Looking back half a generation in Science Fiction

kw: book reviews, science fiction, anthologies, short stories

The local library, from which I get most of the books I read and review here, has been doing things quite differently since pandemic struck nearly a year ago. Nobody but workers and a few volunteers are allowed in the building, so browsing the New Books section is out. The county library system has a good online catalog, although I could wish for a few more features in their Advanced Search section, but that's a story for another essay. Anyway, once I have located a few books I'd like to read, I can put a Hold on them. What next? Over the past few months they tried an experiment or two in outside pickup. They have settled on this: Once the books have been taken from the shelves, the library sends an email and/or a text message; I then drive to the library parking lot, where a row of spaces are marked with numbers and instructions; I call the library desk to tell them my name and space number, and open the trunk; finally a masked worker brings the book(s) out to put into the trunk. I wonder when we'll return to in-building browsing…

In the Advanced Search section I was trying to find the newest Nebula Awards volume. The Nebula folks (Science Fiction [and Fantasy] Writers of America, SFWA) permit the editor to modify the volume's title each year, so it's harder to find than one might imagine. As I sit here, it occurs to me I could find the book in Amazon (which has very robust searching), so I have the correct title. Anyway, I wound up putting a Hold on Nebula Awards Showcase 2005: The Year's Best SF and Fantasy selected by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America®, edited by Jack Dann (SFWA formerly didn't include the words "and Fantasy"). So reading it turned into a blast from the past. Heck, in 15 years, I've slept a few times, so even the stories I'd read before were practically new to me.

About a quarter of any Nebula volume consists of essays, including a "year in review" or something similar, and a brief bio of any newly-awarded Grand Master; in 2005 the Grand Master was awarded to Robert Silverberg, and his story "Sundance" places an American Indian on a far planet, helping carry out extermination on the seemingly cattle-like "eaters" there. He descends into a fugue because he thinks they may be smarter than he was told, and that he is participating in genocide, such as that perpetrated against his ancestors. At story's end, the reality of his experience is in question.

I was quite taken by "Knapsack Poems" by Eleanor Arnason, in which the central figures are "persons" with multiple bodies. They are not telepathically connected, as we find in many multi-body stories. The narrator uses "I" and "me" to refer to the ensemble, and the scenes of argumentation amongst his/her/itself (these folks have male, female, and neuter sexes) is quite fascinating. Following Campbell's Dictum, the narrator is presented with a potentially fatal dilemma, and must solve it with grace and finality. A lovely story.

A Nebula volume also contains a few poems by winners of the Rhysling Award (named for the blind poet in "The Green Hills of Earth" by Robert A. Heinlein). I looked through the selections quickly, hoping some would have pleasing scansion. Sadly, not a one. I don't require rhyme in a poem, but I do require rhythm, or I don't count it poetry. Only a rare talent such as Ogden Nash can produce rhyming lines without the rhythm, that nonetheless evoke the thrill of good poetry. In general, if you can't sing it, I don't call it a poem.

Comparing the stories and their general tone with those in the recent volume I reviewed nearly three weeks ago, there was more hope and optimism in 2005 than there was in 2019 and early 2020. Dystopian fiction wasn't nearly so common. Considering that the stories for the 2021 volumes of all the "Best of" series, including Nebula, were written during the Pandemic Year (let's hope it isn't the first of several!), I expect a great divide, between stories of dystopian hopelessness and "so-what-we-are-still-alive-in-spite-of-it-all" optimism. The latter ones will interest me the most.

I now return to reading mostly nonfiction, for a half year or so.

Why the Democratic Party needs illegal immigrants

kw: politics, abortion, analytical projects

I have been mulling over a curious phenomenon for about twenty years, since I began to gather threads of this idea after the amnesty for illegal immigrants enacted in 1986. At that time there were three million of them. In the past 34 years a further 11-12 million people have entered the U.S. illegally. That is the curious phenomenon: The Democratic Party has increasingly pushed for a further amnesty, and many, perhaps most of the party's national leaders even call for open borders. Open borders would eliminate national sovereignty! I wondered, "Why?"

I think I know why. The population of Democrats and potential Democrats (children born to parents who are Democrats) has not been growing as rapidly as the population of Republicans and potential Republicans. As I figure it, the primary reason behind that trend is legalized abortion, which began January 22, 1973. From that date until the end of 2001, plus the first ten months of 2002, the number of abortions reported to the CDC was a bit over 34.4 million. That is the number of persons who would nearly all be living today, and eligible to vote.

34.4 million. That is more than 10% of the current U.S. population. That is a lot of "missing Americans," who simply faded into the ashcan of history (This does not take account of any children that could have been born to babies aborted before about 1984, some of whom would also be eligible to vote this year).

Who obtained those abortions? For the entire period of about 47 years, Republicans and some Democrats who are people of faith have decried the Roe vs Wade decision, and legislatures in "red states" have enacted numerous laws to restrict abortions. All that time, Democrats, and a very few Republicans, have loudly supported "abortion on demand", and have either fought restrictive legislation or initiated lawsuits to get such laws struck down.

How many of the women who chose abortion were Democrats and how many were Republican? It is inconceivable that there is an exact 50:50 split. Millions of the women who chose abortion were Republicans, but even more were Democrats, but what is the proportion? It is certain that Democrats were the majority, whether it is a slender majority or a great majority. Republican women have the hurdle of belonging to a political party that is vocally anti-abortion, and usually also belonging to a religious establishment that opposes abortion. Fewer Democrats are religious, so in general there is no such hurdle for a Democratic woman.

Based upon my experience with many people of all political stripes, I think the proportion is between 60:40 and 55:45. It is quite possible that the real ratio is even more skewed, but being a conservative, I'll be conservative in my estimates. This table of "missing" voters shows the implications.

The column "Difference" shows the impact. I estimate that if there had been hardly any abortions, legal or otherwise, since 1973, the number of Democrats eligible to vote would be between 19 million and 20.7 million more than there are today, while the number of such Republicans would be between 13.8 million and 15.5 million. Many "purple states" would have become solidly "blue," as would the country as a whole.

The apparent "loss" of between 3.4 million and almost 7 million Democrat voters over the past forty years is tough to make up. Thus the need for illegal immigrants. It is no surprise that in border states, and to some extent in the tier of "next-to-border" states, illegal immigrants can get more "services" than retired veterans. It is a national shame that homeless veterans are living in the streets not far from nice houses filled with criminals (that's what illegal aliens are).

The cynical Democrats look upon the twelve million illegals as a gold mine. It is worth spending tons of money on them, all the while reminding them that it is the Democrats who are "caring" for them. Whenever they get amnesty, and voting rights soon after that, they will remember. If just five million of them begin to consistently vote Democratic, there will be little chance for anything resembling bipartisan politics to be found anywhere in this country. They will be free to enact whatever they want without effective opposition. This alone has a greater potential to bring an end to liberal Democracy in America than any other factor.

Literature's mainstream – muddier than usual

 kw: book reviews, fiction, short stories, collections

The themes of the stories in The Best American Short Stories 2020, edited by Curtis Sittenfeld, seem to be two: Dystopia and Slice-of-Life Emptiness. Frequently a story encompasses both. Is this a reflection of the way society is viewed through the mainstream media, mainstream entertainment, and mainstream politics (not those of the recent President, but of his opponents)? Pessimism rules the party called Democratic, and it rules American culture.

One story in this volume that bucks the trend is "The Apartment" by T.C. Boyle. It is a slightly fictionalized account of the life of Jeanne Louise Calment, from the time a lawyer proposed a "reverse mortgage" on her apartment, when she was 90, until she outlived him about thirty years later; she lived to age 122. There is another fictionalized life story, "Liberté" by Scott Nadelson. It isn't nearly so pleasing; the author gets more into motives and musings he could not have known.

Far too many of the stories relate someone going nowhere fast, or almost nowhere, and usually working their way down the ladder of success, if they were anywhere on it to begin with.

As usual in such a collection, the writing skill of the authors is excellent. However, it seems they have little to work with. In a very different genre, I read a story long ago of two people sent to contact an alien race, learn their language, and attempt to set up friendly relations. One is a skilled linguist, and goes after the language at a great rate, but at the end of the story is more of a prisoner, like a talented zoo animal. The other, who learns few words, does what he can to improve the skills and livelihood of the people around him, and becomes their trusted friend (this mirrors one of the side plots of The Ugly American by Burdick and Lederer, without the heavy political overtones). At the end, when the fellow who succeeded in gaining the trust of the aliens is asked about the difference, he says, "You have to have something to say."

This generation of writers doesn't have much to say, but they can say it very, very well.

Science Fiction on the rise

 kw: book reviews, science fiction, collections, short stories

Considering quantity alone, the increasing number of "Best Of" collections indicates that science fiction is getting more popular. I care most about the quality, from two angles. Firstly, when I finish a story, am I glad I read it? Secondly, the quality of the writing, as writing (analogous to the art critic who said, "I can't paint, but I can recognize good painting.") In both ways, it seems the field is improving.

A comparatively new series is represented by The Best Science Fiction of the Year, edited by Neil Clarke. The 2020 volume is the fifth of the series. One could say that my familiarity with no more than a handful of the authors is another indication that the genre is doing well. The new writers, many of them young, have new ideas aplenty. I was happy to see a lot more stories with believable space aliens and fewer of the navel-gazing, introspective sort that was popular for far too long. I did notice that a significant majority (16 of 28 stories) had a dystopian or post-apocalyptic milieu. I think the younger generation or two are being handed a lot of bad news, so that informs their interest; fortunately, they are coming up with very creative means of coping.

I took brief notes on all the stories, but I think I'll focus on just a few:

• The Little Shepherdess by Gwyneth Jones – A novel take on harvesting seabed nodules. The "industrial solution" is to use big trawls to scrape up everything. A creature is found that gathers the nodules into little piles, for her own purposes. The "bottom up" solution is to have many low-impact harvesters gather the piles; a robbed pile prompts the "shepherdess" to rebuild the pile. Ms Jones has been around a while, and has good ideas well presented.
• The River of Blood and Wine by Kali Wallace – Colonizing a planet is like colonizing a continent. If there are inhabitants, tragedy ensues. In this story, the colonizers pull back before genocide results, not without protest, because, of course, whatever choice is made, someone's ox is gored. This author's deft touch keeps a strong subject from getting either explosive or syrupy. The author is new to me, as are both of those who follow.
• On the Shores of Ligeia by Carolyn Ives Gilman – Citizen science comes to the rescue when a remotely-operated "rover" on Titan gets stuck. I find the idea resembles the one in "Little Shepherdess", in that a lot of little things do a better job than one big thing.
• Give the Family my Love by A.T. Greenblatt – Here I wrote one line: "Apotheosis of a bookworm". I really identify with someone who, like Jorge Luis Borges, thinks that heaven must resemble a library, and a near-infinite library certainly resembles heaven.

Some short stories are exploratory, a way of answering, "If such-and-so were different…" One of the stories (Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds, another familiar name), gradually sneaks up on the reader with the idea, "What if all the insects died?" Another (The Work of Wolves by Tegan Moore) posits animal helpers with EI, Enhanced Intelligence. If the enhancements are partly external, how small can such a critter be?

Only Old Media by Annalee Newitz opened on such a gross note that I skipped to the next story after the first paragraph. I knew I wouldn't finish it thinking, "I'm glad I read that."

The volume is a good use of nearly 600 pages.