election outcome was known, making them retroactively confirm to the published vote tallies. The original polls told a different story. The exit polls did differ from the official tallies, and this should have been random, except that in every case the variance of the tallied votes went toward Bush. This occurred in every one of the close states. Statistically that’s an indication of a problem or outright fraud. There is an easy explanation: the voting machines were loaded dice favoring Bush. Thus he retained the office despite the thwarted will of the voters. It is a continuing disaster; the voters can no longer simply vote out a bad incumbent.

Recently I have had songs constantly going through my head. Now this could be a sign of mental breakdown–critics will emphatically agree–or merely songs I heard on the radio that got lodged for a while. But I had the radios off, because I needed always to be able to hear my wife if she called, in case she wasn’t near an intercom. Also, some of those songs are not on the radio. They come from all over, many from incidental contacts, like the parodies of ads or sacred songs: “Pepsi Cola, stinky drink, pour it down the kitchen sink; smells like vinegar, tastes like ink.” “Far above Cayuga’s waters there’s an awful smell; part of it’s Cayuga’s waters, most of it’s Cornell.” No disparagement intended; these are just what I first heard as a child. “My favorite pastime after dark, is goosing statues in the park; if Sherman’s horse can take it why can’t you?” I’ve always loved songs, of any nature, and memorized many in my youth, and those remain pretty much with me today. So here are some of the lines I was hearing, which I think have a certain interest of their own apart from the music. I generally know the titles and melodies, so they aren’t mysteries in that sense, but maybe some will evoke memories in readers of my generation. “Dip his finger in the water, come and cool my TONGUE ’cause I’m tormented in the flame.” “Cleanse us with the blood and water streaming from thy pierced side.” “All day we faced the barren waste without the taste of water. Cool, clear water.” “Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.” “Angelico, Angelico, mama’s going to take you back; Angelico, Angelico, teach you all the things you lack.” “Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing; Onward the sailors cry; Carry the lad who’s born to be king, Over the sea to Skye.” “I feel pretty, oh so pretty…I pity any girl who isn’t me tonight.” “Hey, look me over.” “For the last time, pretend you are mine; my darling, kiss me goodbye.” “But the vaults are filled with silver, that the miner sweated for.” “Tell ol’ Pharaoh, to let my people go.” “And the earth smells of summer.” “And I will hear the sod you tread above me.” “Dem bones, dem bones, dry bones; now hear the word of the Lord.” “I went to the rock for to hide my face, And the rock cried out ‘No hiding place! No hiding place down here.’” “Young girl inside of me just had to learn, that the woman inside of me must have its turn.” “Take me out to the ball game.” “The night of the marriage, she lay on the bed; her breasts they were heaving, her legs they were spread.” “Down by the station early in the morning; see the little puffer-bellies all in a row.” “For to maintain my two brothers and me.” “Cheer up, weary traveler; after darkness comes the day.” “Down beside some water flow, by the banks of the O-hi-O.” Make of it all what you will, the sonic stalactites of my draining skull.

Some time back I received an email query from the TV quiz show Jeopardy about the pronunciation of Xanth. Then early in May it was a question there; my wife heard it: “Xanth is a series created by this author. If you say his name you’ll hear it in his name.” And–O shame!–no one was able to answer it. Pier-Xanth-ony. Thus was my fifteen seconds of fame aborted. And no, that juxtaposition wasn’t intentional; I thought of it only years later, when Xanth got famous.

We have two cars: a 1995 Saturn station wagon, and a 1995 Ford Aspire. Both have given good service, but we aren’t big drivers. In fact, until my wife’s illness, I hardly drove at all. In the course of a decade we have put 20,000 miles on the Saturn, and 30,000 on the Ford. Now we are considering replacing them. We’re interested in one that can better handle a wheelchair–it’s a chore to jam it into the little Aspire, and my wife can’t even get out of the low-slung Saturn. We also like good fuel economy. In the old days on good days I got 40 miles to the gallon on my Volkswagen Bug. Then they stopped making them, and of course the company’s fortune plummeted. You have one of the most successful models ever produced, so you quit making it? Idiocy abounds. So how do we get good size AND good mileage? We’re pondering the Ford Escape SUV with the hybrid engine. But it costs about $10,000 more than a conventional engine, and even if it reduced our fuel cost to zero, we would not earn that back in a decade. Sigh. Apart from that, I really like the Saturn, one of the safest cars made, and am not eager to give it up.

I am a rainfall freak. We have a rain gauge, and I keep a record. Each month this year there has been more rain. But it looked as if May would not beat April’s 6.5 inches, because a day before the end the total was only 4.6 inches. Then on the last day, mostly in the last two hours, we got a thunderstorm: Fracto dumped 3.6 inches on us, bringing the month to 8.2 inches total. Phew!

I have piles of clippings and such I wanted to comment on, in my irascible plain-speaking way. But I am out of time. I have novels to write. So I simply have to cut it off here, and probably future columns will be shorter. I also may have to stop routinely checking Publishing Survey sites, and settle for spot updates as things are called to my attention. I regret this, but that’s the way it is.

Well, a compromise: I checked the pile and pulled out three items. There is the case of the Naked Nanny in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was constantly grabbing at her breasts and buttocks. She was 23 and the employment wasn’t ideal, but she had to work where she could. He watched a sex scene on a video, then demanded that she remove her clothing. She was tired, having been working 100 hour weeks, and finally it was easier simply to yield. She took off her clothing and lay down on the couch, letting him handle her all over, poking his finger into her vagina. Then his mother appeared. The nanny was arrested and is now a registered sex offender. The boy agrees with his mother that he did nothing wrong. He was four years old. Okay, she was of age and he was underage, but I think they got it backwards, and that boy, so readily forgiven the most abusive behavior, is apt to grow up into full criminality.

Elsewhere in the nation, Mary Kaye Letourneau was close to one of her grade school students. After several years, when he was 12 and she 34, they had sex, and in due course she had his baby. She was sent to prison. She got out, and had another baby by him, and was imprisoned again. Now the two have married, she 43, he 22. She can no longer be punished for loving him. What is the age limit on true love? Were they wrong, or was society wrong?

And from a letter in the ST PETERSBURG TIMES by James McGill: “Inconvenient as it might be to acknowledge, Jesus was a liberal by almost any definition of the word.” Yes, and he was crucified for it. “As for atheists, it is possible to believe that Christ got the message right without having to believe there once existed a God on earth, walking on water and raising the dead.” Amen.

Call it an Act of God: in the morning a truck hauling a bulldozer on a trailer rolled up before our house. It turned out they had taken a wrong turn and got onto our long drive instead of to the house under construction. We have a loop so cars don’t have to maneuver to turn around, and I tried to tell them that, but instead they elected to turn by backing across our yard, and by the time it was done they had crushed the little fringed cypress tree that was the first ornamental shrub my wife planted here in 1988. Only half of it is left, cracked and battered; maybe it will survive. What did God have against that innocent tree?

I stay in touch with my readers. This has cons and pros. One con is the time it takes, for though one letter may be brief, there are hundreds of them, and some folk want to argue endlessly about homosexuality, Mormonism, Israel’s settlement of the West Bank, or other topics that may be vital to them but are peripheral to my interests. I’m a writer, not a social, religious, or political sage, and my opinions in such areas are man-on-the-street grade, as this column plainly demonstrates. For the limited record: I regard homosexuality as part of the broad sexual continuum, not right or wrong in itself, and I prefer let those of that persuasion follow their own natures, as they let me follow my adamantly heterosexual nature; the Mormons started as a borrowing from a pirated fantasy/historical novel but in time became a legitimate religion that prefers to hide its origin, and they aren’t trying to convert me any more than I’m trying to turn them agnostic; the West Bank was once independent but in its anarchy was a hotbed of terrorism, like Lebanon; it’s not likely to be peaceful any time soon because the fanatic Muslims who bear about the same relation to the Koran as the Ku Klux Klan bears to the Bible will not allow peace as long as Israel exists. Since when did the word Moslem become Muslim? Please go argue with someone who knows something about them, and leave me to my fantasy.

One pro (this is about my contacts with my readers; did you forget?) is that I can receive valuable feedback on subjects of interest. Almost everything in these columns gets some comment somewhere by someone, ranging from the woman who confided that filling her car with gasoline would never be the same after my in-your-face (or wherever) sexual analogy, to serious advice about my health. For example, I am now trying a high-zinc and bee pollen treatment for my inflamed prostate; soon I should know whether it worked. But my reason for leading into this discussion is not to drop cherry bombs into private privies (well, not entirely…) but to solicit some more advice. You see, I am cursed with imperfect teeth. I take good care of them, but they rot anyway, and I have put more money into my mouth for less success than anyone else I know. I’ve had a dozen or more root canals, but am still losing teeth. What was supposed to be a two week tooth implant will be a year, and I’m using a “flipper” or fake tooth I have to take out for meals and overnight. Another onlay fell out and that will have to be redone. Another area is starting to hurt when I chew; that’s surely another tooth rotting at the root. Plus about $5000 a year routine upkeep. There was a time when my whole yearly income was not that much. Well, I’ve about had it. My dentist evidently does not believe the amount of effort I put in daily taking care of my teeth–four brushings a day that are not token, a daily rinse with hydrogen peroxide, no food eaten between meals, and so on. I think he thinks I’m only telling him that and not practicing it, because to him there may be no such thing as teeth that rot despite good dental hygiene. Well, there are, and I’ve got them. I’m tired of the continuing expense, pain, and inconvenience, and want a better solution. I’m thinking of dentures. I’d like to know from folk who went that route whether it was worth it. I’m wondering whether using my four (so far) implants to anchor dentures makes sense. I’d like to get away from constant dental distress. Is this the answer? I will welcome informed feedback. Bear in mind that I don’t need 50 year teeth; 20 year teeth should suffice, at my age.

My wife’s health continues to improve, which translates into a more positive outlook for us–we celebrated out 49th anniversary in June and now look forward to our 50th next year–and more working time for me. She’s by no means out of the woods, and there’s another shoe to drop, but things are definitely looking up. I completed the quarter million word Key to Liberty, wherein Havoc’s four children, now teens, go to Earth and wreak some havoc there, to prevent it from taking over their home planet of Charm as a reclaimed colony. I mean, Earthers don’t even believe in magic. The siblings became Glamors younger than others did, and are accordingly more magically powerful. Things get complicated when they seed Earth’s volcanoes with Chroma magic, converting them to centers of colored magic. But this destabilizes Earth and the malign Male Spirit returns to take over from the benign Female Spirit, which was not what they intended. Havoc comes to Earth and takes the current human animation of the Female Spirit as his mistress. She’s some creature. Did I mention that this is one sexy novel? Well, consider that aspect a surprise. Now all I have to do is complete Xanth #31 Air Apparent by year’s end and I’m home free, for now. It may happen.

We’re seeing movies again, and of course that broke the industry’s four month losing streak. My wife attends in the wheelchair, but that works okay. We saw Revenge of the Sith, and found it good but not as good as we had hoped; it seemed more interested in tying up loose threads than in real adventure. It occurs to me that the Star Wars series resembles the Wizard of Oz movie, with a young human protagonist, a man in a lion suit, a man in a robot suit, one without a human brain, an evil nemesis, a benign adviser, and so on. It’s a good formula. We saw Mr. & Mrs. Smith and enjoyed it a bit more, though of course it’s not credible: how could two professional assassins be married to each other for six years and neither catch on to the other’s business? Surely they would feel each other’s hardware when they embraced. And we saw Fantastic Four, wild nonsense that was nevertheless fun. Still, I hope that when they starting making my movies–all three options are still going strong–they have less violence and more credibility. Of course there are ads for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that answer that description, but I’m not quite comfortable with what resembles Michael Jackson leading children into Wonderland. Maybe they should have cast his sister, the one with the breast, instead; she could wear a chocolate pastie.

We bought new cars in June and July, trading in our two ten year old vehicles. I hated to see the old ones go; both served reliably and honorably, and what reward did they get? To be dumped back on the market. It seems unfair. I especially liked our 1995 Saturn, but my wife didn’t, because she could no longer get out of it unassisted. Sigh; I hope its new owner, whoever that may be, treats it well. It had only 20,000 miles on it. Am I the only one who feels sad cleaning out a car for the last time? Yes, my empathy extends to machines. The new ones are Chrysler Town & Country van, which makes bringing the wheelchair along easy but gets only 19 miles to the gallon, and a Toyota Prius, a delightful hybrid car. They had a two year waiting list locally, but that dropped to maybe 4 months–then when we ordered there was a fluke and we got it in six days. I love the arrows that point out which way the power is going: from engine to wheels and battery when cruising, from battery to wheels when in traffic, from wheels to battery when you brake. Theoretically it gets 50 miles to the gallon, overall, but I’ll be satisfied with 45. There is only one letter different between Prius and Piers; magically that surely means something. The other hybrids were too expensive, or couldn’t take the wheelchair, or had no local dealer. So we should be set for the next decade. Still, I was intrigued by an ad for a TV feature on a car that runs on water; unfortunately that came on late and I fell asleep before that item appeared. Did anyone else stay awake for it? I really don’t believe a car can run on water, because it takes more energy to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen than you get from it when the two recombine. So it has to be some sort of cheat, unfortunately.

More songs are running through my head. “Goodnight Irene, Goodnight Irene, I gets you in my dreams.” That was the version originally sung by Leadbelly later bowderlized to “I’ll see you in my dreams.” He was a convicted murderer who I understand once performed his concerts in chains. Then there’s “Morning has Broken,” which always intrigued me; finally I got smart and Googled it and got the words. It’s a semi-religious song, each new day honoring God’s first day. Nice. Sure I’m agnostic; that doesn’t mean I condemn religious expression. Some religious sentiments are very nice. But I have a quibble with some words: it ends “God’s recreation of the new day.” I think it should be God’s re-creation, as this is not entertainment but a symbolic reanimation of the dawn of existence. And it should be the first day, rather than the new day: same reason. You create a new day, but re-create the first day. Maybe God isn’t a grammarian. Regardless, it remains an evocative song Cat Stevens sings. Then there’s one I heard only once, on M A S H back when it first ran; we loved those episodes of field medicine in the Korean War because of the way they evoked humor from grimness. There was one episode that was sort of nothing; they got fed up and threw much of their furniture into a central bonfire. Then they sang Dona Mobis Pacem Pacem, which I understand translates into “Give us peace, peace.” The camera took turns focusing on diverse faces, the tears streaming as they sang, so desperately longing for peace. They well knew the horrors of war and wanted it to end. What a contrast to the chicken hawks who sponsored the current war; they never experienced it themselves, indeed, made sure to avoid serving in any capacity where they might be at risk, then were eager to make war for other folk to fight. Disaster, of course; experienced soldiers would never have done it. War is not a picnic; it’s an ugly business. No, I never fought; the closest I came was when I was in the US Army in 1958 and I went to the chaplain to say that I did not believe I could kill a man, friend or enemy, and he shook his head and said “I’m sorry your patriotism isn’t greater than that.” I said no more; the man had damned himself, though he surely did not know it. Jesus Christ never called war patriotic, and those who so glibly throw Jesus’ name around in such a connection are no true disciples of his. I suspect that I, as an honest agnostic, have greater respect for Jesus than does such ilk. I never joined a religion, not because I lacked conviction, but because I saw too much sheer hypocrisy in religions. To my mind, that song, as sung on that program, represents a far truer indication of Jesus’ attitude. One other song: I think it was titled “The Thing,” and it was about a man who found a BOOM BOOM-BOOM, took it home, and no one welcomed him. Even when he died, St. Peter told him “Get out of here with that BOOM BOOM-BOOM and take it down below!” So what was it? I finally have a notion or two: it might be “new idea,” that would make many folk in the entertainment industry react similarly. But probably it is “tar baby.” Doesn’t that fit? A tar baby is like the Iraq war: once you touch it, you can’t let go of it.

I saw a big green caterpillar chewing away on our tomato plants in our garbage garden. Well, they had already borne their fruit and were fading, so I let the caterpillar be. But I was curious what kind it was, as I remember seeing a similar one as a child that looked like a long cake with green icing and rows of little candles along the top. So this time I went to the bug books, and finally managed to run it down: Tomato Hornworm, a predator on tomato plants, vaguely related to the lovely luna moth. Duh! I did all that work for that?

Stray memories occur to me routinely, and there’s not much to do with them except savor them and forget them again. Then I thought, say, maybe I can share them with my readers. For example, I mentioned last year how my one time roommate at Goddard college, Bob Pancoast, had died. What I remembered this time was burps. If he burped, he would say “Mmmm–tastes as good coming up as it did going down.” But if you burped, he would say “That was well brought up. Too bad you weren’t.” An earlier memory was of the time I took a swimming course, age ten; I had just learned how, and wanted to improve. One of the exercises related to life saving consisted of throwing a line to a floundering person and pulling him out. We watched as a young woman pulled out a young man. Apparently that interaction was suggestive, and it gave him an erection that distended his swimming trunks and would not relent. He had to stand there for the rest of the lesson with everyone male and female pretending not to notice. Ah, the frustrations of adolescence.

A chain of thought took me to a couple of words I don’t quite understand. I looked them up, but the dictionaries didn’t help. Does anybody out there know why the Navy bathroom is the head, or why the Army restaurant is the mess? Which reminds me of a joke: on a TV contest show decades back there were three professional comedians whose job was to make contestants laugh. A contestant who got through without laughing won a prize. It was the framework for many jokes. Well, one contestant was in the Army, and he had a marvelous deadpan. The first comedian couldn’t shake him. Then came the second. “You know, I was in the army. Yeah. I killed 300 men. Yeah. I was the cook.” That broke up the Army man, and I knew why: the pettest peeve of military folk is always the food. It always stinks, perhaps tainted by soldiers’ hatred of being there. He would not have been Army if that joke did not score. That was one smart comedian.

Bill Bowers died. He co-edited the noted fanzine DOUBLE-BILL, and later his own, OUTWORLDS. I contributed to the latter with letters of comment similar to these present columns, which naturally stirred up the opinionated hornets in fandom. Opinionation seems inversely proportional to knowledge. I say again: consider this column. At one point there was a huge issue–I think about 80 pages–that seemed to be mostly objections to me. You see, I never suffered fools or rascals gladly, and those I tersely refuted did not appreciate it. I’m really more at home here in these columns on my own Web Site, because no one can selectively edit or censor me here. You don’t think selective editing can be bad? I sent a comment on another writer’s novel to one fanzine, saying such and such was good, while such and such was bad. Only the negatives were published, giving me a reputation for being exclusively negative. In one case, Dean Koontz was involved, and we had a fine blowout; years later we interacted in a different venue, and a strained relationship became positive. You don’t think faneds (fanzine editors) would have such unfair agendas? Then you never participated in fandom. But Bill Bowers was one of the good ones; my fights on his pages were well earned. As I remember it took two years for the row following my review of Harlan Ellison’s first DANGEROUS VISIONS volume to die down. No, Harlan himself didn’t object; in fact I contributed to the second volume: “In the Barn,” my story about a barn full of large-uddered milking cows. Only one detail was changed: there were no bovines on that world. The cows were human. Ever see a big-breasted woman put on a milking machine? I never wrote the sequel, about the slaughterhouse; I doubt that ever could have been published. At any rate, there was that issue, and I meant to respond. But we were moving from the St. Pete Florida area to the Inverness Florida area at the time, getting our new house built, getting the old one ready for sale, and the contracts at either end were ripping us off–we finally sued one of them and got a judgment, but he turned up broke and we never collected–and there wasn’t time. I lost the issue in the move, and never replied. The issues stopped coming, and I thought that I had been cut off for not responding, or that the fanzine had died. Years later I learned it was still going, and concluded that the mail had simply not forwarded them to me at my new address. I don’t know what all those antagonists did with their spare time after that. So I left OUTWORLDS more or less by accident in 1977, and now, 28 years later, I’m sorry he is dead. He was a good guy.

Archery report: I got fed up with those left side arrows flinging out randomly instead of where I aimed them, so changed the arrow rest again. My wife suggested that though the closed circle that prevents the arrow from falling off is nice, it must be twitching the fletching as it passes through and tugging the arrows to the sides. I think she’s right. So I took it down and dug out my old reliable old-style arrow rest. But the bow is set up for the new kind, so I had to carve a block from foam plastic to move it out so that the arrow aimed forward instead of ten feet to the left. Then when I tried it, the arrows flung out to the right and dropped to the ground as I drew them. Well, it takes quite a jerk to draw 57.5 pounds left handed, so I wound it down to 55 pounds. And they still flung wildly out. Then I caught it happening: the arrow rest was coming partly loose from the foam plastic mooring, flipping the arrow out–and snapping back into place. What devilish cunning! So I wrapped package binding tape around it to hold it in place–and the arrows still flipped out. So I wound it all the way down to a feeble 50 pounds, and then I was able to draw smoothly enough to have it stay in place. But the arrows were dropping way low: that lost power. I remade the block to raise the arrow rest, but the arrows still dropped low. I was at the limit of the sights; I couldn’t adjust them farther. So I would it back up part way, to 52.5 pounds. That lifted the arrows, solving that problem. I still missed most as I zeroed in again, but there were very few flukes. A fluke is where the arrow goes in an impossible direction just to spite you. Say you’re off-planet and loose three arrows at New York: one strikes Tokyo, another Paris, and the third the North Pale with some moondust on it. You couldn’t do it deliberately, but it happens. Ask any archer. So I think I have it straightened away now, and I expect to make better future scores.

One of the myriad publications I read is the WASHINGTON SPECTATOR. It doesn’t like current American politics any more than I do. It asks whether we face a choice between tyranny and civil war. That bothers me too. The far-right greedheads have the bit firmly in their teeth and are stampeding toward national disaster on every front; they don’t much care what happens to the rest of us so long as they get all the power and money. The Downing Street Memo is only a little part of the soiled tapestry. With the continuing signs that the last two presidential elections were stolen–there are alarming indications of massive electoral fraud–so that there isn’t relief at the corrupted ballot box, how do we ever get out of this mess? I think of the French Revolution, where it took civil war and wholesale execution of the royalty to fix it–unsuccessfully. I think of Samual Taylor Coleridge commenting: “The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, slaves by their own compulsion; in mad game they burst their manacles and wear the name of Freedom–graven on a heavier chain.” Is this where we are headed? I hope not–but do fear it.

A Sunday LuAnn comic: her parents list all the chores the have to tackle, exchange a glance, and wind up snoozing embraced on the couch. I love that.

I look at everything that comes my way. Periodically there will be a spam-type from the Party for Islamic Renewal. One was titled “Racism, Lynching, Slavery–Pillars of the American Dream.” It quotes Friedrich Otto Hertz: “At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when He brought some people into being.” It says that the US shamelessly calls for human rights while implementing inhuman policies. That the US hypocritically rants about free speech but cannot tolerate genuine opposing views. That white America accumulated great wealth and power, the price paid by thousands who were lynched and millions who died on slave ships. Okay, why is it that it requires hostile Muslims to state the obvious? Not that the Muslim world is any better in such respects. Consider their treatment of women.

In fact, consider Darfur. Women are freely raped, and this is not any token thing; it is an area where infibulation is practiced, meaning that their genitals are cut back and sewn up, so that rape rips out the stitches and and may cause them to bleed to death. They may be shunned as sexual deviants–for being raped. This apart from the general starvation, slaughter, and brutality of the genocidal war there. Other nations are too busy with their own concerns to intervene. Yeah, sure. Muslims are lecturing America?

Meanwhile the disaster that is the Iraq occupation is causing the American military services to run out of soldiers. Who in his/her right mind would sign up for that meat grinder? Yet they are expelling highly trained specialists who are willing to serve: the homosexuals. Thus bigotry trumps national interest. Quote from a column by Robert Scheer: “Integration was most ardently opposed by Southern white Baptist preachers who cited the Bible, and now we hear the same Scripture-based attacks on gay marriage. Yet this is hypocritically selective because Christian writings are full of historical anachronisms, such as the acceptance of polygamy and women-as-chattel. Marriage to a divorcee, a common occurrence even among conservatives, is expressly forbidden in Matthew (5:27-32): ‘…whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.’”

From a column by Cass R. Sunstein: “In recent years some conservative politicians have been insisting that federal judges should strike down affirmative action programs, protect commercial advertising, invalidate environmental regulations, allow the president to do whatever he likes in the war on terrorism, use the Constitution to produce tort reform, invalidate gun control regulation, invalidate campaign finance laws and much more–regardless of whether they can find solid justification for these steps in our founding document…What we are seeing, for the first time, is a fundamental challenge to the rule of law itself.”

When I graduated from high school in 1952 my great aunt gave me Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds. That summer I used it to identify all the birds I saw on our forest farm in the Green Mountains of Vermont. I have learned precious few birds since then, but I remember those ones. I still have that worn volume. It was then that I learned of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, thought to be extinct. I saw the Piliated Woodpecker, a striking bird, which we also have here on our Florida tree farm, but the Ivory Bill was even more striking. Well, now they may have found it again in the wilds of Arkansas. This is electrifying news, and I hope it can be solidly confirmed.

An article in NEW SCIENTIST on slime mold. That’s another passing fascination; in fact I used it as the basis for my novel Omnivore, published in 1968, wherein there was a planet where the descendants of slime mold were the dominant species of creature, the land-born one-footed mantas. It’s really strange stuff, a fungus that moves around, then settles and flowers in its fashion. Fungus is the Third Kingdom, matching the Animal and Plant kingdoms, and vitally important as it breaks down the organic substances made by the other two. Without that recycling, life would come to a filthy halt soon enough. Now they suspect that slime mold possesses a basic intelligence despite having no nervous system. Good for it.

Having successfully Googled to find the words to a song (see above), I tried it to find the words to a poem I heard once while serving in the US Army in 1957 and never since: “Ode to the Four Letter Words.” These lost fragments haunt me. And it gave it to me without hassle. I am coming to like Google. The idea is that you don’t dare say exactly what you mean, but can get at it circuitously. Such as if you would like to have sex with a woman: “You may speak of her nipples as fingers of fire, with hardly a question of raising her ire. But by Rabbelaise’ beard, she will throw several fits, If you speak of them roundly as good honest ….” “Though a lady oppose your advance, she’ll be kind, As long as you intimate what’s on your mind….But the moment you’re forthright, get ready to duck, For the girl isn’t born yet who’ll stand for ‘Let’s ….’” How true!

PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The organization has made headlines with hard-nosed actions verging on terrorism, in the name of saving animals from bad treatment. Now PETA employees are charged with 31 felony counts of animal cruelty for dumping 31 dead animal bodies they had promised to find homes for. It seems they kill 85% of the animals they take in. I oppose animal cruelty–in fact I am a vegetarian for that reason–just as I oppose trashing the Constitution. It seems that some so called patriots are contemptuous of American values, and some so called animal protectors are slaughtering them instead. Has the world gone crazy? Yet consider what they are dealing with, next.

Also from NEW SCIENTIST: the fur trade had been in the doldrums, as people realized it wasn’t nice to slaughter cute creatures so as to wear their skins. After all, there are many effective substitutes. But now fickle fashion is swinging back, and an ad says “Fur is fun again.” It seems this is the result of a campaign by the fur industry to make it cool and trendy to wear fur. So the fur farms are back, with animals in barren cages smaller than the recommended minimum–and who wants to spend his whole life in a cage? Some animals exhibit extreme fear and signs of self mutilation. I suspect it is similar to the depressive girls who cut themselves to make the emotional pain go away for a few hours. Then comes the slaughter: some animals are swung by their hind legs head-first against the ground, with luck getting stunned. Many are fully conscious while being skinned, and remain so for up to ten minutes after all of their skin has been removed. When this was called to the attention of the fur industry, it claimed the video evidence had been staged. Thus animals are literally tortured for their fur, and it seems that no reforms are in the works. The particular fur factories described here are in China, but of course the fur comes here. So you want to wear genuine fur as a fashion statement? Stay the hell away from me.

The power problem: at the rate the world is using up fossil fuels, they will run out all too soon. They are also polluting our world, and warming it. A study of past effects, circa 50 million years ago, suggests that a tipping point is approaching that could acidify the oceans and lead to another great extinction. Alternative energy sources will come, before or after the last lump of coal is mined, the last drop of oil pumped, and maybe even before we extinguish most life on Earth. It’s too bad that America is not in the forefront of the quest for renewable energy, but fortunately other countries are trying harder. Wind farms are appearing, and no, they are not killing birds wholesale; the birds learn to avoid them. But my bet is on solar collection in deserts and rooftops, translated to electricity conducted around the world.

From a column by Walter Brasch: the Patriot Act (to my mind a completely unpatriotic menace) violates six Constitutional amendments: #1, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 14. The Act has not made a dent on terrorism, but is trashing the Constitution. We are losing the safeguards that made America great.

“Deep Throat” has been revealed. Plenty is being said about the misdeeds of the Nixon administration, and you know I have a T-shirt saying “I don’t care if he’s dead, I still want to IMPEACH NIXON” and I do wear it, signaling where I stand on that. But I have a peripheral comment: some folk today may not realize that the term originated from the title of a dirty movie. It was about a woman in the sex industry whose clitoris was in her throat, so she got her orgasms by oral sex, literally. Some mischievous genius borrowed that for the secret source revealing Nixon secrets.

They are still trying to discredit Vitamin C, saying that a study of studies indicates that it doesn’t work on the common cold. Okay, you can believe the studies, or you can believe me: Vitamin C does work. So what’s with the studies? They were trying daily doses of 200 milligrams. That’s like giving a starving man half a peanut a day and noting that he died anyway. To stop a cold you take one gram–that’s 1,000 milligrams–of Vitamin C per waking hour until symptoms cease. That’s about a hundred times the dose they were trying. It generally takes three days with me; others generally have faster success. I take it in liquid form to be sure it doesn’t run through the digestive system undissolved. I suggest that there are two classes of people in the world: those who know Vitamin C doesn’t work, and those who have actually tried the proper dose. Welcome to try it yourself, next cold you start. Then you’ll know. So why do they refuse to test the proper dose? I think because it would put a lot of palliative nostrum companies out of business, and they make sure that what actually works doesn’t get tested.

There’s a new liberal voice in town, Live Liberal at www.liveliberal.com. Loud mouthed conservatives have tried to make liberal a bad word, though the dictionary definition is favorable to progress or reform, open minded, tolerant, free from prejudice, generous, charitable, and the like. Why would conservatives want to proclaim opposite values of bigotry, intolerance, close mindedness, prejudice, niggardly and the like? Yet seems they not only espouse such opposites, they practice them. It has been said that conservatives are without empathy. They have come to dominate the media, all the time screaming about the liberal bias there. To them, it seems, anyone only slightly to the right of Rush Limbaugh is ultra liberal, and anyone to the left is virtually criminal. Sickening. So if you want to see issues like income inequality, increased national debt, and progress and reform through individual freedom discussed, there’s where. I may even look it up myself.

DISCOVER magazine has an article about Roger Penrose, who has devised an experiment that may determine whether orthodox quantum mechanics is invalid. It may take years to set up the experiment, but the diagrams are persuasive for me; I think he’s right. Another article is on out-of-body experiences; it seems that many people have them, and near-death experiences. It seems our brains are wired for mystical experiences. That explains a lot. Much of religious belief may thus be fathomed.

Republicans have evidently decided that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for president next time, and have cranked up their smear machine. Already they are publishing books and faking pictures. What bemuses me is the way professed moral folk hardly seem to hesitate to cheat and lie to achieve their ends. At issue at the moment is the book The Truth About Hillary, which hints she’s a lesbian and that her daughter Chelsea was conceived only because Bill Clinton raped her. Fascinating; I can hardly wait for the next three years of this campaign. Some people seem to have no shame, and I’m not talking about Hillary.

Here’s an example: a letter appearing in the local newspaper said that this Rove business–leaking the identity of a secret agent, which is a crime–was a tempest in a teapot, and they should be focusing instead on important things. He called it a display of partisan politics. “The liberals have presumed Rove guilty without any proof just as they did to Clarence Thomas. This is their modus operandi. They scream fanciful suppositions loudly and often and hope that the unthinking will believe their propaganda.” Oh, really? One thing I, an avowed social and political (but not financial) liberal, have noticed is that the conservatives tend to accuse the opposition of what they themselves are doing, to cover their guilty butts. Thus when they savaged Anita Hill, the woman who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, they screamed that he was the one being savaged. Since then evidence has surfaced showing that Anita Hill was correct; she was the one wronged. They screamed that the Democrats were trying to steal the Presidential election of 2000, when in fact the Republicans stole it. Now solid evidence has put the spotlight on one of the misdeeds of Rove, and this letter-writing character is desperate to change the subject. And where was he when the Republicans actually impeached president Clinton for a peccadillo that a number of his accusers were guilty of, as well as several prior presidents? Rove should not be investigated similarly? What a hypocrite. Yet it is par for their course.

I received an email discussion from Frank Eeken titled “The Truth about Killing.” It makes several intriguing statements. Human beings do not want to kill. Research shows that less than 25% of soldiers choose to shoot at the enemy, and only 2% shoot to kill. 1% of the air force was responsible for the total killings by bombing by airplanes. A study of the Normandy Invasion of World War Two concluded that after 60 days of continuous battle, 98% of the survivors became psychiatric patients–i,.e,, insane–and the other 2% were called “aggressive psychopatical personalities.” Half of those were sociopaths, which are folk without feelings. [I differ here: sociopaths are folk without empathy. They have feelings, but no compassion for others; they are ultimately selfish. In my fantasy they are folk without souls. Politically they seem to be radical conservatives.] The other 1% are special people who want to spare others pain and sorrow. Okay, as I mentioned above, I am a vegetarian because I don’t like hurting animals; my empathy extends beyond my own species. This discussion suggests that I am hardly alone; I merely draw the line beyond where most others do. War and killing are ugly things, though I do not say they are never justified.

Last time I mentioned how each month this year had more rain on our tree farm than the prior one. That continued, with 10.2 inches in June and 10.95 in July. I suspect the streak will break soon, however. Meanwhile we had an air conditioning lapse: the upstairs unit worked less and less well, until finally it was running continuously, jacking up our electric bill something awful, but not cooling; it got to 87° here in my upstairs study and I didn’t dare turn on my computer lest it fry. I hauled a mattress downstairs to sleep on. My wife has slept downstairs for months, being unable to climb the stairs because of her illness. The Air Conditioning folk said the unit was working. The hell it was. So we turned it off two days, then tried it again, just in case–and it worked perfectly. So did a bubble get in a pipe or something? Meanwhile our second heat exchanger has never worked well; it runs only when the repair man is here. The perversity of the inanimate ruins our effort to save energy.

The Humanists say that Humanists should come out of the closet, as it were, and let the wider public know they exist, to counter the takeover of our nation by the Radical Right. Okay, I am a card-carrying Humanist. Here is one official definition: Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity. Why is anyone not a Humanist?

I have other notes, but am out of time. I have a novel to write, medical appointments to keep, and the other things old fogies do. Chances are that by the time you read this I’ll be 71. When I attend that Orlando fan convention next year I am seriously thinking of wearing a name tag saying PIERS ANTHONY BOF. The initials stand for Boring Old Fart. It’s not fun being old, but think of the alternative.

You haven’t had enough of irascible liberalistic ranting? Well, keep reading, and get another bellyful. Age does not seem to be mellowing me.

Half a slew, maybe even three quarters of a slew of notes this time. Let’s start with the reader responses on the questions I asked last column, such as what about dentures? I said I was tired of pouring money into the black hole of my mouth, only to have continued pains and repairs. Well, at first it seemed to be about 50-50 on whether dentures were smart or a mistake. One book says that dentures will subtract ten years from your life, though I don’t see the rationale. But as responses continued, the balance shifted to about 80-20 in favor of dentures. I didn’t keep any exact tabulation, but I think my informal impression is close enough. Some were savage. One said that dentists will tell you that nothing can match your own natural teeth. “They lie!” Some feel that dentists simply want to keep the expensive work coming in. I would not accuse them so harshly, but I have observed that a person’s philosophy is strongly affected by the source of his income. Thus you get workers wanting a minimum wage raise, job health benefits, and more paid vacations, aligning with the political liberal persuasion. Businessmen want lower wages for workers, lower taxes on profits, and for the government to stay the hell out of private enterprise, aligning with the conservative persuasion. Such views are deeply held, verging on religious conviction–but trace the money, and the root of the philosophies clarifies. (So why didn’t I convert to conservative, once I made a small fortune writing funny fantasy? Well, I did, financially. I remain socially and intellectually liberal; that doesn’t affect my income. So I’m not breaking the rule. Also, they say you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy. I remain a farm boy at heart. You have heard of Piers Plowman?) So naturally dentists would see the preservation of natural teeth, whatever the cost, as best. But the folk whose mouths and budgets have problems would prefer to have a cheap, permanent, comfortable fix. One article says there is a new candy, CaviStat in BasicMints, that mimics saliva and counteracts the tooth decay process. That interests me. I don’t care about candy, but would love to finally stop my tooth decay. One application neutralizes harmful plaque acids for nearly 24 hours. It’s supposed to be available later this year through dental professionals. We’ll see.

One thing I learned: it makes a huge difference how good the dentures are. For a perfect fit, you need to go to a denturist. That’s denture + ist. One who specializes in dentures. A regular dentist is unlikely to do a great job on dentures, because he lacks practice and it will cost him money in the long run. So I asked my dentist for a referral to a denturist. The closest he could come in this neck of the backwoods was a prosthodontist ( = tooth replacement specialist), and I haven’t yet seen him. One thing that inhibits me is the amount I have already invested in my mouth, with a dozen root canals, four implants, and countless onlays and crowns. I hesitate to rip all that out unless I see mouth-heaven within reach. So I haven’t decided anything, but do appreciate the informed advice of many readers. I’m surprised by how many turn out to have teeth like mine: despite diligent care, they rot.

Then there’s the origin of the terms head for ship’s bathroom and mess for military restaurant. These, too, are interesting, and I had many informed responses. It turns out that the head was originally the front end of the ship, where sailors went to defecate and urinate. Now you’d think they would prefer to do it off the rear of the ship, and let the stuff float harmlessly away behind. Not so, for in the sailing days the wind that powered the sails came from behind. So it was the head of the ship where the solids, liquids, and especially the smells were blown away. It does make sense. When things changed, and ships were propelled by other than wind power, the name stuck, and it remains the head. You bare your tail in the head. In my Bio of a Space Tyrant series the future navy has a tail as well as a head: for mandatory weekly sex.

The first to send a detailed discussion of mess was Thomas L. Bruns. The original sense of the word was “a quantity of food.” This broadened to include the dishes used, the mixture of ingredients, and the group regularly taking their meals together. It could also mean sloppy or unappealing food. Often four folk ate together, such as half a gun crew. Thus mess deck, where the crew ate. There was also a German word mischen, meaning to mix. You can see the later meaning of the word emerging from this, uh, mess of origins. Now we know.

Other continuing news: my wife’s improvement proceeds, and now she hardly uses the wheelchair or walker, and sometimes not even the cane. We do have a disabled parking ticket now, and in large parking lots she will use it, because though she can walk well enough 50 feet to the store, she would have a problem walking a thousand feet in one of those miles-wide parking lots. So things are good. However, this condition does not necessarily continue to respond to medication, and this is not her only problem, so we remain wary. The other shoe has not yet dropped, and summer could yet progress to winter. Meanwhile her recovery has enabled me to write at about ¾ par, instead of the ½ par I expected. That pleases me, though I am still postponing time-consuming things like cleaning house and clipping back our long drive until after I make my deadline.

On occasion I mention TV ads I like. For a while there was a car ad featuring several lithe young female drummers in red. I wish they had put the damn car shots in the background and let us see more of those dramatic women. And the marching bands facing off: Red, Blue, Black. They do that one right, spending most of the time on the bands, and then concluding with their ad for bread.

My wife keeps our business accounts, and tax time came at the depth of her illness. Our taxes are complicated; supplementary papers can be something like 50 sheets thick. It still irritates me that the Reagan-era tax reform turned out to mean tax cuts, not simplification. How about a flat tax with no exceptions, so ordinary folk don’t have to hire tax accountants just to figure out how much they owe, and no two accountants agree? So we filed for a postponement, sending in the estimated money without the tax forms. By August 15 she had recovered enough to catch up on the forms–and we owed more money, because of being caught by the AMT, the Alternative Minimum Tax. Donating to charities, suffering business reverses, and so on are valid tax deductions, but it goes for naught with the AMT kicks in. Okay, what I want to know is where is that AMT when all these multi-billion dollar corporations pay zero taxes despite monstrous profits? Why does it seem to apply only to those of us with legitimate deductions? That’s a rhetorical question; we know the answer. In the current political atmosphere, the big boys are supposed to get off free while the grunts pay though the nose. Too many grunts are too stupid to catch on, so they vote in administrations that promise to persecute gays and put God into government while continuing the economic rip-off. It is to vomit.

I had spot surgery on my cheek. No, not my ass; my face. I had spotted a little patch that would crust over, then clear, then crust again. So I called it to the attention of my skin doctor, and in due course he cut it out. It turned out to be a precursor to squamous cell carcinoma, not threatening but could become so if allowed to develop long enough. Thirteen years ago the same doctor took out a basil cell carcinoma on my right ear, cutting out a pie-shaped slice and sewing the ear together again smaller. Reminds me of a limerick about a man with ears of two different sizes. Never mind; it’s a clean limerick. These tumors are cancer, but distinctly less dangerous than the bad one, melanoma. I doubt I was ever in much danger. I was also slated for spine surgery the end of SapTimber, to facilitate the fusing of the crushed disk in my tail. Every day I am limited by pain if I don’t watch my motions, and if I sleep in the wrong position I can really regret it. I’d like to get it the hell fixed. But it turned out that I’d have to spend three months recuperating, doing no real exercise other than walking, no archery, no 20 pound dumbbells, no nothing beyond 5 pounds. So who would lift the 45 pound wheelchair into and out of the van for my wife? Who would even carry the groceries? And in three months the muscles and fitness I have spent decades developing would fade entirely away, and then I’d have to start over. If my wife had a crises, who would bail her out? The chances of her needing serious help in that time are significant. So I canceled; I simply can’t afford it at this time.

I learned that Frances Wagner died. I have many fans, astounding my critics, and I try to answer their letters responsively. She was just another one, a teacher slightly older than I, Roman Catholic, very much her own woman. She was also a very private person, and I pondered hard before deciding to mention her here, as she surely would not have approved. What lifted her out of the throng, in my perception, was her mention of the time when as a girl she lived in Panama, and saw the poverty of the ordinary people there. She wanted to help them, and talked to the local Catholic priest. He told her, in essence, that it was impossible to alleviate the poverty of the masses; all she could do was impoverish herself in the effort. She was not quite satisfied with that. Neither was I. She called me a genius, not once but many times. I laughed it off; I claim to be a competent writer with a conscience, but that’s genius only in a very limited sense. I concluded that it was her way of saying she liked me. It was a close correspondence. I introduced her to my father, and he would have married her had she been amenable. And I think she had more than a reader’s interest in me. She would sent me gifts, though I tried to discourage this. She walled off her back yard to make a hidden garden, a bower, with ornamental shrubs and statuary, reflecting the privacy and internal beauty of her nature. At any rate she was a presence in my life, and her abrupt death from a stroke was a shock. She was quite health-conscious, as I am, and I thought she would exist indefinitely. I understand that she was about to start a letter to me when it happened. She was a good woman.

In 1977 we bought a pendulum clock. Wards had had an octagonal pendulum clock that intrigued us, and we ordered it, but it didn’t work. They replaced it with another, and that didn’t work. It turned out that both clocks had been dropped and broken. I think a whole shipment of them had been dropped. With that frustration on our minds, we went to a local clock store and bought a different clock. It winds with two springs, and the pendulum keeps the time. For 28 years it ran. But when my wife had to make her bed in the living room, being unable to mount the stairs to the bedroom, the hourly bonging was too loud, so we turned off the bongs. And the clock stopped. Well, it was getting old. But when she recovered enough, after six months, to return upstairs at night, I turned the bongs on and tried the clock again, and it’s working fine, keeping perfect time. Except for one thing: it bongs the hour, one bong per hour, though the day and night–except for the hours of six and seven, when it bongs eight. Okay, we can handle that. It reminds me of the song “My Grandfather’s Clock,” whose words I memorized as a child; it’s a lovely song about the relationship of grandfather and clock, who lived and died together. My family learned the song from a book of songs, and discovered after a time that they had one note wrong: “But it stopped, short, never to go again, when the old man died.” The note marking “go” was hollow, meaning it needed to be held an extra half-note. “Never to go-o again.” I remember a friend humorously holding that note for several beats, “never to go-o-o-o-o again.” Fun. So will our clock stop forever when I do?

Another song I remember, in the ongoing musical refrain of my brain, is more humorous. It’s a parody of the popular song that goes “I want a girl, just like the girl, who married dear old dad.” The parody goes “I want a beer, just like the beer, that pickled dear old dad. It was the beer, and the only beer, that daddy ever had. A good old fashioned beer with lots of foam; took ten men to carry daddy home.” They don’t brew beer as they used to. I also remember one with a line “City girls just seem to find out early how to open doors with just a smile.” If that song were in Xanth, it would be “Ogresses just seem to find out early how to curdle milk with just a smile.” And I remember one I think was titled “You’re In the Army Now,” with a line “You’ll never get rich, you son of a bitch, you’re in the Army now.” How come I never hear that line today?

Another spot memory. At my age we are mostly made of memories; bear with it. At one time I wrote little poems for thank-you notes for Christmas gifts and such. My wife’s grandmother gave me a little key holder in the shape of an oblong padded box; the lid would open and the key could be kept inside. It reminded me of an ornate miniature coffin. My poem concluded “So thanks again for what you did, unearthing from the place it hid, the coffin with the flip-top lid.”

Which brings me to the movies, by one of my circuitous routes: The Corpse Bride. With my wife’s recovery we are seeing movies again. I loved it; it’s my kind of gore. Claymation, I think, with figures posed in clay, and animated by a tedious process of many slightly-changing poses. The young man, rehearsing his wedding vow while walking in the forest, finally gets it right, and places the ring on a twig, symbolically completing the statement. But it’s not a twig; its the ring finger of a murdered girl, who animates and says “I do.” He has inadvertently married the corpse. There are maggots in her head, her left arm is skeletal; she is definitely dead and spoiling, but sort of cute for all that. My favorite sequence is when the two sit at the same piano and play a duet; the romance is becoming real. We also saw The Chocolate Factoryafter all, and Sky High, which was fun. So it’s standard formula stuff; it was well enough done.

In this period I encountered an ethical consideration. To date I have not accepted payment for anything I blurb or recommend; my opinions are not for sale. Now I have an offer to lend my name for the promotion of a possible television series of adventures that I would neither write nor participate in. They may have been inspired by my Incarnations of Immortality series; there are elements of similarity. I have no monopoly on Death as a human figure; others have done it before me. My contribution to originality was to make Death an office that an ordinary person could occupy, like stepping into an existing position with a company. I also have had some fun with the Deathcar, that is way more than a car; in fact it is a transformation of Mortis, Death’s horse. Well, this series has people discovering magically endowed cars and acquiring special abilities from that association. Again, I was far from the first to have a remarkable car in my fiction; I merely had my take on it. But taken as a whole, I believe this series has more than a coincidental affiliation with my novels, and elements may have been inspired by them. I have no problem with that; sometimes I get inspired by elements in the fiction of other writers. So I think my readers would find this television series interesting, though I have nothing to do with its essence or detail. The question is whether it is ethical for me to lend my name to its promotion in return for a percentage of the take. Pretty much free money. I am a commercial writer; I do write for money. But not only for money, and today I am financially independent, so do have a choice. I pondered, and believe I will try it and see. If I don’t like the way it turns out, I won’t do it again. If the deal goes through, and I receive 1.2 slews of reactions by readers/viewers who feel they were led astray by my recommendation, I’ll surely heed their input. That’s the polite rendition of “How could you back this crock of shit, you money-grubbing peckerhead?”

When I graduated from high school my great aunt gave me a copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds. That transformed my summer. I had made it to that point unable to recognize any bird other than the cardinal, because it was all red. My bird-watching roommate Peter Wickham took me out bird hunting one day and helped me identify my first other bird: a slate-colored junco. But in that summer I learned virtually all the birds of Vermont, by constant observation in field and forest with reference to the book, and was never bird-ignorant again. However, thereafter I got interested in other things, such as education and girls, and didn’t learn any more birds. If a Vermont bird passes by here, like the piliated woodpecker or hermit thrush, I recognize it instantly, but local avians can be a struggle. I do recognize the sand hill crane, however, by its call: it sounds like a squeaky grandfather clock being wound. Still, when I was exercise-running one morning I spied a bird flitting around that I thought I should recognize, a warbler. So I repaired to the book, and got it: the redstart. Good enough. Except for one thing: Florida is outside its range. Well, tough titty, experts; we do have restarts here in central forested Florida.

And my archery. I’m the “Peanuts” comic’s Charlie Brown of archery; I never get it right. Tired of arrows flying anywhere except where I aimed them, with my left handed bow, I finally changed back to the old style arrow rest. There followed the usual several-session hassle of getting it zeroed in. I had to carve a block out of plastic foam to set the arrow rest out far enough so that the arrows would aim approximately where the sights did. I finally got it just about right, as mentioned last column. Then the plastic block flew off as I loosed an arrow. I recovered it and bound it securely with tape. But that caused the arrow rest to tilt slightly, and the arrows were falling out even as I aimed. I had to tilt the bow well left to prevent that, and zero in yet again. But when I had it almost right, the arrow rest tore itself loose from the block and disappeared into the terrain. So what now? I got a crazy genius notion: I made my own arrow rest. I took the left earpiece of an old broken pair of sunglasses and taped it to my block. And zeroed in again. And you know, it’s working, sort of. My scores aren’t better, but the misses are more consistent: all high, low, left or right. When I find the sweet center spot, who knows, I may finally be able to hit the target consistently. But my last effort, during this column, was 6.5 – 2 right side, and 1-10 left side. That’s not promising. After a week I found the lost regular arrow rest on the drive, so may have to return to it, this time more securely fastened.

Odds & endments: There is a word pronounced click or kleek, meaning a coterie or small exclusive group of people. I had occasion to use it, so looked it up to verify the spelling. And couldn’t find it. After interminable inefficient struggle I finally got there: clique. Now at last I know. I saw a picture of the shuttle being carried on the back of a larger airplane back to Florida, where it lives, and I realized what they were really doing: mating in flight. Some birds do it; obviously so do airplanes. I sent the picture to Jenny, so she’d know how airplanes reproduce. We still get reams of spam in our email. I say yet again: the servers could eliminate spam, viruses, spyware, and overlarge files–if they wanted to. Why don’t they want to? How does it pay them to screw their clients? If it doesn’t stop, in time the Internet will be vacated by serious folk, just as they flee a city buried in garbage. I let my trial subscription to PLAYBOY magazine lapse–it’s fun, but I am after all in my 70s now and not in that scene–but they continue to send me issues. So I page through them. The October issue did me a spot favor, listing the seven media-forbidden words. They are defecate, urinate, copulate, vagina, fellatio, breasts, and having intimate relations with one’s female parent. Interesting that a man can fart and ram his cock into her gash without violating the forbidden list. But he had better not sing a song about broken-hearted little tom-tits. Which vaguely reminds me: on a date, a guy can get to first base with a girl, or second base, third base, or a home run. But I’ve never been quite sure where the lines are drawn. I assume that first base equates to necking, above the neck, and second base is petting, below the neck. A home run would be full sexual interplay. But third base–ah, there’s the rub. Below the waist? Oral-genital contact? Hands on each other’s privates? Mutual stimulation? President-Clinton-style fooling around? I’ve never seen a definition. Anyone out there know for sure?

My exercise runs aren’t what they used to be; my age and back have slowed them, but I continue on the theory that revving up my system thrice weekly is good for me. My mind is active–it’s always active–and sometimes in this thinking time I get nice breakthroughs on novel plot twists and such. This time I remembered how the springbok, a south African gazelle, springs so efficiently that when it lands it recovers 90 per cent of the energy it uses when springing. And I wondered how much that would extend its range. And as with the supposedly simple weather probability calculation I struggled with a coupla columns ago, it turned out be not so simple for my septuagenerian noggin. Say it has an energy quotient of 100, and recovers 90 of that; that means it actually uses only 10. So that would extend its range ten fold (10 X 10 = 100). But suppose you calculate it another way, subtracting the 10 per cent it uses each spring. Thus the original total of 100 would become 90 after one spring, and 81 after the second (90 – 10%), 73 after the third, and so on down to zero. Such progressive chains typically use about half the total (the average of 1 to 100 would be about 50), which suggests it might extend its range only five fold. On the second jump, does it go only nine tenths as far, and eight tenths on the third jump? That reduces it further. So I wind up hopelessly confused, and I fear the lion will catch that poor springbok before it gets its calculations in order. Maybe it’s an old one, and this is nature’s way, taking out those who can no longer do the math.

I maintain an ongoing survey of electronic and self publishers, and related services, elsewhere at this site. I started it because I wanted a meaningful answer for aspiring writers’ queries to me, and now it has something like 500 entries and has become an end in itself. I gather it is bookmarked by a number of folk who neither know nor care who I am; they just check that page. Okay, if it serves, fine. I regard this entire HiPiers site as a service to my readers and anyone else who happens to pass through; I’m not trying for any high listing on Internet rankings and am not eager to exchange links for any such purpose. I’m just doing what I feel needs doing, drawing on my experience in traditional and self publishing and my immunity to retaliation by publishers to facilitate the process for others. (Some know what’s what, but fear they’ll be blacklisted if they tell. Some know, but don’t give a shit for the welfare of others.) I make no bones about my bias as a writer; as far as I’m concerned, if evil is being done, chances are it’s a publisher screwing the writers.

But there is an Achilles heel in this smug assumption: I try to be fair. Sometimes the publisher, much as it pains me to say it, has the right of a case. An example is Venus Press. Last time I reported serious anonymous complaints against it; this time I’m reversing my judgment because the balance of evidence favors the publisher. I am still tacitly blacklisted in some circles; for example, chances are that if you read a listing of the best fantasy writers extant, my name will not be on it no matter how long a list it is. (Memory fogs, but I think I once saw a list of 50 top fantasy writers. I wasn’t on it.) If you challenge it, you will be stonewalled, or they’ll simply say that they have a right to their opinion that I am a poor writer. Indeed they do, but they may not be telling the whole truth. They won’t call it a blacklist against someone who refuses to play the game. I don’t want to do that to anyone else, not even a publisher. I fear I was taken in by a smear campaign. So if you have erotic fiction to sell, consider Venus, listed in my survey. And if you want to be entertained, consider reading some of my fantasy. No, nothing of mine is published at Venus; it’s just an incidental parallel for the sake of artistic expression of an ugly reality.

Another publisher is JUST MY BEST (JMB), also listed. I give it a so-so entry, but the publisher sent me detailed information, and I regard it as an excellent statement of the publisher’s side of things. I must digest it down considerably for brevity, but here is the essence. JMB started business in January 2001, and in three and a half years lost $80,000. In the process the line between what they were and what they have become has blurred. They made some bad early choices, and it cost them dearly. They realized that their romantic dreams of success were unrealistic. They paid for everything from cover art by pro artists to copyright registration. They relied on ambitious authors to promote their books, thus benefiting themselves and the publisher. But some author’s didn’t, even though this was in the contract.

In 2002 they set up a subsidiary for self publishing, AARBooks. They hoped that this would pump some essential money into the company so it wouldn’t go broke. It didn’t work, and they did go broke in August 2004. They were in limbo until January 2005, when they brought all their imprints together as JMBPUB (Just My Best Book Publishing). They sent emails to their authors explaining the situation. Authors would now have to edit their own books to make them legible, register their own copyrights, purchase 25 copies of their own books (at author discounts of 45%), and contribute to the cost of their personal web page creation. All this would come to about $500 per book. If they didn’t like it, they would be free to go elsewhere.

The response was amazing. No, their headquarters was not stink bombed. The authors volunteered to edit, review, and critique one another’s work. They donated short stories for an anthology in an attempt to raise money for the firm. Those who were artistic volunteered to help with book cover design. Some authors offered to market all of the books JMBPUB had published. And sales picked up. The staff worked overtime to get the titles ready for publication. But they need to sell 1,500 to 2,000 copies of each book–remember, this is traditional publishing, meaning physical copies–to break even. As yet, no author has that kind of sales. But the publisher is continuing to try. It prides itself on publishing quality books in attractive packages, and making them available worldwide in brick & mortar stores. So they are not quite traditional, nor are they a vanity press or print on demand publisher. It’s more like a partnership venture. You can find them at www.jmbpub.com/.

So that’s it from a publisher’s view. There is after all another side.

We had hurricanes. Both Katrina and Rita passed Florida on their way to the other side of the Gulf of Mexico, revving up as they went. We hardly felt them, but other places did, notably New Orleans. Reams have been published elsewhere, so there’s no need for me to belabor it; I’ll just say that I hate what it suggests about the species of mankind when the moment there is a calamity, looters come out, not to feed themselves, but to steal jewelry, electronics, and luxury items, raping, burning, and shooting at rescue workers and hospitals. I understand that some reports of the mayhem were exaggerated, but any of this is bad. I received a long report circulated on the Internet of tourists caught there; they commissioned buses to transport them out, but FEMA confiscated the buses, leaving them stranded. So it seems FEMA was hardly better than the looters. When they tried to walk out of the flooded city, the police of the neighboring town barred them, shooting over their heads. Okay, the neighbors were already full up with refugees–but there has to be a better way. There was failure on every level from local to national, and FEMA mainly covered itself in shame by its inefficiency and incompetence. It seems that the National Guard, supposedly existing to help in such national emergencies, had personnel and equipment sent to Iraq instead. And the flood control system had had its budget cut so that the necessary levees were not shorn up to prevent flooding. So it was in significant part a political failing, as party cronies were appointed instead of competent administrators, needed money was sent overseas, and the looming problem was ignored until the disaster happened. This is one of the penalties of putting greedy incompetents in office. There may be worse penalties in the offing.

And I received a generally circulated email titled “Don’t give your hurricane donations to the American Red Cross.” The essence was that the Red Cross actually distributes only about one third of the money it collects for such calamities as 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina. The rest goes to the war on terror, which may mean toward bombing countries like Afghanistan and expanding the police state operations in America. “The history is clear, the Red Cross and other large so-called charities are in actual fact front group collection agencies for the military industrial complex.” I can’t speak for the truth of such a charge, but I remember that when I was in the US Army in the 1950s most soldiers I encountered hated the Red Cross, but respected the Salvation Army. I am not exaggerating. Once we were marched to a Red Cross support meeting, and it became a virtual riot as the soldiers spoke their minds with brutal candor. It seems that things haven’t much changed in the interim. So we donated to the Salvation Army for Katrina. I’m not much for faith-based organizations, but this is one I do support, as its faith seems to be legitimate.

Meanwhile here in the Florida backwoods we had a quiet anniversary of last year’s four-storm month. The little mulberry tree I transplanted to save it from the trucks is doing fine. We had no power failure. I have received letters worrying about us; I can assure all & sundry that we’re okay in that respect.

My Xanth novel #29 Pet Peeve should be out in hardcover around the time this column is. It is perhaps the naughtiest Xanth, and I am not aware of any censoring. I rather think readers will like the irascible talking bird, who also has a chapter in the following novel, #30 Stork Naked. I am presently on schedule on #31 Air Apparent, thanks to my wife’s recovery. (Actually, she suggested that title.)

I proofread Orn for the Mundania Press edition. That’s the sequel to Omnivore, with OX to come. It’s been decades since Orn was first published, and I hardly remembered it, but liked it well enough this reading. It’s my dinosaur novel, but since then much more has been discovered, so it has become dated. For one thing, the meteor theory postdates it, and I think that’s a better explanation for the demise of the dinosaurs than the one I present in the novel. One character therein is the beautiful woman Aquilon, named after the cold northwest wind, who was inspired by a spot mundane event. A couple of events. In high school there was a girl who much of my class longed for, but she seldom smiled. One time I did see her smile, and it didn’t work; her face was prettier composed. I made a mental note: some folk shouldn’t smile. Thus Aquilon, who never smiled. When I had some dental work, the receptionist smiled at me as I departed. She was an ordinary girl, but that smile lighted the room, transforming her. I knew it was calculated, to make me feel less miserable about my aching mouth, and didn’t react, but I remembered. And when Aquilon learned to smile, that was how she did it, measured, controlled, for a purpose. Just an incidental element going into her characterization for this series. I also noted to my surprise that my first mention of my Theory of Dreams occurred in Orn. (Its more complete presentation is in the later Shame of Man.) That is, dreams as processors of relevant memories. Science is slowly catching up to what I knew decades ago, and the theory is being confirmed.

I try to read at least a book a month, though my time has been squeezed recently. For September it was The Slow Poisoning of America by John & Michelle Erb. The author sent me an autographed copy, “To Piers Anthony, the man who inspired so much.” You can find the book on sale at www.spofamerica.com. This is some book. The thesis, as you might guess, is that we are being poisoned. What makes it potent is that every charge and detail is footnoted; this is a work of scholarship. It starts with fluoride, and makes the case that not only does it not prevent tooth decay, it is bad for your system. The list of effects is horrendous: premature aging, arthritis, mottled teeth, brain and kidney damage, lowered IQ, some cancer, hyperactivity–this is scary stuff. So how the hell did it get approved for household use, even promoted as a health measure? Well, it seems it is a waste product of the refinement of aluminum, and ALCOA wanted a cheap way to get rid of it. It is used as rat poison, but there is more than that market can handle. So they promoted it as a health supplement, and evidently had the clout to get the government to go along with that. What a deal: sell your wastes as medicine. So now dentists actually recommend it. I know; I tried it on my dentist’s advice, and had an allergic reaction; I won’t touch it again. (But my wife, who is her own woman, is using it.) If you use it, or require your children to, you should read this book. Chances are you want to get the hell off it.

Then it tackles monosodium glutamate (MSG), the substance that enhances the taste of just about everything. But if you are one of those who is sensitive to it, you may be paying a horrendous price. The author even suggests that the current wave of obesity may be an effect. Again, you will want to read this book and form your own opinion. With luck you are not among those it affects. But it’s enough to make me extremely wary.

My favorite magazine has been the British NEW SCIENTIST. When renewal time came up I called their 800 number and resubscribed for three years. After two months when I was still getting expiration notices, I called again. They could find no record. So I resubscribed again, and in apology they gave me a ten per cent discount. Two months after that the issues stopped coming. Obviously that subscription had not taken either. So I wrote them a letter describing the situation and asking “What does it take to subscribe? Obviously the phone won’t do it.” I gave them my credit card information a third time. And so far I have no response and no magazines. Do I smell bad or something?

This is ugly. An article in the September/October The Humanist magazine tells of evidence that journalists in Iraq are being deliberately targeted for murder–by U.S. forces. It seems our government doesn’t want the truth about Iraq to be known, and if you don’t get the message, you may be dead. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t wish that the Supreme Court had had the integrity in 1980 to put the winner in as president; we are paying a hideous price for that corruption on practically every front. As the Hightower Lowdown says about “strict constructionist” Antonin Scalia: “The fact is that Scalia and other right-wing judges are not hesitant at all to be ardent activists and stretch the Constitution to the breaking point any time it serves their own ideological or political goals.” Columnist David Broder sums up a view: As long as conservatism was simply striving for power, it was intellectually honest. But conservative institutions, conceived in combat, have in power become self-perpetuating, churning their direct-mail lists in pursuit of cash. Most conservative books are pseudo-books, ghostwritten pastiches whose primary purpose seems to be the photo of the “author” on the cover. I’m not surprised; in my view, publicity and greed were always prime motivating forces of so-called conservatism. In power it is no longer masked. And Columnist Robyn E Blumner in the ST PETERSBURG TIMES says “To Bush, being president is not an act of public service in which you are accountable to the press and the people and are limited by the power of two other governmental branches. It is the anointing of a regent for a four- or eight-year stint. That includes the ability to imprison people at will, to offer untruths without compunction as justifications for war and to spend the entire treasury (and more) without worrying about the consequences. In that now-famous debate question, Bush was unable to identify a single mistake he made as president, because monarchs don’t err.”

THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR, discussing bottom-feeding publishers, mentions one editor by name: Adrian Zackheim of Penguin. Seems Zackheim asked the author to write a biography of Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs. It took four months for the contract to arrive. There was heavy research, as you might imagine, and that delay added to the contract delay. Then Zackheim canceled the contract and asked for the return of the advance. Need I say it? This is shit publishing. I believe it, because the same editor did something similar to me, years back; it was why I left Morrow/Avon and took Xanth to Tor. Obviously publishers hardly care about ethical dealing, and most writers can’t do much about it. Hence interest in self publishing by writers who have seen how it is. An article in the local newspaper, CITRUS COUNTY CHRONICLE, by Steve Arthur, relates. “If you aren’t a celebrity or a famous criminal, chances are you will have a hard time getting your literary work published by an established publishing house.” “Hence the emergence of the self publishing industry, which has arisen to meet the demands of frustrated writers who are willing to foot the bill themselves, just to get their tales and ideas into print.” But only books published by large publishing houses are considered and catalogued by the library of Congress. So a small book publisher has filed a federal lawsuit. “You published your book yourself? Yours is a vanity press publication. The book is self published, is nothing more than a book-like object. It will not be reviewed in the press; the retailers will not stock it. Your business is dead in the water.” Yes indeed; I have been there and done that. It’s essentially a closed shop. “Needless to say, this arrangement suits the big publishers nicely. Because there can be no competition from an entrepreneurial author; intrinsic merit is of no particular value to a big publisher and favoritism can reign supreme: there is nothing to lose by rejecting a book that has merit, no incentive to seek it out.” Now you know why I support electronic, small press, and self publishing, despite having made my fortune traditionally, and maybe why some traditional writers and publishers don’t much like me or alternative publishing. They prefer the closed shop.

A reader called my attention to a typo in DoOon Mode. About ten pages into Chapter 2 occurs this sentence: “Cat [a character] had evidently taken the trouble to discover the diver’s needs, and to accommodate them.” Obviously there is a problem with “diver’s,” as this is not talking about underwater adventure. The proper word could be “diverse.” My original script is lost amidst the hard disk of a disconnected computer, but it seemed to me that this could be a copy-editor introduced error. Because the word I would have used is “divers,” which means several. Someone, unfamiliar with the word, might have “corrected” it, and I missed the change and did not get to cancel it. But ha, I have backup disks going back years. I dug out the one for that novel, called up the place–and verified that the typo was mine. Sigh. I would so much rather have blamed someone else.

Editorial in a local newspaper says it’s too bad that the effective anti-smoking ads are gone, another victim of budget cutting, because they did work in cutting down youth smoking. But it would take a constitutional amendment in Florida to force the lawmakers to do what’s right, and even then they might simply ignore it. Florida legislators don’t represent the public interest any more than the national ones do. They did not ignore this issue; oh, no, they passed a budget that prohibits any spending on antismoking ads. So you know in whose pocket they reside. But for any who tried smoking as a teen, then couldn’t stop, I’ll mention again that my wife was caught that way, and smoked for 50 years, until Nicotrol Inhalers made her an instant ex-smoker. She puffs on an inhaler instead of a cigarette, and is no longer damaging her lungs or general health that way. They do work. It’s prescription treatment, and not cheap, so you have to ask your doctor, but it’s worth it. A hell of a lot cheaper than lung cancer.

I’m not part of the nightclub scene, being an old fogy, and in fact I never was part of it, being married and not sexually venturesome. So it’s one of those things I’ve probably forgotten more about than I ever knew. But a newspaper article says that today, increasingly, straight women are getting physical with each other on the nightclub dance floor. Seems it’s a turn-on for watching men. That I can see: to a typical man, the only reason two women would make love would be because they lack a man, and the moment he steps into the picture, they’ll both focus exclusively on him. The typical man, of course, is a romantic idiot. So if I were single, and an attractive lesbian couple offered to keep house for me, would I take them up on it? Yes, probably; I’m typical.

One of my intellectual interests (critics would say obsessions) is empathy. I believe it is, in considerable part, what makes our species human. It’s the ability to put yourself emotionally in the other person’s position, to feel his pain. Liberals tend to have it; conservatives tend to lack it. I was struck by an item in Dear Abby recently, relating to neglected children. “We are raising a generation of lost and confused children. Psychologists have concluded that children who grow up without love do not learn empathy. They can’t feel the pain others experience. These are the teens who lash out in rage and go on shooting sprees and feel no remorse.”

Newspaper article, one of many, says that it’s not only the American government that is going into debt at a rate that can’t be sustained. Regular citizens go into debt to live beyond their means. I understand that credit card debt is ballooning. An article says that at least 8 of the 10 characteristics of a bubble environment currently exist in America. The thing about a bubble is that it gets big, then abruptly pops. At some point this will all come crashing down. The typical what me worry? attitude is reminiscent of the folk in New Orleans who didn’t worry about living below sea level, until the hurricane came. National debt now comes to $145,000 per person, and it’s rising. Sometimes I feel as though I’m on the Titanic, and no one else cares about the water leaking into the hold. I can’t patch the ship alone; no one can, especially when the captain is in denial about the problem.

More odds & endments: An idea whose time may be coming: solar power generated hydrogen for hydrogen powered cars. This could get us the hell off our addiction to foreign oil. The big outfits don’t seem to be much interested, but individuals are. So salvation may yet come from a local garage operation. There’s a haunted building in Orlando, Florida (Florida takes a back seat to none when it comes to crazy items), and a restaurant refuses to move in because of it. Bad for business, you know. So the owner is filing a lawsuit to decide whether its haunted, and if so, whether the ghosts would interfere with business. One ghost is a bartender and two dancing girls. Another is a slender man in a black coat playing a piano. Folk could hear the piano. But when approached, the man would smile and disappear. Okay, as a fantasy author I think I’m qualified to answer this. The restaurant’s balk is ludicrous. No, the ghosts will not interfere with business; they are not inimical and clearly mean no harm. They’re just doing their things. In fact they will be good for business. Patrons will come from miles around to see those dancing girls, especially if their clothing fuzzes out at high moments. Duh. Another item: they have discovered that some folk really are not interested in sex. They are the asexuals, and may constitute about one per cent of the population, compared to 4% who describe themselves as homosexual or bisexual. Now they have an organization and an Internet site: www.asexuality.org, with a blog and discussion board. I wonder what they talk about. Sex? Then there is the local Suncoast case of Debra Lefave, a stunning blonde teacher who had sex with a fourteen year old student. So she’s up for child molestation, though as I see it, a beautiful woman can hardly molest a teen boy; he is eager for it throughout. The police hauled her in and took pictures of her genitals that are said to match anything you can see in porn. Her lawyer wants to suppress those pictures before they get loose on the Internet. I can see his point. So what would I call child abuse? Right here in Citrus County is the Dollar case, where the parents of adopted children shocked them with cattle prods, pulled out their toenails with pliers, hit them with hammers, and starved them so that 14 year old twins weighed 36 and 38 pounds. Why did they do it? Because, they say, they are firm believers in the God almighty, devout Christians. It’s nice to have that explanation.

Remember the poem I rediscovered last column, “Ode to Four Letter Words”? A reader sent me a copy that says it is copyrighted 2003-5 by John Mehlberg. The hell–this poem dates from at least 1957 when I first heard it. Is there such a thing as copyright squatting?

Ending endments: On SapTimber 30 we were in Ocala, Florida–my wife had a dental appointment there–so checked the big Books-A-Million store there. And found two copies of Pet Peeve on sale. So I was right: it’s in print. But we didn’t see the paperback for Currant Events. That same day my agent notified me that Split Infinity will be made into an anime movie. That is perhaps a lesser thing than a straight theater movie, but if they do a good job my readers should like it. The options on the Xanth and Incarnations of Immortality series remain. And the streak of ever-higher rainfall months here continued through AwGhost, with over 11 inches, but pooped out in SapTimber, with under 2 inches. Ah, well.

Have you ever considered the internal architecture of green peppers? Since in the year 2005 I have taken over routine chores such as making meals and washing the dishes–no, we don’t have an automatic dishwasher, and never have–I have become aware of sundry things. When I cut open a pepper I discover that it is like a green ballroom inside, with hanging chandeliers, curvaceous white pillars, and decorative plants twining around with disk-like white flowers. I presume it is similar with the pretty red, yellow, and orange peppers, but they cost more so are beyond our budget. It seems a shame to destroy all that lovely artistry. But of course if I don’t, in a few days it will rot. Ah, well. And for real artistry consider the squashes, looking as if brightly painted, of many shapes. I also feel guilty cutting off the roots of the small green onions; they look like miniature squids that ought to be swimming in the sea. There can be adventure in produce.

Last time I published my retraction of a bad note about Venus Press in my ongoing survey of electronic publishers, satisfied that I had been misled. I said I had not done any business with that house; I merely try to be fair, and do correct mistakes. Well, shortly thereafter that changed. They said that if I ever had anything in their line they’d be glad to consider it. I pondered, and realized that I might have something. They’re an erotic publisher, and my unsold mainstream collection Relationships has some erotic stories in it, notably “The Hot Game,” which is pretty, well, hot. So I sent that collection, saying that it wasn’t erotic so much has having some erotic elements, so was a marginal call for them. I had said before that some of my efforts would likely poop their pretty panties, but this is not a panty-pooper, merely fiction that lacks ellipses where they count. Well, they loved it, so will publish it soon. So now I do have a relationship with Venus, fittingly via Relationships, which becomes a conflict of interest for the survey. That ongoing survey has no authority other than my ornery experience with traditional publishers, and my present immunity to blacklisting; somebody has to be able to tell the truth without being destroyed. But I do try to clarify my special interests, so others can make allowances. So now I’ll have fiction at Xlibris and Mundania, where I have substantial financial involvement, and Venus, where I don’t. Anyway, the stories range from the thoughts of a man whose nice niece wants to marry an utter jerk, to the intense relationship between high school classmates in “Bully”: a girl who was freaked out by being raped, and a reforming bully who was booted on a false charge of rape. As it turns out, he can protect her, and does, and she can seduce him, and does, but it’s hardly that simple in either emotion or sex. Every story in the collection is a relationship, most being male-to-female, and sex is a natural part of it. I like these stories as well as anything I’ve written, and am glad that they will finally be available. But they sure as hell aren’t funny fantasy. www.venuspress.com/.

Last year I completed that year’s Xanth novel on schedule, and planned to take December off to catch up on reading, videos, games and whatnot, a month of relaxation. Instead I dived into the 4th ChroMagic novel, Key to Liberty, and had my second best writing month ever. This is the nature of a workaholic. Then my wife’s progressive illness almost wiped out my writing, before she was finally diagnosed and treated. Now Medicare may no longer cover the expensive IVIG medication that saved her, or allow us to buy it on our own, as we could afford to do. If we do, she could be expelled from Medicare. I think they have that rule because they don’t want doctors to hit the patients up for expensive treatments Medicare won’t cover; there’s room for corruption there. But when the patient’s life could be at stake, for want of that treatment, what then? There needs to be some common sense. I see a battle looming there, because I am not about to let my wife sink into oblivion because of bureaucratic idiocy. But I don’t get into lawsuits lightly, so will wait to see what develops before acting, wife’s health permitting. Surely others will be affected similarly; if there comes a class action suit, I could join that. More anon.

And what about the new Medicare Part D? I won’t be signing up, because it is ludicrously complicated and it is cheaper for me to avoid it. Let’s face it, it’s complicated so that average folk won’t realize how it rips off ordinary folk in favor of the drug and insurance companies. I once sold health insurance, so I do understand it; it’s a partial health coverage policy supplemented by a major medical policy with too large a deductible, leaving a deadly “doughnut hole.” As a general rule, if the current administration sets it up, it screws the poorest folk in favor of the special interests, and our lifestyle is modest, so we relate to the poor. My wife might sign up, though none of the plans list our area as covered–if she stays in Medicare. We’ll see.

So this year my wife’s slow recovery led to less loss of time for me, and enabled me to get ahead of schedule, and I finished Xanth #31 Air Apparent a month early and planned to take November off the play games, watch sexy videos, etc. Right: five days of that drove me crazy, and I dived into a separate project: Pandora Park, a children’s novel intended for the 8-12 year old range. In that month I wrote the whole of it, about 37,000 words. But that’s only part of the story. (If you want simple stories, don’t go to a professional storyteller.) It happened that at the time I was pondering Pandora–she’s the lass who let the works out of her goody box–I heard from Kathe Gogolewski, who had written a children’s novel Tato, for the same age range, published by Wings ePress www.wings-press.com. Did I have a child to read it to? Well, no, but as it happened I had an interest in orienting on that market.

Tato derives from the latter part of potato, and is a creature made from a potato. Michael Tate is seven years old, and his beloved grandfather Gankum has recently died. Michael doesn’t want to believe that, and the force of his disbelief results in several things. Gankum visits him often and communes with him, though for some reason no one else sees the man. Michael decides that he should have a baby brother, to love. He knows how babies are made: from potatoes, with a special magic formula. And you know, it works, only he messes up a bit and the potato doesn’t become a full baby, but more like a potato-head baby who can talk. Some of the magic formula spilled on a mirror, and the mirror comes partly alive and starts snatching souls. Before long it has swallowed both Michael’s parents, who were vulnerable because they didn’t believe in magic and took no precautions. So Michael, and Tato, and his big sister Nicole, have to rescue them, and that’s no easy task. They must go into the dread mirror and bring his parents out, if they can. Okay, you can see that this is a fantasy story, and not a routine damsel & dragon opus. Children should like it well enough, though it is scary in places.

So what about my Pandora Park? 11 year old Mark is stuck at the mall park while his mother shops. He reads the plaque by the statue of Pandora, and touches the empty box she holds and spies a path behind her. He follows it, and finds himself in a magic land, where candy grows on trees and he can do some magic. He can find things, only never exactly what he’s looking for. He looks for a bicycle so he can follow the path faster, and finds a magic scooter that always seems to be rolling downhill, regardless which way it’s going. He finds a 10 year old oriental girl, Kelsie, who is lost. He helps her find her way to the exit, and she impulsively kisses him on the cheek. That makes him float, literally: it’s her magic, which she didn’t know about. It turns out that she’s from China, and speaks no English, yet they have no trouble conversing in the park. They learn that time does not pass outside while they are inside, so they can spend as much time there as they want and never be late going home. But they aren’t quite satisfied: who made this park, and why? Is it a trap for children? And that is the rest of the novel, as they finally solve that mystery, discovering that their adventure is only beginning.

So it is a successful children’s book? Kathe Gogolewski will read it to her classes of that age and let me know. This will be thoroughly vetted by children, so I will know it is right, regardless what editors think. I see it as the first of a series that goes far beyond a simple magic park. However, she will have to read it expurgated, because the school system can’t tolerate that innocent kiss on the cheek. To them, it seems, that is SEX and fifth graders aren’t allowed to know about it. I wonder whether those children ever watch TV, because there’s a good deal more than innocent kissing there. If this sort of thing is general in the school system today, that explains all the letters I receive from children and their parents saying that they didn’t know that reading could be fun until they discovered Xanth. I am of course disgusted, and not just because of the way it spoils education for children. Children are getting raped and killed because they never were warned about the danger of sexual predators. How about making education relevant to today’s society, instead of living in denial and setting children up for potential disaster? And don’t tell me that I’d see it differently if I were a teacher; I was a teacher, and was required to expurgate material to make it sufficiently boring for my students. It was one reason I quit teaching.

As I get older, so do some of my readers. Donna Waldron, about a year older than I, had terminal cancer. I first heard from her almost a decade ago, and learned that though she should have been dead within a year or so, she made it a project to survive until the next Xanth novel was published. When she made it, she set the following one as the target. So it continued, as she confounded the prediction. But in recent years the grim reaper was getting more insistent, and the chemotherapy treatments rougher, I started sending her the hardcover editions, lest she not make it to the paperback editions. I planned to send her Pet Peeve, but two things happened. First, I didn’t receive my author’s copies; at this typing, two months after the novel’s publication, the only copy I have seen was on sale in a book store; I have none myself. I have bugged my agent to bug the publisher, but this will take time. I joke about publishers waiting for the returns to come in before making up the package of author’s copies, but it’s not very funny in practice. I think they have the zip code wrong, but the thing is, publishers don’t correct addresses; you have to change publishers to accomplish that. On occasion I have had to go out and buy author’s copies, which irritates me, but I have not yet done that this time. So I couldn’t send it, or one to Marisol Ramos, who suggested the romance that became the backbone of the novel. Second, Donna Waldron died. So now it will not happen, though I think she would have liked the novel. I hope she is free from distress now.

About Pet Peeve: a reader reports that it has many typos. I would like to check to be sure my corrections were run, but I can’t. Usually publishers do make corrections, but sometimes they don’t, and of course the author gets the blame when that happens. There always do seem to be typos that both I and the copyeditor miss. Maybe they are magical.

Songs continue to go through my head, filling in the hollows of my cranium. Often they are old ones, dating from my childhood. Along about the year 1954, practicing my two finger typing (30 years later I learned touch on Dvorak), I typed the words to 84 folk songs from my head so that I would not forget them. I still have that record, and every so often I do forget a line, and have to look it up. Memorization has always been torture for me; I have to struggle to learn things others pick up readily. But songs are something else, and they enter my being more readily. So this time the “Skye Boat Song” was echoing inside my skull, but I could not recall a few words. It’s about the aftermath of a battle when England defeated the Scots, and they had to flee across the water in a storm to the isle of Skye. “Speed bonny boat like a bird on the wing, Onward the sailors cry; Carry the lad who’s born to be king, Over the sea to Skye.” The last verse is: “Burned are our homes … Scatter the loyal men; Yet ere the sword cool in the sheath, Charlie will come again.” What are the words in the ellipsis? I went to my collection of folk song books–and that song isn’t there, not even in an 800 page compendium of British songs. So I went to my little list and found it: “exile and death.” Okay, the sing is complete again. It reminds me of another, whose title I don’t remember, just the line: “I’ll lay me down and bleed a while, then up to fight again.” Lovely. But what’s with the books of songs that they don’t list this well known Skye one? I had the same problem with “Molly Malone,” and with Eddie Fisher’s “I’m glad I kissed those other lips.” I get these references because I expect them to be comprehensive, and am annoyed when they pretend that my favorite songs don’t exist. It’s bad enough when critics try to pretend I don’t exist; nice songs don’t deserve that treatment.

But about songs: two more were running through my head. Each was the favorite of one of my fellow students at Goddard College in the 1950s. I’m not quite sure of the titles, so may may misremember, but I remember the words. Both are beautiful and sad. “Two Brothers”: “One was gentle, one was kind; one was gentle, one was kind; one came home, one stayed behind; a cannon ball don’t pay no mind. A cannon ball don’t pay no mind, if you’re gentle or you’re kind; it don’t think of the folks behind, there on a beautiful morning.” I don’t recall the title of the other, so I’ll call it “This Morning”: “Bill’s wide was a-baking bread this morning; Bill’s wife was a-baking bread this evening; Bill’s wife was a-baking bread, when she got the news that her husband was dead, this morning, this evening, so soon.” You’d have to hear them sung to appreciate their tragic splendor.

And more: TV ad for the movie Walk the Line about Johnny Cash had him and his wife before the mike, arguing about which song to sing. He decided on Time’s A-wasting over her objection and started singing it. So she joined him–and suddenly from this incidental dialogue emerged this beautiful harmony. Out of nothing, lovely song. I love it. But when on the radio they had a retrospective featuring a number of Cash’s songs, well, the man hardly seemed to carry a tune. He has a marvelous quality of speaking voice, but not much of a singing voice.

So what about that Xanth novel I completed in OctOgre, #31 in the series? What’s Air Apparent about? It is phrased as a murder mystery, at least in the beginning. It features the Good Magician’s daughter in law, blind Wira, who is perhaps the nicest woman in Xanth. She discovers a body in the castle cellar, and her husband Hugo, son of Humfrey and the Gorgon, is gone. Did he happen across the murder, and the murderer got rid of him? The Good Magician can’t answer, because something has scrambled the Book of Answers, and he must put it tediously back in order before he can use it again. So Wira must go seek Hugo on her own, as time may be of the essence. But how can a blind woman go looking for anything, let alone deal with a murderer? She’ll need sighted help. Okay, the Gorgon has saved a few transformation spells; they will transform the next person who comes to ask a Question into a winged centaur who can see, carry, and talk with Wira. That person, by sheer chance, is Debra, who wants to know how to deal with her curse: any man who hears her name wants to take it literally and de-bra her. It is most inconvenient. Still, one thing about centaur fillies is that they don’t wear bras, so can’t be de-bra-ed. That may help. Straightforward, isn’t it? But it soon gets more complicated. Keep it in mind, two years hence when Air Apparent is published. It’s not as naughty as Pet Peeve, but it has its moments, with the bra the focus rather than panties.

I kept getting loose in the colon, and I don’t mean the way the critics say, that I’m chronically full of shit. Something was messing up my intestinal fortitude. Then I read in ALTERNATIVES, which I regard as the best of the health newsletters, that 30-60% of such mischief stems from high-fructose corn syrup (I’ll abbreviate to HFCS). So I started checking ingredients, and discovered that we started eating rich brownies containing HFCS we saw in the store just about the time my complaint began. And ice cream bars, ditto. Sigh; this reminds me of the saying that everything fun is illegal, immoral, or fattening. Add bowel-busting to that list. So I stopped with the brownies and bars, but still had some problem. So I checked more things, and discovered that some flavors of the yogurt I eat on a daily basis as a tasty health measure have HFCS. I eliminated them, and anything else with the stuff, and my condition cleared up. So why do they put this stuff in things, if so many folk have this adverse reaction? Because they don’t give a shit about the welfare of their customers, obviously and literally. I mention this as a public service: if you get your bowels in an uproar, start checking ingredients.

I read Vacation by Jeremy Shipp. This is an intriguing, challenging, literate, provocative novel I’m not sure I understand and suspect I’m not meant to. The protagonist is not satisfied being a teacher, so he takes a year-long Vacation, which is an option allowed every citizen in this framework. It is reputed to be a life-changing experience, as it’s not merely time off, but a somewhat programmed exploration of unrealized aspects of reality. A student in his class turns up for his Vacation at the same time, only in the interim he had a sex change operation and is now an attractive young woman. But that’s not what this is about, and the romantic interest is elsewhere, with a woman named Noh (I think of Nox in my Incarnations of Immortality framework, and there may be a distant affinity) who puts him through several deliberately unpleasant therapeutic experiences and means to commit ritual suicide herself. But that too is not what this is about. Rather, its the perceptive thoughts along the way that stretch the mind. So this is literary rather than common adventure. There are dream sequences that may not really be dreams, and weird concepts, like defecating all manner of evils in odd shapes, clearing the body. Who needs exorcism when you need merely to take a really good shit? I recommend it (the book, I mean) to those who find reality boring; it may make them see it in new ways.

A reader notified me that the Wickpedia site http://en.wikipedia.org/ carries the charge that I endorse or advocate pedophilia and ecoterrorism. I think this is an example of a person showing more of what’s on his mind than what’s in my writing. The fact that I may address controversial subjects in my fiction, and have my characters participate in them, does not mean that this is my personal philosophy. Otherwise I would believe in magic, because there is magic in Xanth; be a murderer because murders sometimes occur in my fiction; and be a rapist or pedophile because my novel Firefly addresses those subjects. I did a long interview for Jitterbug Fantasia www.jitterbug.com, where such questions are addressed, coincidentally. I trust that readers who are conversant with my books and with this column will understand what I actually write, instead of what some anonymous critic wants to claim I write. I defend anonymity, and protect it in my ongoing survey of electronic publishers so that whistle blowers can’t be retaliated against. But anonymity also serves to hide those who may have private agendas or confusions that don’t relate to the truth, as was the case recently in that same survey. My critics have in the past tended to avoid facing me directly, because I don’t suffer rascals gladly, and am not afraid to air their charges in a public forum such as this one. I mention once again the charge that I was being an ogre in fan conventions, spread before I ever attended a convention, and the charge that I wrote to Jerry Pournelle and called him a Nazi, but of course he never produced the letter, because it didn’t exist. (Actually, in both cases they are thinking of Keith Laumer, who was one mean man after his stroke. He lived about 40 miles from me.) Less egregious instances apply to persistent rumors of my death (perhaps a confusion with Poul Anderson); every so often I have to assure a reader that I remain alive and ornery, despite the evident preference of some critics. Really, do you think that anyone elsecould mouth off the way I do in these columns?

Routine life gets in the way of my writing. Our well pump became intermittent, then failed; yes, I was caught in the shower with soapy hair. We had to have it replaced. The pump, not the soapy hair. Our kitchen sink drip became more persistent, so that every day I had to turn off the hot water at the valve under the sink, and still it dripped some. So we got the sink replaced. It’s amazing how much a simple thing like water can disrupt routine existence. My old running shoes were wearing out, so we bought a new pair–and my left toe felt jammed, so that I had to revert to the old shoes while the black bruise under the toenail slowly clears. How did that get so bad, when I was never aware of stubbing it? But here’s a moderately positive one: remember, when my wife’s illness prevented her from cutting my hair, so I started growing it long? Well, now it reaches to my shoulders in back, and has a natural wave. So in front it is receding, and on top it’s comb-over thin, male-pattern baldness, but in back it’s luxuriant brown waves. How come my beard, which started twenty years later, is gray to white, while my hair remains brown? Except for what starts at the temples, which now carries gray streaks back to my ponytail. No, I don’t think it makes me look like a skunk. Folk who attend Oasis con next Mayhem can judge for themselves, as I expect to be there, family health permitting.

Incidental frustration: my Linux computer provides a helpful hint as it cranks up each morning. But the hint remains onscreen only half a second, so I don’t have time to read it. I’ve tried to find where the hints are stored, to see if they can be slowed, but have drawn a blank. I’d just like them to stay long enough to read. Here’s another: the local grocery store had flu shots. We missed their hours, so went to my doctor–and learned that they aren’t going to doctors. Can you figure the logic of that? So back to the store–which no longer had them. So at age 71 I can’t get one, same as last year. Do morons run the distribution system–again?

My supposed two week tooth implant has now been over a year in the making, and I have worn a flipper, a fake tooth to cover the gap. But when the dentist set it up for the crown, the inset anchor nub projected just far enough to interfere with the flipper so it no longer fit. I went to my regular dentist, but got nowhere. So I took a metal file and filed down the base myself, and lo, I’m wearing the flipper again, for a few more weeks until they do the crown. I’m pleased that I was able to figure it out and do it. Soon I’ll have a real implanted fake tooth, I trust. I continue to hear from readers about dentures, and they favor dentures by a solid margin. I’m still thinking about it.

It’s not just songs that sift through my random memories. I remember this story, perhaps true, about a soldier who lost his leg in combat. When he reported to the rehabilitation center, they directed him to his therapy room. “Where is that?” Another man was there, and he said “I know where it is; I’ll take you there.” So the man pushed his wheelchair along the hall. “By the way,” the man said, “if I may ask, what is your injury?” Well, there he was with the stump of his leg in plain sight. “What’s the manner?” he snapped. “Are you blind?” And the man said “Yes.” I keep that in mind when someone asks what seems like a stupid question. It might not be stupid, if I knew more about him.

Our vote for the best TV hour of the year is the Debate on West Wing. Why can’t real politicians express the issues as clearly and dramatically as the actors do? We sampled the new shows Threshold and Surface; the former seemed scattershot with no consistent theme, and we dropped it, and now it’s being canceled, which is odd; usually they cancel the ones we like. The latter seems to be getting stronger as it goes, with some really gripping sequences, and I don’t just mean that buxom naturalist in a damp swimsuit. I was so fixated on that cleavage that I have no idea what the scene was about. The boy and pet monster story is nice, as is the lost among monsters in a storm sequence.

Assorted things bother me. Oh, you noticed? Not everything reaches this column, would you believe. In this period there were three things, so finally I wrote three letters. First, our bank stopped providing notary service. Now they have a right to provide it or not, as they choose. It was the way they stopped that annoyed me. They did not send out a notice. They did not post a sign. They merely refused us when we came in for it, as though we were vagabonds asking for a handout. We had to travel around town to find another notary. It cost me about $200 in the lost value of my time to get that $5 notary. Time we could have saved, had they had the courtesy to let us know before we wasted our trip. Now I have run several million dollars through that bank, over the course of the past quarter century. They may have larger accounts, but I suspect not many, here in the boondocks. So I wrote a polite letter to their personal service representative. She never answered. So much for personal service. So in due course I opened an account at a competing bank, that has a notary. I’ll try out that bank for a while, and decide where the bulk of my business will go in future. As I said to the representative, business decisions have consequences.

The second case was my NEW SCIENTIST subscription, that hassle described in the last column. What do you know, they finally started a new subscription. We lost several issues, and they never explained their lapse, but at least we have it back. The third was our air conditioning company. In 2002 we got a new unit, and had an attached heat exchanger unit to heat our water also, as the first heat exchanger we had has worked very well. But the second one never worked. The company said it worked, but it didn’t. So finally I wrote directly to the boss man, saying that if he came out I believe I could satisfy him that it was not working. That got a response. But meanwhile one of our other units–we have three–was failing. So they replaced that for about $10,000 and it’s working. But they never got to that heat exchanger. So I guess I’ll have to start over. I will.

My wife and daughter decide what moves we see. For some reason they don’t go for the sexy bare-breasted romps I prefer; I suspect it’s a gender thing. For those I buy videos. Any month now I’m going to watch them, if I can just stop myself from getting into another writing project. So we saw Legend of Zorro, and it was fun but not really special. On the last day of the month we saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I was disappointed. The sound just about blasted us out of the theater, the story was jumpy and hard to follow, and aspects did not seem to be explained. I also wonder if there isn’t something more original than repeat battles between the boy and the evil lord. I haven’t read the novel; I assume that is more competent. The same studio, Warner Pictures, is working on a Xanth movie; now I’m a bit nervous.

One of my ongoing column themes is that here in the Tampa Bay region we’re as fouled up as anywhere else. Recently we had two legal cases involving accidental death on the road. Case #1: William Thornton, age 17, was driving without a license here in Citrus County. He was hit by an SUV at an intersection, and two people in the other car, who were not seat belted and had been drinking, were thrown from their car and killed. Thornton remained at the scene of the accident, admitted his fault, and pleaded guilty in court. Case #2: Jennifer Porter, 29, a dance teacher, hit and killed two children on a dark street. She fled the scene, and her folks cleaned up her car and told her to keep her mouth shut. But later the truth came out, and she too wound up in court. Here’s your spot quiz: who got the more severe sentence? Answer: Thornton got 30 years; Porter got house arrest and probation. Oh, one factor I forgot to mention: Thonton is black, and his victims were white. Porter is white and her victims were black. No, of course we don’t have racial bigotry here, and it never influences the law; whatever gave you that idea? These are merely the most recent cases. There was one in Texas in 1963 where a 17 year old girl, Laura Welch, ran a stop sign and crashed into another car, killing the driver. She was not even arrested, let alone charged, and today she is our nation’s first lady, Laura Bush. Tell me more about equal justice.

Then there’s the case of Debra Lafave, a 25 year old middle school teacher of starlet appearance, a stunning blonde. She had sex with a 14 year old student. She has been convicted of child abuse, and registered as a sexual offender, with all that implies. Actually her sentence of house arrest and probation is similar to that of Jennifer Porter. It might have been worse, but the victim’s family made an out of court settlement. Now this may get me more charges of pedophilia, but let’s face it: the average teen boy who gets to have sex with a gorgeous grown woman is hardly dismayed; he’s thrilled and proud. I think when it came to the verge of the trial, that young man didn’t want to testify against the woman he loved and maybe put her away forever for doing him a most singular favor, even if his mother didn’t understand. Rather than face that prospect, he prevailed on his family to pull back. We may never know for sure, as he remains anonymous, but it makes sense to me. He is a victim mainly in the sense that word got out and his family came down hard on him for being a typical male teen who took paradise when it offered.

This reminds me of something I have pondered before: why does a married woman have an affair? (Debra was married.) Well, it could be for practice, be sure she’s in shape to catch another man if she ever needs to. Or revenge, if hubby’s having affair she can’t stop, so she gets back at him by doing it herself. Maybe she likes being courted; hubby takes her for granted, while her lover treats her like a queen. Maybe the danger of exposure turns her on in a way that routine sex doesn’t. She could like being in control for a change, as she is in the affair. Or maybe its just something to do on an otherwise dull afternoon. She just might be in love with the other man, and gives him sex to keep him close. Last and least, she might like the sex itself, not getting enough of it in her marriage. I admit that’s a reach, but it is theoretically possible. As a general rule, men have affairs only for sex, while women can take or leave it; that’s what gives them leverage. Okay, so which applies here, with lovely Debra? Control, perhaps. But it may be a different reason: she’s a little crazy. Debra was raped at age 13 and it threw her for a loop; relating to a boy near that age might be one way she compensated. Folk tend to assume that a beautiful woman has to be happy with her power over men, but that may not be the case in her mind.

Andrew Knight is filing for a patent on a story line. I am wary of this; who is to say what other stories by other writers might have similar elements, and suddenly they have to pay to license those elements from him? Another worrisome case is that of Google trying to make all books searchable online, including new books under copyright. The Association of American Publishers is suing to stop that. No, this is not dog-in-the-manger; why would anyone buy a book if he could get it free by searching out all its interesting portions online? The publishers say Google should buy licenses. I’m inclined to agree.

This year’s hurricanes have rendered many animals homeless as well as people. Susie Lee’s Ferret And Dove Sanctuary in Pensacola, Florida, suffered. I have mentioned them before. They are at www.angelfire.com/theforce/ferret_rescuer/.

NEW SCIENTIST (now that I finally got them to renew my subscription, I’m reading it again) has an article in the 8 October issue on animal rights: we freely brutalize animals, and this shouldn’t be. We try to pretend that we are morally superior to them. “The bottom line is that we cannot justify human domination of non-humans except by appeal to religious superstition focused on the supposed spiritual superiority of humans.” Amen. Does our supposed spiritual superiority justify the brutal slaughter of millions of cows for meals, when we hardly need the meat for our already obese bodies? If so, I’d hate to see spiritual inferiority. Yes, of course this is another of my plugs for vegetarianism. You want to preach to me about morality as you chomp on the butchered scorched carcasses of innocent creatures? Are you in denial about the apparent hypocrisy?

There’s a proposal to give drunk drivers here in Florida pink plates starting with DUI. At first blush (as it were) that’s intriguing; serves them right. I have felt for a long time that we need to get serious about stopping drunk driving, because of the carnage it encourages. But second thoughts give me pause. Would it work? I understand some states are already doing it; it is reducing that carnage? That would make a difference. But what’s to make sure the drunk uses the car so marked? Maybe he takes his spouse’s car, and she has to use his marked car for the grocery shopping, so she gets the raw eggs thrown at her, and the moralistic stares, when she’s innocent and has been trying to get him off the demon bottle for years. Why not paint his whole car pink so he can be identified before he rear-ends the innocent driver in front? How about other colors for other crimes? Surely the child abusers deserve their own tag and color, maybe KID blue, and the murderers theirs, KIL black. We can conveniently distinguish Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and whatever else. Hell, why not require Jews to wear the yellow Star of David again while we’re at it? Democrats can wear brown donkey ears, and Republicans fake gray trunks, so passers-by will know on whom to spit. What a fascinating multi-color society we could have! But I suspect this is one simplistic solution that won’t wash.

Keith Younger sent me a report from Australia relating to smoking. A student researching for her thesis found that the state and federal governments make more profit from smokers than the cigarette companies do, because more than 50% of the price of a packet of cigarettes is tax, and smokers tend to die before they collect much in pensions. So every time the anti-smoking ads start to get results, those lobbies lost funds from the health departments. Say–maybe that’s why you never see the nicotine inhalers in the articles about how to stop smoking: because those actually are effective. I repeat, my wife was a heavy-smoking addict for 50 years until she tried the inhalers, and the first inhalation marked the last cigarette she took. No struggle with lingering cravings, no extraordinary effort of willpower. THEY WORK. It seems that government-sponsored no-smoking programs make sure to include only those things, like abstinence through sheer willpower, that they know won’t work in most cases. Sort of like the anti-VD programs that stress sexual abstinence rather than condoms, knowing that it won’t work. What would the moralists have to do if VD and unwanted pregnancy disappeared? Similar story on the articles about how there is no cure for the common cold, that don’t mention vitamin C except to disparage it. So what happened with the Australian lady’s project? Her university refused to publish it. Any questions?

This has been known for a long time, but there are recent comments on it by William Raspberry and John Leo, normally at opposite ends of the liberal/conservative gradient. The best way to prevent crime is to have fathers in the families. Children raised in two-parent families are less likely to get into gangs or crime. The common adage is that a mother’s love is unconditional, from which come a child’s security, while a father’s love is conditional, and from that comes a child’s conscience. There is something to that.

From a letter by John Bassett in the St. Petersburg Times: “Fundamentalists believe in a god small enough to accommodate their limited world view. Others believe in a god large enough to accommodate the material evidence around us.” so how big is your god?

I am no fan of the Bush administration. I think that if Satan took over, he would put in the same programs we are seeing now. Further evidence is coming to light of American brutality to prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere. Senator John McCain introduced amendments to forbid the torture of prisoners–and Bush opposes them. That says more than all the president’s statements that torture is not used.

I understand that a weekly magazine called Human Events is considered the bible of the right. It published a list of the most harmful books of the past two centuries. It includes books like Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Freud’s Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Darwin’s The Descent of Man, Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed, and Carson’s Silent Spring. You don’t have to be stupid to be conservative, but it evidently helps. I once tried subscribing to National Review, to give the conservatives a fair consideration. This was in the time of the Newt Gingrich problems that led to his departure more or less in disgrace. I opened the first issue I received randomly and read that all the charges against Newt were either false or irrelevant. I knew then that this was not a credible source of any objective information. Decades earlier I had given the Wall Street Journal a similar trial, in the time of the Nixon presidency. That screed could see no evil in Nixon. Then at last it had one criticism. Had it at last seen reality? No, it said that Nixon had not been hard enough on his critics. In the intervening years I have not seen persuasive evidence that “honest conservative” is not an oxymoron.

Sheila Dee sent me an article about why TAPS is played at military funerals. It seems that during the Civil War a captain in the Union army risked his life to drag a wounded soldier to safety. It turned out that it was a Confederate soldier, who was dead. It was also the captain’s son, who had enlisted in the Confederate army without his knowledge. Heartbroken, the captain asked permission to give his son a full military burial, with army band members playing a funeral dirge. That was turned down, but they did give him one musician. He had the musician play a series of notes found in the dead youth’s pocket. Thus TAPS came to be. “Day is done … God is nigh.”

Last column I mentioned my ignorance of the “bases” when a man is making out with a woman: what is third base? One person suggested that third base was without clothing. Another said that in his circle they call it the four Fs: French Kissing, Feeling, Fingering, and Fucking. Teens are evidently more advanced about this sort of thing than they were in my day.

So my relaxation month became crowded to the point of having to skip part of my Publishing Survey review, and stuff got postponed to the next month. Necessary tasks are still piling in. My membership on the Xlibris board of directors is taking time; it’s not necessarily smooth sailing. I have novels to read for critiques; it’s amazing how many folk seem to value my mere opinion, considering I’m known mainly for frivolous fantasy. So it goes. I’m going to try again to relax in part of Dismember, before getting to work on something in Jamboree. Wish me luck.

Last column I remarked on the interior architecture of green peppers. That incurred several responses, so here is a sequel comment. One person remarked that the other colored peppers have similar architecture, and are easier for him to digest. Well, the store had a sale on the other colors, bringing them down to the price of green peppers–$2.99 at Publix–so we bought one each of yellow, orange, and red. They do seem to be similar except for the colors, and I can’t tell any difference in taste. Maybe my palate is uneducated. The orange one looks like carrot when sliced, and the red one like tomato. Since the carrots on sale locally tend to taste like turpentine–I was raised on a New England farm, so I know what decent carrot tastes like–this tended to fake us out. As it happened they raised the price of tomatoes, so we substituted apples, and again were faked out by the apple-colored pepper. Then they dropped the price of green, so we’re back green again. At least we got try try the full color array. They sure are pretty.

One person marveled that we couldn’t afford the more expensive peppers. He thought I should have made enough money for them via my writing. Herein lies a lesson in economics that voters would do well to heed. I’m not poor; my estate passed a million dollars twenty years ago and is far beyond that now. It’s that I don’t care to pay more than a thing is worth. As I put it to my daughters when they were children: I would not pay two cents for a one cent gum ball. (Never mind that today you can’t get a one cent gum ball for a nickel.) So we shop the sales and stop buying what gets too expensive. My wife, who is surely typical of the distaff gender in this respect, zeroes in on sales from miles away. Half price sheet sets, reduced price chairs, food–anything. She buys her prescription medication pills at double potency and we cut them in half for the doses, saving money. When haircuts passed a dollar I stopped getting them at barbershops and my wife and I started doing each other’s hair. When she was unable to continue that, because of her illness last year, I started growing my hair long, and now have a solid ponytail behind, and comb-over thinness on top. Getting old is a bitch. We are aware of the fuel economy of our cars, which is why the 45 mpg Prius gets most of the driving rather than the 19 mpg Town & Country van. Anywhere you look, we are living economically. It’s our nature. So yes, we could afford a dollar more for a colored pepper. And no, we won’t spend it; we’ll substitute or do without, as we did with the tomatoes.

So what’s the economic lesson? It’s that this is the typical pattern of the self-made millionaire. Someone who grew up poor and then got money by hard work and frugal habits. Folk who inherit fortunes don’t necessarily appreciate the value of money, and may spend it wastefully; they don’t count. Most of us keep the economic habits that got us where we are now. So if the government cuts taxes on the rich to stimulate the economy, it won’t work; the rich will just put more money in the bank or investments. They won’t spend it on more expensive peppers. That’s why the tax cuts of recent years have had minimal effect on the economy, and major effect on the number of billionaires extant. To stimulate the economy you have to put the money in the hands of the poor; they will use it to survive, having no choice. That’s what isn’t being done. So are those currently in power economic idiots? No, they know this. It’s that they want to reproduce their kind, and make more billionaires, buy more politicians, and fuck the poor. It is happening exactly the way they designed it. The economic idiots are the poor who continue to vote these fuckers into office. Anyone who shops for peppers should be able to appreciate this reality.

More adventure in groceries (you can tell I lead a dull life): they had a nice price on five pound boxes of Clementine tangerine/orange crossbreeds, so we bought a box. I’m not sure how an orange mates with a tangerine, here in Mundania, but we do have their offspring. But I wondered about the box: it is sort of thin wood panels with four very solid uprights, and only netting for the top. That surely helps them to stack high without squashing the delicate fruit, but it’s an unusual design. Then it came to me: herring boxes without topses. From the song “Clementine.” “Light she was and like a fairy, and her shoes were number nine; herring boxes without topses; sandals were for Clementine.” Cute. My wife says that number nine is humor, as it is a large shoe size. She wears size twelve. I say the angels have big feet. But there remains the specter of the shoe salesman who may inquire snidely “And do you want the oars with those boats?” Now that song is running constantly through my noggin. I have the words in my spot song collection I typed out as a teen, and when I couldn’t remember some words, I looked them up. I like the conclusion: after Clementine hits her foot upon a splinter and drowns, “How I missed her, how I missed her, how I missed my Clementine. Till I kissed her little sister and forgot my Clementine.” I think he was a turd to forget her like that, but that sister was probably a pretty girl. I wonder what her name was? Tangelo?

I looked at a book of haiku at the author’s invitation. I said that the poems weren’t following the traditional haiku form: three lines, of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. He said that’s passé; no one writes them that way today. Oh? I like to think of myself as forward-looking, if not actually a maverick, but some things don’t really change. I’m not a poet or poetic scholar, but in poetry, more than in almost anything else except maybe a woman, form defines the type. You don’t have an 18 line sonnet or a three line limerick; you do them as they are defined, or you have something else. So how can a non 5-7-5 poem be a haiku? Am I really out of touch?

Ed Howdershelt, a sometimes correspondent, told me of Xandros, a Linux distribution. Now that interested me, because I use Linux and I write a fantasy series called Xanth. If ever something seems cut out for me, it would be Xanth Linux, or something in that neighborhood. He said it installed on his system with four clicks, just as advertised. Okay, we had a dialogue. He got an extra distribution he didn’t need, so he motorcycled up and brought it to us. We have an extra system we’ve hardly used because we couldn’t get my keyboard on it, and my wife didn’t want to struggle for hours to download the current Eudora mail handler; typically the download of anything gets interrupted and we have to start over, and then it doesn’t work anyway. So we much prefer to load from discs; at least they work, and serve as a backup when there is need. Four clicks? Xandros didn’t load at all. Well, it got on the system, then refused to recognize us. It kept asking for a nonexistent password. Finally my wife managed to get it reinstalled, and this time it worked. But the keyboard section was hidden, so couldn’t be modified. I thought it was only Windows that took pride in hiding things to the user can’t find them, let alone adapt them. But my theory is that disaffected Windows programmers migrated to open source, taking their used-be-damned attitude with them.

Came a fan letter from Farrell McGovern: he’s into Linux; anything he could do to help? I told him about the Xandros problem. So he got it and downloaded it, and soon got us the name of the key file. With that my wife was able to trace it, buried way deep in the labyrinth, and modify it. So now I could use that system. Except that it won’t go online. The Windows that it came with uses its modem to go online, but Xandros can’t figure it out. I love the open source idea, but sometimes I wonder whether its programmers actually know their business. I just assumed they knew about modems. So that system remains unused. So why don’t we query the Xandros proprietors about it? Actually, I’d like to register with them, because it seems like a nice software package, and I’d be happy to put it on my writing system and review it in this column. You know the song about the hole in the bucket? Catch 22? We can’t take the system online to make that query or registration. I suppose we could do it via Windows, but that doesn’t seem quite Kosher. But Xandros has had one effect: for years I’ve been telling my wife what a fun game Shisen-Sho is. It’s a sort of a gravity-tile/Mahjongg variant, and I play it to relax when I have time. But it’s on Linux, and she’s on Windows. But Xandros has it, so she tried it–and became addicted. My fastest time is just over 15 minutes; now all of her top ten are well under that. What have I done?

My recumbent bike ran over a roofing nail and got a flat. I pondered, and concluded it was overdue for refurbishing anyway, after 9 years, so took it into the bike shop. They said they were so busy they couldn’t handle it then. So I took it home and trotted out my adult scooter, with 16 inch wheels (I won’t use one of those scooters with chair casters for wheels), and for a month I scooted the 1.6 miles round trip to fetch in the newspapers and mail. And you know, it was okay. The scooter runs about two minutes slower on that trip than the bike, 17 minutes instead of 15, but that’s not bad. I changed feet every tenth of a mile, but later tried it more often, and now I just push three times per foot and switch. It takes more energy than the cycle, so I wear lighter clothing to alleviate overheating. When I finally got the bike fixed, after a month–they had to replace the whole chain assembly–I decided to continue using the scooter too, alternately. The thing is, I’m getting older, my balance may become less certain, and the scooter is easier to handle in that respect. In a few days the bike suddenly dumped me, as if proving my point about balance. Then I discovered that it wasn’t me; the metal rod that connects the steering for the front wheel had severed, corroded through. Well, I could fix that by putting the wheel in its rear position, that did not need that rod. Only the connection would not budge. I put a pipe wrench on it and hammered: nothing. Sigh. So I took it back to the shop. The man put an ordinary wrench on it and it came loose no effort, making me look like an idiot. You know how a jar with a tight lid can be passed around a room of men, and they all try it, but it won’t budge? Then a woman tries it and it comes right off? Maybe the last man got it started and didn’t know it. Maybe. So the shop did it for me, and now I’m getting used to the bumpier ride and hypersensitive steering promoted by the wheel set back. I’ll get used to it in time. I had the wheel set forward for seven years; those reflexes aren’t undone in a day. I had to adjust the front wheel brake after I got it back; it was too tight so the wheel would not spin freely. You’d think shops would check for such things. So the main thing is the discovery how well the scooter can substitute. The whole scooter cost less than just the repairs on the bike. I’m still learning things, even at age 71.

Our Town & Country van started acting odd. It would surge and fade, surge and fade. We took it in to Chrysler, and they discovered that mice had eaten away the insulation of a key component, so the wires were shorting out. We know how that works; it’s like the demyelinizing my wife’s nerves suffered, shorting out and putting her in the wheelchair for months. She’s fine now, in that respect, thanks to treatment, and so is the van. But that alerted us to the problem of mice in the garage. Now normally I prefer to live and let live, but that $200 repair bill was a nuisance. So we put out bait. The mice loved it; they carried off whole packets of it unopened, hoarding them in their lair. Then they died. That puts my mind into depressive channels. I relate well to depressives; there could be a reason for that, could I but fathom it. The problem is that the mice know no bounds; they chew into anything that interests them, heedless of the harm done. That in time incurs a deadly response. Now a rat has moved in, and is gobbling up the bait. It will be sorry. Okay, there is one species that’s worse: mankind. We delve into all corners of the world, exhausting resources, generating garbage and destroying wildlife, just because we can. At what point will God conclude that mankind is a mistake, and put out bait? Yes, of course I’m agnostic, so this is just a thought. But if I were religious, I’d be distinctly nervous. Is there a Heaven for those who ruthlessly despoil the world? I doubt it.

Every so often I report on my ne’er-do-well archery. I finally put the old fashioned arrow rest on the left-hand bow, hoping the wild misses would stop. Well, they have; now the misses are much closer to the target. This morning, Sunday, before I started this column, my score was 3.5-3 right side because of two misses at the end, and was 2-2 with 3 arrows to go. The first hit the center; was I finally going to break even? The second missed touchingly close low right. Now it was 3-3. So I aimed a bit left and higher for the final loose–and the arrow sailed up to miss high. So it was 3-4, another losing session. Then as I put away the bow I discovered that the sights had dropped, causing me to aim high. Equipment failure had caused me to lose. So maybe there is hope for the future–or maybe that left side will find other ways to preserve my losing streak. And a later note: this column is running a day late, so my Thursday archery session come the day of this editing. Right side was 2.5-2, and left side was 4-2. Wow–I had a positive score! (Did someone say it couldn’t be done?) Maybe that’s a fluke, but I’m taking it as hope for the future.

I used to like to watch TV football. That interest has gradually waned. I can give a reason. I watched the game between the #1 and #2 College teams, from California and Texas. At one point the Texas runner’s knee was down, ending the play. But he lateraled to another, who scored what turned out to be the winning touchdown. They showed the video several times, but the officials had missed it and apparently the California coach wasn’t allowed to protest. So the college championship of the nation was decided by a bad call. What did they think it was, an election? Why, when the truth is known, don’t they do it right? Was the Texas team proud to “win” on that basis? I wouldn’t be. They may have their reasons, but this sort of thing alienates me. Why play a game unless it is correctly called? Which puts me in mind of a story I made up years ago: two billionaires made a bet on who could assemble a winning football team. One spent money like water, signing up the best players in the world and training them rigorously. The other didn’t bother; any cheap players would do. Then came the time for the game. The two billionaires didn’t watch; they relaxed over a nice meal and drinks. They didn’t care about football, just about their bet. Then came the result: Team B, the poor one, had won. “How did you do it?” the first billionaire asked. “You couldn’t have found better players or coaches. I bought the best there are.” “I bought the officials,” the second billionaire replied smugly.

I read recently that a study shows that couples who have a TV set in their bedroom have sex only half as often as those who don’t. Once a week instead of twice. And all this time I thought it was my advancing age. Sigh. And we don’t even turn on that bedroom TV.

Relationships has now been published by Venus Press. I received a fan letter remarking on how I had done an erotic novel for Venus. This requires a bit of clarification: this is not a novel but a collection of 12 stories, and it’s not erotic but has erotic elements. That is, some stories have no sex, some have some, and some have a lot. The point is not sex but the relationships, mostly between men and women. It has always bothered me how published stories were generally either the prince kisses the princess and 9 months later the stork delivers a baby, or the prince fucks the bejesus out of the princess for six hours straight, and is just warming up, no other details. Phew! Bring out the saddle soap. I prefer fiction that is in between, with neither the sex nor the humanity ignored, and that is the type I have written here. I wondered how Venus classified the volume, as it doesn’t have a story collection category, and saw it labeled as Contemporary. So I checked the Contemporary section of the site, and it wasn’t there. Didn’t make the cut, I guess.

As I proofread the galleys I enjoyed revisiting the stories. I like them all; otherwise I wouldn’t have written them. But different ones strike my fancy at different times. This time it was “For Real,” in which a college boy is assigned a pro girlfriend. That is, a company sends him a girl without charge, and sends a college girl a boy, to demonstrate its wares to the college and the world. It’s a free-sample advertising ploy. The “partners” are trained to be ideal. And you know, they are; it goes way beyond sex. If you were looking for the ideal partner, this would be it. She’s pretty rather than beautiful, average rather than smart, and she can be hurt, but she is totally dedicated to his welfare, to the limit of ethical responsibility, and she is ethical. She has a significant beneficial affect on him, and the boy has similar effect on the college girl. At the end of the semester it is over, but he is signing up with that company to learn to be a partner. So that he can become the kind of boy a girl like her could love for real. And this is the kind of story I write when I’m not catering to the market, but writing for real. It may pass without much notice, satisfying neither the prudes nor the prurients and certainly not the critics, but I like it regardless, and believe it could make a great movie. Dream on.

So okay, Venus is an erotic publisher, and this collection remains a marginal call. I remarked before about how some of my fiction would likely poop their panties, but that this wasn’t that. I was slightly in error: they did edit out a bit of poop, where the girl hacked into the school video surveillance system and watched her boyfriend when he was sick with the runs; I can’t think why jetting out hot brown sludge would turn off a sex-minded reader. But there was another effect: the proprietress remarked in passing that she wouldn’t mind seeing another such collection. That got my attention, and I checked my Story idea file. Now I’m writing another collection. I was writing a story titled “Doll,” the doll being a life-sized android that can be fitted with anatomically correct male or female parts and is programmed to respond to key commands like “kiss” or “thrust.” It’s some doll. Three college boys and three college girls share expenses purchasing it, and they have a sexual ball with it. But no need to bore you with dull details. The Relationships galleys arrived amidst this story, so I had to break off writing. An inset story in “Hot Game” caught my attention, and fermented in my mind, and when I completed the proofing I wrote a sequel to that inset, titled “Friends of Bolivia.” I don’t think I’ve done that before: sequeled an inset. It’s about an affair between a homely black female prisoner and the white post commander, which leads in a surprising and savage direction. Then I returned to “Doll.” Thus the ongoing adventure of writing; I can never be quite sure what I will write next.

I receive fairly regular queries about the 8th Incarnations of Immortality novel I wrote, Under a Velvet Cloak, featuring Nox, the Incarnation of Night. It has not found a traditional print publisher, and since earlier volumes in this series were bestsellers and there may be a movie made from the first, On A Pale Horse, I am reluctant to let this go to small press or electronic print just yet. But I wonder. One editor had every reason to take the novel, but found it to be not up to the standard of the others and turned it down. So I have shown it to I think five non-editorial readers, and only one even commented, liking a particular scene, not expressing an opinion on the novel as a whole. That’s it. I can’t even get an opinion on its merit. What does it mean when a novel disappears into a void: no positive, negative, or in between comments? It may be that it is inferior to the others; writers have their ups and downs and things don’t always come together perfectly. But why didn’t anyone say so? I mean, any real reader; editors don’t count. So it could be that there are elements in it that turn off readers for other reasons, but that they find awkward to remark on. So they simply shut up. Such as when the Angel Gabriel is portrayed as having a robust interest in sex. I don’t know. I suspect it is both: not as good, and with turnoffs. And I’ll wait. If there is no interest, come the movie, I’ll reconsider.

As I believe I have mentioned, Wife #1 and Daughter #2 control our movie schedule, which is why we don’t see hot-girl movies. But we did see the first Narnia movie, and the King Kongremake. Both were pretty good, if not perfect. Both tended to throw in fantasy creatures or dinosaurs galore with no real rationale; do you really think human beings ever mixed with dinosaurs or unicorns? It’s been a long time since I read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I didn’t remember a big battle in it; I understand the battle occurred and took something like one and a quarter pages, while in the movie it’s the main event. Par for that course. And how did a 25 foot tall ape exist on an island, with no big-ape community? But let’s face it, these are movies; there’s no place for common sense or fidelity to the original stories.

I also watched some videos, before my supposedly relaxed schedule socked in tight. House of Sand and Fog, which depicts a dreadful struggle for a house that winds up pretty well destroying the participants. Ugly, but a savagely good movie. Dangerous Life of Altar Boys, which I think had potential but in the end sort of fizzled. So alter boys are not angelic, and they do have dreams of super-heroes; is that all? Blazing Saddles, a parody of westerns that lays it on so thick it becomes dull. But the discussion following it was interesting. It explained how the notorious farting scene, where the cowboys ate beans and eased themselves up to let out foul-smelling noises, was expurgated of the key sounds for the theater. So the cowboys lifted themselves in a kind of slow silent ballet, the point lost. Wow.

Richard Vallance sent me a video that appeared in England and may not make it to uptight America: The Root of All Evil? The answer: Religion. I have pondered for decades whether religion has not brought as much harm as good to the world. I never joined a religion, not because I lacked a moral compass, but because I saw no clear consistent ennobling of participants brought about by religion. I did see evangelistic hypocrites, and historically there was the Inquisition, which was about as unJesus as anything could be. Well, this video’s thesis seems to be that there is no doubt: religion is evil. What about indoctrinating children into organized superstition rather than letting them grow up and make their own choices after studying the issues? Is this a form of child abuse? What about threatening children with Hell, literally, eternal torture, if they aren’t scared into being “good”? (What is it about those who proclaim their religion, and their affinity for torture?) The case is devastating, as an evangelical minister lectures the interviewer on his arrogance, showing astonishing arrogance himself. Why struggle with all the conflicting theories of Science, when you can settle for Faith with no thinking at all? What I find frightening is how many people of this nation do settle for just that. The video suggests that religion is in fact a dangerous virus, warping people’s minds with twisted “morality.” I remember a comment commentator Paul Harvey made decades ago: all over the world, people are killing people, in the name of religion. I do believe that were Jesus Christ to return to Earth today, he would reject the warmongers and moneychangers who are so freely taking his name in vain.

I squeeze in reading when I can. There was The Kinshield Legacy, by K C May, a rousing hard-hitting fantasy adventure. Two novels by Marilyn Peake, completing her Fisherman’s Son trilogy. Rarity From the Hollow, by Robert Eggleton, featuring a precocious child who saves the galaxy from destruction by infesting roaches. And PLAYBOY 50 YEARS, a compendium of their art and intention. Some nice pictures.

When checking my library for something else–ever thus!–I spied my collection of MALEDICTA, the International Journal of Verbal Aggression edited by Reinhold Aman. This was published annually in book form for a quarter century or so, and there’s not much like it elsewhere. Some tidbits selected from pages of them: how different folk “do it”: Admirals do it fleetingly. Bigots do it intolerably. Cardiologists do it heartily. Hitchhikers do it with their thumb. Seventh Day Adventists do it until the Second Coming. Writers do it literally. Then there are the mock book titles: The Golden Stream by I P Long. The Tiger’s Revenge by Claude Balls. Under the Grandstand by Seymour Butts. Antlers in the Trees, by Hoo Goost, the Moose. The Hole in the Mattress by Mr. Completely. I used to love those in high school. And colorful insults: She’s so dumb she couldn’t add up to two without taking off her blouse. You’re slick as snot on a marble. She’s a girl who can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. You should have been a hemorrhoid because you’re such a pain in the ass. And how to decipher personal ads: Athletic = no tits. Good Listener = borderline autistic. Redhead = bad dye job. Young at heart = old bat. Free spirit = banging your sister. Thoughtful = says “Excuse me” when he farts. Honest = pathological liar. And Shit Happens as interpreted by various religions, politics, famous people, professions, etc.: Confucianism = Confucius say Shit Happens. Creationism = And the Lord said “Let there be shit” … and there came piles of it. After six days of this shit, He rested. Islam = If shit happens, it is the will of Allah. Jehovah’s Witnesses = Shit happens door to door. Quakers = Let us not fight over this shit. Libertarianism = Hands off my shit! Beethoven = Shit, shit, shit … shiiiit! Descartes = I shit, therefore I am. Julius Caesar = I came, I saw, I shat. Teddy Roosevelt = Grunt softly and take a big shit. Politician = My fellow Americans, all I stand for is shit. Psychologist = Shit is in your mind. Waitress = You want fries with this shit? Microsoft = NO! That shit looks and feel like our shit. Wal-Mart = We sell our shit for less, always. Dyslexia = Tihs happens. The address is MALEDICTA PRESS, Dr. Reinhold Aman, PO Box 14123, Santa Rosa, CA 95402-6123. aman@sonic.net www.sonic.net/maledicta/ . Tell him I sent you; he could use your support. No shit. His politics are not mine, but MALEDICTA is some effort. What he doesn’t know about verbal aggression isn’t worth shit.

I allowed the last week of the month to update the Publishing survey and write this column. Naturally everything else socked in to take my time. I had to set two books and the copyedited manuscript for Xanth # 30 Stork Naked aside until the column cleared, and the column is running late. We finally got the heat pump I have mentioned before fixed, after more than two years, but that came out of column time. My front tooth, whose implant was supposed to take 2 weeks, has now been 15 months. The enamel surfacing came, and it fit perfectly–but was the wrong color. Someone in a lab somewhere had ignored the specified shade, so that it would stand out in my face. So it is being sent back, and I have another 3 weeks to go. That too came out of column time. And of course I have household duties; I make most of the meals now, wash the dishes, and go into town and doctor visits with my wife, not taking a chance on there being a problem with her being alone, so my working time is not what it was. I think I mentioned how getting old is a bitch; don’t do it if you have a choice.

Sudoku is the number game that has swept the world. You have to fill in the numbers 1-0 on each column and row, and in each of 9 sub-squares. My wife now has whole books of those games. I tried one; it took me an hour, and I wound up with two numbers wrong in the rows; I fixed them, but then they were wrong in the columns. I had to quit; I can’t afford the time. But it is clearly a good game: simple rules anyone can understand, but hard as hell to get right. Like writing a story, actually.

I’m a health nut; that’s why I exercise and watch what I eat. That’s not why I’m a vegetarian, but that doesn’t hurt. (SF writer Larry Niven tried to tell me vegetarianism is unhealthy. Well, let’s see which of us lives longer.) There are many health newsletters; I subscribed to five, and whittled them down over the years until finally staying with the best: ALTERNATIVES, with Dr. David Williams. Some top-rated ones failed the Vitamin C test, claiming it is ineffective against the common cold. I’ll say it again: there are those who know Vitamin C doesn’t work–and there are those who have actually tried it. I remain amazed by the determined ignorance of most of the medical profession. C doesn’t stop the flu, though. I read recently that selenium helps stop the flu. Interesting; I’m taking that for my prostate, so maybe that will substitute for the flu shot I was unable to get. Anyway, this time ALTERNATIVES talked about lymph, and it’s fascinating. We all know how the body is networked with blood vessels, but the lymph network is about as intricate. The lymph is a fluid that comes, as I understand it, from the blood and the interstices between cells; it collects in its own vessels, goes through assorted lymph nodes, and eventually is returned to the blood. But it travels the backwaters, as it were, and lacks the pumping action of the heart, so it can be sluggish. Health is improved significantly if the lymph flow is improved, somewhat the way a city’s health is improved if sewer blockages are kept clear. But how is that done? Well, one way is massage–not heavy, but light, more like a gentle stroking of the skin. I’m still reading about it, but I think I want to learn that massage.

Email I received: “Old people are worth millions. Take into consideration the silver in their hair, the gold in their teeth, the stones in their kidneys, lead in their feet and the gas in their stomachs.” I’m glad to know it, having all those assets.

We have a local character. Aside from me, I mean. His name is Joe Redner. I met him once, passingly, at a program. He’s about 6 years my junior. He owns several girlie establishments–you know, nude dancing–and seems constantly in trouble with the bluenoses. He claims to have had 25 female sexual partners and has been married twice. Now he says he is gay. Is it true, or is it a ploy? I suspect only he knows for sure. It sure stirred up the community.

They may have found a drug that can be inhaled that stirs passion on both males and females. They tried it on female rats, and one sniff sent them seeking males for sex. I can see the future: men will put it in gift roses and wait for the women to sniff them. Can they call it date rape when the woman is begging for it? There may be some interesting legal cases.

A reader sent me a link to www.asimovs.com/discus/ where someone opened a discussion “Anyone read Piers Anthony? Or do you consider him a hack? Seems this person read one of my columns and wondered why I wasn’t mentioned elsewhere. The initial consensus seems to be that I’m a hack despite showing promise early on. Well, two things about that: early on I was just another writer, struggling to get my work into print. Then I moved to fantasy, became a best seller, and didn’t have to struggle any more. But the choice was really that of the publishers. Readers are great at blaming the authors, without realizing that they don’t see what the publishers don’t publish. So I made my fortune on what the publishers wanted. But I did not stop writing ambitious things, and the leverage of my bestsellers enabled me to get some serious work also into print. Like Tatham Mound, Firefly, and the GEODYSSEY historical fiction series. Or, for that matter, Relationships. If someone reads those and still calls me a hack, well, that’s his opinion; he’s locked in. But I have noticed that generally the hack-accusers don’t read my serious work; indeed they seem deliberately unaware of it, and they prefer to judge me on their own ignorance. I call those the real hacks. Still, some here do read; one says that Spider Legs, my collaboration with Clifford Pickover, was possibly the worst book he’d ever read. “It was so bad I couldn’t stop reading it.” Interesting comment. Another said “With a name like Piers, he’s got to be good.” To which another replied “Just think, if he called himself ‘Mangled Baby Ducks Anthony,’ he’d be even better!” Another liked the Incarnations of Immortality series, but felt the “blogging” at the end was distasteful. That’s the Author’s Notes, written before blogs existed; most readers really like them. Another conjectures that I’m a strong backer of self publishing because I want to write what I want to write. That’s a half truth: each part of it is correct, but my reason for supporting self publishing is to make it possible for other writers, who haven’t gotten lucky as I did, to get published too. That’s a rather different motive than the one implied. Another says that she (I suspect it’s a she) read a book of mine that was so AWFUL that she blocked the title from her mind. It is about men needing to cheat and women having to put up with it, with a portrayal of “love” that is violently sexual with emotional betrayal. This is interesting; can anyone out there tell me what title she was thinking of, because I’m not aware of writing such a book. Could it be her take on Firefly? Then she tried what sounds like DoOon Mode, and it made her sick. The next person says that’s the most outrageous thing he’s read in months, and is beneath contempt. He’s not referring to the distorted comment, but to the author, me, and in contrast he extolls Terry Pratchett as one of the best writers in literature today. Others comment on my story “In the Barn,” wherein the milkers are big-breasted women–and, surprise, one gets it right, as a message story intended to be an animal-rights shocker. Some wonder whether my stuff is really science fiction. No, it’s mostly science fantasy or straight fantasy. One person conjectures that I spent ten times as much time writing Macroscope as a Xanth novel, and that the Xanth earns ten times as much as Macroscope. Well, not quite–five times might be closer–but the essence is correct. The other part of that equation is that I may not be able to get a quality novel into print at all, while I have actually sold Xanth novels on titles alone–without even naming the titles. If publishers wanted quality material I’d still be writing GEODYSSEY novels. Another person says that he puts me firmly in the misogynist category, and that in my collaboration with a dead teen boy, Through the Ice, “Anthony spends a bunch of pages telling everyone how busy and successful he is, and what a labor it was to pick up a juvenile attempt at writing–basically, if it sucks, don’t blame me.” I hope some readers will check that book to see what I actually said. He concludes “After reading that, I can barely stand mention of the pompous ass.” My impression is that he hated my fiction before he ever read it; a reader does sort of get out of a book what he puts into it. Then comes one who says “Could it be possible (Anthony) enjoys Xanth as much as the people who still read it? I feel moved to say–don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Yes, I love Xanth; I just don’t want to be limited to it. And I’m trying to change the game by supporting self publishing and electronic publishing. Another says “Piers Anthony is a midget of a man who likes to call himself OGRE!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Shorty short short!” I presume he means intellectually, as I stand 5′ 10½ inches tall barefoot, which is more like average than midget–and what would be wrong with being physically short, anyway? My publisher Judy-Lynne del Rey, who gave the name to DEL REY Books, stood something like three and a half feet tall, but I call her a giant for what she accomplished, and I liked her personally. I took the ogre identity when I was accused of being an ogre at conventions, before I had ever even attended a convention, which shows the way of that. My critics never bothered unduly with accuracy. But of course the ogres of Xanth are justifiably proud of their stupidity; maybe I’m missing something. Further along another person nails it: consider the PUBLISHERS, who look only at the bottom line. Amen.

Interesting email I received: Congressman John Conyers, Jr., www.johnconyers.com/ , is taking steps to begin an inquiry into possible impeachable offenses by the Bush Administration. Seems NBC is investigating reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) conducted wiretaps of CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour, whose husband served as a senior adviser to the John Kerry presidential campaign. Hm–that’s not the first time the spouse of a critic has been illegally targeted by this administration. But that’s the mere tip of this iceberg. I will watch with interest as it slowly brings the Titanic down.

I looked up a reader site, http://bambit.kusangpalo.com/, by Balay ni Bambit, a 40+ year old Filipino housewife, because she Googled for “No sex causes bad eyes” and came across my discussion in a year 2000 column, which she quotes. My corollary was that screwing caused better vision for my wife, when I screwed her loose glasses frames tight. That’s not the only time I have mentioned screwing with my wife; the other was when I got a burst blood vessel in my eye from screwing bookshelf screws tight as she drilled the holes.

NEW SCIENTIST had an article on the prospect of multiple universes. I have pondered this before, notably in science fiction where we are light years ahead of contemporary scientists, but this is a good take on it. A new String Theory describes 10500 universes (that’s ten raised to the 500th power), which is a fair number. So how does this relate to the price of beans in Bohemia? It’s that the fundamental laws of our universe seem largely haphazard, coincidentally making it possible for life to evolve, and thus enabling our presence to marvel at it all. How can this be? The chances against such a coincidental collection of just-right laws are astronomical. If you’re religious, you don’t sweat it; God made this shit in six days, and on the seventh day he was pooped out. But I’m not religious, so I need a natural explanation. And that is this nearly infinite array of universes. You can do things with infinity that are difficult in more limited quarters. There can be every conceivable and many inconceivable variants of universe, each just a whisper of the memory of the odor of fecal difference apart. Somewhere in that vasty array will be a universe where life is possible–and that is our universe. So it’s not chance but natural selection and evolution. Sorry about that, God.

Also in NEW SCIENTIST: if you want to help the planet by buying an eco-friendly car, there’s a much more effective way: become a vegetarian. Considering the amount of fossil fuel needed to cultivate and process a meaty diet, that’s worse than the car. Of course I drive a Prius and am a vegetarian, so you can practically see the halo.

The University of South Florida magazine has an interesting article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Their mission was to help the children ages 2-17 who were just coming to the realization that they had lost everything. Some had waded through neck-high rushing water, pushing away snakes and dead birds to evacuate. Many had survived three days without food, water, or toilets at the Superdome. Some had heard gunshots or witnessed a brutal beating. Some were in a bus taking them to safe shelter when it overturned, imbedding glass in their necks and splattering blood. It turned out that mere words were inadequate to soothe them. They needed to be stabilized and calmed, and to feel safe, but the shelters were chaotic. So the USF folk brought toys, beach balls, crayons, pictures, puppets–and tight, tender hugs. And the response was instantaneous, with squeals, smiles, laughter, and play. There is surely a lesson there. My father did relief work for the British Friends Service Council in Spain after its civil war of 1936-39, feeding the children who were suffering the horrors of war, and reported similar reactions. Then he was arrested and kicked out of the country, which was how we came to America as World War Two was revving up.

The Hightower Lowdown, a radical newsletter, describes how Toyota is building cars in America, paying wages and benefits comparable to Detroit’s. Its high quality, good mileage cars are selling–yes, we bought one–while the Detroit gas guzzlers are suffering. With a national health care program, General Motors would save $1,500 per car and the health of the nation would improve; but the CEOs seem to be more interested in richly feathering their own nests. “They have become blind to the looming threat that their avarice poses to the social order … and to their own well-being.” Then Robert Paulk is quoted: “This is the thing that revolutions are made of.” That’s my concern. I think of the French Revolution, when the oppressive rulers were finally overthrown and slaughtered wholesale. I don’t want to see it in America.

I commented last column on Kothe Gogolewski’s children’s novel Tato. Her site is www.TRI-Studio.com . She read my novel Pandora Park to a class of children, anonymously (that is, they did not know the author), and recorded their reactions. Half liked it very well; others found it okay, and a few didn’t like it. I made many spot changes of vocabulary they had trouble with. So it has been child-vetted. Now my agent will market it, and we’ll see.

I have a huge remaining pile of clippings, magazine articles, and notes, but I’m running late, my time is out, and I must stop. I hope I didn’t overlook something vital.

Okay, by this time regular readers of this column will know the story of my fling with the sexy maiden publisher Venus: it is listed in my ongoing survey of electronic publishers, I received and ran a negative report, then had to nullify it because it seemed it was from a person with a grudge and did not reflect the real nature of the publisher. There are been several more of those recently, relating to other publishers, causing me to rethink my policy, as noted in the introduction to that survey. Anyway, that interchange wound up with my placing my collection of mainstream stories, Relationships, with Venus, and it was published electronically in January, and in trade paperback February. It’s a nice edition, and I enjoyed paging through it, refreshing my memories of the stories. Part of the deal with such publishers is that the author helps in promotion; they don’t have the budgets big traditional print publishers do. So while I prefer to range the universe in these columns, and avoid pushing my own books apart from just letting readers know they exist, this time I am obliged to promote. After all, if the book bombs, the fair damsels at Venus will dump me like an infected male skunk, and the sequel volume I am now writing will have to be self published elsewhere. So please, check it out, and buy the electronic or the print edition if you are so moved. Venus is an erotic publisher; I haven’t read any of their novels, but chances are they’re way sexier than most of these stories are. I believe it was a marginal call for them, as this is a collection of intense relationships, some of which have erotic elements, rather than an erotic book per se. That means that sales won’t be as good, and the publisher is taking a risk. They have done a good job, and I’d hate to have them regret it. They even forwarded me a review–I think it’s been decades since a publisher did that–by Nickole Yarbrough that touched on every story, rating each favorably or unfavorably. Some stories that were carefully nuanced evidently were too subtle and were rated failures, but in general this was a fair review in that the reviewer seemed to follow the principles described later in this column. I don’t ask that a review be favorable–though this one rated the collection a B, which is favorable–but that it be honest, and this one is.

To encourage you, let me comment in more detail than I have before on the one story that is fully erotic. This is a novelette-length effort “Hot Game,” about a lovely female officer in the Army we’ll call Nuance who protests sexual harassment, wins her case, but then is quietly banished to Nothing Atoll, a military prison island where nothing ever happens. This is how the military deals with uppity women who don’t put out for their superiors. Many others there, including the prisoners, have similar cases. It is a dead-end, physically and career-wise, absolutely boring. Yet there is something about it. For one thing, there are no disciplinary problems, and folk there, both administrative and prisoner, seem contented. The entire post seems to shut down during “Happy Hour” and hardly anyone is around. Where do they go? She sees some prisoners, male and female, out of their cells, sunning themselves on the beach; how can this be? Nuance tries to inquire, but no one will talk. Finally she goes to the stockade and addresses a female prisoner she saw on the beach. “What does it take?” And the woman replies “See Famish.” Famish turns out to be an extremely thin black female prisoner. She agrees to tell Nuance everything, provided she will keep her mouth shut. She agrees–and thus commences a sexual adventure like none other. For it is straight, raw heterosexual sex that powers this post, prisoners and personnel together, male, female, black, white, mixing it up according to definite rules: the Hot Game. Where every contest is sexual and public (for post personnel), the winner being the one who makes the other climax first. And Nuance, as the loveliest woman on the post, is in top demand. Provided she is ready to compete for the points that can be be used to buy almost anything. Such as when a homely black female prisoner buys a 24 hour date with the post commander, including sex and being seen with him throughout. Or when a black male prisoner buys one hour watching the female officers exercise, all naked. He stands there at the edge of the mat with a huge erection. I doubt that even the straight erotic novels have sex quite like this; it’s not more evocative, but it is different. Neither do the other stories in the volume, so if all you want is sex, be warned. But if your interest is in well-written, mature, intense relationships of diverse kinds that don’t censor out the erotic aspect where it is relevant, this is the volume. I don’t just write funny fantasy for children.

Last year February and March were pretty well wiped out for much writing, because of my wife’s illness. This year February was as low, but for a different reason: I had agreed to read some novels for blurbing, and suddenly they all jammed in, anywhere up to 300,000 words long. I’m a slow reader, and reading tends to put me to sleep. It’s not boredom, just relaxation. So I try to shift off, reading ten pages or so, then doing something else, such as clipping back encroaching foliage along the drive or writing a bit. But then it’s hard to get back to the reading. So often I just carry the book and walk around the study, reading. It’s a chore. So why do I do it? Because newer writers need the boost of blurbs, and I try to follow the Golden Rule, helping them when I can. For those who don’t know, a blurb is a short favorable comment, typically run on the back of the book, so potential readers will see it and say “Piers Anthony likes this book? I’d better buy it immediately!” this making it a bestseller. Don’t I wish. One reader bawled me out, thinking the word was an insult to readers. Not so. I try to comment honestly, so not every book gets a blurb, but only the most favorable ones ever see the light of the bookstores. I really don’t read for pleasure, but for business, though it helps if the books are enjoyable. And what do you know: they were all worthwhile books, worthy of the time I spent on them.

First there was Starkweather, a special case. It’s a graphic novel–that is, done in pictures, like a comic book. But it is not Donald Duck material; it deals with a coven of witches, male and female, who are fighting the Templars, and it relates to the Second Coming of Christ without being a religious treatise. It is full of action and thought, and those female witches are sexy babes. There’s one picture of one taking a tumble, her short skirt flying up, and we see her from below. Hoo, it’s cold shower time. The Templars are systematically catching the witches and burning them at the stake. That’s just the beginning. The protagonist is Starkweather, a short order cook, who has witch powers, but can’t properly control them. It is his mission to try to save the woman whose death will end the world as we know it–and she thinks he’s the enemy. It’s a hard-hitting story. But I didn’t read it to review or blurb it. The proprietor asked me to contribute a story to a follow-up volume that will explore the backgrounds of the major characters of the first volume. Since what I know about graphic noveling is within haling distance of zilch, he sent me the book so I could do my homework. I did, and wrote a story about Cartaphilus, the so-called Wandering Jew, that will be adapted to graphic format. Meanwhile, I can recommend Starkweather as an interesting, dramatic, thoughtful story with some very nice pictures. www.arcanastudio.com.

Next was How Noble In Reason, by Alyn Rockwood, published by A K Peters, www.akpeters.com. It is about sentient computers–that is, ones that are conscious. The story itself is fairly standard, with a scientist getting in serious trouble because of trumped-up charges, and finally vindicating himself. But here’s the question: is the destruction of a sentient, feeling computer to be considered murder? After reading this novel, I’m inclined to agree that it is.

Then came The Way of the Fog, by A P Fuchs. This is a giant fantasy novel, first of a series, and well worth anyone’s time. It takes place in the time after Armageddon, when the showdown between the forces of Good and Evil was mysteriously abated, and mankind left to fend for itself for an indefinite period. What is going on here? I suspect it will take several novels to unravel that. This one concerns a man who tries to help a little girl and her blind grandfather return to her city, where her parents are dying of a mysterious plague. Their long trek of course takes them through assorted challenges and dangers and revelations, plus a shapely warrior woman, according to the fantasy tradition. The question is how well it is done, and this is done very well, with truly significant things promised for the future, such as the battle between celestial forces. I’ve been around a while; I blurbed David Eddings when he was starting, and Robert Jordan, and Terry Goodkind, all of whom went on to become major fantasy bestsellers. I say this advisedly: A P Fuchs is equivalent as a fantasy novelist. Unfortunately he has not gotten big traditional print publication for this, so won’t make the bestseller lists. That’s not unusual; I had to go similarly to small press for my ChroMagic fantasy series. Many worthy writers must labor in the shadows of peripheral publication because of the vagaries of publication; merit is only one factor among several, and not really the major one. If you are a serious fantasy fan, and crave something more significant than, say, punny Xanth, try Fog. www.apfuchs.com. www.coscomentertainment.com.

And Tigra, by R J Leahy. This is science fiction, another good one. Jeena is a space officer shipwrecked on a little-known colony planet who adopts and raises a native tiger-like cub, Tigra, who turns out to be considerably more than an animal. He is smart, and learns to talk, and may have other powers. Other humans are systematically exterminating Tigra’s kind, and in due course Jeena comes up against them. This is a rousing adventure with an intriguing mystery: Tigra’s kind once built civilized cities, then suddenly devolved into animal level. Why? The answer is intriguing, and maybe valid. It might do the same for the human species. I’d like to discuss it in more detail, but that would ruin much of the mystery. For solid adventure with a conscience, this is a good read. Zumaya Otherworlds, July 2006 www.zumayapublications.com/.

Then in March I read three more. Mrs. Night, by Jon Hargrove, is a vampire detective novel. Neither of those are my genres; I’ve never had much interest in vampires or detectives. Yet I enjoyed this immensely; it was the most fun novel of this present collection. The protagonist, Samantha Moon, is a female vampire with a husband and children. Those predate her condition; six years ago she was attacked by a vampire and rendered into one. Now she’s trying to carry on with family and private eye business, and she’s a feisty, skilled person, so is doing mostly okay. It is not a horror story; she buys animal blood to eat and doesn’t generally prey on humans. But her husband has an increasing problem with her coldness–not of spirit, but of body. “You sicken me and scare the hell out of me,” he tells her. “And when I touch you it’s all I can do to not gag.” She replies “Words every wife wants to hear.” I love this! She really doesn’t deserve to be frozen out of her marriage, yet his attitude is understandable. In the course of the novel she solves the mystery she is tackling for a client, and finds a new romantic interest. What makes it special are her character and nature. I sure wouldn’t have kicked her out of bed. I recommend it as light reading, odd as that may sound. www.myspace.com/mysterywriterjonhargrove.

Lady Magdelene’s, by J Neil Schulman, jneil@jesulu.com, is a screenplay for a movie currently being made. An air marshal spots a likely suspect, arrests him–and gets canned for being wrong. He is banished to an inclement assignment: he has to run a brothel that is in tax default. Lovely ladies galore, of course, who resent his presence and try to seduce him and/or get him in trouble. Then the man he profiled turns up there, having a nefarious plot that surely will be much mischief. He manages to discover and foil the fell ploy and redeem himself. Standard fare, but it will surely be a fun movie to watch. Meanwhile Schulman is embroiled in a fight with the Department of Homeland Security, which forbade him to refer to it in the movie. Nervous about a seeming association with a whorehouse, maybe.

General comment: can’t anybody here use “may/might” correctly? Misuse of may seems endemic, even in otherwise good writing. I know the language is in constant flux, but I do wonder.

And one more, not a novel but a biography. The Ghost of Jack Woodford, by Keith Nichols, that I received half a year ago but didn’t get around to reading until now. Jack Woodford was the literary pseudonym of Josiah Pitts Woolfolk, a popular novelist of the 1920s and 1930s who then disappeared from the literary scene almost without trace. Most listings of American writers don’t mention him. How come? I see two reasons. First, he was a trashy novelist, publishing many adventures and sex novels, writing to the public taste. Some said 140 books in all, but a number can’t be documented. (For comparison, I have had 130 published, with 7 in the pipeline, and I’m not yet done. I tried to Google Andre Norton’s bibliography, as I understand she wrote about 150 books, but though it said it downloaded it, I am unable to find it on my system. Par for the course. Maybe a reader will tell me how many she wrote. Anyway, Woodford wrote a lot.) Critics prefer to pretend that such writers don’t exist. Second, he wrote several books telling the truth about writing and publishing. And there’s my own interest. When I was in the US Army, stationed at Ft. Sill Oklahoma, in the late 1950s, I was trying to become a writer. I realized belatedly that I needed to have the incidental things correct, such as format and submission protocol. Editors seem to care more about format than content. But those details seemed to be a big secret. I remember when there was a contest of some kind, and SF writer Joe Green (I knew him, and visited at his house in the 1960s) won it and got an hour of editor Fred Pohl’s time. He used it to find out the secret of what editors wanted. Then, using that information, he started selling stories. Good for him, but what about the rest of us who lack that avenue for information? Well, it was Jack Woodford who blabbed, and I found it in books of his in the Post library. I almost sold a story in 1958, but then the magazine folded before it could be published. But you can see I was starting to get the hang of it, thanks to Jack, and several years later I succeeded. Thus Woodford has always had a fond place in my outlook. He did that for many other writers, some of whom you may have heard of, like Robert A Heinlein and Ray Bradbury, who were similarly grateful. So Woodford had about as much impact as any writer has. But of course the establishment is not kind to those who betray its secrets, and did its best to marginalize him out of existence. And largely succeeded. This book was not fun reading. It seems he was personally abrasive, and he hated Jews, and maybe figured publishing was run by Jews. Was he a bigot? I don’t know. He suffered a change of editors, and the new editor “privished” his best book. That is, threw it out there without support so that it sank unknown. That is the nature of some new editors, who don’t seem to care about quality or even the welfare of their publishers; if a prior editor set it up, it is trashed. I learned that the love of Woodford’s life was his daughter, Louella, on whom he doted. No, not incestuously; this was Family. She had potential, selling several novels before she was 20, with aspirations as a Hollywood actress. But then her career and his life were cut off by her insanity. She was in and out of mental hospitals, and he went broke trying to afford treatment for her. He was finally institutionalized himself, and died bankrupt and depressed. So the story of his life is a tragedy, but he was in his ornery fashion a great man. Fortunately there is one outlet for some of his books: Woodford Memorial Editions, PO Box 55085, Seattle WA 98155-0085. Sorry, I didn’t find a web site.

So what am I to make of this, discovering that the man to whom I owe so much, and whose ornery dispensation of essential information for writers I try to emulate, system and critics be damned, was a tragic, heartbroken, ultimately crazy figure? Is this likely to be my own fate? I think not, if only because my daughters are not insane, and because it will be harder for critics to marginalize me out of existence. I have supported both electronic and self publishing, that the powers-that-think-they-be can’t control; good books by many writers are appearing despite the establishment. But time will tell.

I have in the past 18 months learned a lot about shopping and housekeeping, as my wife’s incapacity required me to assume many of the chores she used to do. Still, there are moments. I paged through a DULUTH TRADING COMPANY catalog and spied two items I wanted: a small synthetic fiber blanket and a synthetic fiber wallet. My vegetarianism extends to leather; I don’t use it if I can avoid it. My rule of thumb is that if it hurts the animal to take it, I don’t want it, and it surely hurts the animal to take away its skin. But leather is available, cheap, workable, and durable, and it’s hard to match it artificially. But this wallet said it was five times as durable as leather. So I ordered the two items My Very Own Self. In due course they arrived, and I love them. The wallet holds my essentials and fits nicely in my pocket, and presumably will not wear out before I do. The blanket I use to cover my bare legs on cool exercise mornings. You see, I get hot when running, but then as I sit in T-shirt and trunks and eat breakfast and read the newspaper between the hours of 6 and 8 AM, after which my wife gets up and I go on to shower and dress, well, I cool. The blanket abates that nicely. So this is a small personal success story, unworthy of note except in a dull blog nobody who is anybody reads.

More about Xandros: I told last column how we got it and put it on, but couldn’t make it go online. Well finally we got a geek in, Peter Popovich, who spent seven hours struggling with it and finally got it working sort of. He had to replace the modem to do it. We learned that a Windows system may have only a very limited modem, with half the necessary wiring being in the software, and when you try to do something Macrohard doesn’t like, such as switching to Linux, it pokes its finger in your eye. Because Linux lacks that software, so can’t use the modem. Thus the need to replace the modem. We did it twice, and now it will go online in Linux, and not in Windows. But my wife uses mostly Windows, so that was a problem for her. So finally she bought a whole new system, Windows, and uses that. Which of course is part of the deal: Windows makes you stick to it, or buy a new system, or both. I’m ornery enough to fight it, and my personal computer does not have Windows on it, but it is a struggle. Unfortunately the Xandros system refuses to accept our defaults for email, so that system still isn’t properly functional. As I have said before: Linux needs to get its head out of its ass and address the needs of real non-geek people if it ever expects to be popular. We want to use it, but hate the endless hassle and balkiness.

I mentioned Peter Popovich. Maybe you thought I made up that name. No, he’s organizing Oasis Con in Orlando, Florida, and I expect to attend it on memorial Day Weekend, and will no doubt have a Con Report next column. I may attend the whole weekend, or only one day. This is because our old dog is ailing, and if she lives until that time, my wife won’t leave her for the weekend, and I won’t leave my wife for the weekend. In the past on occasion our daughter Cheryl has baby-sat the dog, who is very choosy about the company she keeps; strangers can’t do it. But Cheryl will be at the convention too. So if we are limited, we’ll be there one day, probably Saturday, and I’ll meet folk, sign books, and whatnot. Then I’ll go home and may never attend another convention; I don’t know. Much depends on my family situation. When I had breakfast with Andre Norton in Nashville in 1987 I told her that I regarded the two of us as being in a contest to see who could attend the fewest conventions, and she smiled. I saved that smile, and still keep the faith.

I mentioned my wife. The expensive IVIg treatment restored her life to her, after she was bound for months to the wheelchair, unable to walk. She had to practice walking again, and it was literally painful, redeveloping muscles that had atrophied. This is not an experience we want to endure again. She requires booster treatments every three months or so, to hold off the ailment. But they are no longer sending that medication to our county. We could pay for it ourselves, if there were any to pay for. So now she is slowly turning the corner back toward the wheelchair as her doctor desperately searches for a way to get her the necessary treatment. I suspect the Bush Administration found one more nifty way to cut the budget, to make more room for more tax cuts for the wealthy, so that this expensive treatment is going. Screw the folk on Medicare. I never did get a flu shot this winter, by similar token: none available. I am not pleased, but I haven’t yet found a way around this particular dodge. No, my wife remains mobile; we don’t know how long it will take to revert completely without treatment. I fear we will find out.

I had a nightmare that a copyeditor had changed my “vice versa” to “visa versa.” Copyeditors have done stranger things. Horrified, I rushed back to the text–and found no such change. So was it really a dream? It must have been. But I sure don’t trust those copyeditors.

One happy note: I finally got my author’s copies of Pet Peeve! Only five to six months late. How did it happen? Well, Tor got a new assistant editor, and I griped to her about it, and she immediately put in the order and I had my copies within the week. So at last I was able to send the copy I had promised to Marisol Ramos, who suggested the Goody Goblin/ Gwenny Goblin romance that forms the backbone of the novel. I suspect I’m going to get along with that particular editor.

There’s a long-term comic strip called “Blondie,” and it’s okay. But you know, I have never in my life had any romantic interest toward any blonde. I married a brown-haired girl. It took me some time to figure out why. People do things for reasons they themselves don’t always know. There was a study that showed that in second marriages, the richer the man was, the less the woman weighed. I dare say that each such husband would deny that he married her for her looks, and each such wife would be offended at the implication than she married him for his money, but the statistics do suggest the case. So what is my hidden reason for staying clear of blondes? I like intelligence in a woman, and I know that “dumb blonde” is only a joke; there are smart blondes. So it’s not that. I love my blonde daughter, to whom I send dumb blonde jokes, and she sends me dumb blond (that is, male) jokes back. So it’s not that I have any anti-blonde agenda. So what is it? Well, it’s that my sister is blonde, and our childhood relations were such that it forever turned me off blondes for romance. It’s that simple.

I now wear a ponytail, as discussed in an earlier column. When my wife could no longer cut my hair, I started growing it long, a bit over a year ago. Now my ponytail is six inches long and growing. I used pretty colored hair clips intended for little girls, as they were what I could manage behind my head with one hand holding the hair, the other working the clip. But it was hard to get it perfect first time; a check with two mirrors would show hanks missed, and I’d have to try again. It could take ten minutes do to my hair. I wanted something I could do in one minute, have it hold well all day, and be easy to remove at night. I tried putting the clips on from below, and that helped, but still not perfectly. I tried rubber bands, but the process of tightening them with second and third loops tended to mess up my hair. Remember, I have not spent a lifetime doing my hair; the process is relatively new to me, and I’m a septuagenarian codger. I need it good and simple for clumsy hands. Then my wife had a notion, and found what she calls a bobble tie: a loop of elastic with a marble-sized ball at each end. Pass it around the hank of hair, pull one ball over the other, and presto: perfect ponytail in one minute. Ideal. But though we had two of those bobbles we inherited from our bygone little girls–they both disappeared into adults twenty years ago–they are old, and the elastic may snap soon with renewed use. So we searched for new ones of that style. And finally found them at a Dollar Tree store–everything there cost one dollar–and it had slews of them, in different shapes: balls, cubes, flowers, hearts, different sizes and colors. So we bought three packages, and I should be in business indefinitely. It took me a while to figure out how to use smaller ones, because it is tricky to stretch them around with two hands while holding the hair in place with another hand, but I finally got it. The brand name is Giggles. So if you giggle when you see me, maybe I’ll understand. But I still think they ought to have a brand for grown men. Just think, they could have them shaped like motorcycles, gold coins, skull & crossbones, guns, nude starlets–endless possibilities. How about for writers, shaped like books or scrolls? Or critics, shaped like sour pickles. Ah, well.

Public Announcement: we receive emails from readers, and normally answer them. But some servers evidently have it in for correspondence, and seem to delete my responses. Then we get plaintive follow-ups: “I received your email, but it was blank.” Yet there is my full response, right on that same query. It seems it wasn’t trashed, just hidden from the recipient. Why a server should want to cruelly tease folk this way I don’t know, but it is happening increasingly. The main offenders are Yahoo! and SBC Global. So if you’re with Yahoo!, don’t blame me; blame your server for refusing to let you see my answer. And ask it why. This is apart from the annoyance of folk who query me about things, then bounce my answers unread because I’m not on their list. If someone tells you that Piers Anthony doesn’t answer his email, chances are that’s why.

I have better things to do than play card games on the computer, so why the $%#@&!! do I do it? To relieve incidental tension, so I can settle down to work. I used to like Scorpion, where in you put the 5 of hearts on the 6 of hearts, and move all the other cards on top of the 5 along too, gradually getting the suits in order until they are complete. There’s the easy version, which I prefer because it allows you to strategize, and the hard version, almost unwinnnable because you’re totally dependent on the blind fall of the cards. But my Linux system doesn’t have that game. Then in FeBlueberry my wife mentioned that the Linux game Grandfather is similar. There’s a Windows Grandfather that is an entirely different game, with two decks; that’s not it. I checked, and the Linux game is similar, differing in that the four aces are built up in suit; they fly up when exposed, and then the 2s, 3s etc. Chances of winning seem to be about one in three, and sometimes you’re left with all the cards lined up from 2 to King but the ace is buried and you can’t reach it. Prick tease with a vengeance. Which is part of what makes it a good game. These are unsettled times, for me, with publishers balking at even reporting on my novels or delivering author’s copies as mentioned above; the NY agent my Hollywood agent showed my child-vetted children’s novel Pandora Park for assistance in marketing–who bounced it and me forthwith; my wife’s situation without the medication, and movie prospects looming. There’s even interest in India for a TV series based on my collaboration with Al Tella, The Willing Spirit. Both good and bad news can be unsettling. So I play maybe three games in about half an hour, maybe winning one, then get on to work.

I had my two year eye test. My left eye remains 20-20, but my right eye has degenerated to 20-50, with a proper corrective lens able to make that 20-30. So how come it’s my left side archery that typically has the problem? I sight left side with my left eye, the good one. Critics could have a field day with that: if I were able to see better, I’d see that I never was any great shakes as a writer and would quit imposing on the reading public.

I make most of our meals these days, and one of the things I make is Cuban-type sandwiches. I had trouble with the cheese turning moldy, and thought I wasn’t re-sealing the package properly. But then came an unopened package with the mold showing. Ugh. But at least it exonerated me. Tomatoes, apples, lettuce, bread–anything can it seems rot overnight. There’s a smell in the refrigerator in the garage that one day will need investigating, if I can hold my nose long enough.

But life isn’t all ugly. Remember the little mulberry tree I transplanted two years ago to save it from getting flattened by trucks? That I noticed because of the lobed leaves, that can look like the clubs of a deck of playing cards? It survives, and this year is putting out so many new branches and leaves it is obviously serious about being a pet tree. I note something interesting, to me at least: the first leaves are round, that is single-lobed, but later ones on the branches start being two lobed, and further out they get up to three and even five lobed. Is it that the outer leaves are lost in the pipeline and have less sap, or that the tree makes them with missing sections so as to let the sunlight through to the interior leaves? If I were as smart as the tree I might be able to figure out the answer. Meanwhile I’m thrilled by its progress. Maybe some day we’ll actually have mulberries. I don’t know whether I even like mulberries, but I’ll surely like these ones.

Several years back daughter sent us what I call a leaf plant. I don’t know the proper designation; any leaf of it will regenerate a whole plant. Well, this one did, and soon we were buried in leaf plants, all around the pool, making a jungle, all around our garbage garden square and working on our back yard. It got so we couldn’t walk without crushing leaf plants underfoot. So finally I had to clear them out, with regret. I took several days, hauling them up entire and toting them off to a pile in the back yard which became close to head high. It was done, though we’ll keep having to root them out as they reappear. And they are growing merrily from the top of that pile.

My printer started smudging the pages, gradually getting worse. Finally I tried unscrewing the cover to see if I could get in there and vacuum out spilled powder. No luck; there was no access to the innermost works. So I screwed it back together–and it no longer worked. It jammed, giving me a mess of a job pulling paper out bit by bit in torn sections. So I took it down again, and put it together again, and it worked partly. It has a duplex feature, so that it prints on both sides of the page. Now I have to turn that off, printing on only one side–and it still smudges. Damn. Since shops don’t fix things any more, they just sell you new ones, I may have lost my printer. Anything I want to print out from the Internet jams, because there is no option to turn off the duplex there. Programmers work diffidently to make sure the user is truly fucked.

Things pass through my hollow cranium as I go about my business. One day I remembered a great newspaper headline. Remember in Roman times how Nero fiddled while Rome burned? Maybe 40 years ago Florida had a Governer Burns who traveled a lot, and nothing much got done in his absence. The headline was “The Legislature Fiddles While Burns Roams.”

We watched some of the Winter Olympics. What I don’t understand is why an athlete, having labored so hard for the honor of representing his country, should then spend his time partying instead of being ready to compete, so that he washes out. That’s like high class universities with the strictest standards for admissions that somehow manage to admit students who spend their time partying instead of studying. I think something is wrong with the admissions procedure. Actually, why do they compete to get top students, who would do well anywhere? The best institutions, as I see it, would take average and poor students and make them great ones.

I tackled chores. One of them was checking in books for my library. Long ago I got tired of spending half an hour looking for a book I knew I had, and not finding it. So I organized my library along the lines of the Library of Congress, by subject and author, and now put labels on new books and file them where they belong, with a master Catalog file. That used to be the Cat Dog–that is, Cat.doc. Now I’m on Linux, it’s a less evocative Cat.sxw, unless you remember that SXW = Sexy Wench. But it’s a chore to check them in, and it tends to get behind. So I had a couple years of books to enter. I’m trying to stifle my purchases of books, and have succeeded to an extent, but there were still about 75 to enter. Many of those are books I was sent for blurbing. In the process I discovered a number of interesting ones, such as 50 years of PLAYBOY, the Castles of Estonia that Lauri Roogna sent me–she’s related to Martin Roogna, after whom Xanth’s Castle Roogna was named–a book on Zombies my daughter gave me, and one on the unfolding of language that truly opened my eyes. Its thesis is that language is constantly changing, so there never was an ideal time, as common errors become established as proper, and new errors are introduced. Fascinating.

I finally have my new front tooth, an implant, after about 15 months with a fake tooth. Remember, I got the implant put in, supposedly a two week process, but it fell out, and they had to do a bone graft, let it set 6 months, then the new implant, and finally set the crown on it. Works fine. But there was one annoying complication: they took an X-ray of it, and the sharp edges on the X-ray card were painful, tearing up my gums. My gums inflamed, and they thought I wasn’t taking care of my mouth. Oh? It was the natural response to the injury done them that brought the inflammation. So the victim got blamed. After decades of this sort of thing, I’m going to start getting firm about it: no more X-rays unless they can get frames with soft edges. I wish the makers of these things were required to use them, tearing up theirmouths; then maybe there would be some reform. Obviously they don’t much care, and won’t, until someone makes a stand. However, there was one benefit: they gave me a dental floss holder that greatly facilitates its use. It’s a little plastic U on a stick, with the floss stretched across the open part of the U. When the bit of floss wears out, you replace it. I have found a couple of brands; both work, but one better than the other. So now flossing is less of a hassle.

A pet peeve of any writer is reviewing: books that never get reviewed, or get reviews that hardly relate to the real nature of the book. I remember when my story “In the Barn,” intended to be a shocker, with big-breasted women who were milked like cows, with a subtext of if it is unkind for women, how is it for the cows, was reviewed as vegetarian science fiction. Obviously that reviewer had not read that story. It has been apparent to me for decades that I read a book more carefully for blurbing than many reviewers do for reviewing, and they get paid for it. And of course too many have agendas, being out to praise a friend or torpedo an unfriend, regardless of the merit of the piece. But not all reviewers are corrupt. Here is a digest of a piece forwarded to me by Veldane Darkhosis from the Writer’s Block of Dreams, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The_Writers_Block_Of_Dreams: “How to write a decent Book Review” by GraceAnn Andreassi DeCandido, “Ladyhawk” ladyhawk@well.com: Read the whole book. Review the book in front of you, not the one you wish had been written. Don’t review in genres with which you are uncomfortable. If possible, compare it to others in the same genre. Criticize clearly and specifically but gently. Know the guidelines of your reviewing medium. Be precise. Don’t be cowed by a famous name. Don’t review books by people you know, or love, or hate.

Report in THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR: “By most conventional measures, especially job growth, the Bush years have been the worst of any president in the last fifty years.” From the HIGHTOWER LOWDOWN: “Pentagon report reveals that up to 80% of the marines killed in Iraq from upper body wounds would not have died if they had the proper body armor.” And 90% of the units ordered have not yet been delivered. From a column by Gene Lyons: Col. Larry Wilkerson gave a speech at the New American Foundation in Washington blaming a secretive “cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,” for seizing power from an ignorant, intellectually lazy president. They were aided by “an extremely weak national security adviser” (Condoleezza Rice), who told Bush whatever he wanted to hear to build “her intimacy with the president” and bolster her career. Congressman John Conyers is organizing a campaign to impeach President Bush for deception, manipulation, torture, retribution and cover-ups. www.afterdowningstreet.org/. And from WASHINGTON SPECTATOR again: “Loyalty to the nation now demands an exposure of the disloyalty of the governing party. Its preparedness to lie and invent facts in order to procure a war that it has yet to explain adequately; it’s willingness to compromise national security to protect its lies; its confusion of loyalty to the Bush family and to its cronies with loyalty to the country, all capped with a willingness to retaliate at once against any liberals who speak out.” From a letter in the newspaper, by Richard Feigel: “As a Christian, I am concerned that today ‘moral values’ are defined as part of a political agenda, rather than based on the teachings of Jesus.”

Remember when I relayed the story of the discovery of the “Taps” melody? That turns out to be false, another urban legend. It seems to have been adapted from an older piece known as “Tattoo.”

From NEW SCIENTIST: Keep stress at bay by having sex beforehand. But it has to be penetrative sex; other forms don’t do it. The effect lasts for a week or so. I wonder how they found out? Did they do a double-blind study of copulating and noncopulating couples? “You penetrated her what with your what?!” From the Sunday supplement PARADE: “All pedophiles–even the ones who describe their predatory conduct as ‘love’–lack empathy. The pain of others is immaterial to the pursuit of their own pleasures.” I don’t know whether that is true, but I think it also describes the present political administration, whose pursuit of ever more money for its supporters takes little or no note of the pain of those impoverished by its actions. Empathy is vital to the human condition, but before we crack down on those who lack it, we had better be aware who they are and how they may retaliate.

A reader forwarded a collection of doctor stories. Here is an example: the doctor told the wife that her husband had died of a massive myocardial infarct. Then he heard her report to the rest of the family that he had died of a massive internal fart. A young doctor was whistling to cover his embarrassment while performing a pelvic exam on a middle aged woman when she burst out laughing. He had inadvertently whistled “I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Weiner.”

Sarah Sine forwards many items. One tells how to tell whether a mirror (such as in a bathroom) is real, or one-way. Touch it with a fingernail. If there is a gap between the nail and the image, it’s a regular mirror. But if there is no gap, it’s see-through from the other side. That little test could save you some embarrassment.

Live & learn dept.: You know that realistic doll Barbie? She has had more of a celebrity history than I knew. She married her boyfriend-doll Ken, and they had a child Kelly. Then they divorced and she became a single mom. Then she dated Blaine, who was a surfer, while Ken dated Barbie’s best friend Nadine, a party girl. Then Ken went to the Middle East and became a Buddhist. Now Ken and Barbie are getting back together. Poor little Kelly, now age four, doesn’t understand why guys come and go. I suspect there is trouble in the future in the valley of the dolls.

A reader finished On a Pale Horse. Then his hand wrote of its own accord in a notebook. Herewith:

Though the Gates of Hell may bar my way,
Though Satan may ride his steed,
Demons at bay, my mind will say,
Courage is all I need.

Brimstone and Fire, the Devil’s desire,
May speed to slay my soul,
Immortal dire, a crowning pyre,
Lights the way to my goal.

My heart’s true quest, my honor’s at test,
How could I possibly fail?
My scythe so sharp, my cloak so dark,
Riding a horse so pale.

Kristina O’Donnelly, the other Inverness Florida writer, forwarded news of a Spanish class. Her teacher explained that Spanish, unlike English, has noun genders. House is feminine, pencil is masculine, and so on. Then a student asked what gender is “computer”? Hm. So the teacher divided the class into men and women to reason it out and decide. The men concluded it is feminine, because no one understands their internal logic, they communicate with each other in a language incomprehensible to others, the smallest mistakes are remembered forever, and when you commit to one you have to spend half your paycheck for accessories. But the women concluded that it must be masculine, because in order to do anything with them you have to turn them on, they have a lot of data but can’t think for themselves, they are supposed to solve your problems but half the time they ARE the problem, and as soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer you could have gotten a better model. It is said that the women won. Oh? Must have been a female teacher.

A study of the effect of third-party prayer on heart surgery patients shows that they do not benefit by it. I’m hardly surprised. I see two reasons: first, that God doesn’t exist, so the prayers have no one listening. Second, that God does exist, and hears, but is fed up with people beseeching Him to make exceptions to the laws of the universe He established. And to reduce it to a statistical test to verify whether He will respond–deserves no response.

Columnist Molly Ivins remarks on the decline of newspaper circulation, so the papers are cutting costs by cutting the number of reporters, the space devoted to the news, and the money spent to gather the news. “For some reason, they assume people will want to buy more newspapers if they have less news in them and are less useful to people. What cutting costs does, of course, is increase the profits, thus making Wall Street happy. It also kills newspapers.” I agree; it is bean-counter logic, and it applies also to book publishers who respond to the general decline in sales by cutting back on the variety of books. Fortunately there is self publishing and electronic publishing, that will likely inherit the readership traditional publishers are alienating. In a vaguely related manner, the local legal action regarding Debra Lafave has ended. She’s blonde bombshell teacher who seduced a teen boy and got in trouble when his mother found out. Next time, you bet, he’ll know to keep his mouth shut. Now she wants to become a journalist. Well, more power to her; if I see a column under her byline I’ll read it; she surely has a fresh perspective. It might help if they ran her picture, nude.

It started with my elder daughter Penny, around the Christmas season of 1992. She was shopping, and by the store door was a box with several mongrel puppies, free to good homes. Later she passed that store again, and all were gone except one. “Guess we’ll take her to the pound,” they said. So Penny took that last puppy. She named her Obsidian, after the glossy black fur on her back. Her mother was a black lab, and her father was probably a yard dog; embarrassing scandal there. But Penny already had two dogs, and couldn’t keep another. She tried to place Obsidian as a service dog, that is, seeing-eye, hearing-ear, or whatever, for she had very sharp senses. But she also had a strong will of her own, and that may have disqualified her; they were afraid she would not train well. What to do with her? Then came mother to the rescue, and that’s how Obsidian came to our household at about age ten months.

Obsidian grew to be a big dog, 96 pounds of muscular vigor, not fat. I played with her, and took her for long Sunday walks, but she came to orient on my wife, and became very much her dog. When my wife was out of the house, while I remained, it seemed to be the same as an empty house, as far as Obsidian was concerned. Wherever my wife went, there went the dog. Obsidian did not demand to be petted all the time, just acknowledged, and she would lie down and snooze beside my wife’s chair. Offhand, I think that’s a viable definition of love.

There were problems. Obsidian was a nose-oriented dog, and she avidly smelled everything. This was fine, with one exception: we did not like her jamming her nose into people’s crotches. I tried to discourage her, but she didn’t get the message. Then when I was standing watching the TV, JAM! painfully in my crotch. I reacted before I was conscious of it, whamming her on the nose. She was amazed, hurt, and chagrined; she had no idea how she had given offense. She never jammed my crotch again, but I was sorry for the event. Years later when my wife was confined to the wheelchair, and I had to lift her to and from it and wheel her around, the dog resented that proximity and tried to prevent it. More than once my wife fell because of the dog’s encroachments, and falls were serious business, leading in time to injury and the wheelchair. Obsidian would growl at me when I got near my wife, and try to jam in between us, and snap at me. I reacted by hitting her again. In time she learned that this amount of proximity had to be tolerated, though she did not like it. But I wish I had found some other way to make my point. Obsidian and I got along fine when my wife was not in the vicinity.

When my wife was incapacitated, I gradually took over the business of the house, including meals, dishes, laundry, shopping, processing email, and feeding the dog. Obsidian accepted this, and liked the lettuce ribs I gave her when I made salad. I had thought she was humoring my wife about the lettuce, but it turned out that she liked it very well regardless who gave it to her. When IVIg treatments were effective in restoring my wife’s mobility, to an extent, she took back the email and laundry, but I continued the dog feeding.

We attended the Magicon World Con in Orlando in 1992, and made plans to attend the World Con in England in 1995. I left England when I was four years old and never went back; I rather wanted to see the Old Country again before I died. But in the interim Obsidian joined us, and we discovered when we put her in a kennel that it almost killed her. She was so depressed being separated from my wife that she was dying. So we knew we could not do that again. That canceled the England trip. When we had to make briefer trips elsewhere, such as attending collaborator Julie Brady’s wedding in Miami, Daughter #2 Cheryl would come to dog-sit; Obsidian liked her almost as much as she liked my wife.

But as Obsidian aged, she developed leg trouble that eerily mirrored that of my wife. We learned later that labs are subject to arthritis and neuropathy. Bingo! But though there is a treatment for this, they don’t give it to dogs. Obsidian was very polite about it, never whining or complaining, but it became increasingly painful to see her have to pull herself along by her front legs when her hind legs would not function. Gradually she became unable to do the things she loved, such as riding in the car: I made steps out of boards for her to mount, and they worked for a time, but finally she just couldn’t make it. Such as the long Sunday walks. Such as even going out into the back yard to bark off potential intruders. Such as going upstairs to be near my wife at night. Her senses and appetite remained good, but not her legs. When she got stuck in the doorway for two and a half hours, unable to make it across the sill, we knew the dread time of decision was upon us.

And so on May 25, 2006, the vet came to give her The Shot. She was thirteen and a half years old, a good age for a dog that size. She could have lived longer, as the rest of her was fine, but there were problems of urination and defecation because of her difficulty getting to her feet, and we felt that it would be kinder to take her quietly out. I dug a big hole in the forest and buried her. Obsidian and I had our differences, and she had seemed dedicated to being IN THE WAY at all times, but she was a good and loyal dog, true to her nature, and I did not wish her any harm. We are in grief for her. Everything about the house reminds me. For example, when I made our afternoon snack, I cut off a small wedge of cheese for Obsidian—then remembered. When her feeding time came I was about to do it, and remembered. I took up her dog bed, to get it out of sight. When I made the salad for supper, I had to put the lettuce ribs in the garbage: such a waste, when the dog was so eager for it. I see the many stains on the carpeting, and think of her. Four days after her death I encountered one of her chew-dolls, and that got me all over again: the dolls, toys, and bones that gave her pleasure. Even the absence of turds on the porch to clean up now bothers me, as does her failure to be in my way when I want to go between rooms. She just was so much a part of our daily lives, for twelve and a half years. She was our seventh dog, and we remember them all; it isn’t as if we have not been through this before, as countless other families have. But this is fresh, and it will take time to fade. If there is a heaven for dogs…

Next day we departed for Orlando, Florida, to attend Oasis Con. Proprietor Peter Popovich had rescued key files for me in a prior computer mishap, and wouldn’t take money, instead asking me to attend the convention. I said I would if wife and dog permitted it. Later we compromised: we would attend Saturday regardless, as we could leave the dog for one day. Then we lost the dog, and really it seemed better to get away from the house and the constant reminders. So we traveled Friday afternoon, and returned Sunday morning, sharing the Sheraton World Resort motel room Daughter #2 Cheryl had arranged. That relieved the strain of travel somewhat for my wife. I should mention in passing that we finally were able to obtain the treatment she needs; a competent male nurse came to our house, and it was really more convenient than the hospital for the four hour infusion. But it did cost us over $3,000. We can afford it, though it bothers my wife to spend that much on herself. I would spend a hundred times that to keep her halfway healthy, but I’m not sure she quite appreciates that. Anyway, she is able to drive and get around, and we didn’t have to bring the wheelchair, but her participation in the convention was limited because her physical resources remain limited. She might stay in the room while Cheryl and I went out for an event. Regardless, it was an enormous relief for me to have her there, because I’m an incompetent traveler, and I can get lost in the labyrinth of a convention too. I joke about needing wife and daughter to run my life, but only the thin top layer of that is humor. Had I been alone, I might not even have made it into the motel room; as it was there were three of us to try the balky card-keys in relays until that one in a hundred chance occurred and it worked. Then we usually had one person in the room to open the door from inside, bypassing the perversity of the inanimate card.

So Friday night Cheryl and I caught the end of the panel on Alien Artifacts, where the panelists invented clever explanations for ordinary objects, such as one being an alien chastity belt. Then we turned in for the night—we old fogies don’t stay up odd hours—and were ready for Saturday.

Saturday at dawn Cheryl and I went for an hour’s walk along International Drive, which is a pretty road. We take our health seriously, and exercise is vital. We moved along about three and a half miles per hour, for an hour; faster would have sweated us up too much, as we weren’t dressed for it. The one challenge was the water sprinklers, which came in clusters, so that when we timed one and zipped past it, another caught us. I think the proprietors get bonus points for that. The Sheraton itself is a fancy block-sized complex with 19 domino-shaped buildings surrounding the central Tower building. Curvaceous walks and pools abound; it’s a pleasant environment.

Most of the Oasis convention was in the Lakes Conference Center at one end of the complex. They had two parallel programs, so that if you didn’t like, say, the Charity Auction, you could attend the Current Events in Media SF panel instead. Conventions vary; big ones can have half a dozen parallels, and dedicated fans, that is faans—those who are more interested in fandom than in its books or movies—take pride in attending none of them, but just hanging out with each other. Oasis did not seem to be spoiled that way, however.

I made it to my first panel, If Only I’d Known, featuring anecdotes and advice from the pros. There was a fair audience, maybe 50 folk. My rule of thumb is that the bigger the convention, the fewer attend such functions; when I attended the World Fantasy Con in Nashville in 1987 as Guest of Honor I was surprised when Stephen Donaldson, bestselling fantasy novelist, attracted only about 6 to his reading. He said that was typical. So Oasis, being small, fields several times as many per event. Probably only magic can fully explain this phenomenon. There was a chilly blast on the stage. I had come prepared with a long-sleeve shirt to don, thanks to my wife’s advice, but the panelist next to me, copy editor Deanna Hoak, a fetching creature with bare shoulders, was in trouble. So I appealed to the audience: it’s the arctic here, she will soon be an icicle; is there a jacket available? And an obliging audience member provided one, saving Deanna from frostbite, and the audience applauded. There followed, I think, a successful session, replete with audience involvement, as it should be.

At 2 PM was my program, An Hour With Piers Anthony, wherein I read my short story “Chessmaid” and then fielded audience questions and comments. I completed my sequel story volume, Relationships Two, the end of April, and am waiting to see how the first volume does before daring to offer it to Venus Press. (Wild Child Publishing forwarded a very nice review of that first Relationships. I’m glad those stories are being appreciated.) Most of the stories have strong erotic elements, but for a general audience I wanted one that wasn’t erotic, and this was it. It features a young female chess player who ranks #15 among female players in the world, and #9 on the World Chess Beauty Contest site. That’s a list that ranks the players by their looks, and it actually exists, at www.1wcbc.com. That’s what gave me the story idea. Her name is Pawna, and she says she will marry the man who defeats her in chess, sight unseen. In fact she plays nude, and blindfolded, 20 men at a time, on closed-circuit TV that of course hackers break into and broadcast globally. She beats 19 and draws with one, wherein lies the story. In the course of the match the WCBC, having seen her assets, as it were, ups her ranking to #3. Could this happen in real life? I hope so.

Then at 3 PM, and after, I autographed books, signing several hundred. That completed my obligation. One of the dealers remarked on my prior column discussion of Jack Woodford, to whom so many writers owe so much. He had several of Woodford’s novels on sale, and I bought one, Flame, so as to discover just what kind of a fiction writer the man was. Another person gave me a copy of a novella by Andre Norton, “Serpent’s Tooth,” which I expect also to read with interest. I knew Andre, and her advice early in my career helped me to succeed. It is a favor I try to pass along to others.

Cheryl and I finished out Saturday at the Con Suite, a separate room that served pastries, chatting with whoever was interested. I make it a point to be available to the folk at any convention I attend, and I don’t suffer from stage fright or shyness. Those who accuse me of being an ogre at conventions have never met me at one. I don’t go often—maybe once in a decade—but I try to do it right when I do. It was an enjoyable experience, and I recommend it to readers who crave more than just the printed page. So why don’t I do it more often? Because I don’t feel the need for such interaction, and get impatient with the amount of amateurishness I have experienced at other such conventions. I also don’t like to travel. I would rather be home writing. The recent situation with my wife’s health is another limiting factor. So probably I won’t do it again soon. But it was fun once.

We saw one movie in the past two months, Take the Lead, about teaching ghetto kids ballroom dancing. I was never a ballroom dancer myself—I’m not sure I could do even the box step correctly—but I love to see the art of skilled dancers, and delight in the flashes of fine female flesh. So it was my choice to see this one, and I did enjoy it. There were several sub-stories, and the one I remember most is of a clumsy white girl who needed to get competent for her cotillion, so as not to embarrass her socialite parents. She really couldn’t get it, even with professional instruction. So when the instructor started the ghetto class she asked to join it. She wound up dancing with a huge fat black boy that no one else wanted to dance with, and slowly, with much practice they began to get it. With him she could finally do it right. Then she brought him to the cotillion and danced publicly. Her parents nearly freaked out—that was part of her private delight—but they did a perfect dance, no missteps. She had come through in a way her parents would never have chosen. The larger message of the movie is that if you give the riffraff something truly challenging and inspiring to do, they can come through. Sort of the way that I, as a kid who took three years to make it through first grade because of reading problems, made it as a writer many readers can relate to.

I intended for months to take a break between books and catch up on some things. Well, now was the time. I ordered ten videos from MOVIES UNLIMITED, and about the time they arrived we attended a Friends of the Library book sale where they turned out to have used video cassettes, so I bought ten more. Then there were DVDs at the supermarket for $4 each, so I bought five of those. I managed to watch about half of that collection in the month of Apull, and I’ll get to the rest in due course. Sure most are cheap junk; I enjoyed them. I liked Flight Plan, The Rookie, Ninth Gate—stuff like that. Pigging out, intellectually.

In Mayhem I tacked back magazines. Exigencies of writing and my wife’s illness caused me to get behind on them. They’re good magazines: NEW SCIENTIST, DISCOVER, SCIENCE NEWS, THE HUMANIST, FREE INQUIRY, the weekly LIBERAL OPINION WEEK, WORLD WATCH, US NEWS & WORLD REPORT, and others—all excellent reading for a science minded liberal environmentalist. I make my living from fantasy, but for pleasure I absorb science. There were about 40 in the backlog. So I started in, and at this typing the backlog is down to about 12 and shrinking. So I’m getting there, but any day now my hiatus from writing is going to get to me and I’ll relapse, probably writing the next Xanth novel, Two the Fifth. That’s Xanth #32. There will be some wild scenes therein; I’m already making notes for it. How do you handle an assertive romantic underage Sorceress, Princess Rhythm? My wife asked whether Obsidian Dog would now go to Xanth, as our last dog Bubbles did fourteen years ago. I think not, because Obsidian is already in the stand-alone novel Realty Check. But who knows?

I don’t get colds often, in significant part because I use Vitamin C to suppress them. It has been years. But in this period one did come. I started the C regimen as soon as symptoms started, and it did stifle it. One gram per hour for three days normally does it for me. But when I was easing off, the symptoms recurred, so I went back on the regimen. Overall it took over a week to beat it back. Maybe a second cold came, or maybe it just was a really tough one. I never had a sore throat, runny nose, or other complications; the C stopped them. It just bothered me that it took so long. And of course it bothers me that published accounts are still claiming that Vitamin C has no effect on the common cold. That is a lie, perhaps fostered by the pharmaceutical industry, that would lose billions if the common cold were eradicated. They know that universal use of Vitamin C could do that, by suppressing all cases and preventing them from spreading their infections. And how many other cheap, effective treatments are being similarly obscured, for similar reason? The big drug companies are not in business for your health.

The local community college, Central Florida Community College, CFCC, invited me to their open house. I autographed books, chatted with readers, and watched the other events. Our local representative, Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite was also there, another celebrity. There was the obligatory Pledge of Allegiance recital, in which I refuse to include the words “under God” because they were not in the original and represent an attempt to break down the constitutional barrier between church and state. This is similar to my objection to the claim that ours is a Christian nation. It is not; it is a nation the majority of whose citizens are Christians. That’s a significant distinction that many don’t seem to comprehend. At one point the local school’s Lecanto High School Step Team performed; about eight cute girls in close-fitting jeans stepping in patterns and chanting. Their last number had a refrain that sounded to me like “Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle!” and some of them could really jiggle, especially the fuller-busted ones. So the day was fun in its fashion. The ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, not a sponsor, ignored it completely. THE CITRUS COUNTY CHRONICLE, a sponsor, covered it. Has it come to this, that newspapers no longer carry the news and events of the day, unless they have a personal interest in it? Shame.

I mentioned the bobbles or bead ties I discovered for my hair, in the last column. We had bought three packages, and then Daughter Cheryl brought us two more packages, so I had about 60 ties. A problem was that the smaller ones were tricky to do; they tried to tunnel under my hair, and by the time I got my ponytail fastened, it was messy and I’d have to start over. One day I took 13 minutes to get a satisfactory tie. That bugged me, so for a day and I night I put my brain to it. Surely I had enough wit to find a simple, easy, reliable way to tie a bobble that would hold all day and release readily at the end of the day. I came up with idea after idea, that didn’t work. But finally I got it: hook the two beads over my thumb and forefinger, and carry the elastic band around the ponytail being held by the other hand, until the beads meet at the other side. That frees the other hand to hook one over the other, and it is done. That worked perfectly every time. But the larger bobbles need to be looped around twice, to be tight enough to hold, and that second loop was messing up. So I pondered again, and worked out a variant: for the second loop, take one bead with the free hand, and instead of hooking on the other bead, pass it around to hook on the little finger of my right hand. Then come around from the other side, grasp it, and stretch it around to hook over the other bead. It can’t slip or tunnel because it is never let go; it is always held or hooked over a finger or bead. That, too, works every time, and now I have no problem fastening my hair in place. It gives me a great feeling every time I do, because it reminds me of my victory over uncooperative beads. Surely all girls and women knew this technique from before they were born, but if any don’t, and for other long-haired men, now they, too, can have perfect ties. This is a public service announcement.

I had a spot of foot trouble. I run three times a week for exercise, and in time my running shoes wear out. So my wife hauled me off to the shoe store, back around last OctOgre, and I checked shoes on my right foot, found a good fit, and bought them. Bad mistake. I should have checked both feet. My left foot is larger, or the left shoe is smaller. Whatever. When I ran, that left shoe was so tight that my toe hurt. But I plowed on, running through pain. I shouldn’t have. My large left toe continued to hurt, and in a few days it turned black under the nail. Evidently I had bruised it, and that was dried blood under there. I had to return to my old shoes; I couldn’t use the new ones. Several months later it started growing out, and now it’s about halfway clear; by the end of the year it should be pretty again. But I still needed now shoes. So this time when we went to the store I tried the shoes on both feet; size 11 was snug on the left, so I tried size 12. It was okay, but my sensitive big left toe still wasn’t satisfied. So I tried size 13, and that gave me plenty of room around that toe. So now I’m running with those. They feel like crates, they weigh over a pound apiece, and they slow me down, but my toe is not hurting. I remind myself that the point is the exercise, not the speed; it is as if I put weights on my feet. So I am reluctantly satisfied. It is not the shoe’s fault that I had to go to such a large size.

I read Le Morte d’ Arthur—an Epic Limerick, by Jacob Wenzel. That title may sound like a joke, but it’s not. It is a rendering of the Arthurian legend (there’s little evidence that King Arthur existed, and less that he was anywhere near as powerful or noble as the legends suggest) into limerick form. In some cases the rhyming is forced, and I wouldn’t call it great poetry, but it is a worthy challenge consistently carried through. I’m surprised by how well it works as a narrative device; you can follow the story. This is a Lulu book, and you can find it at www.limerickdarthur.com.

I read Unfinished Business by Jon Hargrove. He’s the author of Mrs. Night, that I reviewed last column. The author is a private investigator, and it shows; this is another detective story. I didn’t like it as well as Mrs. Night, mainly because I got half a crush on the feisty lady vampire detective, but this one too is fast moving and entertaining. It is the first of a series, published by Mundania Press, www.mundania.com. Hargrove is surely destined for larger success, if he can get the right break; his fiction is fun reading.

I read Waking God, by Brian Doe and Philip Harris. This is a remarkable philosophical adventure that alternates serious religious discussion with hot action adventure. I was more impressed with the former, perhaps because as an agnostic I have asked myself similar questions, but the average reader may skim across to the chase sequences. Does God exist? What is his nature? This story suggests that it is not what most Christians like to think. So if you are a thinking reader with a halfway open mind, this should interest you. www.WakingGod.com.

And at Oasis I bought a copy of Flame, by Jack Woodford, published in 1949. I commented on Woodford last column, and the bookseller remarked on that and showed me several of Woodford’s novels. I’ve never read Woodford’s fiction, so was curious. So far I’m only 70 pages into it, but it’s a competently handled love story, not trashy at all. So the man could after all write.

My writing computer crashed. We have several computers around the house, essentially mine for writing, my wife’s for our accounts, and the correspondence system for email. We had loaded Xandros on another system, and when mine crashed I had to move to the Xandros system to continue my operations. Fortunately I had just finished and backed up Relationships Two, so lost no text. But there turned out to be several working files I hadn’t backed up recently, and those are a problem. I am in dialogue with a geek, and am making progress, and may be able to recover those files. Meanwhile I have gotten to know Xandros Linux, and am not satisfied. It seems nice enough, with some nice features, but it refuses to address our email, or to let me back up my files, saying that I do not have permission to address the floppy disk. It won’t load StarOffice 8, so I have paid for a suite I can’t use. My wife can use it, because it loaded without trouble on her Windows system. And Xandros randomly trashes a file every so often. So having lost two months of my daily work record in the crash, I lost the subsequent two weeks because of Xandros. It balked at backing up, then destroyed the file: holding and hitting. Xandros was tempting, because it spells so much like Xanth, but it has satisfied me that it can’t be trusted and I won’t keep it. I don’t know what its proprietors are thinking of, to loose a program with a bad-dog attitude like this on the public. So I am considering Knoppix, which operates from its own DVD or CD disk, or Linspire, said to be the most user-friendly distribution of Linux. When I make my decision, I’ll order a system with it pre-installed, and that will become my writing computer. Meanwhile, Linux still is not something I’d recommend to a person who doesn’t want a computer hassle. It’s not user friendly. I would have thought that by this time the Linux geeks would have caught on to that. But you know, I witnessed an exchange once wherein a person said he wanted a Linux system that would run out of the box, and two others in effect bawled him out for wanting it. That attitude has to go, before Linux seriously challenges Windows. I suspect some Microsoft execs are tracking my progress, sure that I will regret leaving their corral. So far I can’t refute them, galling as it is to admit it.

Related matters: we bought a new printer, an HP LaserJet 1320 on sale. The store gave us $100 off, and there was also a $100 mail-in rebate. We set it up, checked it; it’s a good printer. We sent in for the rebate about a week after purchasing it—and it bounced, as being outside the required time frame. Really? Nothing was said about that before, and we had not dallied. So apparently they are simply reneging, figuring they can get away with it. Hewlett-Packard makes some fine printers, but this sort of thing alienates customers. If their marketing is corrupt, how long before their hardware is too? We will remember. We also bought a tiny Flash drive, that holds over a hundred floppy disks worth of material, and that Xandros has not yet learned to reject. So now I can back up my material, and probably we’ll be using Flash henceforward. It sets a new standard for convenience.

Some rectum is using my www.hipiers.com address as a fake origin for spam. Folks, if you’re getting solicited that way, I hope you understand that I’m not spamming anyone, and my system has not been co-opted. It’s just a deliberately wrong return address. Spammers have no shame. The same goes for viruses: our systems are clean, and we’re not sending any out.

One morning on my exercise run I spied an object on the drive like a large pine cone. It turned out to be a dead screech owl, unmarked. I don’t know how it died, or how it got there. These are cute tiny owls, even smaller than the burrowing owls of the movie Hoot fame. These vignettes of nature bother me; I wish nothing ever had to die, but everything does, in time.

More evidence is developing that maybe there is no such thing as dark matter. One theory is that we merely don’t properly understand gravity. It may be that it fades more slowly farther out, so that it can hold galaxies together without the need for inventing invisible substance to explain what we see. They are building machines that should be able to discover dark matter if it exists; if they don’t find it, then maybe it doesn’t exist. I shall be watching this with interest.

I had an odd memory: when my sister and I were children ages 5 and 4 in Spain, circa 1939, a nanny showed us how to brush our teeth. First we brushed them, then we took a sip of water from the full glass, rinsed, and spat it back into the glass. Then when we were done, we drank the glass of water. Later I learned that others don’t do it that way. I suspect that the nanny was having a private joke, making us do something we didn’t know was uncouth. It is one reason that my children never had a non-family baby-sitter. You just never know what that outsider is doing, as some videos in the news have shown.

Quote from the March-April THE HUMANIST magazine, an article by Camillo C Bica, with reference to 9/11: “Over the long term, however, what threatens the very foundation and fabric of our way of life in these dangerous times isn’t some amorphous, enigmatic horde of bloodthirsty terrorists. Rather, it is the assault upon truth, individual freedom, and the values of justice and morality by those opportunists, obsessed and motivated by wealth and power, determined to forward their agenda.”

Email humor forwarded by Kristina O’Donnelly: one day, in line at the company cafeteria, Joe says to Mike behind him, “My elbow hurts like hell. I guess I better see a doctor.” Mike replies, “Listen, you don’t have to spend all that kind of money. There’s a diagnostic computer down at Wal-Mart. Just give it a urine sample and the computer will tell you what’s wrong and what to do about it. It takes ten seconds and costs ten dollars—a lot cheaper than a doctor.” So Joe deposits a urine sample in a small jar and takes it to Wal-Mart. He deposits ten dollars and the computer lights up and asks for the urine sample. He pours the sample into the slot and waits. Ten seconds later, the computer ejects a printout: “You have tennis elbow. Soak your arm in warm water and Epson Salt. (Aisle 8) And avoid heavy activity. It will improve in two weeks. Thank you for shopping @ Wal-Mart.” That evening, while thinking how amazing this new technology was, Joe begins wondering if the computer can be fooled. He mixes some tap water, a stool sample from his dog, urine samples from his wife and daughter, and a sperm sample for good measure. Joe hurries back to Wal-Mart, eager to check the results. He deposits ten dollars, pours in his concoction, and awaits the results. The computer prints the following: “1. Your tap water is too hard. Get a water softener. (Aisle 9) 2. Your dog has ringworm. Bathe him with anti-fungal shampoo. (Aisle 7) 3. Your daughter has a cocaine habit. Get her into rehab. 4. Your wife is pregnant. Twins. They aren’t yours. Get a lawyer. 5. Finally, if you don’t stop playing with yourself, your elbow will never get better. Thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.”

I received a request for my favorite book title for a National Library Week promotion. So I gave it, with an explanation. Then came the article: “The responses ranged from the nice—Rosalynn Carter’s favorite is the Bible—to the naughty: dirty joke books favored by writer Piers Anthony.” Well, I won’t be answering similar requests in the future, because this is an example of deliberately distorting an honest response for humor at a person’s expense. The book I had given was Rationale of the Dirty Joke by G Legman, an 800 page compendium of dirty jokes with discussion, showing that a person’s inner nature can be signaled by his favorite dirty joke. If a person finds anti black jokes hilarious, or gay jokes, or anti-woman jokes, that says a lot about him. The author pretty well makes his point, and this volume, together with its even longer companion volume No Laughing Matter, is one of the defining psychological studies of our culture. Sure the jokes are there, but they pale beside the related discussion, which truly plumbs the darker aspects of human nature. I am disgusted, not by these significant volumes, but by the evident attitude of this article. So I am set opposite Rosalynn Carter, like Satan opposite God. If she read these books, I suspect she would find them as meaningful in their framework as the Bible is in hers. Anyone would.

Letter by Mal Kong in US NEWS & WORLD REPORT FOR 4-17-06: “I enjoyed your article on non-fiction book writers who are frauds. It is worth noting that Tom Peters co-wrote the very successful management hot seller In Search of Excellence. On the 20th anniversary of the book’s release in 2001, reports stated that he faked the data.” That explains much. I read that book when it came out, and thought it junk, because I had had some experiences with some of the companies discussed, and know they were hardly examples of excellence. Sure enough, some later failed. It was my impression that the book took companies that seemed to be at the top then, as was Enron more recently, and said they were examples of excellence. And what of all the businessmen who believed it? No wonder there are so many failures.

Perhaps vaguely related: company CEO pay. A quarter century ago, CEOs made about ten dollars for every one dollar the average worker made. Now it’s over 400 times as much, and still rising. The head of United Health Group is making over one and a half billion (with a B) dollars. No wonder health const are skyrocketing. AT&T; shareholders tried to limit the CEO’s pay, but were defeated. We own some AT&T; stock, along with the Baby Bells, and dutifully send in our proxies marked for such limits, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. Exxon Mobil shareholders also reject such limits; their last chief retired with $98 million, while they say sorry, they can’t do anything about rising gasoline prices. Greed has no limit. What does it take to get some minimal fairness—a revolution?

There are ads galore for the 2006 early-strike 1/10 ounce $5 gold eagle coin. That’s fine, for those who want them, though $60 plus shipping for a coin with gold valued at closer to a tenth that price is not my notion of a good investment. My bemusement is at the figure of a running Liberty woman, looking as if her ponderously dangling breasts are flinging out to either side. I think it’s actually just her shirt, but it’s a turnoff. I’d have hired an artist with more taste.

I work the daily chess and Jumble puzzles in the newspaper, considering them spot exercises for my mind. Sometimes they annoy me. For example, one chess challenge I didn’t get, so I checked the answer. Which was invalid, because in the process of mating Black’s king, White opened a discovered check on its own king. Doesn’t anybody check these things?

There was a newspaper article titled “Save gas. Don’t buy a Hybrid.” It said that the mileage of the Toyota Prius plummeted on the highway. As it happens, we now own a Prius, so we know from experience that statement is false. Actually so is the literature that says it gets better mileage in the start-and-stop city than on the highway. What it does is use the battery more in start-and-stop driving, but that has to be recharged, which normally occurs on the highway. If you drove a Prius 100% in a congested city, then your mileage would plummet. We average about 45 miles to the gallon in mixed driving, which is very good. Those who recharge the battery with electricity from the house get seemingly higher mileage, because part of the burden is being transferred to the house. The gasoline is not more efficient, it is simply being used less.

Letter in the ST PETERSBURG TIMES by Ken Sandusky makes the point that the production of meat and other animal products dumps more debris, pesticides, and animal waste into our waterways than all other human activities combined. One of the most effective single things we could do for the global environment would be to stop eating meat.

A reader forwarded pictures relating to a new women’s fashion, currently big in Japan, maybe spreading to the USA. It looks like sheer skirts that show panties and bottom. It’s not. It’s opaque skirts painted to resemble tight panties and buttocks. Sexy as hell, even when you know it’s fake. After all, probably the real panties would look similar. More fun. I wonder whether they will also do images of bras or bare breasts, and whether men will have jockstraps showing, or maybe even paintings of giant penises.

I looked up my entry in Wikipedia. For folk slow on the uptake, as I am, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia whose entries are made by anyone who walks in off the street, and can be changed by anyone. So utter accuracy is not to be expected, and we don’t see it here. Still, it’s about as good as professional bios are, and will probably improve as further corrections are made. Errors are approximate, rather than malicious. The version I saw in May 5, 2006, said that I won the Special Recognition for Service to Writers award from Preditors and Editors for my ongoing survey of electronic publishers. No; the P&E recognition was for my Hipiers site, given before I started the survey. It was EPIC that gave an award for the survey. Wikipedia said I was a venture capitalist, investing in a publishing house since bought out by Random House. No; I invested as an angel capitalist in Xlibris, and am now a co-owner along with Random House. One of the anomalies of this situation is that I generally see eye to eye with Random House on this. Who would have thunk it? Wikipedia says I also invested in vegetarian foodstuffs related technologies. I have not. It says I believe I was blacklisted at one time. That makes it seem as if I imagined it. Yeah? I was blacklisted by Ballantine Books for six years because I complained and got a lawyer when they cheated me. They badmouthed me to maybe half a dozen other publishers so that I could not sell to them either. Then Random House took over Ballantine and the blacklist was lifted—they knew the real story—and I became a bestseller there, in its Del Rey imprint. Most, perhaps all, of the blacklisters are long since out of business or in greatly reduced circumstances, while I prosper. I think of it as being like the Arab/Israel 1967 war, that occurred about the same time, within a couple years, where the outcome was not what the attackers expected. Sometimes the worm does turn, and the villains get hit by their own crap. But it is true that the experience left me extremely cynical about the motives and integrity of publishers and supposedly writer-friendly organizations, and I do try to help other writers in my own ornery fashion. I mean, I was blacklisted and badmouthed for being honest and right, by some officers of SFWA as well as some publishers and reviewers. That’s outrageous.

A perhaps related matter: SCIFIPEDIA at http://scifipedia.scifi.com/ is looking for volunteers to write articles about all aspects of SciFi, including something about me. So if I have an adoring fan, or even a hateful critic reading this column, that’s where to express yourself. There are those who feel I should not be omitted from significant genre references. So maybe it is time that this decades-long tacit blacklisting comes to an end. But I must say it’s too bad that this reference relegates itself to the trash bin that the term “sci-fi” signals. Science fiction is a serious genre; sci-fi is an ignorant derivative used mainly for junky movies.

I mentioned some columns back, lines in a song, “I’ll lay me down and bleed a while, then up to fight again.” “Tommy” send me the full original poem, “Sir Andrew Barton.” My memory of the words was not quite right, but I had the essence. It’s a long poem, several pages. Good to verify its existence.

I mentioned last column Lauri Roogna of Estonia. I got the gender wrong: in Estonia this is a man’s name.

I am bemused by a newspaper ad: picture of a full-fleshed young woman in bikini clasped by a young man, her full breasts jamming his chin, her firm thighs against his midsection. The caption is “No more constipation, hemorrhoids, or gas!” Sure as hell she doesn’t want any of that in this situation. It’s effective.

Article in NEW SCIENTIST, commenting on Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett, likens religion to contagion. “Religious beliefs promote their own survival more than that of the believers… Religious cults cast evil spells, just like fanatical politics, addictive drugs, gambling, alcohol and child pornography.” Why do people believe? Religion has three purposes: to allay our fear of death and comfort our suffering; to explain what seems inexplicable; and to encourage group cooperation in the face of trials and enemies. The fear of death is alleviated by belief in a life beyond death. Too bad I don’t believe.

THIS MODERN WORLD political cartoon by Tom Tomorrow shows an administration supporter chiding its trademark penguin for getting worked up about intrusions into personal privacy. “After all—if you’re innocent, then you don’t have anything to hide.” Whereupon the penguin responds: then why doesn’t the Bush administration release the record of Cheney’s secret energy task force? And pre-9/11 intelligence, and Katrina preparedness? What about coming clean on torture and extraordinary rendition? The Downing Street Memo? The No-bid contracts with Halliburton? And all the other abruptly sealed records? After all, if the innocent have nothing to hide…

From the Internet: an article titled “Under the cold eye of history” by Robert P Watson suggests that there is much agreement among scholars that the greatest American presidents are Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt. The worst are Warren Harding, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. So where does W Bush place? As one of the, perhaps THE worst. “Bush’s legacy will likely be that of death, deficits, and deceit, and it could well take this nation a decade or more to recover from his presidency.”

Coming soon, perhaps: the open-source cell phone. I am interested. Surely we shouldn’t have to pay high rates for closely guarded secret innards, to use the public airways.

As usual I have a pile of clippings remaining, with some really interesting—to me—material. But as usual I’m running out of time and space and must cut it off, leaving readers to wonder what I would have said had I really gotten my dandruff up. Sorry about that.

If you don’t like computer discussion, skip the first few paragraphs of this column. If you don’t like tarot card discussion, skip the next few. If you don’t like Piers Anthony fulminations, skip the rest; you’re in the wrong section. This is the bimonthly blog. The one you’re looking for is the Internet Publishing & Services list. Next time try to hit the right button the first time.

I mentioned my computer crash last column. Complications continue. I prefer to use Linux on principle, so as not to be locked into a dominating money-hungry corporation, and Linux has features I like, but there are problems. At this stage I have tried Caldera, Red Hat, Xandros, Knoppix, SUSE, and Linspire. I elected not to try Ubuntu, because it uses the Gnome environment, which I discovered I don’t like. These are all distributions of Linux, similar in essential features, differing in details. Caldera was okay but seemed to go out of business. Red Hat crashed. Xandros got balky about backing up, then trashed two of my files I had been thus unable to back up. Knoppix is a “live” version not suitable for my hard disk mode of operation, though very nice for its designed purpose. SUSE refused to install the environment I prefer, KDE, giving me Gnome instead, both it and SUSE struck me as relatively primitive, lacking contemporary features like ready keyboard changing, more than four virtual desktops with their individual names and backgrounds (I personalize, with file handlers in “Files” and my writing files in “Novels” with scenic backgrounds, and so on; I love it), and it had trouble addressing peripherals, like my floppy disks. It also seemed to be incapable of clearing an error message, which can be aggravating. I thought that that fault was fixed way back in CP/M, back in the stone age of computing. So finally we ordered Linspire from Amazon.com, and I started using it the first of July, to write Xanth #32, Two to the Fifth.

Linspire is supposed to be the easiest version of Linux for a newcomer to use. Sure, I’ve been using Linux for over five years, after taking a year and a half struggling to get it from a local computer shop, but here’s the key: the only way it has worked is when it has been set up personally by a geek. This time we were trying to do it ourselves, and-I say this bemusedly-it can’t be done by real people. Oh, we managed to get it installed, after switching out systems-the Compaq we had ultimately refused to install anything but Windows, which means we won’t buy Compaq again–but all we have is the offline version. We use a modem; the high-speed Internet option is not available for us. Yes, we checked; it seems we are too far into the back woods. Linspire keeps bugging us to go online, as it is designed for that, but it won’t go online with our modem. Would you believe, when we tried, it gave a message saying to check whether we had the right modem we had to go online first? “Please download and run the scanmodem tool before sending any query…” Catch 22: since we can’t take it online, we can’t check to find out how to get online, or download their tool. Unless we do it with a Windows system. Sure they have cute little tutorials, and Click ‘n’ Run, things that are supposed to make everything easy. Know what? We got halfway through those menus, and they vacated. Simply disappeared. No error messages, no nothing, they simply stopped existing. So I reset, and tried again, and this time the menus remained but pulled other stunts, such as requiring a unique account name, but offering no place to put it. Start over. Such as proffering a place to put it, but graying it out so that it could not be used. Such as using obscure terms we never heard of and never needed with Windows. So why the hell leave Windows? So those nice looking step by step instructions in the manual don’t match reality; the later menus they say will come up when you click this & that, may or may not appear. Leaving us unconnected without explanation. I wish to hell these outfits would actually try watching a newcomer attempt to use their stuff. But as with Windows, they obviously don’t, whatever they say. Finally we did go online via Windows, and Linspire doesn’t list the modems we have, though they are standard brands that worked before. Par for the course. Such as the external AOpen that I used for years with Red Hat Linux, until The Crash. What do they have against an external modem? I prefer it, as it shows me what’s happening when it is happening. As if they ever cared what I prefer.

So how is Linspire offline? Not bad actually, though there too are problems. With SUSE I started using OpenOffice 2 with its .odt files (Open Delirium Tremens, I think); but Linspire 5.0, bought new, used OpenOffice 1.1 which can’t read .odt files. I had sort of expected a new distribution to be current; silly me. Install StarOffice 8, which I think is the same as OpenOffice2? We tried. It asked us to open a terminal, for which there was no icon, and the word “terminal” is not in the manual index. Neither, for that matter, is the term “modem.” Really helpful, folk; try using your own manual some day. We had to stair-step to find Konsole. Then we got obscure “alien” commands, not at all intuitive or simple. In sum, we could not install StarOffice 8. Sandbagged again. So my wife loaded StarOffice 8 on her Windows system, no trouble at all, and used it to translate the .odt files to .sxw (Sexy Wench) files, which I then imported to Linspire. But note the connection: we had to use Windows in order to use Linux. What is the point in going to Linux, if you have to use Windows to get it started? What of those folk who can’t afford more than one system? It had better be Windows. As I remarked in the June column, I’m sure I have fans in Microsoft who are chortling as they watch me struggle like a hooked fish to escape Windows, and keep not quite succeeding. On and on. We have to log on as “Administrator”; Linspire seems to offer no other choice. Is it that the Linux geeks don’t care whether it is usable by regular folk? Or are they simply tuned out of real life?”

Minor things: there are statistics for the games you can play. I played card games-and discovered that it penalizes you one game per session. I played one game of Grandfather, won it, and it listed me with 50%. Next session, it listed me at 33% before I ever played. Here’s a bulletin for whoever programs this stuff: a game should not be listed as won or lost until it is actually played, or at least the first move is made. Otherwise the statistics are invalid, and thus pointless. Duh. We are now using a Flash drive. It kept saying to unmount it at the end, but when we did, it said okay-then flashed the error message again. Turned out it wants you to abolish the dialogue box it uses. Why didn’t it say so? The speller doesn’t know the words “Linspire,” “online” or “okay.” There is an Auto-load feature, so that commonly used programs can be set to load on their own at startup. I tried that, but it led to confusing instructions and it seems I wound up accidentally overwriting or deleting a program that auto-loaded the desktop icons and desktop menu bar, as well as the way to address the flash drive. And the screen saver. Shouldn’t there have been a warning note for such an important program? WARNING: DELETION OF THIS FILE WILL CRIPPLE YOUR SYSTEM, AND IT CAN’T BE REVERSED BECAIUSE WE THINK YOU SHOULD DAMN WELL SUFFER FOR YOUR STUPIDITY. Something like that, letting some noxious candor squeeze out. But I keep forgetting: we’re dealing with geek programming here, that thinks if you run afoul of unmarked potholes it’s a neat joke on you. Ha. Ha. So I had to reinstall, losing all my defaults and files (though those were backed up this time), having to start over. Why wasn’t I amused? Maybe I lack a proper sense of humor, at least when it’s my time being wasted. I won’t be trying auto-load again. Then there’s the matter of macros: I like to make and use them. But I haven’t been able to since StarOffice 6, because they changed them so that only a geek can do it now. I got them for StarOffice 7 with Red Hat by bringing a geek in to figure it out. He discovered that it was putting REM by any macro I recorded, meaning to ignore it. For sure! Linspire hasn’t fixed this; I can theoretically record a macro, but can’t do anything with it. Again: it is evident that they don’t have newcomers actually try their product, because if they did, they’d fix this sort of mousetrap. But if any distribution of Linux ever decides to get serious about making it usable for ordinary users, in reality as well as advertising, here is my advice: not only do you need to have bug-free programs that work reliably, and clear instructions that match what is happening on the screen; put warning notices to mark treacherous territory, and have an Oops button. Or is that too complicated for them to grasp?

At any rate, I concluded that Linspire was best for my purpose; I fault it mainly for not fixing standard Linux problems, because it’s the one that claims to be the world’s easiest desktop Linux. That claim seems about as true as the Windows claim that the user is the most important person. Gives some pained laughter. I decided to order a complete system with it pre-installed. We found material on Koobox that seemed just right. But when we went to order, they were out of stock of the particular one I had decided on, and stopped selling it. I am bemused; how did they know? I swear that thing was available until the very day I tried to order it. But perhaps it explains the rest: Linspire does not want my business. It wants to force me to buy a Windows system and then struggle to impose Linspire on it, knowing I may never succeed. I am not allowed to bypass all that hassle. It fits the master plan: thou shalt not suffer an ordinary user to go unto the temple of Linux ungeeked. I am disgusted.

So on the last day of July we drove to CIRCUIT CITY and bought a new Acer computer system and brought it home, a 2.5 hour trip. The mas brought our boxes down from an eight foot high shelf using what amounted to a portable elevator vehicle. What won’t they think of next? August 1 I set it up, got it running-main problem was finding the right plug for the sound, as there were 6 outlets, none of which worked, and no instructions relating to that, so finally my wife put on a card game with sound effects and I tried one plug after another until the sound came through. Why can’t they have instructions that simply tell you? Then I tried to install Linspire. First it refused to read the CD ROM drive, so I got in there and changed the default so that it had to read it first. It wouldn’t hold; it had to be reset each time. Then it read the Linspire disk, started loading-and went kaplooey, unable to do it. So we tried Xandros; it ignored that disc completely. Tried Linspire again, and again it started okay, but the moment Windows realized it was being replaced, it garbled the works. We can’t put Linux on a Windows system; Windows doesn’t allow it. Antitrust? Sure, but who is going to spend millions of dollars making the legal case? They do it in Europe, and have to do it again because Microsoft ignores the court’s judgment. So we have wasted time and money, again, and I’m still on my temporary Linspire system. I am not at all pleased, as the tone of this column may hint. But I will say the new system came with a nice mouse that has no ball; apparently it uses a red laser light, so can operate on any surface with impunity.

My wife and I had our 50th wedding anniversary June 23. It’s a significant marker, and we celebrated by doing nothing. Our elder daughter sent us a bouquet with 50 flowers, roses and such. That left us with a perplexity: we were caught by surprise by the delivery, and just sort of dumbly accepted it. Should we have tipped the lady who brought the flowers? If so, how much? It’s a problem, because is it truly a gift if you have to pay someone for bringing it? Were we remiss? Anyway, the expensive home treatments are keeping my wife on her feet, and the surgeon said her aortic aneurysm is stable for now, so postponed surgery for a year. That’s a relief, because it’s really a form of heart surgery, and dangerous; they have to stop the heart to do it. So we’re doing okay, considering our situation. I can’t say whether we’ll make the 60th, though; there are too many health questions, hers and mine.

Right after that anniversary, things went wrong. I was struggling with one of those computer glitches, and then our Sony TV crashed. Well, it had lasted 9.5 years and was about due. Next day our water pump failed, evidently taken out by lightning. Okay, so we shopped for a new TV and got a 32″ wide screen HiSense. No, we never heard of it before either, and presume it’s a made-up brand name for a manufacturer we would recognize if we saw it, only at a cheaper price. It seems to be working fine. It is HDTV-capable, but of course we don’t get HDTV here. I mentioned being in the back woods? And the pump company sent a man out promptly, and not only did he replace it, there was no charge, because it was still on warranty. Even though it wasn’t a defect in the pump, but lightning. So maybe our anniversary wasn’t cursed after all.

In this period I was contacted by a reader-well, yes, by hundreds of readers, as usual, but this one was different. He is Renard Gervais, who works with computers. Did he ever walk into a situation here! We quickly developed a hot and heavy correspondence as he wrestled to diagnose and fix our computer problem by email and snail mail. He sent CD copies of Knoppix, SUSE, Linspire and others, which is how I was able to try them out, and decide on Linspire. I shipped him my crashed hard disk, as I was unable to address it here-it wouldn’t mount-and he verified the bad news: its cooling fan had failed, and it had warped and was dead. That’s why Knoppix had been unable to rescue my files. Damn.

But he had originally contacted me for another reason. He had read the third volume of Tarotyears ago, and been impressed by my hundred-card Animation Tarot deck. So he had worked out his own 100 card variation. Tarot is like open source computing: anyone can do a variant, and there may be more different tarot decks than there are Linux variants. But most are 78 cards; I’m the only one I know of to develop a 100 card deck, which I did by working out the likely true history of the deck and restoring cards that had been lost. If my variant makes sense to others, so that they are moved to improve on it, fine. And Gervais did. His deck is animated, every picture something to see. He asked me whether it’s okay to circulate that. Sure it is. I am pondering whether to put it on my site, but am not sure I have room; it’s massive. What it needs is its own site, where anyone can visit, see the cards, appreciate them, and use or download them. The Internet makes great sense for tarot, because anyone can access it. The only physical deck I have is a very nice one made by Stephanie Peters, which she gave me when she visited in 2002.

Let me say more about my tarot. The novel is one of the most significant of my career, and therefore largely ignored by the critical and reviewing establishment, which is not equipped to comprehend it. In vastly simplified terms, it concerns the monk Brother Paul of the Holy Order of Vision who is assigned the mission of determining whether the seeming manifestation of God on a far planet is genuine. That is, is it really God, or an impostor? It is important not to make a mistake here, as you might imagine. Brother Paul feels inadequate to the challenge, but he is the one assigned and he must do it. There is considerable evidence that it is God, so this is no minor quest. That exploration leads him through a fantastic study of the planet, where very strange things happen, and a sometimes painful exploration of the nature of mankind and himself. This summary is inadequate, but I can’t properly convey a quarter million word philosophical novel in a few hundred words. It really does need to be read to be understood, and I have said that anyone who does read it and is not offended at some point, does not properly understand it.

Now the deck. The standard 78 card tarot decks are known mainly for divination or character exploration. They consist of the 52 cards of a regular playing card deck, plus 22 Trumps, or Triumphs, and an extra face card in each suit, the Page. The history and nature of tarot is too complicated to go into here; let’s just say that you could spend years fathoming it if you chose, as I did. Every card has its special meaning, and a different or opposite meaning if reversed-that is, dealt upside down. You do a reading by laying down the cards in a set pattern, and the ones that turn up indicate whether you will come into money, get married, die suddenly, and so on. Divination. Let me clarify that I have no belief in the supernatural, and divination is supernatural. But when I first tried a tarot reading on myself, back circa 1975, I was amazed; I felt like a butterfly pinned to a board, all my secrets exposed. So how could it work so well, if it was based on magic that doesn’t exist? That intrigued me, and I studied it, and the result was the quarter million word novel Tarot, the 100 card Animation Tarot deck, and the Satellite Spread. I concluded that it wasn’t supernatural, but a fine psychological tool that pushed key human buttons. I set out to make it do that better. Actually, as I see it, tarot is five-fold: it can be used for entertainment, as in games or gambling. For divination, perhaps its most common use, which really includes character analysis, a sort of Rorschach test. Or study, as in a survey of all the available decks with their cultural indications, special interpretations, religious significance, and the history of its practitioners; there is some fascinating material there, and some passionate disagreements. For example, one beautiful variant was crafted by a self-proclaimed most evil man in the world, Alister Crowley. Or business, as with those who sell books about it, collect cards, or make money from divinations. Or meditation, considering the meanings of the individual cards, especially their symbolism. Five uses, equating to the five suits; more about those below.

The Animation Tarot deck has 30 Triumphs and 5 suits of 14 cards each. The Triumphs are special cards, covering things like Love, Death, Time, Reason, Power, Future, and so on, and they too have alternate names. Power, for example, is the traditional Emperor. I did not change the Tarot, I merely amended it and enhanced its definitions, trying to restore it to its original splendor. The Triumphs actually trace the life of Jesus Christ, or of any person, with some savage parodies of the foibles of established institutions. In the traditional deck, for example, the High Priest is almost indistinguishable from the Emperor. Was that a mistake? No, it suggests how the leaders of the Church had assumed worldly pleasures and power. Right on target for medieval times (and today, actually), but of course anyone who openly said such a thing risked being tortured until he repented, then perhaps burned at the stake. Then on through Death, and thereafter the transfer of the Soul to another vessel, and a vision of the Afterlife. The cards were in fact a sermon, secretly circulated by the Waldenses sect. But because their real purpose had to be secret, they were hidden within a deck of playing cards, and outsiders did not necessarily know their true nature. Even some Tarot experts today seem not to know or care. There’s much more than meets the eye. So a deck reached the court of the King of France, who took it for a new kind of game. Well, it was, in its special fashion.

The suits are variously interpreted, according to the user’s preference: the conventional Fire, Air, Water, Earth, plus Aura. You see, the first four are what the ancients were believed to have taught, but actually they taught five, including the Void, so I replaced that lost suit. Only mine is positive, covering the not only the Void, but also Aura, Soul, Spirit and the Arts, which are what truly separate mankind from the animals. No animal appreciates the arts. The suits can also be called Nature, Science, Faith, Trade, and Art. Or Energy, Gas, Liquid, Solid, Plasma. Or Do, Think, Feel, Have, Be. Within each suit the 14 cards further define their aspects, positive and reversed, so it writes with a fairly fine pen, at least compared to the traditional 78 card tarot deck.

But the Satellite Spread is special. It is an enhanced version of a traditional spread, and it is the way the deck is made to relate to human concerns. It was developed for the Animation Tarot, but can be used with any deck. It is hard to digest it without sacrificing clarity, but I’ll try. Let’s say you have a problem and you want guidance from the cards. First formulate your Question. Then select your Significator, the card that stands for you personally. This is normally Court Card, but can be any card, depending on your nature. Shuffle the complete deck, with your Significator in it, then deal the cards face down into five piles of 20 cards each. Then start with any pile and turn its cards face up, one by one. Do this until you find your Significator. If it isn’t in the first pile, do the second, and so on; it’s bound to be somewhere. When it turns up, stop right there and check which of the five piles it’s in. If it is in, say, the third pile, that’s FEEL, as in Do, Think, FEEL, Have, Be, above. Is the nature of your Question consistent with this category? Such as, does she truly love me? If it is, proceed. If not, stop there, as the Deck has declined to address this question. Maybe it doesn’t want to break your heart by telling you the truth; you’ll be happier in ignorance. Let’s say you proceed. Put your Significator down in the center of the table. Turn up the next card in the pile, below it, and lay it face up, cross-wise. That is, the Significator is oriented north-south; the next card crosses it oriented east-west. The next one goes south of it, with the N-S orientation; it is the first satellite card. The next one goes west of the Significator, also oriented N-S. The next one, north, and the next one, east. Now you have a pattern of six cards, with two crossed in the center and four around them. The first set of cards stands for Definition, defining your problem. The card below is Past, the one west is Present, the one north is Future, and the one east is Destiny. Interpret each card in the light of its position. Court cards are likely to represent important people in your life, being their Significators, and the meanings of the others are as given in the deck or your manual of interpretation associated with whatever deck you are using. As I said, it doesn’t have to be the Animation Deck, though for this purpose the Animation Deck will be most precise. The complete pattern should pretty well define your situation, with Destiny summing it up. You have to interpret it for yourself; no one else should do it for you, for the cards speak only to you, in ways that only you can appreciate. Say your Destiny card is Death; that doesn’t necessarily mean you will die; it could be that your romantic interest does not return your love and the relationship is effectively dead. But if you remain uncertain, you can start another satellite. Deal another card from that pile across the card that confuses you. This will define not the whole pattern, but only just that one card, amending its meaning. Does that do it for you? If not, deal out three more cards as satellites. These will be Past Present and Future for that card only, which has become the Significator for that Satellite. Does that do it? If not, you can build further satellites around any of those cards. The Spread is endlessly accommodating; it wants you to understand what it is saying to you. Except: when you run out of cards in that pile. If your Significator was the top card in the pile, you have 19 more to use if you need them; if it was in the middle, you may have only 10 cards. If it was near the bottom, you may not be able to complete your initial Spread. Take the hint: it is not meant to be. Don’t try a second Reading on the same Question. This is a system that will tell you No if it needs to. If you cheat by trying to go beyond the pile, your answer won’t be valid. Don’t blame the Deck or the Spread if you get a bad answer after abusing it.

That’s it. If you are serious about questioning the Deck, this Spread will interactively answer. More power to you.

I bought a Tri-King scooter I saw on sale for $50 in a catalog. It is like a regular scooter, only with two tails spreading of from the common stem with the handlebars. You don’t put a foot on the ground to push it; your feet remain in place on the two sidebars. So how do you make it go? It came with a DVD video disc-but that refused to load, though we tried it on three systems. The little manual did not say a lot, so mostly I had to work it out for myself. At first I got nowhere. In fact it seemed to want to nudge forward only when I did the reverse of what the meager instruction said. So I went back to re-reread the instructions, and devised an interpretation that allowed me to do it my way. That was the breakthrough; I started to move. Not rapidly, not readily; it was a constant struggle. But I practiced half an hour a day for about a week, gradually improving, and got so I could move it along at a walking pace, though it would have saved much energy simply to walk. I found that I can’t use it our our rough drive; it needs a smooth level surface. So I conquered it, but it remains in effect a toy, not usable in real life. For fetching our newspapers I still use the recumbent cycle and the adult scooter.

I mentioned last time that Hewlett-Packard reneged on a hundred dollar rebate. But a week later they sent it. We had not sent them a complaint, figuring it would be futile; they just did it. So apparently the notice they sent us before was in error, and they did not renege. I’m glad, because I really like their printers.

We saw movies: X-Men 3, Cars, Superman Returns, Dead Man’s Chest. All had their points and debits. I think Cars is about the finest animation I’ve seen, with some lovely scenes, and I like the way that all the characters are cars; no humans at all. I liked the somewhat conflicted situation in Superman: during his five year absence Lois Lane got a life, with a good man and her son by Superman. How could he just break that up? He couldn’t. Then the son, who is a weakling needing an inhaler, saw his mother being roughed up, and manifested a bit of super strength, killing the bad guy with a piano. That suggests the future. It was nice right before that scene, when the boy was picking out “Chopsticks” or whatever on the piano, and the bad guy sat down beside him and played a competent accompaniment. So the bad guy wasn’t all bad, though he had to go when he beat on Lois Lane. It was a nice touch. As for good movies like An Inconvenient Truth-this is a conservative county. It never was shown here.

I read books, trying to catch up before starting writing my novel, because once I start writing, the rest of the world tends to get squeezed out. Flame, by Jack Woodford, a fairly standard romance, showing me how the guy earned his living. You would hardly really know him from that, just as you would hardly know me from Xanth, but at least it showed me that he was indeed a competent writer. A Hole in the Earth, by Robert Bausch. I bought that two years ago from Daedalus for $2.98, which was a fair markdown from the $24 hardcover price. It starts with our hero’s teenage daughter he hardly knew coming to live with him for the summer, together with her sort-of boyfriend. Then his girlfriend turns up pregnant. He’s not particularly competent handling women anyway, and so muddles along. It’s well written and interesting, if not spectacular, a mainstream slice of life. Then I read a potentially fascinating alien-contact novel that I think doesn’t quite make it. Naturally I never heard again from the author after saying so. You get no thanks for an informed opinion if it isn’t positive.

Serpent’s Tooth, by Andre Norton, the one I was given at Oasis. I found it opaque and heavy, barely readable. That bothered me, so I searched the house and raided my daughter’s copy of a children’s novel Norton wrote decades ago, Octagon Magic. You see, I always got along well with Andre, and the reason I didn’t read her books was to avoid judging her, as is the case with Serpent’s Tooth. I did not want that to be my final impression of her. I’m pleased to report that Octagon Magic, copyright 1967 (the year I had my first novel published) is not at all like that. It is written clearly and it is interesting. A little girl strays onto the estate of a woman she takes to be a witch, who lives in an eight sided house, and receives a more understanding welcome than she expected. In the course of the novel we learn more about the old house and old woman, with revisited scenes from the past. This is a suitable book to remember Andre Norton by.

Then I read one for pleasure. I normally read fiction for business, and nonfiction for pleasure. Before the Dawn by Nicolas Wade explores the history of mankind in that period of roughly 200,000 years ago to 15,000 years ago. This is a period I have researched more than casually in the past, and it still fascinates me. There are many nice insights in this book, though the author does miss some. For example, he discusses the way couple-life became feasible, one man protecting and breeding with one woman, but doesn’t catch on to the formidable arsenal of attractants woman developed to ensure the presence of the man, including breasts that turn men on as well as nursing offspring, and the appearance of perpetual breedability so that not only is he constantly attracted, he dare not leave her alone lest she breed with some other man. He does make a case that our species emerged from Africa 50,000 years ago, rather than 100,000 years ago; I had had great difficulty figuring out why man would wait 50,000 years in the near east before suddenly exploding in capabilities. It seems he didn’t; he emerged from Africa when he developed those capabilities. The author traces the descent via genetics, aligning it with linguistic and archaeological evidence, zeroing in on dates. He believes that this was when language developed. I have a problem with that; my prior researches suggested that language was what powered the increase in brain size in the course of two and a half million years. If language came only 50,000 years, ago, what made for the larger brains of the Neandertals, who split from our lineage hundreds of thousands of years ago? What drove our own brain size increase, which happened long before 50,000 year ago. So I don’t think we have the answer yet. But it’s a fascinating and informative book.

Richard Vallance sent me several DVDs he suspected would not have been shown in America. He may be right; they represent a perspective we don’t get via normal media. One is titled Iraq-The Hidden Story. It says that this war has been sanitized for American news, and makes the case. It’s a horror there, with 35,000 lives lost the past three years. No one who sees this brutality and carnage would ever support war again-so the news of it is suppressed. The TV news thus supports governments that want to go to war. Journalists are targeted by insurgents and Americans; 92 have been killed there, more than in the whole Vietnam war. We need to get out of Iraq; we will never pacify it. Face it: if another nation invaded America on a false premise, and slaughtered any folk who protested, would we ever give up our fight for independence? Or would we constantly harass them by any means possible, in an unyielding effort to get them out? That is what they are doing with us. We are the oppressors, in Iraq, not the liberators. But our controlled press can’t say so. And that’s only the beginning; the videos show how it is oil that always drove our involvement in the middle east, and how in 14 months our occupying force squandered more than twenty billion dollars that belonged to Iraq; it was a special interest feeding frenzy that abated only when the money was gone. One video is on global warming, about which much of America is in denial; it’s broader and worse than we know. And how American companies do their drug trial in India, where the subjects are not paid, only their recruiters, and some suffer serious side effects, like paralysis.

I also started watching some videos my daughter gave me over a year ago: the MythBuster series. These two men go around checking out popular myths, and their explorations can be fascinating. For example, the Penny Drop. The myth is that if you drop a penny off the top of the empire State Building, it will either embed itself in the concrete below, or hit someone in the head, killing him. What’s the truth? Well, first they pointed out that tall buildings can generate their own weather, and your penny bight be blown right back up at you, not hitting the ground at all. Then they calculated terminal velocity for a penny-that is, the highest speed it will achieve when falling. For a person it is 120 miles per hour; for a penny it is 35-65 mph. So they tested that, dropping a person off a plane, who while in free fall let loose bunches of pennies. Sure enough, they disappeared upward, falling more slowly. Then they made a gun to fire pennies at 65 mph into a concrete wall, then a mock head. Know what? The pennies simply bounced off the wall-and off the head. Finally they fired the penny into a live human hand. It stung, but did not even break the skin. So the myth is false; not only can pennies not embed themselves in concrete, they can’t even embed themselves in human flesh. Want another? Can mints or other chewed things enable a person to beat the police breath test? One MythBuster undertook the chore of getting drunk to test this. The answer: no. Nothing worked. You can’t beat the breath test.

I have mentioned that I now wear my hair long, ever since my wife had to stop cutting it. This was started as a matter of expedience, but now that I have wrestled with the problem of tying ponytails, I conclude that I like my hair this way, and will probably stay with it the rest of my life. It doesn’t actually save me time, because each day I have to “do” my hair, brushing and combing it out and tying it back. As it lengthens past shoulder length the tangles have become worse; I have spent minutes ripping out snarls of hair, which I can ill afford to do with my thinning quota. Which suggests an answer to a hypothetical question: why do I wear a ponytail? To cover my bald spot. So finally we shopped at the grocery story for a lotion to abate the tangles. It seems that it smooths over the scaly stem of the hair so that it doesn’t snag on itself. I’m trying L’Ordeal Kids Tangle Tamer, Burst of Sweet Pear flavor. It sprays on, perfuming me to smell like a ripe pear-Piers = pears? Don’t call me a fruit!–and does seem to be helping. Actually, VO5 also works. Maybe this will hold me as my hair continues to grow to bra-strap length and beyond. Oh, stop sniggering; you know what I mean. You’re just jealous of my lovely wave. I never knew what great hair I had, until after 70. Compare yours, when you’re that age.

As usual, I have a huge pile of clippings. I save out anything that interests me, and just about everything does. Then I have to skip most of them, because I’m aware that they wouldn’t interest others equivalently. So, distilled, a selection of items:

NEW SCIENTIST has an article about how they have discovered the switch that turns on puberty. It refers to it as the teen gene. But they don’t yet know why it comes into play when it does. Puberty has been happening earlier. In the mid 18th century it was 17 for European girls; a century later it was 14. Now it’s 13, and for black American girls it’s getting down toward 12. That’s average; they don’t consider it precocious unless it happens before age 8. It runs about two years later for boys. I believe I was the last in my class for it, at age 18. Yes, I was ridiculed, but the fact is I never looked my age, and now that’s a blessing. I’ll be 72 on August 6, and I won’t look it. So there.

Perhaps related: a prior NEW SCIENTIST complex of articles about Love. Can science help us understand it? There do seem to be biological underpinnings, and the various forms of love-romantic, maternal, family, religious-have neurochemical circuitry in common. Levels of certain hormones peak during sexual intercourse as that aspect of love is indulged. One thing that seems to turn people on is laughter. Wow: I make people laugh all the time. Does that make me a romantic figure? Then when it goes bad, there are four horsemen of the apocalypse: Contempt, as with insults and sarcasm; Air of Superiority; Criticism/Defensiveness; and Stonewalling or Emotional Withdrawal. Similar things apply to gay love, with some distinctions; without the fundamental difference of genders, they can’t afford to be too similar in other respects. One telling question: “If we are attracted to people who resemble us, why aren’t we all gay?” So differences in age, race, personality and such may contribute to a stable gay/lesbian relationship.

Newspaper reference to the problem of illegal immigration. I’m a legal immigrant, whatever my critics may prefer to think. Have I mentioned how when I was naturalized American in 1957, age 24 in my US Army uniform, they started interviewing my American wife, taking her for a foreign army bride? No, we were the exception, and I took the oath of citizenship as the one man, together with 49 women. But I retain a certain sympathy for immigrants. Many come here from Mexico, trying to make a living, and are exploited mercilessly by American companies. The authorities try to wall the immigrants out, literally, but it’s useless because they sneak and bribe their way across the border, abetted by those companies. The solution, columnist Cynthia Tucker says, is to cut off the flow of jobs. “If a few business executives were to be imprisoned for illegally hiring, the practice would experience a sudden drop in popularity.” Then far fewer folk would try to sneak in. But of course that won’t happen, because they want to harass poor workers, not rich employers. Meanwhile thousands turn up at marches in Florida and around the country, demonstrating for immigration reform.

I still receive ads for multi-million dollar estates. They look nice, but the fact is the software environment of my computer as I write my novels is probably more important to me than the hardware environment of my house, and it’s somewhat cheaper.

NEW SCIENTIST has a feature where folk send in questions, and other folk answer them. A child chided for nose-picking inquired whether it’s coincidence that the human finger fits a human nostril. The answers say that yes, it is coincidence, and describe the snot rocket, where one nostril is blocked and the snot is blown out in a glorious stream from the other. Well, maybe. But when I wake at night with saliva drooling on my pillow because my nose has blocked up solid and I have to breathe through my mouth to survive, I wonder. Could the finger be nature’s way of cleaning out a bodily waste, as is urination and defecation? We seldom do any of these things in public, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t necessary.

From a column by Jay Bookman: “WMD [weapons of mass destruction] was the administration’s excuse for a war it had already decided upon for other reasons.” “Of course, accusing Bush of deliberately lying to the country still sets off a contentious counter-attack. Historians, though, will have no qualms whatsoever about reaching the same conclusion; the evidence is overwhelming.” From another column by the same author: “Do the math-in barely a decade, the number of pork projects grew almost ten-fold. No wonder lobbyists are in a feeding frenzy.” And one by Peter Phillips, titled “Neo-Conservatives Seek Global Dominance.” That may say it all. But here’s a comment that makes sense in the local ST PETE TIMES newspaper, by Donald F Kelly: “If your government has the right to set a minimum wage, then why doesn’t it have the right to set a maximum wage that a CEO can make?” Damn good question, what with the minimum wage unchanged in 9 years while CEO pay has increased enormously. If I were making such law, I’d start with a ratio of 10-1; that is, the highest paid member of a company could not make more than ten times the wage of the lowest paid member. Maybe the ratio should be narrower than that.

I have mentioned high-fructose corn syrup before, because I will no longer use products containing it, lest it mess up my digestion. Now it turns out that it’s worse than that: those who can digest it fail to have their hunger abated, so they go right on eating and become obese. Thus it may be contributing significantly to the current epidemic of obesity and diabetes. My wife and I read food labels carefully, and act on them, excluding such perils. It is one secret of health, or at least of being less sickly than otherwise.

NEW SCIENTIST: how to live to 100 and enjoy it. Go for small stresses, because the effort your body makes to overcome them makes it healthier. Marry, because such a relationship really boosts your well-being. In fact, age and living alone are the strongest predictors for heart disease. Live in a healthy place. Indulge yourself in moderation with things like a glass of wine, a chocolate bar, a nap: pleasure is generally good for you. Exercise your body and your brain. Laugh. Take care of yourself, to the point of a little bit of hypochondria. Don’t eat much. Get a life: take some risk, seek novelty. Okay, I’ll try. I wonder whether ornery blogging at two month intervals counts? PARADE agrees: “A solid marriage with regular and enthusiastic sex can be the best preventive medicine of all.” Cuddling does it for women, but men need full sex.

Evidence grows that we don’t properly understand gravity. I’ve been a fan of Dark Matter for years; it fascinates me. But increasingly I am wondering whether it doesn’t really exist. That it is an attempt to explain our confusion about gravity by postulating an invisible something, like a ghost who makes our accounts go wrong. That latter notion really is simpler, and may in the end be the truth. There is considerable data about dark matter, but also about gravity; scientists who know way more about both than I do are gradually coming to some sort of conclusion. I am eager to see it.

From DISCOVER magazine: it may not have been smallpox that decimated the native Americans, but a little-known local disease related to Ebola. That magazine also suggests that the American economy could prosper without oil. Wind power alone, properly developed, would supply all our energy needs. And that mankind evolved to run as wall as to walk. Yes, the running dynamics are different from walking; I am conscious of it as I run for exercise. It’s not just faster walking. It seems that man is the only striding biped that’s a runner that’s tailless.

I’m not much into horse racing, or, for that matter, other TV sports. But we did watch the Kentucky Derby. I looked at the list of entries and saw one named Keyed Entry. That was obviously a computer-using writer’s horse, so I focused on it. Would you believe, that horse was #1 at the quarter mile, #1 at the half mile, still #1 at three quarter miles. Then pooped out and dropped all the way back to last, #20, at the finish. That figures; it matches the career of the typical writer, with high hopes until the publisher responds to let him know they regard him as horse puckey.

For a few days there were motorcycles all around town. Then we found out why: there is an organization known as the Patriot Guard that honors fallen soldiers. There had been a local soldier killed, so they were out to help. More power to them.

Global warming is a problem, a serious one, as glaciers melt, storms increase, and climate shifts imperil our food supplies. But it’s not the only one. We are running out of fresh water, and energy is becoming expensive. I see politics as the solution: We need to get those in denial about such problems the hell out of office so that the problems can be addressed before it’s no longer possible to avoid disaster. My vote is for solar power, used among other things to glean clear water from the sea. But we are stuck with an administration that voted to cut funding for programs like “Sesame Street.” Anything worthwhile seems to be at risk.

Citrus County is where John Couey, a convicted sex offender, abducted, raped, and killed nine year old Jessica Lunsford. At last his trial came up. They had to change venues to try to get an impartial jury, but in the end had to postpone, because the jury pool ran out without finding enough. I’m not surprised.

Column by Bob Herbert: “Hallmarks of totalitarian regimes have always included an excessive reliance on secrecy, the deliberate stoking of fear in the general population, a preference for military rather than diplomatic solutions in foreign policy, the promotion of blind patriotism, the denial of human rights, the curtailment of the rule of law, hostility to a free press and the systematic invasion of the privacy of ordinary people.” Say, that seems eerily familiar. Not that it could ever happen here…

I mentioned starting to write Xanth #32, Two to the Fifth. Naturally it’s not as simple as a straight math pun. It moved well in the month of Jewel-Lye, especially considering it was part time work, and I wrote 44,600 words. There is a complicated mission for Cyrus Cyborg, the son of Roland Robot and Hannah Barbarian, who got together in Pet Peeve. The stork brought them a crossbreed with some assembly needed, and Cyrus was created adult. Remember the Three Princesses, Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm? They are now twelve years old, precocious girls eager to get into things the Adult Conspiracy forbids. Rhythm is assigned to help Cyrus on his mission, incognito; he knows her identity, but others don’t. At one point she leads him to a pool in a glade and confesses that she has a crush on him and would like to marry him. “But you’re a child!” he protests, dismissing it. Uh-oh. Now she’s a Girl Scorned. She is also a Sorceress. He really should have found a nicer way to set her straight; one simply does not safely dismiss a Sorceress of any age. She invokes a spell that makes her ten years older, for one hour, bursting out of her clothing, and stands before him a lusciously nude age 22. She grabs him, stuns him with a kiss, and hauls him into the pond with her. It is a love spring, by no coincidence. There follows an intense ellipsis; Cyrus doesn’t have a chance. Then the spell runs out and she reverts to age 12. Cyrus is left passionately in love with a woman who won’t exist for another decade. I did mention that it is unwise to dismiss a Sorceress? Rhythm’s vengeance is complete. Then the stork arrives with a bundle for her. Did I mention why the Adult Conspiracy exists? Her parents will never understand. She’s in one bleep of a picklement. This is just an incidental scene in the larger novel, though it does relate to the main theme. Their daughter will play a vital role in the conclusion.

A reader sent me an email, and I answered it-and received this response: “You are not permitted to send mail from [this address]. All SMTP connections have been blocked from your system because its address matches in the DNS Black List.” So if you wonder why you didn’t get an answer…

Every so often my wife and I exchange a glance and inquire where is the easy, unhurried life of retirement-age couples? Of course I’m not retired and never will be, but our average age is 70 and we wouldn’t mind relaxing a bit. Instead the hectic pace continues. Ah, well.

For my birthday my elder daughter send me a book Walter the Farting Dog, plus a Walter-dog doll that farts when squeezed. The essence of the story is that when they adopted Walter from the pound they discovered that he constantly farted, and they could hardly stand the smell. Nothing abated it, so they were ready to take him back. Then robbers sneaked in, and only Walter knew it. He farted up such a storm that the robbers suffocated and fled, leaving their loot behind. So he saved the family from the robbery, and became a hero, smell and all.

Something else relating to my birthday: I learned that Jon-Benet Ramsey, the little showgirl who was abducted, raped, and killed at age 6 a decade ago, had the same birthday: August 6. 1990 for her, 1934 for me. I don’t like this business of tarting up children to look and act sexy; it’s contrary to nature and can lead to exactly what happened to her. Children should be allowed to be children. Yes, there is a graphic sex scene with a child in my novel Firefly; folk should read it to understand that it is no endorsement of pedophilia. Today there are Internet chat sites that obliquely cater to pedophiles. US NEWS & WORLD REPORT had an article on Myspace where teens can have sites that would freak out their parents and predators can lurk.

Meanwhile my wife is doing well enough, considering, needing that expensive IVIg infusion every five to six weeks. Otherwise she slows down, suffering numbness at the peripheries, and we know where that leads: to the wheelchair. One thing that disturbs me is the way the current congress acted to stop Medicare from covering the home treatments, so patients including my wife went to the hospital for them. So Congress acted again, to stop that too. So now we pay for it ourselves despite being on Medicare, while others who can’t afford it are dying. I am speaking literally; I got it from the magazine I.G. LIVING, that serves people like my wife. It seems people will continue dying until there is a regime change. It seems that is okay, if you belong to the party in power. She also tried Boniva, the once a month pill to shore up the bones-and it tore up her esophagus, giving her severe heartburn that recurs daily even weeks after she stopped taking it, making her miserable. How would you like to live with a miserable spouse? About expensive medicine: an article describes how Overton Pharmaceuticals bought the right to market the cancer drug Mustargen. In less than a month the price of a two-week prescription jumped from $77.50 to $548.01. They did the same with Panhematin, a drug used to treat a rare enzymatic disease, and the price went from $230 to $1,900. Welcome to American medicine.

I remarked last column that I did not try Ubuntu Linux because it uses Gnome instead of the KDE environment I much prefer. Well, several fans advised by that there is Kubuntu, which is Ubuntu with KDE. Okay, so after I finished writing Xanth #32 Two to the Fifth, I tried putting Kubuntu on my system. It wouldn’t install. I tried it three times with two different discs, but each locked up the system in step 4 or the 6 required. So then we tried the 64 bit Kubuntu on our new 64 bit computer, and it installed. But Kubunti is different from the other distributions of Linux we have tried, and my wife, who was a computer programmer in the computer stone age, is unable to get my modified Dvorak keyboard installed. You see, I learned touch on Dvorak in the earlier days, when Mr. Dvorak was alive-I exchanged a letter with him-and then when computers came, they changed the punctuation, I guess just because they could. So I have to change it back to the original so I can use it. Otherwise words like “don’t” come out “don;t” and I can’t find the dash. With Caldera, Red Hat, SUSE, Xandros, and Linspire we got it changed, but with Kubuntu they hid it somewhere else and we can’t. Oh, it is still shown where the others have it, but that’s not the one it actually uses. So this puts my Kubuntu geek fans on their merit: if you can tell us how to swap keyboards, I’ll move to Kubuntu, which seems in other respects like a sophisticated operating system. If not, then I’ll have to stay with Linspire. If you want me to join your number, this is the key. It would help if it turns out to be possible for it to go online via dial-up, too, as we don’t have more than that here in the backwoods. PS-I see reference to Xubuntu, using the Xfce Desktop environment. Maybe an Ubuntu geek can tell me whether this variant would be worth my while. But I think if I can’t have KDE or something as good, I won’t go there.

As mentioned before, I quit with Xandros when it trashed two of my files. But it remains on our correspondence computer, because it will share with Windows, which my wife uses. There are some little features I like about Xandros, such as the Eyes in the Taskbar that constantly watch the mouse cursor, and the little (5/8 inch on a side) 15 puzzle that you can actually play. But it has now trashed two more files, the last one my 1987-to-present letter list containing records of thousands of letters I’ve written. I use that list to check when I’ve been in touch with folk before, not trusting my sieve-like memory for names. Fortunately I saw it coming and backed up that file just before it got trashed, so that I could then copy it back in from the backup flash drive. It seems that it happens when I shut down StarOffice after retitling a file, deleting the file that is in memory. Must be a confusion, thinking that because it is being closed, the file must be deleted from the hard drive too. This is something Xandros needs to fix before it alienates more important folk than I am. It has no business deleting a file without permission. But for that dangerous glitch, I would have been satisfied with Xandros.

One of the problems in maintaining a list of electronic publishers and services (see the publishing section for that if you’re interested) is that publishers don’t like negative reports. But such a survey is meaningless unless it calls things as they are. Because I have been established in traditional print for four decades, I am effectively immune to blacklisting or similar threats, so can and do call them as I see them. Every so often the resulting fracas becomes too much for the limited space in the Survey, so I do it here.

This time the issue is eXtasy Books. I had a negative report on it a year or so back, ran it, and then got feedback from the editor Stefanie Kelsey that satisfied me that things weren’t that bad, and I corrected it. I rather liked the way Stefanie came across, actually. Then the spit hit the fan. Stefani had a blowout with owner Tina Haveman and was fired. She has now set up her own publisher Mojocastle Press and is out of the eXtasy picture. I received some savage complaints about eXtasy, and remarked “A meltdown seems to be occurring.” All was quiet for six weeks. Then, in one day, I received half a dozen complaints about that entry. It was evidently a scripted campaign, replete with misinformation. I have little patience with obnoxious ignorance. So I made up an ad hoc canned paragraph to answer them all. To wit:

For all you folk who evidently wrote me letters from a script: My report on eXtasy was based on news from both Tina Haveman and Stefanie Kelsey, plus anonymous others who were on the scene at the time of the main incident. Your suggestions that I did not do my homework here and the threats of legal action against me, because I spoke the plain truth, impress me more with the inaccuracy of your script than any sincerity of your purpose. As I told Tina directly, when the future of eXtasy becomes apparent, I will say so. Meanwhile, you’ll surely be better off focusing on your own writing and accounts than on trying to harass one who has probably been in the rough and tumble business as a writer longer than any of you.

If that seems to reek of contempt, then you picked up on the nuances correctly. For those who evidently don’t know: I was cheated by a traditional publisher in the late 1960s, got a lawyer, got some of my money-and was blacklisted for six years. They did not post a notice saying “Piers Anthony is hereby officially blacklisted” because of course I had the right of the case and what they were doing was illegitimate retaliation. They just found other reasons to reject my material, but my agent was given the private word why. But some publishers did not honor the blacklist, and I endured. Today virtually all the blacklisters are out of business or merged into larger outfits, none of which blacklist me; I survived them all. I thought of it at the time as like the Israel/Arab war of 1967: they all piled in to destroy Israel, but then the battle did not go as expected and the Arabs lost. Thereafter it was no more Mr. Nice Guy for me; I simply took legal action against errant publishers, and always made my case, refusing to accept silence in return for the settlement. Silence means the author gets badmouthed and can’t respond. I have had more trouble with publishers than perhaps any other writer I know, because I stand my ground and have the will and the means to take it to them. I am, when roused, in this respect, like a vicious dog going after blood. Or maybe more properly a riled ogre. No sensible publisher would care to encounter me in court, because I make sure of my case and will have my pound of flesh. For example an earlier column described how I went after Baen Books and made it pay. The operative rule is that a publisher can push around a poor writer, but not a rich one. Meanwhile, a bit of sensible advice for folk who like to participate in harassing campaigns: don’t point a gun unless you are ready to fire it, because this is asking for trouble you may not be able to afford. I have been in the legal arena, and am prepared to be again.

Here is a sample of the campaign: an email missive I received:

You have an incorrect fact on your site for there is no meltdown at Extasy Books and authors are not leaving. You apparently received a false statement and did not ask the source about the correctness of such words. Please rectify your fouled words and cease the confused havoc such fallacy is creating for Extasy readers.

Thank you.

Well now. What I said was that a meltdown seemed to be occurring, as quoted above. That was exactly the case. As it is turning out, the appearance is not in this instance the reality; eXtasy is surviving. But authors are leaving-again, not in droves, but I have heard from some. So what I said was true, and it is those who accused me of being false who are incorrect. They thought they were dealing with an over-the-hill writer who could be cowed. They were foolish.

It doesn’t end there. You see, this email had a return address-and it turned out that the woman listed as sending it had not done so. I had been independently in touch with her. She was appalled that her name was used falsely. I’m not; this is the sort of thing that comes with the territory of ignorant attacks, where anonymity is preferred for obvious reasons. As I told her: the real author of that letter was no friend of mine, hers, or eXtasy’s. It was just someone with a private agenda and without integrity trying to stir up trouble. But perhaps it helps show why I view such campaigns with contempt. This was not an outpouring of righteous indignation by regular authors; it was a scripted campaign whose most likely consequence was to promote a fight between me and the publisher.

Here is a general summary of the case. Tina Haveman is the owner of Zumaya, whose erotic imprint is eXtasy. Stephanie (also spelled Stefani) Kelsey was eXtasy’s chief editor. Tina keeps a tight fist on the money, and Stefanie had a problem with this, especially when she received complaints about fouled up accounts. I know; I published such a complaint in my Survey. They are two strong-willed women whose personal relations were becoming strained. Then eBookAd defaulted on payments it owed for books sold, about $20,000. That was a crushing blow to Tina, who had to either stiff her authors in turn or make it up out of her own money. She did not owe that money, as she never received it, but the authors were never going to understand. I am familiar with that, having once been stiffed myself by a publisher’s bankruptcy. The paperback publisher paid my royalties to the hardcover publisher, which then went under, taking my money with it. My money should have been in a separate account, untouchable. Decades later, I remain annoyed.

Tina paid for Stephanie and some authors to attend a function, but things did not go well. Tina was under medication, and made the mistake of drinking alcohol. That’s dangerous, because of potential interactions. As a result she made a public spectacle of herself, and some of the evening got blanked out of her memory. Finally Stephanie got her alone and had it out. Stephanie lost her temper and is not proud of her own behavior. As a result, Tina fired her. Naturally each woman had the right of the case in her own mind. I have heard voluminously from both. Now they are apart in person and business and would prefer that things settle down, Internet gossip permitting.

Tina has moved in to run eXtasy personally, and of course it is not easy. There are questions as to what records are where and who is responsible. Some authors are impatient, but for what it’s worth, I believe Tina is honestly trying to get things in order and to see that all royalties are paid, including the eBookAd ones. It is generous of her to pay those. On the other hand, it seems that some necessary eBookAd accounts were mislaid or never received, so it may be impossible to ascertain exactly all of what was owed to whom. I am a great believer in auditing, but I fear an audit could not fathom nonexistent accounts. That means that some authors will be dissatisfied, but it is probably best for them to accept what is offered and move on.

I had some interesting sources I will not identify, and will say that a couple brought me up short with surprise. There are nuances that are suggestive. I learned that alcohol and sex aren’t limited to the pages of the erotica these women write; there are hints that some seem to practice what they fictively preach, and some interactions are remarkable. I don’t drink and drive, because I value my physical health; I also don’t drink and make public appearances, for the health of my reputation. But it seems I’m not a hot-blooded Romance writer. One who spoke with authority gave me a usable quote: “The controversy regarding eXtasy Books that arose during and after this year’s RT convention is past and done. For it to be revived over and over again, often by people who weren’t even there, does more harm to those fine writers whose work is published by eXtasy, and those who will be in the future, than anyone else.” The identity of, and discussion by, this person were persuasive, and as you can see it has essentially become my position. Another persuasive person was Tina Haveman herself, because she named some names, and among them were some I had heard from and left anonymous. If a publisher is shafting dozens, it can’t identify malcontents, but if there are only a few, it can, and Tina did. She’s a hard woman, tending to arrogance, but she is doing her best and it seems to be good enough. There are personality conflicts, and I think some paranoia, but I don’t see dishonesty, and that counts for a lot.

So there are complaints, and in my judgment some are valid, but not all. One valid one is that the publisher has in effect accused those who seek to invoke the audit clause in their contracts of extortion. Oh? Let me set this straight immediately: invocation of the audit clause is a requirement for a correct and verified statement of accounts done by an independent party, such as a CPA. To call it extortion suggests a guilty conscience. No honest publisher should fear it other than as a passing inconvenience. Another complaint is that statements may be delayed, and handed out only when specifically requested. And that some royalties are not paid at all, though the publisher says that all royalties have been paid. One author who decided to leave was released with an extremely ungracious notice, accusing her of libel and being part of a “scam orchestrated by others” to undermine the publisher. I doubt it; she just wanted to be paid her royalties and granted release to take her work elsewhere, without getting savaged. Another received a sudden release after I mentioned her name. No “scam” that I know of; the orchestrated scam was the one directed at me in supposed defense of the publisher, as noted above. One of those letters that did not impress me begged me to tell it as it is-as if I haven’t been doing that all along-suggesting that I had been taken in by bullshit (her term), and threatened me with a lawyer. I replied “Put your lawyer on; I will deal with him.” She replied “You really missed the whole point, now didn’t you?” Oh, I don’t think so. The point was that she came at me with unfounded charges and threats from a script; I called her bluff; she backed down, as she had to. Published writers ought to have the wit to get correct information before making an issue, to phrase their remarks appropriately, and to know whom they can bluff and whom they can’t. Maybe some are learning.

In sum: eXtasy has had its troubles, and maybe an attitude problem, and can be savage in fighting dissatisfied authors, editors, or reviewers (I’m a reviewer in this context), but does seem to be worthwhile overall. The majority of its authors seem satisfied. I have left the full eXtasy entry in the Publishing Survey for this time, as a kind of historical document, but will remake it in the future to reflect the current state. With luck the hard feelings will fade away in time.

Let’s move on. I got an idea-impossible, the critics snort!–and a revelation. The idea is could God be Dark Matter? You can’t see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, but it’s there. Astronomers worship it, but I doubt it actually exists. It seems like a fair parallel to me. Now the revelation: why people seem to have an innate belief in the supernatural, whether superstition or religion. Intelligence has always been a survival asset, and smart folk tend to do well, making their own clever decisions. But what about stupid folk? If they trust their own boneheaded judgment too much they’re liable to wind up dead. So they need a guide they can trust. And there it is: religion, where a priest or the Good Book tells them what and what not to think and do. It’s a better guide than their own inclinations. So if you are stupid, it helps to be religious, and that seems to be built into the human genome. We evolved to disbelieve in evolution, unless we have the wit to understand it.

Spot items: They demoted Pluto. That gripes me. For one thing, it’s the only P planet. My given name begins with P, so I identify. Of course that’s stupid, but maybe my attitude is governed by the preceding paragraph. I saw an intriguing picture on the Internet: a fancy cake made to look like a cat’s litter box, complete with recipe so you can make one of your own. Half-melted Tootsie Rolls look marvelously like turds. There’s a popular song whose title I don’t know; I’ve heard only snatches. “There will be an answer,” soulfully sung. What I want to know is, what’s the question? The comic strip “Lio” isn’t really well drawn, but has wicked fantasy imagination. In one Lio’s father reads him a bedtime story about a bold knight slaying a fire-breathing dragon. After Father departs, Lio is seen comforting the freaked-out baby dragon. Awww. Ad on TV I think I saw only once, and I don’t know for what product: young woman is frozen in place several times. She finally protests “Stop-freeze-framing-me!” in freeze frames. Beautiful.

As regular readers of this column know, I am surely among the worst of archers. I set up my target at a range of 150 feet, counting +1 for each time I hit my marked one-square-foot center, and -1 for each time I miss the two foot wide target entirely. I have baffle targets set up all around, so I don’t lose too many arrows. Typically I have a positive score right handed and a negative one left handed. Well, in this period my left bowstring broke. I got it replaced, but then of course I had to zero in again. One day my right side score was +7; then I missed the target with the first 11 left side arrows, and scored in the center on the 12th for a score of -10. A month later I did it again. I keep saying, expecting no one to believe me, that the arrows simply are not going where I’m aiming them. Well, they aren’t. So why don’t I move closer, such as to 100 feet? Because the point is not my score but the exercise, and I get it regardless where the arrows strike. From drawing the bows-neighborhood of 55-60 pounds draw weight–and moving the big targets. So I make it interesting by the challenge of accuracy. My score this Sunday, OctOgre 1, Column Editing Day, was 6.5-0 right side, 0-6 left side. So overall I was positive by half a point. This time.

Something that seems similarly random is the computer card game Grandfather I like. I felt I was wasting too much time on it, so I made myself a deal: play until I lose, then get back to work. Since the chances of winning are about one in three, and a game takes five or six minutes, that effectively limits my wasted time. Well, one day I played and won, so I played again, and won again, so I played a third time and won. That matched my record winning streak and I couldn’t quit. So I won a 4th, breaking my record, and a 5th, and then a 6th before finally losing on the 7th. Knowing I would never do that again, I retired from the game for several weeks and got more writing done. But in time the hunger to play grew again. Sigh. I love writing, but sometimes I just need a half-mindless break. As a thoroughly married man I don’t go to conventions to get drunk and laid, so my breaks are relatively tame. No, of course I don’t envy those hot-bodied Erotic Romance novelists. Much.

Jim Baen died. I had a history with Baen Books. With my collaborative novel Through the Iceit was good, but then with If I Pay Three Not in Gold it was bad. It wasn’t just that he paid my collaborator approximately $50,000 for a manuscript that needed such severe editing that I resolved never to work with her again, while paying me $200. That’s not a misprint; I was getting only one 250th what she got, and I was the senior writer. I had to force a hostile audit backed by a high-powered lawyer to prove he was cheating me, and made him pay for it because the “error” was way beyond 10%. Apparently he was mad at me because I opted out after that one manuscript. See above for how publishers react to authors who leave. But as I said, it wasn’t the money. It was that the man demonstrated such vindictive dishonesty in response to my reasonable position that I knew I’d never work with him again. It wasn’t the first time we had crossed swords, but I had tried to make allowances. Apparently the man was out to prove that he could do whatever he wanted, legal or illegal, and I, the author, just had to accept it. He picked the wrong writer to test. Maybe he actually wanted to show he could defeat the toughest, like a gunfighter proving he’s top gun. He pushed to the limit to get his way, and beyond it. He lost. So he gets no nice memorial from me. Baen Books should be okay now that he’s gone.

Local politician Gabe Cazarez died. I knew him personally from my days as a Common Cause activist. I was contacting other civic organizations to get them to join Common Cause in a joint forum on campaign finance reform. He enlisted three separate organizations for that effort. Later he became the mayor of Clearwater, Florida. The Scientologists moved in, and he opposed them, and they staged a phony hit-and-run accident involving him in an attempt to discredit him. They also tried to set up a sex smear campaign against him. My enmity to Scientology dates from those libels of this good man. Before that, starting with the original article on Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine, circa 1950, I had regarded them merely as nuts. Now I realized they were dangerous nuts. I said so at a convention in Tampa, and a car followed us home. It was a we-know-where-your-children-are message. No, I can’t prove it was them, but it surely was. Many figures in the science fiction community support them. I never will. Gabe continued doing good works, and was a lifelong enemy of Scientology. I am sorry to see him go.

You may have heard rumors about a property tax revolt in Florida. Yes, it is brewing. Theoretically there’s a limit: they can’t add more than 3% a year to the taxation on your homestead. They have ways around that, as we discovered. We have invested in property, mainly tree farms. I like trees. Well, now they disallowed the tree farm exemption for the one we live on, though the trees are still growing there, and jumped the appraised value of our properties what seems to be several hundred percent in one year. Double whammy. Suddenly we own much more than we did in land, with taxes proportionate. The device is to appraise land for its “highest and best use,” such as development, which is way more valuable than trees if you have no appreciation for the environment. I wonder if the object is to force us to sell to developers? We’re not in this for money either, but I doubt we could sell for anywhere near those new assessments. Land values are in the process of collapsing. We’ll see. We are hardly the only ones caught by this stunt.

But my personal concerns include the small. I have favorite trees and plants, and even a favorite blade of grass. Let me explain. Back when we built our house on the tree farm and moved in in 1988, we got a small area around the house sodded to make a lawn. First the horses, and later the rabbits decimated that lawn. But some fragments of turf landed across our drive at the edge of the forest, and these expanded in time to make a new lawn, better than the sodded one. Then someone tossed a bucket of something caustic in the middle of it; we suspect a workman. The grass died first in a patch a yard across, then the death expanded until it was about twelve feet across. The original heart of our volunteer lawn had became a mini desert. I tried dumping water on it to wash the poison down and out, but it just kept spreading. So I dumped the leaves I scraped off the drive on top, hoping to form new soil above. And that seems to be working. The grass is sending ambitious lines into that bleak center. One blade was growing almost where the death zone started. I gave it water, making sure it had support. Then it disappeared; I think an animal ate it. Sigh. But months later it sprouted again, and I’m supporting it again. Now it is four or five blades. I think it’s going to make it. I always root for underdogs.

My empathy extends even to letters in words. Say I mistype and the word comes out “loook” I need to delete a letter. But I hate abolishing it, once it has come into existence. Its not its fault that the word can’t use it. Yet I have to do what I have to do, editors not being very understanding about this sort of thing. But I delete the last letter, not the first, because the first letter was always legitimate and doesn’t deserve to be destroyed in favor of an impostor. Still, it bothers me to have to wipe out any letter.

They installed Katie Couric as news anchor at CBS. Even that has a history in my mind. Long ago the nework had to select a new anchor, and the nicest prospect was Roger Mudd. Instead they screwed him and put in sour Dan Rather. Disgusted, I never watched that evening news. Now that’s over, and maybe I’ll watch Katie. Maybe. I’m not sure, because I don’t trust the network not to pull some other obnoxious deal.

We had an earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico, where no one knew a fault existed. It didn’t cause a tsunami because it wasn’t vertical, and we here in north central Florida didn’t feel it. Still, what does California have that we don’t, now?

I don’t pay much attention to TV ads, but some do catch my attention. This time it’s the Geiko client and actor skits, where the insured person is the straight narrator and the actor hams it up. Such as a woman telling her experience, and the actor speaking dramatically into the mike “A new wind was blowing…payback, this time for real.” I suspect that sometimes they have to do several takes, because the clients must burst out laughing.

I read Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which it seems was a parallel project to the movie and surely has similar elements. We didn’t see the movie because it never showed locally; conservatives don’t want to be bothered with truth like this. Gore really makes the case. We may be nearing a tipping point, like a tree starting to fall, where the climate will rapidly change, causing horrendous disruptions in weather and food supply, as well as flooding of coastal cities. The naysayers have no credibility; informed scientists are virtually 100% satisfied that global warming is happening because of human pollution and probably accelerating. At the end he gives sensible steps the average family can take to help abate the damage, many of which we are already doing here: composting organic garbage, driving a hybrid car, insulating our house, and so on. He doesn’t mention vegetarianism, but that’s another way to reduce environmental mischief. But I think we will need a regime change before reforms can be made on a national scale. At the moment the lunatics are in charge of the asylum.

I saw an ad in DISCOVER magazine for Better Sex videos. About $35 for four hours total, so I ordered it. It’s a nice collection, with sensible discussion buttressed by sex videos that don’t censor out the details. I did learn some things. For example, vibrators can be used on men as well as women, and the woman can use one on herself while addressing the man, so that she gets her orgasm when he does. She can even use it while he is having sex with her, so that again, she is assured of her orgasm along with his. Both parties can choose to have their orgasms before, during or after intercourse. This really gives women equality in sex, and makes feasible a mutually pleasurable larger experience. I wish such videos had been available when we got married, fifty years ago.

I commented last year on John and Michelle Erb’s book The Slow Poisoning of America. Now there is a supplement, “The Slow Poisoning of Mankind,” a report on the toxic effect of monosodium glutamate. This is horrendous. This supposedly innocuous flavor enhancer that is widely spread through commercial foods can trigger epileptic seizures, contribute to obesity, diabetes, ADHD and autism. The message is simple: get the hell off it as fast as you can, because using it is like playing Russian Roulette.

Political and related: I received an email from the office of Congressman John Conyers, Jr., who has filed a lawsuit against George W. Bush and members of his administration for violations of the Constitution. I’ll be interested to see how that turns out. Amnesty International issued a backgrounder on renditions and secret detentions, wherein innocent folk can be arrested without charge and “disappeared” into a labyrinth of duress and torture. This is another example of illicit and surely illegal behavior by the present regime. Yet torture typically produces misinformation, because the victims will say anything to end the pain. How any thinking or feeling person can support it is beyond me. Bill Press had an article summarizing a study by the Lovenstein institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania on the IQ of the American presidents of the last 50 years. Democrats turn out to be significantly higher than Republicans, by 40 points. The smartest was Bill Clinton, 182. The dullest is George W Bush, 91. He’s barely half the intellect of his predecessor. Why does that not surprise me? THE HIGHTOWOR LOWDOWN, a radical left newsletter, says that when Americans were asked to choose the worst president since World War II, Bush was the runaway winner, beating Nixon 2-1. Liberal columnist Donald Kaul has a suggestion to abate the recruitment crisis in the military: reinstate the draft, with congressmen and their families first in line, followed by lobbyists, lawyers, golfers and such. We might be surprised how quickly peace came. Newspaper item: fewer than half of Americans believe this statement: “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.” That puts us next to the bottom, below all European nations except Turkey, for believing the truth. Ignorance reigns supreme.

George Zebrowski has an article in the August/September 2006 FREE INQUIRY on the late Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, relating to his admission to, and expulsion from, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) organization. I had already left SFWA in disgust when it tacitly sided with the wrongdoing publisher against the cheated author (me) though it was in a position to know the facts. The publisher was giving SFWA free books, you see, so the officers did not want to rock the boat, though I believe many other members were being similarly cheated. What happened, as I understand it, was the Lem wrote an article on American science fiction, and the translator impurgated it so that it seemed far more negative than Lem had actually written. Because of that, SFWA kicked him out, and apparently suppressed those who protested this unfair treatment. I could have told them how SFWA operated, but as I said, I was already gone. Now SFWA prefers to have no knowledge of that event, or of my case. Small wonder.

Odds & Ends: I saw a reference to apoptosis, or cell death, a term I have been familiar with for decades. The oddity is that it is not in regular dictionaries. I believe I have mentioned the Eolake Stobblehouse blog before, at http://eolake.blogspot.com/. This time he discusses some masturbation myths, or maybe facts, such as that orgasms can act as a natural pain killer. Next down the page is a reference to me. I think that’s coincidence. Article in PARADE says that play is essential for good health. I believe it. Those who try to cram children into strict 3Rs schooling with no recesses are doing them no favor.

Internet-circulated humor: sample student sentences: “She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, that sounded like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.” “He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.” Women on men: Men are like bananas-the older they get, the less firm they are. Or like chocolate bars-sweet, smooth, & they usually head right for your hips. Or like snowstorms-you never know when they’re coming, how many inches you’ll get, or how long it will last. Or like parking spots-all the good ones are taken, the rest are handicapped.

The Ferret And Dove Sanctuary in Pensacola, Florida got three new ferrets they named Trent, Humfrey, and Beauregard after characters in the first Xanth novel. They were rescued from a crack-house and weren’t in good condition; I think Trent later died. Anyway, the site is www.angelfire.com/theforce/ferret_rescuer/index.html.

Warner Pictures extended the Xanth movie option another two years. No, they’re not stalling; they pay handsomely for each year and they’re hiring a director. They must simply need more time to do it right. Soon we’ll also know whether Disney will exercise the option on On a Pale Horse. I said before that I expect all three movie options to be exercised; Split Infinity has been, for Anime, and the others remain active. I realized long ago that if I depended on traditional publishers to promote my career, I’d be washed up well before I died. So I tried for an end-run around Parnassus and went for the movies, and if my long quest finally flowers, I will return to the bestseller lists in due course, no thanks to regular publishers. We shall see.

Once again I find myself with a pile of clippings and items relating to subjects I’d like to discuss further, but time and space ran out. Ever thus. I always seem to have more to say than it is possible to say.

Once this column and Electronic Publishing Survey are done, I will have time to catch up on reading and viewing. Among the prospects on the docket are Andromakhe by Kristina O’Donelly, and the Troy movie video she sent me. Her novel relates to Troy, you see.

I have spent two months catching up on DVD and VHS videos, because we have not yet been able to get my keyboard on the Kubuntu system. Readers have sent in suggestions, and some of these have been interesting, but when we try to apply them, the program balks. It has been frustrating as hell. Why do they have to make simple things too complicated for ordinary folk to use? When will there ever be a computer system that isn’t a struggle to make work? I am fed up with having months of my time wasted and a new 64 bit system rendered unusable in such unnecessary struggles. So I watched the first season of Policewoman, which was fun but not the ultimate; she’s cute and a bit naughty, but in twenty years the art had advanced. Thirteen MythBusters, where I learned some fascinating things, including that the duck’s quack does too echo, but it sounds so much like the original that folk think it doesn’t echo, and that myth is now widely repeated. The first season of Have Gun-Will Travel, which is okay but let’s face it, TV has also progressed from 1950s black/white. The one that really reached me was the first season of Grey’s Anatomy, which I never saw on regular TV; here in the backwoods we don’t get all the networks, or have such poor reception that it’s not worth the effort. I liked it so well I bought the second season, together with the first two seasons of House. So which do I like better? House has discrete (that is separate, self-contained) episodes, and that’s fine, while Grey has more of an ongoing larger narrative, with romances forming, blooming, and foundering from episode to episode, and that’s fine too. Both have intriguing medical challenges, which is what distinguishes them from the common run. I’m not sure which I prefer, though Grey is gaining, with some hilarious and some insightful aspects; I think I’d like to see Meredith Grey have to work with Dr. House and see what happens.

We had an election. THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR ran an issue before it titled “The GOP Playbook; How to Steal the Vote.” Such as by passing Jim Crow laws of startling brazenness. In Ohio they quadrupled the price of recounts. In Florida they made it illegal to hand count paper ballots once they have been “counted” by machine. Elsewhere they showed “a steely willingness to thwart the voters openly, if they should dare resist the party’s will,” and gave an egregious example in San Diego. Sickening. I knew what was required: an election in which the will of the people was so overwhelmingly clear that it would not be possible for one party to steal a fourth consecutive election without the stench being too obvious and triggering a revolution. That was the case, and the Democrats swept into power in the House and eked into power in the senate. I suspect now we’ll see two years of investigations into the rich lode of Administration misdeeds, and possibly an impeachment of the president that will have a good deal more going for it than the Republican impeachment of Clinton. Meanwhile, wouldn’t you know it, the district Katherine Harris, the woman who fought to steal Florida for Bush in 2000, used to represent-has a serious vote-counting problem. The Republican man beat the Democrat woman by 369 votes, of 238,000 cast. Seem familiar? It gets more so. Sarasota County, generally Democratic, had an “undervote” of more than 18,000. That means that that many voters, who went Democratic by 53% to 47% in other local races, skipped that one race. Or, in a region where the undervote ranged from 2.5 to 5.5 percent, this was almost 15 percent. How come? There were complaints from 400 voters that they did vote in this race, then discovered too late that it hadn’t been counted. Others had to make their selection two or three times before it stuck. You bet there were thousands more who didn’t think to check that their choices were actually recorded; you sort of figure that when you mark it, it won’t be unmarked when you turn your back. Unfortunately there is no paper trail here. Curious how this happens where it can’t be verified. So there will be a court case, whose outcome may depend on the party affiliation of the judges. We’ll see. The conjecture is that it was faulty machines. But there is a familiar odor, and it suggests what we might have seen nationally, had the other races been closer. At least this time the complexion of the House of Representatives does not depend on this particular race. Katherine Harris is gone, even if her ugly legacy lingers on her home turf.

Warner found a director for the movie version of a Spell for Chameleon. I learned of this when a reader sent me a link. (The author is generally the last to get the word.) Chris Palmer is a U K based commercial director. Wolfgang Petersen is producing it via his Radiant Prods. banner, along with David Benioff. The aim is to make Chameleon an adult-skewing family movie. Actually, they have two years before they have to put up or shut up by deciding whether to exercise the option and actually make the movie, but such signals are positive.

Jack Williamson died. He was 98. He was one of my leading lights in science fiction. Back near Christmas of 1947 I was thirteen, waiting for closing time in the office where my mother worked, with nothing to do. There was an old magazine lying there, so I picked it up and started to read the first story. This was “The Equalizer” by Jack Williamson. It told of a space mission returning decades later, thanks to time dilation, only to discover no activity at the home planet, and complete radio silence. They checked the moon base: it was deserted. Alarmed, they landed on Earth, which was overgrown by vegetation. What had happened? They found people there, but they had no interest in the space ship. It seemed they had reverted to a primitive level of society, deserting technology. Gradually the truth became known: a new source of free power had been discovered, that could deliver electric current with a mere twisting of a few wires. No one had to work any more, so they focused instead on the arts and a relaxed life style. A pretty young woman was happy to show the ship’s captain around, until he realized the truth of it. The returning space men would just have to fit in to the new order, finding ways to make themselves useful. Then it skipped a year or so, and the captain paid a call on the young woman. He brought her a gift: a working cuckoo clock he had made with his own hands. He had learned.

Okay, it has been almost sixty years since I read that story, and surely I have garbled details. The point is, it was my introduction to science fiction, and I was instantly addicted. I took the magazine home-no one wanted it-and read the rest. The stories were fabulous. I gave away my collection decades ago, but as I remember that March 1947 issue of ASTOUNDING SF (later ANALOG) contained several other great stories, such as “Little Lost Robot” by Isaac Asimov, wherein a robot with a dangerous modification in its three laws hides among externally identical robots, and “Child’s Play” by William Tenn, where a man receives a chemistry kit from the future that can literally build a living man. Maybe some day I will assemble an anthology of my favorite genre stories, and it will contain these and other great ones, with my commentaries on what they meant to me. It was a fabulous universe, opening to me at a time in my life when I desperately needed it. A universe I never really left, as my career as a science fiction and later fantasy writer demonstrates. And it was Jack Williamson who introduced me to it.

Naturally I sought the next issue of the magazine. That turned out to be April 1948; a year had passed since that first old issue. And there was the second part of a three part serial by Jack Williamson. There had been a story “With Folded Hands” followed by a novel “…And Searching Mind,” the combination later published as The Humanoids. It was about a race of machines that took over human society, to make it better, abolishing war, and so on. Naturally some free-thinking dissenters opposed that. It was a gripping adventure. There was a nine year old girl in it, so when my daughter Penny was that age we read that novel together. It really wasn’t pitched at a child, so wasn’t as effective for her as it was for me, and I was no longer thirteen. I believe it was fan and writer Wilson “Bob” Tucker, also recently dead, who said the golden age of science fiction is twelve; I was a year late at thirteen, but it does seem true. Still, it shows the novel’s historical importance to me. I was in due course selling my own stories to ANALOG.

In 1969 I had the immense honor to have Jack Williamson visit for an evening at my house, brought by fellow Florida writer Joe Green, and I showed him the magazines and told him what his work meant to me. He was polite and modest. In 1987 when I was Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention in Nashville I had the pleasure of telling the audience the same thing, with Jack in that audience, and led the applause for him. He was a great writer and a nice man, a worthy star of the genre firmament. Now he is dead, but his works remain, and I am surely not the only one who will never forget him.

Now, as an inset, here is my Conference Report: FWA 2006:

Earlier in the year Lori Strongin of the Florida Writers Association (FWA) invited me to speak at their annual conference in Orlando. I declined, because my wife Carol faced surgery on her aortic aneurysm-this would be equivalent to heart surgery, as it is the major artery leading from the heart, and her heart would have to be stopped for the surgery–and we were scrambling to obtain IVIg treatments for her that keep her out of the wheelchair (Congress, controlled by so-called “conservatives” passed a bill to stop Medicare from covering this any more, and patients are dying as a result)-and I simply could not make any decision that far ahead. I do a good deal of the household work, whatever is necessary, and will not leave her alone in the house for any length of time. We have lasted as a married couple for 50 years, and death will us part, but not one minute sooner than I can help.

Then Marcia Rankin, their Speaker/Workshop Chairman, asked me again, about two and a half weeks before the event. In the interim the surgeon had decided to postpone the surgery a year, as the aneurysm was stable and he was uncertain her health was sufficient to be sure she would survive the operation. We had found a private source for the IVIg treatments; they cost about $3000 each, and need to be repeated every five to six weeks, but they give her back her life, no thanks to Medicare. So those concerns were abated, and she was doing okay. I wasn’t eager to go, but I could hardly plead too short notice, after pleading too long a notice before. So we pondered, and this time decided to accept. There was then half a passel of forms and things to fill out, schedule to make, whatever. We would get free hotel room, meals, and admission to the conference, which is standard for this sort of thing. The regular attendees have to pay.

By sheer coincidence, at that time the conference lost its banquet speaker, Ben Bova, because of a sudden health crisis in his family. So I took over the slot, as it were. I was sorry to miss seeing Ben, who I first met in 1966 at a Milford Writer’s Conference in Pennsylvania. He’s of my generation, and has a longer history in the science fiction genre.

We left home at 1:30 PM Friday in the Prius, armed with maps and instructions, and in two hours reached the hotel. Disney World is huge, and Animal Kingdom is only a little corner of it, and the Coronado Springs Resort is only a nook off the side road. We couldn’t even get on the access road; the map was confusing, as were direction signs, and there was only half a cloverleaf there, going the wrong way, so we had to go the wrong way, then U-turn back. I had expected Disney to be better organized. But the hotel complex, once we achieved it, was huge. It was a job just to find our building, Casitas #3; it turned out that we had to walk between Casitas #1 and Casitas #2 for the most expedient access to C#3. I wandered around for some time figuring it out: the most direct route from car to room for me, and easiest route via the elevator for my wife, as we were on the fourth floor. Our room turned out to be approximately a third of a mile from the Conference rooms. Carol can walk and get about, but that was simply too far. Fortunately Marcia found a wheelchair Disney made available, and with that I took Carol everywhere. We had not brought her own wheelchair along because we hadn’t realized we’d need it. Live and learn.

But I have to say that the hotel complex, once fathomed, is beautiful. The buildings are Spanish style, girt by internal courts and walkways, and there is a lovely promenade around the edge of the lake, Lago Dorado, leading to all the parts of the hotel complex. You can walk in the sun, admiring the gardens, but if it rains there are covered walks throughout. I’m not a connoisseur of hotels, and avoid them when I can, but this one is about as nice as I can imagine.

The conference goody package contained schedules, maps, material on the personnel, pens, peppermints, a cute little mirror in a case saying “In Christ’s love, everyone is someone,” calendars, a book titled SELF-PUBLISHING SIMPLIFIED published by Outskirts Press (it is listed in my Survey of Electronic Publishers with a so-so rating), and several sample magazines: THE WRITER, TOTAL HEALTH, and MUSCLE & BODY. The relevance of the first I can see, and the second maybe, but the third? I was also given a book by Sharon Rendell-Smock www.rendell-smock.com: Hooking the Reader: Opening Lines that SELL. This is a fun book. Random examples: “Regina Dalton snapped awake the instant the coffin lid closed.” “Count Dracula’s on line two, and he’s pissed.” “She would never forgive herself for not being there when her son was born.” This is a book I am likely to read, in due course, as I do like a good opening line. Consider Pet Peeve: “It all started when the stranger gave Goody Goblin the Finger.” That is, a separate finger in a small box, receipt of which annoys people for some reason. But no, there are none of mine in this book; I’m a chronic nonentity. I think the best opening line I remember was in a science fantasy story in the 1940s which ran something like “The doorknob opened a blue eye and looked at him.” As I recall it wasn’t much of a story, but what an opening!

It did not start well for us. My wife has a disabled parking tag she uses when she needs to, but it turned up missing. Evidently it had fallen out of her purse before we left, and now was gone just when it could have helped. Once I had ferried our things from the car to the room, we discovered that a bottle of water had fallen over in our cooler and leaked, soaking some of our carefully sorted pills. At our age pills are not idle diversions; they have to be taken at set times, or the body suffers. Mine were okay, but one day’s worth of hers were in trouble. She had to take them anyway, hoping they remained potent. Then in the night she got severe diarrhea, apparently from something she ate, and spent the hours from 3 to 5:30 AM in the bathroom. The following day, Saturday, she didn’t dare stray far from a bathroom, as there were some aftershocks.

So I went to my functions, as I was slotted in for several events, and used my cell phone to check in with her at the hotel room. I got through once, but then kept getting an intercept. We finally figured it out: somehow the number of her cell phone had been put in wrong. Once that was fixed, we could communicate. She gradually improved, though hesitant to eat more than tokens, and by the end of the day was pretty much okay.

Saturday morning was a series of half hour one-on-one interviews with aspiring writers. I answered their questions as well as I could. Only about half of them showed up, so some I talked with for an hour. I learned later that one had discovered herself locked into two things at the same time, so hadn’t been able to make it to mine. One showed me the first pages of her fantasy novel, which were aptly done, so I agreed to read the whole of it when I got home.

I wear a ponytail, now about 9 inches long, dating from when Carol could no longer cut my hair. I have become much aware of ponytails, especially on men. There were two other men there with them, one with a shorter one than mine, the other with a longer one, so I fit right in. I do not wear mine to distinguish myself, or in any social protest; it’s just a matter of convenience, and I like confirmation that I am not alone.

My first workshop was Saturday afternoon, Building Worlds, with a baker’s dozen attendees. I had thought at first that this was purely physical, inventing planets and such, but learned that it was more general. Worlds can be frameworks for stories, social, cultural, whatever. I have generated many literal worlds, such as the double star, double planet volcanic colored magic framework of ChroMagic, and of course many odd cultures elsewhere, and hope that my comments helped the others with theirs.

I agreed to sign books at the bookstore in the afternoon, but they had only three of my titles-the first Xanth (which I noted was up to the 55th printing), first Incarnations of Immortality (37th printing), and first GEODYSSEY (5th printing), and no one came. I think they didn’t know I was there, because it was a late arrangement. So I penciled notes on my next ChroMagic novel, Key to Survival, wherein our magic heroes must take on a machine culture set on galactic conquest that is quite competent at it. There are no ghosts in these machines; they are strictly business. They know what magic is and how to thwart it. I don’t like to waste time.

In the evening was the Awards Banquet. We got food at the buffet; then, too late, were told that they had made vegetarian meals for us. We wish we had known in time. After the meal I spoke, not for the ages but with humor and encouragement for a profession that has so many disappointments. Writers have dreams that too often are crushed by mercenary publishers and indifferent editors. My typed talk sat a bit too low on the lectern for me to see it clearly, but I didn’t want to break off my attempted eye contact with the audience, so it was a somewhat clumsy compromise, and I did lose my place a time or two. Ever thus; things seldom are perfect. I was surprised when they gave me a standing ovation at the end, and many people came up to me afterward to say how much they had liked it. I do try to relate to my audience, and maybe I succeeded, if somewhat haphazardly. The text of that talk follows this column, so you can judge for yourself.

Carol was feeling better, and eating better, though she was disappointed that we didn’t get to eat at a restaurant. That nervousness about her digestion was the culprit; you don’t want to have to rush to the restroom in the middle of a nice meal. The proprietor might get the wrong idea. So often as not we simply mealed on breakfast bars and “glop”–nutritive drink, and that worked well enough. We slept well Saturday night, and even got to watch a familiar TV program or two. Having my wife along makes all the difference to me; had I been alone, I would have been the one with the knotted digestion, regardless what I ate.

Sunday morning we were up before 6 and organized for early checkout, because checkout time was 11 and we’d be still in the conference then. I wheeled Carol to the car, then she drove to the convention while I wheeled the wheelchair to the hotel check in/out area. No trouble, and we even got to keep the nice Disney door cards as souvenirs. The man took the wheelchair, and I told him how great it had been to have it; it had made all the difference for my wife. Then on to the convention to reconnect with her, and do my second workshop.

That was Making Magic of the Ordinary, with Xanth as a prime example: I turned Florida into my fantasy land, with its markers becoming magic. Lake Ogre Chobee, the With-a-Cookee River, Lake Wails with the Wailing Monster who leaves little footprints on the water-the prints of wails-and so on. It’s adaptation more than imagination, and anyone should be able to do it. I also explained how to make a dull scene of a woman cooking supper into a compelling one by adding eerie music every time she gets near a particular pot on the stove. You just know something awful will happen when she lifts that lid, and the details of her cooking become interesting as you try to figure out how they may relate. Making magic from the ordinary; it’s a useful tool, with a bit of imagination.

Then the closing ceremonies, and by noon we were free to go. We made it home in two hours and started unwinding and catching up. It was a nice enough event, and I have to say that the conference was well run and we really appreciated Disney providing that wheelchair. Would we do it again? Maybe, sometime, depending on health and scheduling. I’m sorry I couldn’t give a more comprehensive conference report here, but the fact is that most of the events I attended were ones I conducted; there was no time to attend the others. My wife did attend one on taxes for the writer, and found it worthwhile; you would hardly believe how complicated our taxes are. The proprietors were competent and considerate, Disney provided a great con site, and I suspect that most of the attendees found it well worthwhile. I hope I contributed to that.

We saw a movie, the remake of Casino Royale, with a new James Bond. This one is brutally violent, with extended high action sequences and, oddly, some draggy spots. It is compelling, but I suspect we’ll pass up the next one of this type; we don’t see movies for brutality.

We saw a local obituary for a woman we never knew, but there was something about the name that had an eerie familiarity. Edith Pierantoni. No, don’t tell me; I’ll surely figure it out eventually.

Michael Moore has a devastatingly pointed essay, “A Liberal’s Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives,” with items like “We will never, ever, call you ‘unpatriotic’ simply because you disagree with us,” and “We will not spend your grandchildren’s money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends,” and “We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don’t practice those beliefs.” This really skewers the hypocrites, though I suspect most Republicans will not find it very amusing. Speaking of which: I read in NEW SCIENTIST that Christian conservatives want to empty America’s classrooms and have all children educated at home, where they are free to use the Bible as the ultimate science reference book. No more of this unGodly Evolution or heresy about Earth being older than 6,000 years, or nonsense about Global Warming. I hope they find personal satisfaction as they march determinedly back into the Dark Age while the rest of the world advances.

Also in NEW SCIENTIST, an article about hair. It seems that our species has been dressing our hair for at least 25,000 years (sorry, conservatives; maybe the record before the world existed has been faked). We don’t have actual hair that old, but ancient statuary shows it. As a ponytail wearing man, I now have a certain interest; it seems I am not alone. Did you know that we have about five million hair follicles on our body, only around 100,000 of which reside on the head, and we lose between 50 and 100 of those a day? Ouch! It would grow to waist length in about four years. I’ve been at it less than two, but seem to be on schedule.

Remember fractals? The heart of the Mandelbrot set is a bug-like glob that radiates out twistingly to form endlessly more intricate patterns. Artists are building on this to make compelling representations, but the straight math generates phenomenal art on its own. I was so intrigued by it that my novel Fractal Mode is set in just such a universe. I wanted to be an artist and mathematician before I wanted to be a writer, so this really fascinates me; I can still get lost in wonder when contemplating it.

Fascinating ailment described in NEW SCIENTIST (I was catching up on my backlog of unread magazines): sexsomnia. It is vaguely akin to sleepwalking, only the person tries to have sex with someone instead. There is no memory of it in the morning. A woman had it, and her boyfriend was intrigued at first, but later was not: she was violent, scary, and persistent. One wife realized that her husband had a problem when he was snoring loudly during sex. As yet there is no cure.

Letter to my dentist, when a lower tooth shattered painlessly while I was chewing, leaving a gap, after I learned that it would cost about four thousand dollars to replace that one tooth:

With respect to your letter of 10-31-06, containing an estimate of fees for proposed work on my teeth consisting of the replacement of one crown and a crown on an implanted tooth to come: I have pondered and concluded that at my age of 72 expensive long-range restoration of my teeth no longer makes sense, as I am likely to get the benefit for significantly less time than I would have at a younger age. I dislike the associated pain, inconvenience, and loss of time, but the main problem is that I doubt that any tooth is worth thousands of dollars at this stage. So I am declining this and future restorative work of this nature, understanding that as time passes I am likely to lose some teeth. When this becomes awkward, I will see about partial dentures. In the interim I will accept stop-gap repairs such as fillings.

Therefore I am not signing your consent form. This is, as email notices like to put it, not a temporary but a permanent error.

They have discovered that tarantula spiders cans secrete silk with their feet. That helps them walk on vertical surfaces. I’ll keep that in mind as I ponder Xanth #33, Jumper Cable. Jumper is a spider originally featured in Xanth #3 Castle Roogna; this would be a descendent.

Here is a poem Kristina O’Donnelly forwarded to me via email. It reminds me of a scene I had in Centaur Aisle, when Dor enlisted the help of a reluctant Spelling Bee.

“The Spell Checker”

Eye halve a spelling chequer;
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye can knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a whirred
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong or write.
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid,
It nose bee fore two long;
An dye can put the era rite.
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it.
I’m sheer your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh;
My chequer tolled me sew.

Last time I ran a note about the IQs of recent presidents. One reader advised me that other indications suggest that G W Bush actually has an IQ of 125, not 91. Another sent links that expose this as an Internet myth, such as www.csbsju.edu/uspp/Bush/Bush-IQ-Myth.html. Actually IQ is a dubious measure of true intelligence; it’s mainly the ability to take IQ tests, which is another matter. Article in NEW SCIENTIST says that talent or genius arises not from innate gifts but from an interplay of natural ability, quality instruction, and a lot of work. They considered Mozart, Newton, Einstein, Stravinsky and others and found hard work. “Geniuses are made, not born.” That’s comforting to know; maybe there’s hope for me yet. Meanwhile in LIBERAL OPINION WEEK I read columns that tell how former president Clinton was ambushed by Fox News, and turned the tables on them. Why didn’t he do more to take out bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business? He reminded them that he had tried-and the rightists accused him of a Wag the Dog syndrome. That was the movie that had a president stirring up foreign trouble to distract the nation from problems at home. I remember commentator Paul Harvey repeating gleefully “Wag the Dog! Wag the Dog!” While Clinton was trying to take out bin Laden, they impeached him for a pecadillo. Now they pretend he didn’t do enough? Truly, those folk have no shame.

For those who persist in thinking that Florida is not the center of the universe, here’s another rebuttal: there is evidence that the thought-to-be-extinct Ivory-Billed Woodpecker exists in the Florida panhandle. They report 14 sightings, and recorded sounds of double knocks and calls that match descriptions of the Ivory Bill. We’ll see. Certainly the almost as large Piliated Woodpecker lives in Florida; we have them on our tree farm, along with other rare birds like the Sand Hill Crane, whose call as it flies sounds like winding an old grandfather clock. I would hardly know one by sight, but the call is unmistakable. Anyway, the prospect of surviving Ivory Bills may stop a big airport from being built there. Good for the birds.

More on men vs. women: I learn from a review of a book by Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain, that during puberty a girl’s entire biological reason for existence is to become sexually desirable, and she is almost exclusively interested in her appearance. Well, that dovetails with the teen boy’s motivation, which is entirely to get into her pants. But it seems that this author can’t document sources for her provocative statements, so it may be that there are after all a few other things on the minds of teens. I can’t think what. Another book, Size Matters, by Stephen S. Hall, suggests that boys who grow up significantly taller or shorter than their peers can be scarred for life because of social hierarchies based on size. I think this is true. I speak as one who was short in childhood; in 9th grade at just under five feet I was the shortest in my class, male or female. Then I grew almost another foot in the next five years, to 5′ 10½” in bare feet, but I remember. I tease my wife, who was 5’9″, that I had to grow to be taller than she was, and I always encouraged her to wear sensible shoes: no high heels. I have understood all along that if men judge women by the size of their bosoms, women judge men by their height. So basketball players marry beauty queens, and the rest of us struggle along as leftovers.

Three mysteries fascinate me: existence, life, and consciousness. The nuances of each have sponsored much consideration across the ages, without firm answers. My theory is that there must be a paradox in the concept of nothing, so that there is a wrinkle in the otherwise perfect fabric of nonexistence, and that wrinkle is what we take for the universe. That the elements of life formed chemically, probably near volcanic vents, until some random combination of proteins became self sustaining, and we take that for life. And that consciousness is a feedback circuit, and if we just could fathom and duplicate it, we could make conscious machines: self willed robots. US NEWS & WORLD REPORT for October 23, 2006 had a special report: “Is there Room for the Soul?” It says that consciousness is the defining feature of the human species. I would extend it well beyond that; if you have a pet dog, cat, parakeet, lizard, frog or whatever you know they are all conscious. I think consciousness turned out to be a survival advantage, so it became established. So what about the soul? “There is, indeed, something troubling, if not downright offensive, about the effort to reduce human consciousness to the operations of a 3-pound chunk of wrinkled brain tissue.” Oh? It doesn’t trouble me. To me the soul is a fantasy, and I use it freely in my fantasy. But if it is defined as consciousness, that’s another matter. The article refers to The Astonishing Hypothesis: the Scientific Search for the Soul, by Francis Crick. “The Astonishing Hypothesis is that ‘you’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.” Exactly, only I don’t find it astonishing. This is an article dense with considerations that doesn’t come up with an answer, but it does mention that in Buddhism the self is understood not as an entity, but as a dynamic process, a shifting web of relations among perceptions, ideas, and desires. That works for me.

News flash: a recent survey shows that only 49.7 percent of the nation’s households are made of married couples. This doesn’t mean that marriage is dead, just that it is fading. In 1930 the figure was 84%. Love isn’t dead; couples are still cohabiting, just not in marriage.

Fun message shirts: 17 year old girl’s tight T-shirt said “No Money, No Car, No Chance.” Another said “STOP STARING-they don’t talk.” “I may not be perfect, but parts of me are pretty awesome.” “Don’t assume I’m not into cheap mindless fun.” “My Eyes Are Up Here” with an arrow. I remember one some time back saying “Objects under this T-shirt are Larger than they Appear.” The fact is, women’s breasts are made to be appreciated; it’s why our species, alone in the animal kingdom, maintains them permanently, instead of letting them disappear when there are no babies to be nursed. Women who complain about getting looked at should perhaps dress more modestly.

From an advertising circular: Dr. Linus Pauling, who won the Nobel prize twice, was fascinated by the healing powers of Vitamin C. When he suggested that it could relieve common colds, drug companies got worried. No wonder; it does work. I use it to stop colds, and have not had a cold in the past decade or so. Then Pauling released his cancer research, and they went into a panic. “What followed was the most vicious smear campaign in the history of medicine…” and his breakthrough was blacklisted, and millions who might have been saved died. Okay, I have no experience with Vitamin C and cancer, but I should think a charge like this should be verified, and if it proves to be true, heads should roll. Don’t you?

I read two books by Kristina O’Donnelly, www.kristinaodonnelly.com, portions of her Lands of the Morning series. One was Andromakhe, about the wife of Hector of Troy, who turns out to have had quite a history on her own. I don’t know how much was historical and how much was conjecture, but if we take this at face value, she was captured during the fall of Troy and made the mistress of the son of Achilles, bearing him several sons. When he died she was able to return to Analolia (modern Turkey) and begin restoring the remnants of the Trojan culture. It’s a grim, hard-hitting story showing the subjugation of women that was and still is standard practice in much of the world. Then Trojan enchantment, actually an earlier volume in the series, about Olivia Hayden, a contemporary American librarian, who visits Turkey and is romanced by a handsome Turkish professor of archaeology Dr. Somer Berk. So this is essentially a Romance, but clothed with impressive detail relating to the descendants of survivors of Troy, admixed with some intrigue as she is suspected of possessing a valuable smuggled artifact. So I would call it Romance Plus.

I also read Blame it on the Rain by Laura Lee, an interesting but I think superficial book about the ways in which weather has affected history. One sour note: on the cover it says “Would JFK have been elected president if it had been sunny on election day in 1959?” That question is not addressed in the book, but regardless, that election was in 1960. I remember, because it was my first after I was naturalized American. Still, it was a worthwhile read.

And I read Guairu ae Chatri, (King of Magic) by D M Rosner, whom I met at the Florida Writer’s association Conference described above. It is a fantasy, the story of a new king who must undertake a perilous quest if he is not to be killed by the specter that pursues his family. I read it for a critique, and made a suggestion that I hope will improve it. Regardless, it’s a good adventure with some original twists. One example: a talking creature whose sole purpose is to prevent the king from passing. So the king means to kill it. Rather than that, the creature backs constantly away, actually leading the king where he wants to go: that way he does not pass, and does not kill. Win-win, by the creature’s logic, and not your usual monster.

I am a naturalized American citizen, born in England, and I really value the country I chose, with its fine Constitution and Bill of Rights. It bugs me to see these flouted. Yet it’s not just the current administration that shits on the fundamental values. Article in THE HUMANIST by Beth K Lamont tells of a World War 1 incident, 1918. A man stood on a Bronx street corner and read aloud from the Declaration of Independence. When he came to the part that said “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it” he was arrested. When he protested that these were the words of Thomas Jefferson, the policeman said “Where’s that guy? We’ll get him too!” Had I been in charge of things then, I’d have taken that policeman and sent him to a class on America and the Constitution. If our law enforcement personnel don’t know the American Way from a hole in the ground, where are we headed?

A fan reports seeing me at this year’s Philcon, in Philadelphia. Sorry, I wasn’t there; I haven’t been out of Florida since my father died in 2002. So if you see me anywhere else, chances are it’s a fake. Anywhere I do go, I report in this column, and I don’t go often or far.

Florida Writers Association Banquet talk:

Of course you want to write a great story or novel, get nicely published, sell many copies, get great reviews, get famous, and get rich. You’re crazy! Welcome to the club. I’ve been there, done that, except for the reviews. Generally you have to choose between good reviews and good success. I chose success. 99% of my readers love my books; the other 1% review them. It’s likely to be the same for you. That’s just one of the facts of life, in writing.

So what does it take, to make it big? Luck. I’m not joking. You need a series of significant breaks, or you won’t get anywhere, they won’t necessarily be of your own making. My own career is an example. Sure I can write, and write well. Ask anyone except a reviewer. That’s not enough. You can write well too, but without good luck you won’t get far. I wrote and published good novels for a decade before I got my big break. That was with DEL REY Books.

Let me tell you about Judy-Lynne del Rey. She was a dwarf. She stood about three and a half feet tall, but I call her a giant for what she accomplished. I first encountered her as Judy-Lynne Benjamin, an assistant editor at GALAXY and IF magazines before she married Lester del Rey. Then she got hired by BALLANTINE BOOKS as their chief editor, and she put her husband Lester in as fantasy editor, and talked the publisher into naming the fantasy line after him: DEL REY BOOKS. He had edited my favorite science fiction magazine in the 1950s, SPACE SF, and I always wanted to work with him. So I wrote a fantasy novel, and he accepted it, and Judy-Lynne published and promoted it. The rest is history.

Here’s where the luck comes in. Fantasy was about to take off for the stratosphere. None of us knew it; it had been a drug on the market. I just wanted to work with that editor. That’s why I wrote A Spell for Chameleon, the first Xanth novel. I found I couldn’t take fantasy seriously, so it became a humorous novel, with puns and things. Then fantasy caught on, thanks to the efforts of Judy-Lynne, and I rode that escalator right up to the New York Times national bestseller list. Suddenly I was famous, and rich, doing much the same thing I’d been doing for a decade. I just happened to catch the right editor and the right publisher at the right time. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made it, and would not be here talking to you now. Certainly I have done serious writing, including some more ambitious than what I have seen any other writer do; I’m speaking of my GEODYSSEY historical fiction series, that covers several million years of global human development. But as I said, good writing doesn’t necessarily do it. GEODYSSEY lost its market. Xanth was what put me on the map.

So can you do something similar? Let’s face it, big writing success is like winning the lottery. It’s great when it happens, but hardly one person in a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand will win. Judy-Lynn is dead, and DEL REY BOOKS is not what it was; that avenue is closed. I just had the luck to be there at the right time. Maybe one of you will get a similar lucky break somewhere else; I hope so.

Given that actual writing ability is secondary, in this arena, you still do need it. I don’t know whether I can help you there, but I’ll throw out some incidental notions. One thing is to be able to orient effectively on your market, whatever it may be. Mine turned out to be humorous fantasy, but of course there are other types of fantasy, and other types of humor. I remember examples I saw long ago on TV.

There was a contest-type program decades ago where the object was not to laugh. They would put contestants in a chair, and three comedians would have at them for something like two minutes each, and if the contestant succeeded in not laughing, he won the prize. One was a young Army man in uniform, and he had an absolute deadpan face. Nothing was going to make him laugh. The first comedian got nowhere. Then the second approached. “You’re in the Army? You know, I was in the army. Yeah. I killed 300 men. Yeah. I was the cook.” That wiped out the soldier. He had to laugh. I spent two years in the Army, and back in those days all soldiers hated the food. That comedian had zeroed in on the man’s weakness, and scored. You need to do the same thing with your target readership.

Another show was a Latino comedian, a small dapper man with a musical instrument, I think a guitar, who told this tough audience how he had dealt with a tough audience before. There are those who don’t like Latinos, and they especially don’t like uppity Hispanic immigrants like this one. One table was making unkind remarks and messing up the comedian’s act. So he approached that table and told those big tough laborers off. “You are interfering with my act, and I’ll thank you to keep silent while I am performing,” he said firmly to that past audience. Then he paused, returning to the present, and concluded: “It took a team of expert surgeons three weeks working around the clock to get the guitar-out.” That scored on the tough audience, especially those who didn’t like Latino comedians. The man knew his audience.

Then there’s one of my favorite cartoons. You know how we all have to make difficult choices? It’s easy to choose between right and wrong, or between good and better. But what about choosing between bad and worse, the lesser of evils? That’s never fun. This cartoon showed two demons, devils with horns and spiked tails. The smaller one was saying “I’m tired of being the lesser of two evils.” What a way to find humor in an ugly situation! If you can do that as a writer, you have promise.

There can be halfway amusing side paths to writing. I had a letter from a man who said his uncle told him that my book Split Infinity was the finest novel ever written. Then he committed suicide. Another reader told me he had ruined his copy of one of my books by vomiting on it. I told him that normally only critics did that. He explained: he had deliberately overdosed on pills, to commit suicide, then sat down to read my novel while he waited to die. Instead his stomach regurgitated the drug, and he survived, but with a sadly spoiled book. He said he really liked the novel, and wanted to replace it. So I sent him a replacement copy. I take my fans where I can find them.

But back to luck. Sometimes you can steer it a little. You can’t win the lottery without buying a ticket. I don’t gamble that way, so I’ll never win a real lottery. But I did in effect buy a ticket gambling on renewed bestselling success as a writer. I realized early-on that traditional publishers were not going to do it for me. They operate by weird rules. For example, they have this notion that the readers will buy only one novel by a given author in a year. So if he publishes two novels in a year, each will sell only half as many copies. If he publishers three, then each sells only a third, and so on. Yes, it’s ludicrous; we all know that. But it seems to be in their big book of rules. That’s why some writers use multiple pseudonyms, so the publishers won’t know. I didn’t do that, and have paid a certain price.

So how does a publisher’s delusion affect the author who tries to resist it? Many ways. They cut the print orders and the promotion to fit their rule. A publisher can’t make a bestseller out of nothing, but it can make nothing out of a bestseller. I’m in a position to know, unfortunately, having had three fantasy series taken off the bestseller lists that way. So they took me off and perhaps figured I’d fade quietly into oblivion. A writer who gets screwed by the idiot publisher is supposed to say “Thank you Massa,” and disappear.

Let me tell you this about success: getting there is a challenge. Staying there is another challenge. I resolved at the outset that I would manage my career so as not to allow it to fade out the way I had seen happen to other writers. But I found that the publishers were really determined to follow their rules, and they broke promises and lied to me to accomplish it. They don’t even consider it lying when they fake figures to the author; it’s just their idea of good management. One publisher even shredded signed contracts. They’ll do the same to you, if the occasion warrants it in their eyes.

There’s an analogy I like. It’s a kind of game: take a ten dollar bill, and offer it to someone on condition that he share it with another person. That’s all; it’s easy money for them both. Five dollars apiece. But after a while he’ll realize that the ratio isn’t specified. He can offer the other person less, like maybe three dollars, and keep seven himself. If the other person balks, okay, no deal, and he gets nothing while the one with the bill goes elsewhere. He’ll find someone who will make the three dollar deal. In fact, what about two dollars? Would you take two, if you knew the alternative was nothing? How about one? Or fifty cents? The man with the money makes the rules.

Well, this is the game the traditional print publishers play. They take the author’s book and offer him about fifty cents. That is, five percent royalties for mass-market paperback books, give or take a couple. Ten to fifteen percent for hardcover. Any who balk get nothing. If they cheat a bit on payments, and the author makes a fuss, he’s out. I know; I was blacklisted for six years when I protested. The average author is not in a position to enforce honesty by the publisher. The publishers make the rules. This does not mean that all publishers cheat, or even that most do; most are straight. But some do, and only the insiders know which ones. Apart from the bitter authors relegated to oblivion, and who believes them? Short of an audit of the publisher’s accounts, which is like sticking your finger into a hornet’s nest. Regardless, traditional publishers tend to be arrogant, and the author is just about the least important element in their business. They’ll promise him anything, but once they don’t need him, promises are just words.

So what’s it like, sliding down the other side of the mountain after savoring the heights? It’s not fun. Last month my Xanth novel Stork Naked was published in hardcover, and Pet Peeve in paperback. I went to the most local Waldenbooks, a store where in the past I have autographed, to see them on sale. Several months before I had checked that store, and the only book of mine there was Faith of Tarot, which is one third of a reverted novel I wrote almost thirty years ago. This time-it was the same story. Only that one book there. So we inquired: why didn’t they carry Piers Anthony? Oh, he’s out of print, the clerk replied. Well, now. I introduced myself and named the novels; they could hardly be out of print in their month of publication. So she looked them up on the computer, and found them listed, but they had never been sent to the store and apparently the store had not known they existed. “You can order them,” she suggested helpfully. Guess how many copies will be ordered at a store that doesn’t stock them and says they are out of print. If that’s the way the local store is, how will it be elsewhere? In fact, I haven’t seen these titles on sale anywhere. And that’s what it’s like on the other side of the mountain. Just like the near side many of you are facing.

Are these bad novels, and that’s why the stores don’t stock them? I don’t think so. I have had a few fan letters from readers who did somehow manage to find them on sale, and they like them. Pet Peeve is about a talking little bird that insults everyone in sight, using its companion’s voice. The peeve even spent some time in Hell, and wore out its welcome there; it’s pretty obnoxious. Poor little Goody Goblin, the politest and least aggressive of goblins, is assigned the chore of finding a good home for the irascible creature. If he can survive the experience, as the peeve frames him for insulting dragons, ogres, women, and other fearsome creatures. In Stork Naked, grown and married Surprise Golem is expecting, and the stork brings her baby-then refuses to give it to her because of a confusion in the record about her age, thinking she’s only 13. So she has to chase after it, trying to recover her baby, and that takes her on a horrendous excursion through alternate realities. As it happens, the peeve is along, helping in its fashion; at one point it gets into the realm of bad dreams and poops on the heads of the walking skeletons. That annoys them, for some reason. Are these dull notions? I really don’t think so. If my talent as a writer declines, I want to be the first, not the last, to know it, and I don’t think it has declined yet. But as I have indicated, writing it is only part of the equation; you need to get it published, promoted, and distributed. I suspect I’ll be changing publishers. So life is not necessarily fun on the twilight side of the mountain.

I saw this coming long ago. I gambled on the movies. I took my Hollywood agent as my primary agent and focused on getting the attention of the movie industry. It took about 15 years, but now I have serious movie options on three of my fantasy series, including, perhaps appropriately, On a Pale Horse with Disney. Now an option isn’t much unless it is exercised, but the indications are that they will be exercised and they will make the movies, and they will not be minor ones. It is largely conjectural at this stage, but if it works out, I’ll be back at the top, through no particular merit of my own other than ambition and luck. I simply gambled on a rather special lottery. Give it a couple more years, and we’ll see.

But what of you? Unless you have rather special connections, a movie is not in your near future. But you can still do the best you can with what you have. You have worked to write your book, to get it published, and maybe with luck you’ll pick up an award here tonight. That’s a step. I wish you that luck. But you know, awards are nice, but what you should be trying for is to get no awards. No awards. Because out in the real world, they don’t give awards to bestsellers.

Now perhaps you understand why I so ardently support small press and electronic publishers. They are far more open to new writers, and usually less arrogant, though there are some bad ones. I have invested solidly in small press and in self publishing, because the one offers writers of merit a far better chance, and the other is completely open regardless of merit. Merit is not the point in self publishing; merit is judged by others, some of whom have hostile agendas. The point is at least to be in the game, to have your dream made available for others to share if they want to. To publish your book for the appreciation of friends and family members and anyone else who is curious, or to make special information available that doesn’t happen to be commercial. I hate having the arts-and creative writing is an art-governed solely by commercial considerations. Would the great art of any type in the world ever have been accomplished if it had to pay its way in six months in gold?

So I’m a commercial writer who is into alternate publishing for reasons other than money. I own about ten percent of Xlibris, a legitimate self publisher, and it is my loan currently financing Mundania Press. I may or may not some day get that money back. I also maintain an ongoing survey of electronic publishers at my web-dot HiPiers site. I know how slight your chances are with traditional publishers, and I know the frustration of writing stories and novels that no one will read, because they aren’t published, so I do support alternatives with my money and my mouth. No, you won’t get rich with these, as a general rule, but at least you’ll be in the game, as I said, and anyone can play. And some few do go from there to the big time. Maybe you’ll be among them. It’s a worthwhile hope. More power to you. But meanwhile I hope you’re in it for the sheer need and love of writing, as I am. There’s a lot to love.