A Word About Tech Writing

15 Tuesday Oct 2013

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Image courtesy of Missouri Southern State University

When people who don’t know me ask what I do, I usually hesitate.  “I’m a writer” is misleading; it causes people to think that I’m a journalist, maybe, or perhaps a novelist, a short-story writer, something like that.  And while I aspire to that, I’m not there yet, and it’s not what I do to earn my daily bread.  “I’m a computer nerd” is safer, but that has its own issues; people usually assume that I’m an engineer, maybe a QA person, in IT perhaps (I’ve never had anyone assume I’m in sales or marketing; I have no idea why–maybe because I don’t wear a tie?).

Unfortunately the honest and easy answer–“I’m a tech writer”–is almost invariably followed by a confused expression on the part of my interlocutor and, if they think I won’t mind, the obvious question, “Oh; and what’s that?”  Which brings me back to the first two answers, only now I combine them:  “I write computer manuals for high tech companies; right now I work for HP.”  (“Oh, how interesting!” people often insincerely say; I appreciate the effort, but I know it sounds boring.)

Despite being a surprisingly-large industry, with college degrees being offered in it, it pretty much flies below the radar.  While my career is not sneered at as much as it was when I first fell into it–and most tech writers do indeed fall into it rather than seeking it out–there are still plenty of people who blame me for, e.g., badly-translated-from-the-Japanese VCR instruction manuals, or poorly-translated-from-Finnish cell phone booklets, or things of that nature.  As I am the first to admit, there is a lot of bad tech writing out there.  I think it is because it requires two separate skill sets that both require years to master, and are almost mutually exclusive in most people:  Being a nerd, and being a good writer.  Most engineers in my experience can’t write a decent English sentence to save their lives, and most writers don’t want to go anywhere closer to nerdly topics than researching them on WikiPedia.  (Though this has changed some in the last 5-10 years.)  With a C.S. degree but some nominal gift at writing, I’m one of the few overlaps.  Hence the huge supply of crappily-written technical documents.  (“I’m only one person,” I often tell folks; “I’m fixing them as fast as I can.”)

But it’s a decent-sized industry.  There are thousands of us out there, all over the country, doing out level best to help you understand how to work your tech.  Where do you think the online help for MS Word comes from?  Those pop-up bubble-help pieces of text you see when you hover over that button that you don’t know what its for.  The text that comes spilling out when you type “Help [whatever]”.  Someone like me.  (And my wife Sami, too.  That’s how we met, in point of fact.)

I mention this because if you’ve been paying attention to the “mainstream media” at all–particularly the print media–in the last 15 years or so (i.e. shortly after the Web really got rolling), journalist and journalism has been engaged in a fairly epic level of navel-gazing, trying to figure out (poorly, for the most part) how to adapt to this Brave New Online World.  And almost invariably, they completely ignore the tech writing industry.  Which on the one hand I can understand–they’re journalists, not tech writers.  But on the other hand, the tech writing biz started wrestling with this issue a good decade before the Web got going.  We have experience with this.  We were only targeting customers who were buying our computers rather than the world at large–SGI computers, Sun Microsystems computers, Windows boxes, what have you–but it was all going online.  I was helping an engineering team design something that looked a lot like the WikiPedia interface, only specific to that company’s computers (it was a small startup you’ve never heard of) . . . in 1992.

I’m not telling you all this to impress you with my knowledge or how far in front of the curve I was, but because when I read posts by people like Noah Davis who talk about the early days of online writing and oh those young innovators while totally ignoring the entire area of tech writing, it makes me want to bang my head against something hard.  To folks like Davis, the idea of an online writer in his or her 40s is mind-boggling, and the thought of one over 50?

What happens when you get to be 45 and don’t have the drive to stay up late and continuously react to flash-in-the-pan online controversies? What does middle age look like on the internet?

The point here is that there is a huge store of earned knowledge out there, and it lives in the heads of tech writers.  And if journalists and other online writers were smart, rather than talk about how the media world is changing and shrinking and how oh no one understand what they’re going through, they might want to consider tapping some of that knowledge, and maybe leveraging it to help themselves for use in their own journalistic areas.

Because let me clue you in, Mr. Davis:  There’s lots of tech writers out there with extensive experience with online writing, and plenty of us are over 45.  We know what “middle age looks like on the internet” because we’ve been there.  For a while now.  So maybe you should consider asking some of us how we managed it.  It would be a lot more productive than writing another navel-gazing article about how tough the online journalism world is, I guarantee you.

Steven King, “Doctor Sleep”, and Writing Styles

13 Sunday Oct 2013

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As I’ve mentioned endlessly, I’m trying to write fiction.  Well, actually, that’s not true; I am writing fiction, practically every day; what I’m trying to do is get it noticed, read, and (one hopes) published.

What I’ve noticed is that as I’m listening to podcasts, or driving around, or reading books, I have a bunch of ideas about what to write about or what to include in my stuff or how to make it better, which I take down and try to integrate into my work.  So say if I’m listening to an SF writer on the “Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy” podcast and he renders some advice that I think is valuable, I make a note (mental or physical).

I’ve also been re-reading writing advice from various writers I like–the introductory comments Dan Simmons has to many of his short stories in his short story collections; Neal Stephenson’s pieces in “Some Remarks”; Steven King’s thoughts in “On Writing”.

I realize I’ve buried the lede here, but this is all a roundabout introduction to the fact that I just finished King’s book “Doctor Sleep”, and I thought it was simply tremendous.

King himself, in 1982’s collection “Different Seasons”, has said that his writing is “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large fries from McDonald’s.”  Only King knows what he is trying to say by that, but I’ve always felt he meant that he meant his stuff to be horked down, that it was tasty (and hopefully filling) if not particularly nutritious, enjoyable, targeted for your mythical Middle American, and wasn’t to be put in the same category with Graham Greene or Gunter Grass or Alice Munro.

OK, fair enough.  But you as I read through a passage in “Doctor Sleep”, where the main character is helping another character to make the crossing from life into death–as cliched a topic as you can possibly imagine, really; how many thousands of writers have taken a hack at that one?–I found myself crying.  Now, I’m an emotional slob; Sami will tell you that.  I still cry in Star Trek II when Spock dies, even knowing he’s got many more years, TV appearances, and several movies still to go.  But it’s not often.  And here I was, sobbing at a piece of fiction, and staying up until after 3am to finish it.  (I’ll admit my emotional resources were at low ebb, but still.)

This is not McDonald’s McLiterature, and I’m sure King knows that, or at least hopes that it’s true.  No.  King is hit or miss, no doubt about it; you don’t crank out “The Stand” or “The Shining” on every try.  But this is a winner.  And as I struggle to incorporate the lessons I learned about style, pace, timing, and the like while reading this book (see how I brought it back to my lengthy intro there?), a better analogy occurred to me.

In Santa Cruz, there is a breakfast and brunch place called Zachary’s.  The food at Zachary’s is middle-american breakfast food with a California funky twist.  Bacon, but applewood-smoked bacon; eggs; pancakes, but whole-grain (if you want them); oatmeal molasses toast instead of white bread; that kind of thing.  But in the main, solid American breakfast food.  Eggs, coffee, juice, bacon, home fries, pancakes; stuff like that.  The coffee is horrible.  I mean, really horrible; the kind of horrible that you absolutely, positively want when you’re desperately hung-over and need coffee more than anything to wake you up in the morning.  It has always been remarkable to me how consistently awful Zachary’s coffee has been across the years; burnt, bitter, and probably capable of removing engine grease from locomotive diesels.  But somehow, with the excellent (and slightly California off-beat) breakfast food, it’s perfect, absolutely perfect.  I never have less than two cups.

And that’s what Stephen King’s writing is like.  Stephen King’s writing is like that awesome diner breakfast you had that one time in that podunk town that you absolutely didn’t expect, where somehow the awful coffee or the slightly crisped bacon or the too-sugary “maple” syrup (that wasn’t maple) made it even better, more filling, more perfect.  You know what I mean?  Where you walked out of there sated, totally full, feeling fine, feeling like, hey, the world ain’t so bad, I got some solid fuel in the tank finally and I’m ready to face life.  That’s the kind of breakfast I’m talking about.  That’s the kind of writer Stephen King, at his best, can be.  That’s the kind of writer I hope I am, or can be.

And that’s why you should read “Doctor Sleep” if you like solid, filling, American-style breakfast food horror/sf fiction.  You’ll feel full and satisfied.  And that’s saying a lot, don’t you think?

Some Writing Notes

04 Friday Oct 2013

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Image courtesy of Gilles Roman Soilworker Artist

I haven’t posted in a while not because I haven’t had much to say, but because life has intervened.  For example, I spent an awesome four days visiting my bff in Maryland, celebrating his 50th birthday, watching guy movies, watching sports, going to the local RenFaire and doing guy things (throwing axes, knives, throwing stars, hatchets, drinking way too much, and eating cheesecake on a stick, which I’m sure many insurance carriers have already ruled an “unacceptable health risk”), going to museums–in short, having an awesome time while reminding myself what great friends I’m lucky enough to have.

And there’s been personal nonsense of which I’m sure you have little to no interest.

But on the positive side, I’m still writing.  Not as fast as I want, but regularly, and determinedly.  I completed and posted to Wattpad a short story of my mystery solving team Tosh and Zack, “The Red-head Experiment”; surf on over and check it out if you’re interested and please, do feel free to leave comments.

I’m also plugging away on my other two novels: The science fiction/urban fantasy, and the young adult steampunk (but with a twist!) one.  The latter is the one that’s consuming me the most; I don’t know if anyone will like it or want to read it, if any agents or publishers will be interested, but I’m very much loving the story and the characters that I’m discovering.  I’m up to just under 18,000 words, the plot is clear in my head, the main characters are fun to write, and if I’m lucky maybe I’ll have another 60,000+ word novel finished by the end of the year.  (In a world I truly believe is unique–a very definite twist in the usual steampunk scenario.  Which my friend Tim calls “the eurotrash of science fiction”.)

It’s a yarn, and I do love me a good yarn.  I will never be Pynchon or Hemmingway or Poe or Dickens; if I’m lucky, I’ll be (a very very unsuccessful) Steven King, style-wise.  A writer of yarns; a teller of tales.  Ones that I hope very much folks enjoy.

It’s rough sledding sometimes, raising two “special needs” kids, holding down a fulltime job, and trying in my copious free time to be a fiction writer.  But I’m trying and, if I manage to entertain even one person (beyond my personal circle of friends), I will have succeeded.  Truly.

Genre vs. “Lit-ruh-chure” or, Why Christopher Beha is Dead Wrong

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

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Michael Caine and Julie Walters talking about LitRuhChure

I ordinarily don’t wade into fights between genre fans and the folks who stand guarding the ramparts of Real LitRuhChure (as Michael Caine so memorably pronounced it in “Educating Rita”–the star of which, by the way, is Molly Weasley).

For one thing, it’s usually a waste of time–there’s really no way you’re going to convince Lit folks–Lit professors, reviewers at the New York Times Book Review, and other Keepers of the Canon–that they should modify their rules.  You can complain about the over-abundance of dead white dudes, lobby for more people of color, demand more women, but they’re basically just going to ignore you.  So I usually don’t waste my breath, even though it does indeed drive me nuts.

There are folks out there battling away, though.  Jennifer Weiner, especially, is out there Fighting the Good Fight, particularly with regard to having more women be on the NY Times editorial board for the book reviews, and including more books written by women in their reviews.  (They are notoriously lame about inclusion.)  She also grinds my favorite axe, which is regarding “commercial” fiction which, in Christopher Beha’s long and–in my opinion–condescending response to Weiner he equates with “genre”, which is probably correct.

But the reason I’m writing about it today is because Junot Diaz basically exploded a huge segment of Beha’s argument.  Beha, who says that he “write[s] for the Times Book Review a fair amount”, said that the reason the NYT Book Review rarely reviews genre is:

[Genre] fiction, even when very well made, is designed to conform to the expectations of its genre or subgenre, and usually the best that can be said about any given example of it is that it does or does not succeed in conforming to those expectations.

(Which I’m sure comes as a big surprise to folks like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, and many, many others, along with the shades of A.C. Doyle, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Dickens (think “Edwin Drood”), Shakespeare (Think “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, for Pete’s sake!), and many, many others.  But never mind.)

Diaz disassembled this argument in a single sentence.

But ultimately, I think it’s a matter of privilege. Literary writers can attack new markets without ever losing their cachet as literary writers. I don’t think that tide has raised the boats of genre writers. A literary writer who writes a sci-fi novel will get a fucking Guggenheim. A genre writer who is classically genre, writing a genre book, will not get a fucking Guggenheim.

And let’s face it:  That’s basically it.  Privilege.  Is seems likely that Beha–in the incredibly unlikely event he reads this blog post–would be pissed off by this comparison, but to me this isn’t all that different from the Tea Partiers and their increasingly-desparate attempt to hold on to their generations-long electoral white dude advantage.  They are terrified of the coming onslaught of diversity, and are doing everything they can to avoid it.  They don’t understand it, and it scares them.

Similarly, it seems to me that Our Loyal Guardians of LitRuhChure don’t understand genre, the work of women writers, writers of color, trans writers, and you-name-it.  But there’s so much of it out there now, and the pressure for inclusion in our society is rising so much in recent decades, that it simply can’t be ignored.  So you get fights like the one between Weiner and Beha, and Beha’s pretty lame (and insanely lengthy) response.

I know you don’t like it, LitRuhChure folks, but one can find worthy works in any genre, be it science fiction, mystery, fantasy, romance, and yes even “classic” literature.  So instead of defending your increasingly-absurd positions, how’s about you open up your minds and be inclusive?  And you know what?  It’ll probably increase your readership, too.

Oh Goody, More War!

06 Friday Sep 2013

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John McCain getting ripped a new one by his constituents over Syria
(Photo courtesy of Salon.com)

To whatever extent one can get involved in a debate on Facebook, I was recently involved in one over Syria.  And my interlocutor used this analogy with regard to Syria (the “bullies” analogy, which I personally like in general):

Respond to a thug with a written list of grievances, and all you get is more thuggery; knock him upside the head with a bat, and you’ve got his attention.

The problem with that analogy is this:  If you are standing there watching a thug beat on someone, and you jump in and knock him upside the head with a bat, what’s the most likely outcome?  I think it’s obvious:

The thug will stop beating on his current victim and turn on you instead.  Or maybe the thug’s friends will jump you, having decided you’re a pushy busy-body and a bully your own self, and feel a need to protect their friend.

The analogy here is pretty clear:  Assad is a thug, and he’s beating on his own people.  And if we whap him upside the head, he’s going to either turn on us, or his friends (or the various American-hating terrorists around the world) are going to decide we’re being a bunch of bullies again ourselves and jump us.  And given our behavior in the last, oh, say 60 years, I think they have a strong case, don’t you?

And the case of Syria is even worse, right?  Because this is a case of us arriving at a scene late in the game, and we look down, and we see someone writhing on the ground and the bully standing over them.  A bunch of people in the crowd are yelling, “That bully tear-gassed that poor person!”  Yeah, maybe, but do you wade into the bully based solely on the say-so of a bunch of bystanders?  What do you do?

Let’s go ahead and push this analogy as far as we can:  What’s the “right” thing to do?  Well, it’s obvious:  You see someone getting beat on, you don’t jump in yourself, you call the police.  You ask for help.  In this case, the “police” are the UN weapons inspectors.  Let’s let them examine the victim and say, “Yeah, okay; he was tear-gassed all right.”  Then we get to decide if we play the role of police, or if we ask the world (again) for help, or what we do.  But to just wade in there with our baseball bat, without all the facts, when we weren’t even the ones being beat on, strikes me as reckless and foolish.  And let’s face it, folks:  We’ve done it before, and when has that ever turned out well?

(And before you say, “Kosovo”, let me point out:  The Europeans wanted us to fix the situation in Kosovo; they were too weenyish to do it themselves.  This time, all the folks involved don’t want us to butt in.  What does that tell you?)

More Big Media Company Silliness

01 Sunday Sep 2013

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Zachary Quinto’s squinty-face is due to him wondering how Paramount can be so durn dumb, I bet (Photo courtesy of the LA Times)

I have written quite a few times, in my own blog and as a regular poster on the (genuinely excellent tech review and commentary) site Gear Diary about the many stupidities of big media companies, and how many of their decisions increase rather than decrease the piracy they claim to fear so desperately.  I’m not going to rehash those arguments–you can google them up easily, and I think The Oatmeal sums them up perfectly in his cartoon about the unbelievable stupidity exhibited by HBO over “Game of Thrones” which, not to put too fine a point on, you quite literally can’t get legally in digital format for nearly a year after the episodes are broadcast unless . . . you subscribe to a cable company, and sign up for HBO, and sign up for HBO plus.  If HBO thinks that increases signup rates and decreases piracy, they’re deluding themselves.

But today’s rant comes to you courtesy of the upcoming DVD release of the new Star Trek movie.  Gigom notes in their excellent overview that the extras that you get for buying the Blu-ray release vary based on what store you buy them in, and also what country you reside in.  So if you want all the extras for that film–and believe me, I know plenty of Trekkies who will–you can either spend over a hundred bucks getting them legally by buying yourself multiple copies . . . or you can pirate.  And given that Trekkies are, as a group, fairly highly technically sophisticated, I’m guessing they’re not going to shell out more than a hundred smackers to line Paramount’s greedy-ass coffers, but rather will buy one copy and pirate the other extras on ThePirateBay.org or some other bittorrent site.  Because to do otherwise would be, frankly, stupid.

Bit media companies seem to operate based on two assumptions:  That their customers are deeply stupid, and that everyone wants to pirate and no one wants to pay.  Both these assumptions are fatally flawed, and the combination of them is what brings us to this pass, where media companies find their profit margins shrinking and respond by engaging in practices that will simultaneously drive up piracy and decrease their income.  Good plan, that, media companies!

You would think, nearly 20 years into the Web era, that big media companies would have learned how to adjust by now.  You would be wrong.

Elysium Micro-Review, Plus Doug’s Movie Ratings Scheme

25 Sunday Aug 2013

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Matt Damon in his “Elysium” bald-headed glory

I don’t do real movie reviews.  For one, I don’t think I’m very good at them, and for another, I’m not getting paid for it.  Instead what I do is tell you what kind of movies I like and, in that context, how I would rate a particular movie.

I am ecumenical in my film enjoyment; I like everything from cartoons to musicals to drama (even Shakespearean drama) to sci-fi to comic book movies to anime.  What do I like?  I thought “The Incredibles” was one of the best movies of the last 15 years.  I think the three “Lord of the Rings” movies are incredible, and hold up really well.  I think everyone should be required to see “Casablanca” and “Singin’ in the Rain”, two of the best movies of all time.  I saw “Citizen Kane” once; I don’t ever need to see it again.  I think “The Godfather” is amazing, but don’t particularly enjoy “The Godfather II”.  I laugh so hard at some scenes in “Sleeper” that I practically wet myself.  So there you have it.

Rankings-wise, I don’t use stars, or anything like that.  My rankings are simple:

  • Go see this in the theater, and buy it when it comes out!
  • Go see this in the theater, but you don’t need the DVD (e.g., “Dangerous Liaisons”, which I’m glad I saw, and never ever want to see again as long as I live.  If need to see a young Uma Thurman’s boobs again, I’ll watch “Baron Munchausen”)
  • Buy the movie when it comes out, but it doesn’t require a theater trip (e.g., you don’t really need to see “The 40 Year Old Virgin” on the big screen)
  • Just rent the damn movie when it comes out
  • Why did I rent this horrible movie?

This is an enjoyment scale, not a quality scale.  For example, “Mad Max” is not a particularly high-quality, Academy Award-winning film, but man do you need to see that sucker on the big screen, you know what I’m saying?  By the opposite token, “Dangerous Liaisons” is a beautifully written, wonderfully acted, well-directed movie that is worth seeing . . . once.  Afterwards, take a shower and rinse out your mouth, and never see it again.  (“The French Lieutenant’s Woman” is similar.  Good movie, but uck!)

That all being a prelude to how I like “Elysium”, the latest film by South African film wunderkind Neill Blomkamp.  And the answer is:  Meh.  Which means, “Just rent the damn movie when it comes out.”

The premise is interesting enough; in the mid 22nd Century, the wealth gap has reached such an epic level that the Rich Folks have left the planet entirely, living on their very own space habitat, Elysium; sort of the ultimate in gated communities.  On Elysium, you can get any sickness cured.  On overpopulated Terra, not so much.  Like many dystopian future science fiction movies, the poor ol’ Earth is a hellhole.  And naturally, most folks want to get on up to Elysium.

There’s a bunch of interesting ideas in this movie–apartheid taken to its logical extreme, ditto the aforementioned wealth gap, ditto stomping on illegal immigrants (the film even calls them “illegals”, just like Romney did during the 2012 election).  But for me it just didn’t hang together.

Don’t blame Matt Damon or Jodie Foster, who both put in excellent performances.  (I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of Damon’s crooked smile that just seems to bust out of him when you least expect it.)  No, it feels more like too many ideas in the stew.  Plus I am sick Sick SICK of shaky-cam, where everything is close up and shaky to simulate urgency, or realism, or some damn thing.  It is the hellspawn of “The Blair Witch Project”, and it seems as if no SF or action movie director is allowed to use steady camera shots.  Enough, already!  And “Elysium” uses it all the damn time.

And while I really appreciate the melange of cultures and accents in the film–middle-American Matt Damon, South Africans, Hispanics, a couple of African Americans, that evil dude from the first “Iron Man” movie (no, not Jeff Bridges; the bad guy from the caves)–between the close-ups, the shaky-cam, and the accents, half the time I couldn’t understand the damn dialog.  Especially when the character Spider was speaking, in his thick L.A. Barrio accent (one presumes).  It’s hard for me to enjoy a movie when I both can’t see and can’t understand the dialog of WTF is going on.

Finally, there’s the “science”.  Which I’m putting in quotes because who the heck would build a space habitat where one side is open to space?  Yes, it’s theoretically possible to spin a giant habitat enough to hold the air in, but it has to be really big, and spinning really fast.  It’s dramatic-looking; it’s also stupid.

And all the other tech in the movie is basically stuff we have right now.  The computers not only looked like current tech, they actually looked like my friend Chris’ 8 year-old Alienware laptop.  In 2154?  Seriously?  And (spoiler warning!) the plot hinges on the ability of someone to just insert any random person as President of this giant, high tech satellite during a hard system reboot and then you’re in charge?  SERIOUSLY?  Even “Live Free or Die Hard” was more realistic about computer security than that.  C’mon, Blomkamp!  I mean, I go to an SF or comic book movie expecting to test my willing suspension of disbelief, but there’s testing it, and there’s spitting in its face.

So to sum up:  “Elysium”, meh.  Rent it when it’s out on DVD or streaming download.

I’m So Sick of the SF Ghetto

24 Saturday Aug 2013

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Elon Musk–who I bet read tons of SF growing up

Okay, yeah, it’s a button for me, but as long-time reader of genre fiction–science fiction, fantasy, and some mystery–I do get awfully tired when I see a Writer of LitRuhChure™ (ordained so by The Literary Powers That Be) dabble his or her toes in genre and get praised to the skies for it.

The proximate cause of today’s rant is a fawning article about Margaret Atwood in The Guardian.  Atwood, who has been publishing poetry and “literary” fiction novels since the early 60s, is no stranger to genre fiction; her first foray into science fiction was “The Handmaid’s Tale” back in 1985.  But she made her bones as a writer of LitRuhChure, and the reporter in The Guardian is clearly treating her as a Real Writer who dabbles in SF, rather than a genre writer.  (Atwood, as is typical for Literary Fiction writers who do genre, tries to disavow any connection to SF.)

And frankly, I have no problem with that.  Nor do I have any problem with Atwood’s work, or with her deciding to move into SF.  Heck, the more the merrier!

No, what I have a problem with is Atwood being treated as some kind of prescient genius for her latest set of SF works (that feature a lot of biotech), rather than what she is:  Another in a long line of writers who have tackled this subject in the SF genre.  But because she’s MARGARET ATWOOD, Literary Writer, suddenly the stuff she’s writing about–genetically-modified food, vat-grown meat, and the like–is amazing and forward-looking.

Look, LitCrits:  We’ve been talking about this stuff in SF for a long, long, LONG time.  Take the three things that Emma Brockes, the author of the article, seems to find so amazing:  “cross-species gene-splicing; growing meat in a petri dish; man-made pandemics”.  This post would go on forever if I started to list all the SF authors who have touched on all three of those topics, and have been doing so for, literally, decades, but just a couple of quick mentions:  Frank Herbert wrote an entire novel based on a man-made pandemic called “The White Plague”, released in 1982.  Heinlein’s “The Star Beast” mentions in passing meat-like foods grown from yeast in 1954.  And one of the earliest SF writers, Olaf Stapleton, wrote about something that sounds just like cross-species gene-splicing in his story “Last and First Men” . . . in 1930.

These are old, well-established tropes, Ms. Brockes.  I mean, really old, and really well-established.  Perhaps Atwood addresses them in unusual ways, or with more graceful prose, or with an odd twist that previous writers haven’t (although I have a hard time believing Atwood does a better job than, say, Prof. Samuel Delany), but the point is it ain’t new.  And I can only think the reason Brockes (and other litcrits) fawn over Atwood and other literary writers is because they are considered “real” writers, writers who have made their bones cranking out poetry and “literary” fiction, not dirty, low-life genre writers.

Understand that I don’t think this phenomenon is limited to SF.  Absolutely not.  I’ve got to think that Romance fans get similarly irritated when a LitRuhChure writer cranks out what is (essentially) a Romance novel, and gets kudos for their originality.  Or how fans of kink and BDSM fiction feel over the hooplah about “Fifty Shades of Gray”, which is not only not particularly original, but doesn’t reflect the BDSM and kink community in any kind of realistic way, and is not nearly as good as Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace works are.  Or how mystery fans feel when some Big Name decides to write a mystery novel, does a mediocre job (though unfamiliarity with the genre, usually) and gets lots of press for his or her attempt.  Meanwhile, writers–excellent, high-quality writers–get ignored because they have been stamped with the “Genre” label years ago.  It’s maddening.

(And don’t get me started on what William Gibson must think of Atwood’s puckish remark ‘You can imagine a lot of people wanting to get their own DNA hair.” The 73-year-old smiles, thinly. “I’m offering it as a free gift to the world.”‘  Like Gibson–and Neal Stepheson, and Arthur C. Clarke, and hell even Gene Roddenberry (where do you think the idea for flip-phones came from?), and other SF writers too numerous to count–haven’t given endless free idea-gifts to the world.  I mean, please.)

It goes in reverse too, of course.  Neal Stephenson didn’t get nearly the amount of attention for “Snow Crash” and “The Diamond Age” that he did for the much more “literary” novel “Cryptonomicon”, which contained no SF whatsoever.  But he broke through that barrier, and now he gets noticed, even when he writes genre novels like “Anathem” (SF) or “Reamde” (thriller).

I am continually, constantly amazed at the lack of respect SF genre writers receive in the “real” literary community.  We live in an SF world, with smartphones and the Internet and the Web and tablet computers and electric cars and gene-engineered anti-cancer therapies and tons of other tech that was inspired by kids who grew up reading SF, and decided to turn it into a reality.  The top-grossing films are almost uniformly SF or comic book movies.  And yet if you don’t write plot-less character studies about dysfunctional families that live on Long Island or are set in some rural part of the South or some damn thing, if you’re presumptuous enough to like plot-driven hard-tech SF novels, well, you’re just a loser genre writer.  No matter that your ideas will influence the next generation of inventors currently dreaming up the iPhone for the 2040s, Umberto Eco’s or Martin Amis’ or Salman Rushdie’s new novel is much more important, right?

Think I’m exaggerating?  Go to iTunes, to the iBooks store.  What books are listed first? Where are the science fiction books?  Can you even find them?  (You can, but it ain’t easy.)  So on this science fictiony platform–the World Wide Web–the users of whom are more tech-savvy than any generation in history, the keepers and architects of which almost certainly grew up reading SF–if you want to find a book in your genre, what do you get?  Lots and lots of “literary” fiction, and your favorite stuff shoved into its usual ghetto.  (The irony of this appears to completely escape most eBook publishers and sellers.)

Give me patience, O Lord.

On Vaccines and Drug Company Suspicions

10 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by in News, Opinion

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Dr-Diane-Harper.jpg.pagespeed.ic.S9VVj3UJxJ
Dr. Harper (Photo courtesy of Underground Health)

In 2006 or 2007, I believe, Rick Perry attempted to use executive action to force all girls in Texas age 11-12 to get this vaccine. My daughter was 11. I spent a considerable amount of time researching the details of the vaccine, and was alarmed by several things:

  • Gardasil was developed by Merck, the same folks who developed Vioxx, an analgesic and anti-inflammatory that was shown to have caused heart attacks in people during clinical trials and after it was released to the public. It later turned out that Merck deliberately suppressed that information prior to FDA approval. They lied about killing people, in other words.
  • Merck has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying for the adoption of this vaccine in various states, and spent heavily in Texas with state legislators and Rick Perry as well. Rick Perry (if memory serves) received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Merck.
  • There were at the time no longitudinal studies showing either the positive effects or negative side-effects of the vaccine. Texas’ 11-12 year old girls were to be used as experimental guinea pigs, in other words. At this point, we are starting to see the negative side-effects, and while the positive benefits are undeniable, they are not at the absurd rates that Merck promoted at the time.

Given this, I absolutely did not let Rick Perry and Merck use my daughter–who already has various neurological issues that could possibly be exacerbated by an experimental vaccine–as a test subject. Unfortunately, the excuse that a lot of Texas parents used at the time was that giving them this vaccine was equivalent to “promoting sex”, and absurd stand. But what that meant was that people like myself, who objected to the vaccine on medical grounds and based on reasonable suspicion of the production company, were lumped in with a lot of religious extremist idiots and declared nuts.

I have no doubt–none at all–that there will be a concerted effort by the medical community, Merck, and various political fellow travelers who want to protect Merck’s profit margins, to discredit this researcher. “She’s just one doctor”; “the benefits to women’s health vastly outweigh the possible risks”; “Research has shown this vaccine to be safer than [fill in with innocuous substance–aspirin is typical]”; etc. I wouldn’t be surprised to read in a few weeks or months how Dr. Harper lost her job, her accreditation, and her standing in the medical community–whistleblowing is *always* severely punished. (See Manning, Bradley.)

Now, there are reasonable responses to my arguments above (and I’ve heard a bunch of them).  I think that’s fine; let’s have a reasonable, data-driven discourse.  I am not an anti-vaccine nut; I think vaccines overall have done more to improve the health of people than almost anything in the history of the planet. But I wish we were in a place were suspicion of a giant drug company’s motives, and the motives of the politicians who support them and their profits, were not automatically dismissed as “anti-vaccine crazies” or “religious nuts”, or whatever. As Dr. Harper’s statements show, there are actual, valid reasons to be suspicious of drug makers’ claims of effectiveness and safety that have nothing to do with politics. Here’s hoping that we all have the freedom to question these claims in the future.

Obamacare Sucks (but Not For the Reason You Think)

05 Monday Aug 2013

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You really think the government is worse than insurance companies?
(Image courtesy of CrazyColtrane)

Obamacare sucks.  But it’s not for the reasons you think.

Us lefties have been screaming “socialized medicine!” for as long as I can remember. Literally. And folks on the right continue to insist that “the market is better!” and “If we have socialized medicine, care will be rationed!”

You know what, righties? Care is already rationed.  It’s just that right now, it’s rationed based on what insurance companies–not doctors–think is reasonable treatment for you, and how much money you can spend.  So if you think having your care rationed by some bureaucrat at an insurance company whose goal under a capitalist system is profit–this is not a value judgement on my part; that’s what the goal of all companies is under capitalism–then you should be perfectly happy.  If you trust a government bureaucrat who, although often incompetent and slow is theoretically working for you and not to make more profits, then you should be screaming “socialized medicine!” (or “Medicare for all!”) just like us looney lefties.

And this is why Obamacare sucks.  NOT because it’s a giant government takeover of the healthcare system.  God, I wish that was the case.  No, it’s because it puts profit-seeking insurance companies between you and your health care.  And the incentive for profit-seeking insurance companies is to take in as much of your money in premiums as they can, and pay out as little as possible (i.e., limit the amount of health care you receive to the absolute bare minimum).  Again:  This is not a value judgement.  This is simply how companies work under a capitalist system.  The problem here is obvious:  Having profit-seeking companies between you and your health care is obviously a Bad Thing.

Now, Tea Partiers want you to believe that having the government between you and your health care is worse.  But I believe that, while it can be bloated and inefficient and often uncaring, the government is worthy of trust more than some mercenary insurance company.  At least it’s not the governments job to take as much of your money as possible; that is the job of businesses, and insurance companies are businesses.

Here’s just one example of what I mean:

I have chronic neck pain. I’m in pain basically all the time. Working with a pain care specialist, I have managed to reduce the level of pain.  One of the things that has helped enormously is regular chiropractic visits.  However, my insurance company has a “hard limit” of 10 visits per year to the chiropractor.  Ten.  Per year.  I need to see him about once a week.  So the insurance only pays for 20% of the visits I need, and even when they “pay”, my “co-pay” is actually $60 of the total $90 charge for the visit.  Doing the math, that means that the insurance pays for 7% of the health care that my doctor has said is critical, and that has been shown to be effective.  7%.

Don’t tell me that isn’t rationing care, you right-wing jerks; the awesome free-market that you love so much is paying for seven fucking percent of the care I need.  And if I don’t get that care, I’m in agonizing fucking pain.

So you’re right in a way: Obamacare sucks.  But the reason it sucks is because it puts a for-profit industry whose goal is to provide me with as little care as possible in between me and my health care.  And that does indeed suck.

Medicare for all.  The sooner the better; my neck really hurts.