Christopher G. Nuttall's Blog, page 45

Book Review: The Dragon Republic

The Dragon
Republic

-Rebecca F. Kuang

One of the problems with ‘diverse’ books is that their
authors often feel the urge to mouth politically-correct talking points, or
feel pressured to do so, even when such points either don’t fit the narrative
or openly break the reader’s trance.  The Poppy War was such a magnificent
success, in all senses of the word, that PC talking points fitted so smoothly
into the narrative I had no intention of questioning them.  The pointlessness of both racism and class
privilege was so well demonstrated that there was no need to mention it
overtly.  But, in many ways, The Dragon Republic stumbles when such
points are raised.  And that is, it must
be admitted, a weakness.

The deeper problem, one suffered by many other books, is
that The Dragon Republic is the
middle book in a (presumed) trilogy.  It
advances the overall plot, but – unlike The
Poppy War – it is neither complete nor conclusive in itself.  There aren’t many middle books that are, and this is quite understandable,
yet it remains a problem given the sheer size of the book.  The plotline seemed to drag in places, while
Rin – the heroine – seemed to regress too. 
I saw the ultimate denouncement coming long before it finally arrived.

If you haven’t read The
Poppy War, which I highly recommend, The
Dragon Republic probably won’t make any real sense to you.  During the first book, set in a
slightly-fantastical version of Imperial China during the last few years of its
existence, Rin won a scholarship to a military academy, learned how to call
upon the gods, fought a hopeless war against an analogy of imperial Japan, won
it decisively by unleashing a holocaust on their home islands … and found
herself betrayed by the Empress and forced to go on the run.  As the story develops, she is invited to join
forces with the Dragon Warlord (the father of a character who bullied her, then
befriended her) to overthrow the Empress and establish a republic.  It rapidly becomes clear that the Dragon
Warlord is no better than the Empress he fights, his subordinates are too aristocratic
to put the common interests first and that his foreign allies are dangerously
untrustworthy.    In the end, he betrays Rin (surprise,
surprise) and she winds up leading a revolutionary movement against him. 

The book is very good in depicting a massive civil war,
roughly akin to the final years of Imperial China and the rise of the
Republicans and Communists.  Both sides
make logical moves, hampered by the need to watch their backs (betrayal is a
universal theme running through the book) and their low quality of their
leaders.  Family is a burden in such a
society, weirdly enough; the oldest son leads his forces into a trap, ignoring
advice from his younger brother who cannot disagree with him publicly.  The war is on an immense scale, ranging from ‘simple’
assassinations to massive campaigns, often decided by shamanic activity and ingenuity,
or sneak attacks designed to cause famine and weaken the opposing sides.  Both sides are hypocrites, using force to
convince people to join them and then punishing them for changing sides when
the other side applies force of its
own.  This was true of pretty much every
civil war in China.

It also explores the problems of outside meddling, with
both sides working to secure help from foreigners … foreign aid that might
come at a price.   The book illustrates both the urgent need for
help and the price, a price that might not be paid by the people who get the
help (another common problem with foreign aid). 
It does, however, tend to fall over itself a little.  On one hand, the ‘Europeans’ believe themselves
to be more evolved than the natives (with a twist that the natives will grow
more evolved as they develop); on the other hand, there is no suggest that they have shamans and therefore they’re
seriously outgunned (and perhaps out-evolved). 
Racism does not have to make logical sense, of course, but it’s still
odd.  Historically, Europe regarded China
as a mighty civilisation until the Opium Wars, when it sank in that China was
rotting away from within.

The book’s weakness, however, lies in character
development.  Rin seems to regress a
little, alternatively mourning her lost friend (and commanding officer, who
casts a long shadow over the book) and churning in circles, unsure of herself
and being constantly manipulated by others. 
It’s nice to see how the magic system develops, and how many long-lost
secrets are unearthed (along with new ideas and concepts) but Rin keeps making
mistakes and its only at the end of the book that she realises they’ve been
fighting the wrong war all along.  Rin
travels from place to place, learning more, but she doesn’t really seem to
develop much as a character.  Others do
develop a little, including a couple who managed to surprise me.  But then, given that betrayal is a theme of
the book, perhaps it shouldn’t have.

Overall, though, the book does come across as a worthy successor
to The Poppy War.  It pulls no punches about the grim reality of
war, or the effects on civilian populations … most of whom are trapped
between one side or the other and exposed to the horrors without hope of succour.  Rin herself only really grasps this after she
encounters her adopted family within a refugee camp, although she should have
seen it after witnessing the aftermath of this world’s Rape of Nanking and
later committing genocide herself.  And,
as before, the world itself is finely realised, from the shamanic magic to the corrupt
and decaying (and racial) power structure that is responsible for so much
suffering.  It is slightly less gripping
than The Poppy War, but The Poppy War was a masterpiece.

I recommend it.

Snippet – Their Last Full Measure (A Learning Experience VI)

Prologue

The irony would have made Empress Neola laugh, if it
wasn’t so … ironic.

She had rebelled, the first junior officer – by the
standards of her people – to rebel in thousands of years.  She had led an almost effortless coup against
the old ones, the ancients too doddering and old to realise that someone could overthrow them … only to
discover, after the twin disasters of Apsidal and N-Gann, that someone had
overthrown her in turn.  They hadn’t
stripped her of her power, they hadn’t banished her to a retirement world
nicely out of the way, but they had limited her power.  The omnipotence she’d claimed for herself was
gone.

Although I was
never quite omnipotent, she reflected, sourly.  Sure, she’d been the absolute ruler of the
Tokomak Empire, but … there had been limits. 
The humans and their pathetic Galactic Alliance hadn’t surrendered, when
faced with the prospect of clashing with the greatest military machine in the
known galaxy.  The universe didn’t bend to my will.

She studied the handful of faces around the table,
knowing her position was weaker than ever before.  Once, she could have snapped her long fingers
and everyone would have leapt to obey. 
Now … it was a popularity contest, where the soldiers and spacers
decided for themselves who they’d follow, who they’d obey.  Neola shuddered at the thought.  She understood the importance of ensuring
competence at the top – it was why she’d launched her coup – but soldiers and
spacers couldn’t decide for themselves which orders they’d follow.  At best, there would be long delays as they
tried to argue out the pros and cons of each set of orders: at worst, there
would be absolute anarchy.  It was no way
to run a government, let alone a war. 
And she knew they simply didn’t have time to iron out the kinks before
the humans set Tokomak Prime itself on fire.

And they know I
lost the last campaign, she thought. 
They’re not inclined to listen to
me.

A human would have gritted her teeth.  Neola was too practiced to reveal her
emotions that openly, but anger and despair gnawed at her gut.  It wasn’t a complete disaster – she’d argued,
time and time again – but hardly anyone believed her.  Cold logic was no substitute for the shock of
hundreds of thousands of lives, important
lives, being expended on a gravity point assault.  No one in the room cared one whit for the
lesser races who served the Tokomak as sepoys, expendable cannon fodder, but
the Tokomak spacers themselves?  They were important.  The Tokomak hadn’t suffered such losses in
living memory.  And, given there were
Tokomak who were literally thousands of years old, that was a very long time
indeed.

“We expect you to behave yourself, Empress,” Coordinator
Hakav said.  “And to listen to our
advice.”

You could just have
taken power for yourself, Neola thought, coldly.  It spoke of either rectitude or moral
cowardice.  She didn’t care which.  And
instead you content yourself with giving advice.

She wanted to laugh. 
Or cry.  The youngsters often
affected the manner of the old … but they didn’t need to, not any
longer.  They were calling the
shots.  Now.  And yet, they didn’t have the courage to
overthrow her completely.  They had to
know she was dangerous.  Neola had
overthrown ancients who’d held their posts for longer than most of them had been
alive, sheer longevity giving them a legitimacy the youngsters lacked.  She’d kill them all if she got a chance and
they had to know it.  But they’d merely
hampered her.  That was a mistake.

Unless they don’t
want to risk another round of infighting, she reminded herself.  We
could lose the war with the humans while scrabbling amongst ourselves.

She nodded, curtly, and directed their attention to the
holographic display.  “There is no point
in lying to ourselves,” she said.  Let
them think of her as fettered, for the moment. 
She’d regain what she’d lost in time. 
“We are not our servants, who need reassurance.  We can accept that the situation is
grim.  The humans have scored a major
victory.”

“We have never lost a fleet base before,” Admiral Kyan said.

“No.”  Neola
conceded the point without rancour.  “But
we have many – many – fleet bases.”

She spoke calmly, hiding her irritation as much as she
could.  “The humans have successfully
prevented us from launching a major invasion of their sector.  Right now, our fleets would have to proceed
through FTL, a journey that would take decades. 
The human outposts blocking the gravity point chains have to be
dislodged before we could mount an invasion in a reasonable space of time.  We will be required to launch a series of
gravity point assaults before we could even think
about bringing our muscle to bear on Earth.

“However, we have other problems.  The loss of a major fleet base” – she nodded
to the admiral – “has … unsettled our allies. 
Many of them are rethinking their stance in the light of new
developments.  Others are looking back to
the days of their independence and wondering what, if anything, they can do
while we’re distracted.  And while we are
still strong enough to take out our allies if there is no other choice, they
could produce a distraction at the worst possible time.  Right now, there is a human fleet within
striking distance of the inner worlds. 
It may only be a matter of time before that fleet starts an advance to
the core.”

She allowed her words to hang in the air.  “To Tokomak Prime itself.”

There was a long chilling pause.  She smiled inwardly, despite the seriousness
of the situation.  They’d never really
considered just how easily a strength could become a weakness, if the balance
of power shifted even slightly.  The
Tokomak had banned their servants from fortifying the gravity points, both to
ensure free navigation and to make it difficult for anyone to stop their fleets
from teaching any rebellious systems a lesson. 
Now, with a major enemy fleet pressing against the inner worlds
themselves, the gravity points were terrifyingly undefended.  Neola had started a fortification program,
hastily repurposing planetary defence platforms and constructing floating
fortresses from scratch, but she was uncomfortably aware that the program would
take time.  Time she didn’t have.  The humans moved so quickly that they’d often
managed to surprise even her.

And they’ve also
managed to improve upon the technology they stole, she mused, sourly.  The Tokomak had thought they’d taken
technology as far as it could go.  The
humans had proved them wrong.  In
hindsight, it had been a convenient lie … a lie that been believed,
eventually even by the people who’d propagated it in the first place.  Neola knew she’d pulled off some tactical
innovations – she’d caught the humans by surprise, once or twice – but her
people were ill-prepared to engage in a technological arms race.  Sooner
or later, they’ll come up with something that renders our giant reserve fleet
nothing more than scrap metal.

She shuddered at the thought.  The Tokomak had built literally millions of warships over thousands of
years.  They’d built so many ships they
couldn’t hope to man them, even if they gave every last one of their race a
uniform and assigned him to a ship.  The
fleet had been held in reserve, the largest hammer in the known galaxy.  But now, the fleet was only of limited
value.  The programs to bring the ships
out of mothballs, crew them and deploy them to the front might not be completed
in time to keep the humans from developing a whole new weapons system.  And then the reserve fleet might become worse
than useless.

“Time is not on our side,” she said, calmly.  She altered the display.  “This is what I intend to do.”

She outlined her plan, grimly aware that it was really
nothing more than a more urgent version of her previous plan.  She’d assumed
she could secure Apsidal and open the way to Earth without much ado, forcing
the humans to stand in defence of their homeworld rather than raiding the inner
worlds themselves.  She’d assumed …
those assumptions had died in fire, along with hundreds of thousands of Tokomak
spacers.  She hadn’t bothered to
calculate how many of their subjects had died too – no one had cared enough to
ask – but she knew their deaths were
in the millions.  And yet, she needed to
demand more and more from their client races. 
They’d all have to stand in defence of civilisation itself.

And yet, they’re
starting to wonder if we can be beaten, Neola thought.  And
that makes them unreliable.

She cursed the gentocrats under her breath,
savagely.  The humans had an expression –
Old Farts – that fitted them perfectly. 
They’d been so keen to make it clear that the Tokomak had never suffered
even the slightest loss – not in recorded history, anyway – that losing even a
single ship was a major disaster.  And
she’d lost thousands of ships.  It was a black eye – she had hundreds of
thousands of ships coming online – but it looked bad.  The public perception was that the Tokomak
were losing.  And the mere fact they had
to consider public perception was itself a sign that things were going wrong
…

“Time is not on our side,” she repeated.  “The humans are at our gates.  But we do have a preponderance of firepower
and mobile units.  If we can find the
time to bring the rest of the fleet online – if – we can end this threat once
and for all.”

“If,”
Coordinator Hakav repeated.

“If,” Neola agreed. 
“The galaxy has changed beyond measure in the last few years.  We can no longer allow ourselves the delusion
that we are unbeatable.  We cannot afford
to keep believing our own lies.  We must
adapt or die when change sweeps over us.”

She let out a long breath.  She was young, although by human standards
she would be on the verge of death.  And
yet, even she had trouble grasping
what might lie ahead.  She’d been so used
to the limits of everything from technological to politics, and to the concept
of those limits being inflexible, that she had trouble imagining what might
happen if they changed.  The Tokomak saw
themselves as the undisputed and unchallengeable masters of the known
universe.  It rarely occurred to them –
it had rarely occurred to them – that
their dominance was not a natural law. 
The universe didn’t guarantee them anything.

But it doesn’t
guarantee the humans anything either, she reminded herself, firmly.  They’re
strong, but they’re not unbeatable.  We
can still reclaim the galaxy for ourselves.

Sure, her thoughts answered, as the discussion continued to rage.  And what sort of galaxy will we pass down to our children?

Chapter One

Hameeda’s eyes snapped open.

For a moment, wrapped in the darkness, she was honestly
unsure of where she was or what she was doing. 
She’d been dreaming … she wasn’t sure what she’d been dreaming, but it had troubled her on a level she
couldn’t express.  There’d been shadows
in her dreams … she shook her head as the cabin lights came on, illuminating
a chamber that was surprisingly large and luxurious for such a small warship.  But then, she was trapped in the LinkShip
until the day she died.  The designers had
known they’d better make it comfortable for her.

She rubbed her forehead and sat upright, trying to
recover the dream.  It bugged her, more
than she cared to admit.  She’d rarely
dreamed since joining the navy … but then, she supposed, she’d often been too
tired to do anything more than throw herself on her bunk at the end of her
shift and sleep until the next shift
began.  Even now, with a small army of
automatic helpers at her beck and call, she still got tired.  Her body was in the peak of health, and would
remain that way until she died, but she could still get mentally tired.  And there was no one who could take her
place.

Hameeda sighed, then reached out through her implants to
touch the local processor.  The LinkShip
was surrounded by the featureless darkness of FTL, effectively alone within the
folded universe.  Her long-range sensors
had picked up the occasional hint of other starships passing through FTL, but
none of them had come close enough to exchange greetings.  They might have been hundreds of light years
away, given how gravity waves propagated within FTL.  There was no way to be entirely certain of
anything unless they came a great deal closer. 
A status display appeared in front of her and she studied it
carefully.  She was definitely alone on
the ship.

Perhaps I should
have asked for a companion, she thought, ruefully.  Or a
sexbot.

She snorted at the thought – she’d tried a sexbot when
she’d reached her majority, only to discover that even the most humanoid robot
wasn’t human – and swung her legs over the side of the bed.  The floor grew warm under her naked
feet.  Hameeda didn’t bother to check her
appearance in the mirror, let alone don her uniform, as she paced down the
corridor and onto the bridge.  She felt a
twinge of the old disappointment as she stepped through the airlock – the
chamber was really nothing more than a single command chair, surrounded by holographic
displays she rarely used – and then pushed it aside.  One day, all starships would be controlled by
direct neural links and complex command bridges would be a thing of the
past.  She rather suspected that would be
a long time in the future.  A normal
bridge might be less efficient, but it looked
better.

Her lips quirked as she sat down, the neural links activating
automatically.  Her awareness expanded,
twinning itself time and time again with the starship’s processor nodes.  She took a long breath as a string of status
reports fell into her head, each one assessed by her intellectual-shadow and
classed as non-urgent.  There was no
reason to be concerned about anything, the network said.  She checked them anyway, just to be
sure.  The LinkShip was in perfect
shape.  It was more than ready to carry
out the mission.

Hameeda nodded to herself, then checked the FTL
drive.  The LinkShip was rocketing
towards Yunnan, a major Tokomak fleet base a few hundred light years from
N-Gann.  If Solar Intelligence was
correct – and Hameeda took everything the spooks said with a grain of salt –
the Tokomak were massing ships there, preparing for … something.  Hameeda’s
tactical computers offered a number of possibilities, listed in order of probability.  They could launch a counterstroke at N-Gann, despite
the presence of two-thirds of the Solar Navy; they could withdraw the ships to
block a thrust towards Tokomak Prime; they might even be bracing themselves for
a revolution, for a whole string of
revolutions.  Hameeda had read the
reports from the inner worlds.  There
were literally hundreds of alien
races that hated the Tokomak, but were too scared to rebel.  That might have changed, now the Tokomak had
taken a black eye.  Their servants might
be wondering if they could launch a successful revolt against their masters …

And they’d better
pray they could get away with it, if they did, Hameeda told herself.  The
Tokomak won’t hesitate to burn entire planets to ash if that’s what they have
to do to stop the rebels.

She shuddered.  She’d
grown up in the Solar Union – she’d never set foot on Earth – but she’d heard
the tales.  Her grandmother had been born
in the most barbaric region of the planet, a place that was up against some
pretty stiff competition.  She’d been
aware, from birth until she’d escaped to space, that the strong did what they
liked and the weak suffered what they must. 
Hameeda had found it hard to believe, when she’d listened to her
grandmother’s stories of near-permanent starvation, warlords, religious fanatics
and raving misogynists who hated and feared women.  She believed it now.  The Tokomak would do whatever it took to keep
themselves in power, fearful of what would happen if – when – they lost
it.  They and their human enemies weren’t
that different.

A timer appeared in her vision, counting down the final
seconds.  Hameeda checked her weapons and
shields again, bracing herself for the worst. 
The FTL baffles were supposed to
keep the enemy from detecting a ship in FTL, but the Tokomak might be wise to
that trick by now.  They were
unimaginative, not stupid.  And they were the ones who’d developed FTL
travel.  The Solar Navy’s officers had
spent years wondering just what, if anything, the Tokomak might have kept back
for themselves.  They didn’t have to share everything with their
allies.  Why should they?

There might be an
ambush lying in wait for me, she mused. 
Or they might be preparing to yank
me out of FTL early and pound hell out of me.

The timer reached zero.  The LinkShip hummed out of FTL.  Hameeda allowed herself a sigh of relief as
the near-space sensors drew a blank, then started to deploy a handful of
passive sensor platforms.  A torrent of
information rushed into her sensor processors as the LinkShip coasted towards
the planet, daring the local sensors to detect her.  Hameeda snorted to herself, half-wishing she
could kick whoever had issued her orders. 
She could have gotten a lot closer
without any real risk of detection, if she’d remained hidden under cloak, but
the analysts wanted to know when – if – the locals spotted her when she wasn’t
trying to hide.  It wouldn’t be
long.  They might not have seen her
coming – the lack of a welcoming committee suggested the locals hadn’t worked
out how to track her yet – but they’d detect her drive emissions soon
enough.  She rather suspected it was too
much to hope that some artificial stupid would decide she couldn’t be there and
dismiss her as nothing more than a sensor glitch.  There was a war on.  The Tokomak would probably investigate any
sensor contacts that appeared on their screens.

We could use that
against them, she thought, wryly.  A few hundred fake contacts and they’d be
ready to ignore an entire battle fleet bearing down on them.

She put the thought to one side as more and more data
flowed into the sensors.  Yunnan had been
populated by spacefaring races for thousands of years and it showed.  Four rocky worlds, three of them heavily
developed; two gas giants, both surrounded by cloudscoops and hundreds of
industrial nodes.  Her eyes narrowed as
she recalled the history datafiles, the ones that stated the Tokomak had raised
the natives from the mud and given them the keys to the stars.  Reading between the lines of flattery so
cloying that even the most narcissistic human in existence would vomit in
disgust, it was clear the Tokomak had enslaved the natives after discovering
their world and its three gravity points. 
They might have the stars, but only as passengers on someone else’s
ships.  Their worlds were no longer
theirs.  And they might – just – want to
rebel.

Her lips tightened as her sensors picked out the signs of
new construction around the gravity points. 
The Tokomak were hastily fortifying them, although she wasn’t sure who
they thought they were fortifying them against.  Admiral Stuart could take her fleet from N-Gann to Yunnan if she wished, but she’d
prefer to take the long way through FTL rather than bleed her fleet white
punching through the gravity points.  The
fortresses would be expensive white elephants if Yunnan itself was
attacked.  They’d be unable to cover the
planet and the gravity points.  She shook her head, mentally.  There might be other problems.  The Harmonies were only three jumps away and they had a powerful fleet.  They might be allies, as far as the Tokomak
were concerned, but … given a chance, who knew what they’d do?

The Tokomak
probably don’t know, she thought.  And that might be why they’re building the
fortresses.

A flash of red light flared across her vision.  The enemy had pinged her, active sensors
sweeping her hull.  She watched, feeling
a twinge of amusement, as their entire defence network flash-woke.  Her sensors drank it all in, nothing the
position of everything from active sensor platforms to orbital fortresses
guarding the planets and their industrial nodes from enemy attack.  The Tokomak hadn’t skimped on the defences,
she noted, as a handful of enemy cruisers left orbit and barrelled straight for
her.  They’d clearly had some reason to
fear attack.

And they might have
been right, she thought.  They just didn’t expect it to come from us.

She watched the cruisers draw near, then kicked her
drives into high gear.  The cruisers
swept their sensors across her time and time again, the universal signal
ordering the unlucky recipient to stop or be fired upon.  Hameeda wondered if they actually expected her to stop or if they were
mindlessly following orders that had been written thousands of years before
humans had discovered fire.  She swept
closer, bracing herself for the moment they took the gloves off and opened
fire.  They’d have a solid lock on her
hull, with or without active sensors. 
They might not give her any warning before they opened fire …

There!  She sensed the flicker and threw the LinkShip
into an evasive pattern, sweeping through a set of manoeuvres that would have
been impossible for anything larger than a gunboat ten years ago.  A handful of shots rocketed through where she’d
been, missing her cleanly.  She smirked
as she darted near a cruiser, trying to dare the ship to fire … knowing that
if she missed, she might just hit one of her fellows.  The Tokomak ships could take a few hits, but
would they take the chance?  She snorted as
the enemy held their fire, then altered course and headed directly towards Yunnan
itself.  The enemy ships were left eating
her dust.  They changed their own course,
following her, but it was too late.  The
only way they’d ever get back into weapons range was if she let them.

The planet grew larger as she zoomed towards it.  The enemy were starting to panic, hundreds of
freighters leaving orbit and dropping into FTL without even bothering to boost
themselves into high orbit first.  There’d
be some trouble over that when the
unlucky crews returned, she was sure. 
Human bureaucrats were mindless fools – she’d met too many, even in the
Solar Union – but Tokomak bureaucrats were worse.  The freighter crews would probably be
stripped of their licences when the dust settled, if they were lucky.  Who knew? 
Perhaps they’d make their way to N-Gann and join the Galactic Alliance instead.  They would be welcome.

She watched, grimly, the planetary defences brought more
and more weapons on line.  The orbital
battlestations would be a major threat if she got too close, while – oddly –
the giant ring surrounding the planet was studded with tactical sensors
too.  She frowned, wondering if the ring
had weapons mounted too.  That was odd –
the Galactics were normally careful not to do anything that might make the
rings targets – but there was a war
on.  Perhaps they’d decided to gamble
their human opponents wouldn’t risk an accidental genocide by destroying the
ring and bombarding the planet below with debris.  Or maybe they simply didn’t care.

They have to care,
Hameeda thought.  The alternative was
unthinkable.  The population below isn’t expendable.

She accessed her communications array and uploaded a
handful of commands into the system as she swept into firing range.  The enemy CO was an idiot, as he opened fire
the moment she flew into range … extreme
range.  A full-sized battleship could
have evaded his missiles, let alone the nimble LinkShip.  Hameeda was tempted to hold her position and let
him empty his magazines, if he was stupid enough to oblige her.  But the risks were too great.  A lucky hit – or an antimatter warhead –
might do real damage.  She had no
illusions.  The LinkShip was too small to
soak up damage and keep going.  If she
lost her shields, she was doomed.

The barrage of missiles grew stronger as she darted
closer to the planet, evading them with almost effortless ease.  She wondered, idly, if someone was screaming at the CO to stop wasting missiles, to stop
throwing warheads around too close to the ring for comfort.  A single nuclear warhead might not do much damage to a structure that
literally surrounded an entire planet, but why take chances?  She evaded another spread of missiles, then
dropped below the ring.  Thankfully, if
there were any weapons on the ring
they held their fire.  Either they didn’t
exist or whoever was in charge was smarter …

They could hardly
be stupider, she thought.  She opened
the communications array, searching for enemy nodes.  Here, so close to the planet, they couldn’t
keep her from hacking the system without shutting down the entire network.  The Tokomak system wasn’t badly designed, but
it had its flaws.  And humanity had had
plenty of time to learn to take advantage of each and every one of them.  And now
…

She uploaded the hacking package, sending it into every
communications node within reach.  The
message would spread rapidly, using codes they’d hacked from other Tokomak
systems to stay ahead of any mass-wiping programs.  It wouldn’t last forever, she’d been warned,
but it would take them weeks to get rid of it … weeks when the message, the
call to war and revolution, would be seen by millions of people.  If only a tiny percentage of them rose up
against their masters, the Tokomak would have a real fight on their hands. 
Who knew how much of their productive capability would be lost if they had to suppress a hundred
revolts?

And how many of
their servants and slaves will be butchered to keep the revolt from spreading,
she thought, sourly.  The Tokomak had
always reacted badly to any challenge, particularly from the younger
races.  We could be doing the wrong thing here.

She put the thought away as new alerts flashed up in
front of her.  The enemy were launching
gunboats, hoping they could chase her out of low orbit and back into missile
range.  She smiled, resisting the
temptation to force them to play cat and mouse for the next few hours.  It would be entertaining, but she couldn’t
risk being hit.  Not here.  She’d completed her mission and now it was
time to run.  She altered course and dove
towards the ring, flying into a giant starship repair yard.  A transport ship, large enough to carry a
hundred LinkShips within its hull, was drifting within the yard, open to space.
Hameeda flew right through it,
resisting the urge to fire off a handful of missiles at the repair
facilities.  It would hamper them –
slightly – if they lost the yard, but the risk was unthinkable.  She wasn’t prepared to risk genocide.  Not now. 
Not ever.

The enemy commander opened fire as she climbed into high
orbit, his missiles sprinting towards her. 
She cancelled her drives, coming to an abrupt stop, then dropped a
handful of decoys before vanishing into FTL. 
The combination of sensor static and gravity baffles should keep them from realising what she’d
done … she shook her head as she rocketed away from the system, all too aware
that she’d never know.  They might think
they’d destroyed her.  They might tell
everyone they’d destroyed her.  They
might not even know they were lying. 
They might genuinely believe they’d
destroyed her.

But no one will
believe them, she thought.  They’ve lied so often that they won’t be
believed even if they honestly think they’re telling the truth.

She put the thought aside as she waited long enough to be
sure she was clear, then slipped her mind out of the network and fell back into
her own body.  The experience wasn’t so
disorientating now, thankfully … she wiped sweat from her brow, her stomach
grumbling angrily as it reminded her she hadn’t eaten anything for hours.  She disconnected herself from the chair and
stood, feeling her legs wobbling threateningly. 
She’d have to force herself to exercise, during the flight to her next
target.  There were limits to what a
combination of genetic modification and nanotech helpers could do.

Not that it matters,
she thought, as she headed to the galley. 
 She couldn’t be bothered to cook,
but there were plenty of food patterns stored within the processor.  If we
lose this war, there won’t be anything of us left.  And our opponents won’t hesitate to commit
genocide. 

Musings on the Cold Equations

 

It seemed, almost,
that she still sat small and bewildered and frightened on the metal box beside
him, her words echoing hauntingly clear in the void she had left behind her:

I didn’t do
anything to die for—I didn’t do anything—

-Tom Godwin, The
Cold Equations

Say what you like about him – and a
great deal has been said, as is the wont of our woke-world, over the past
few months – John Campbell was one hell of an editor.  He understood, at a primal level, what made a
story actually work; he understood how to subvert expectations to make The Cold Equations a story that is still
talked about nearly seventy years after it was written.  Indeed, it is the ending – so unexpected, by
the standards of the time – that caused most of the comment.  At base, we don’t want an innocent girl to die. 
And yet, die she must.

The basic plot is relatively simple.  On a colony world in an otherwise empty star
system, in a universe where spaceflight and FTL travel is possible but
expensive and difficult, a disease is spreading.  A vaccine must be delivered immediately or six
men will die.  In order to do this, an
interstellar transport ship must drop out of FTL and launched an emergency
dispatch ship (the EDS) to the colony world. 
Because fuel is expensive, there is only a limited supply on the EDS;
the pilot, Barton, is going to have to remain on the colony world until he can
be recovered later.  Because of the cold
equations of interplanetary spaceflight, the ship cannot take on more mass (such as a stowaway) or it will miss the
planet, condemning the pilot and the colonists to death.  As stowaways will always try to space the
pilot first, the pilot has a blaster and orders to shoot to kill before he is
killed himself.  And Barton discovers,
when he is committed to his flight, that he has a stowaway.

But this is no desperate man, condemned to kill or be
killed.  The stowaway is Marilyn Lee
Cross, an eighteen-year-old girl.  She
doesn’t want to steal the fuel, she just wants to see her brother … a
colonist.  She’s an innocent abroad.  She doesn’t realise – unlike everyone else in
the story – that she has not only walked into danger, she has walked into
certain death.  If she stays on the ship,
it will crash and eight people will die. 
Her presence guarantees it. 
Barton tries, desperately, to work the figures so everyone might live,
but he draws a blank.  There’s no way to
cheat the cold equations.  She says
goodbye to her brother, then walks into the airlock.  Her death saves seven other lives.

Godwin works hard to tug on our heartstrings throughout
the story, building up an expectation that – at the end – Marilyn will be
saved.  She’s an innocent girl; she’s no
spoilt brat, she declares herself ready to face the consequences … unaware,
all too unaware, that those consequences include certain death.  (By the standards of the story’s era, when
men were expected to protect women, she’s the last person anyone would want to die.)  She talks of her hopes and dreams, slowly
realising that they’ll never come to pass. 
And in the end, she redeems herself the only way she can … by walking
to her death.  Her suicide saves Barton
from having to kill her in order that seven other men might live.

It is no surprise that the story is controversial, both
when it was published and now.  By the
standards of the time, Barton would have found a solution – probably with
undiscovered super-science – and the story would have been forgotten.  By now, with more advanced technology and
different social attitudes, the story has been branded sexist and misogynist,
with Godwin (or Campbell) choosing to overlook possible solutions so the girl
must die.  (One commenter, according to the
foreword to the Baen edition, included a suggestion of pederasty.)  And yet, without the grim ending, the story
would not be so well known.  I would kill to write a story that remained in
the public mind for sixty years. 
Campbell knew his job and he did it very well. 

Half of the story, naturally, rests on the technical
limits, as they were known in those days. 
The EDS apparently cannot be flown on automatic (although that would
have made matters worse, as there would be no one on the ship to explain to Marilyn
that she had to die; worse, perhaps, she might suffocate on an airless ship,
her body still adding its weight to the load and ensuring certain doom.)  There would also be obvious limits to how
much fuel the mothership could carry (regardless of the cost factor) and how
much they could risk giving to the EDS without cutting their own safety margin
to the bone.  Indeed, many of the little
quibbles with the story can be resolved by bearing in mind that the EDS was not
designed to carry the vaccine; it was
pressed into service on an emergency basis. 

The other half rests on social attitudes and
awareness.  Everyone in the story, except
Marilyn, understands the dangers of stowing away on a spacecraft.  They know this because they live in space,
they work in space; they understand, at a very primal level, the dangers of
space.  A sign marked ‘UNAUTHORIZED
PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!’ is more than enough for them, on the grounds that no one
would erect such a sign without good reason. 
Marilyn, on the other hand, was born on Earth and was a mere passenger
on the mothership, unaware of the dangers except at an intellectual level.  On Earth, perhaps within the Sol System, she
could be rescued.  Outside Earth, the
technology and resources to save her simply don’t exist.  Indeed, this may also explain why Barton
didn’t bother to search the ship for stowaways before casting off, reasoning –
correctly, from his point of view – that no one would be stupid enough to
hijack the EDS when there was literally nowhere
to go.  The empty colony system has
no place that can and will take the fuel and hide the pilot with no questions
asked.  (The downside of asking ‘who
would be stupid enough to do [whatever]?’ is that there are people too
ignorant – like Marilyn – to realise that they’re doing something incredibly
stupid.)

There are no easy ways out of the problem, as far as I
can see.  And indeed, most of the
proposed solutions are simply impractical. 
For example:

Point: Marilyn
could land the ship herself, perhaps following directions from the planet or
the mothership (or simple remote control). 
Indeed, a fertile young girl might be more important to the colony than the older pilot.  Barton can commit suicide to save her life.

Counterpoint: There’s
no suggestion that Marilyn can fly the ship (if she had pilot training, she
would have understood the dangers), nor is there any suggestion that the ship
can be guided from the ground/mothership. 
The mothership would presumably have other pilots, but the
speed-of-light delay would make it impossible to guide the ship safely; there
might not be a pilot on the ground.  (This
also raises the issue of why Barton should
die to save Marilyn from the consequences of her own mistake, but it’s fairly
clear that Barton would have done so if that was an option.)

Point: There
are plenty of items on the EDS that could be jettisoned instead, balancing the
cold equations.

Counterpoint: The
items may be vitally important (an acceleration couch, for example), too small
to make a difference (pen and paper) or simply impossible to dismantle and remove
in time. 

Point: Marilyn
and Barton could amputate themselves, throwing out their limbs to balance the
cold equations.  Marilyn could survive
without her arms and legs …

Counterpoint(s): First,
there is no suggestion that either of them have the medical training and
equipment to perform several amputations successfully.  (My wife, a doctor, said she’d be very
hesitant to try, even if things really were
desperate.  Second, what sort of life
would Marilyn (and Barton) have on the colony world, if they were literally
limbless?  Death might be preferable.

As far as I can tell, giving the setting, the outcome is
inevitable.  There simply isn’t any
solution that will allow everyone to
live.  It is for that reason, I suspect,
that most negative commenters choose to nitpick the setting itself, pointing
out that the whole universe seems designed by criminally-negligent robber
barons.  There may be some truth in this,
although – again – we tend to run up against hard limits.  If fuel is so expensive, for example, it is
unlikely there will be much of a surplus. 
(It’s also possible that the real reason
for the blaster is not for the pilot to shoot stowaways, but for him to shoot himself if something goes seriously
wrong and he’s condemned to die in interstellar space.)  There’s also the blinkered mindset, as I
noted above, that comes from thinking inside the box – you might know the dangers, but there’s no
guarantee that someone from outside will also
know.  It’s quite easy to fall into
the trap of assuming that everyone shares your understanding, a trap that can
be extremely dangerous.

It’s also true that a bunch of places I’ve worked had
stupid rules because there was an
answer to ‘who
would be stupid enough to do [whatever]?’ 
Most of them were quite idiotically stupid; indeed, trying to carry them
out bred contempt for the bureaucrats who wrote them, rather than
alertness.  Indeed, in this case, Barton
might have skimped on checking the EDS because he assumed that no one would try
to steal something he couldn’t actually do
anything with.  (Ironically, a rule
that the EDS had to be checked and then locked would be very far from ‘stupid’
in hindsight.)  But those rules did not
exist until someone broke the laws of common sense and forced the bosses to
write the rules. 

These days, all too many people ask – when confronted
with a catastrophe –  who can be
blamed?  Who can be sued?  And The
Cold Equations continues to resonate because of it, with one faction using
the story as an example of someone who did something stupid and therefore
condemned herself to death and the other pointing out that Barton and his
superiors were negligent and therefore could rightfully be punished (i.e. sued)
for Marilyn’s death.  I find myself
caught between the two viewpoints – both sides have a point – and there is no
good answer.  Barton should have checked the ship, it really should have been locked … but Marilyn was also in an environment
she didn’t understand, while being more than old enough to ask why rules and regulations exist.  There are limits to just how many precautions
we can take to deflect stupidity and/or ignorance.  At some point, we must ask why the zoo – for
example – is to be blamed for the idiot who climbed two fences to get into the
tiger pit and promptly got eaten.  At
some point, we must acknowledge that the zoo took all reasonable precautions
and cannot be blamed for the person who didn’t stop to ask why the fence was
there before they started to climb it.

The blunt truth is two-fold.  First, warning signs generally exist for a
reason.   Sometimes, they explain the
danger (WARNING: FLOOD).  Sometimes, they
don’t.  It is simple common sense to be
wary when someone posts a sign, particularly if it’s on a door you have no
business entering.  If you don’t know
what the danger is, you should find out before you put your life at risk.  (Or, as Niven and Pournelle put it in Oath
of Fealty, which touches on similar themes, you run the risk of
everyone else commenting ‘think of it as evolution in action.’)

Second, there are limits to just how many precautions one
can take against someone who is determined to ignore them.  In The
Cold Equations, Marilyn knew she
was doing something wrong.  She assumed the worst she’d be facing was a
jail term and willingly chose to ignore a warning sign, accepting that she
might go to jail.  But her ignorance sent
her to her death instead.  In Oath of Fealty, a politically-connected
teenage boy gets killed in a power plant … after he and his friends ignore a
set of warning signs and break through, IIRC, a locked door.  It may be heartless to say that he brought it
on himself – and he’s a lot less
sympathetic than Marilyn – but it’s fundamentally true.  Sure, some
warning signs are only there because some barmy bureaucrat thought they
were a good idea.  You shouldn’t assume that’s true unless you know how
things actually work.

It’s easy to say, from the comfort of one’s armchair,
that the people involved should have done something different.  It’s easy to proclaim that it should be possible to win a war without
taking a single life, for example, but much harder to do it in real life.  The people at the sharp end know it’s simply
not possible.  Accidents happen.  Sometimes, you do everything right – and/or
everything you’re legally required to do – and accidents happen anyway.  And when they do, all you can reasonably do
is pick up the pieces, learn from experience and turn the whole affair into a
cautionary tale.  Sometimes, there’s no
good choice.  You have to take the least
bad option and cope with it as best as possible.

We have a habit of forgetting that, these days.  We like to think that perfection is possible
– and, when we don’t get it, we waste time trying to find someone to
blame.  Our society is practically
structured to allow us to put off the hard decisions for quite some time, until
they catch up with us and drag us under. 
Marilyn made a string of mistakes – as did everyone else – that ended in
tragedy.  You cannot cheat the cold
equations.  Godwin and Campbell did us a
vast favour by reminding us of that, well before the rot really started to set
in. 

And frankly, their story is one that should be read by
everyone.

OUT NOW – Mirror Image (Schooled in Magic 18!)

Years ago, Heart’s Eye, a school built on top of a nexus point, was attacked and captured by a necromancer.  The nexus point was snuffed out, the handful of survivors forced to flee and the once-great school turned into a forward base for a necromantic invasion.  All seemed lost, until Emily killed the necromancer and retook the school.  Now, she intends to lay the building blocks for a university, a place where magical knowledge and mundane technology are brought together for the benefit of all.

But dark secrets lie within the shadowed school.  What happened when Heart’s Eye fell? What were the tutors doing when the wards fell and the necromancer invaded the school?  And, as power flows back into the school, Emily finds herself caught between power struggles and a threat from the past, a shadow that has walked beside her for the last six years.  It might bring about the end of everything.

In a school full of mirrors, who knows what they reflect?

Download a FREE SAMPLE, then purchase the books from the links here (and purchase the audio version of Cursed here).

Updates

Hi, everyone

Mirror Image is working its way through publication – if you can’t see it already, you should be able to see it in a day or two.  I’ve also finished the first draft of The Ancient Lie, so hopefully you’ll see that one in a month or two too.

The rough plan is:

NOV – Their Last
Full Measure (ALE6)

DEC – Debt of War (Kat
Falcone)

JAN – The King’s
Man (Zero 7)

FEB – The Artful
Apprentice (SIM 19)

Chris

Great News!

Hi, everyone

As you know, ten or so days ago I went for a biopsy after
the MRI scan revealed traces of something
where the cancer was, a year ago. 
(This area was treated with chemo, then blasted with radioactivity.)  The biopsy revealed that it was just dead
flesh!  WhoHoo!

Obviously, the doctor was at pains to tell me that there
might be something tiny left behind – I’m due for another CT scan in January –
and there is a possibility that it might come back at a later date, but for the
moment I’m clear.  As you can imagine,
this is wonderful news!

And, in other news, I’m 13 chapters into The Ancient Lie.  Hope to get it done by the end of the month.

Chris

OUT NOW – Favour The Bold (The Empire’s Corps XVI)

An all-new story of The Empire’s Corps!

Earth has fallen.  The Core Worlds have collapsed into chaos.  War is breaking out everywhere as planetary governments declare independence, entire sectors slip out of contact and warlords battle for power.  The remnants of the once-great Empire are tearing themselves apart.

 In the shadows, the Terran Marine Corps works to save what little they can to preserve civilisation and build a better tomorrow.  But powerful factions are competing with them, determined to establish their own order.  If they cannot be stopped, if the marines cannot hold the line, the galaxy will fall into a new dark age.  And there may only be one chance to nip their scheme in the bud.

Does fortune favour the bold?  The marines are about to find out.

Download a FREE SAMPLE, read the Afterword, then purchase from the below links:

Amazon US.  Amazon UK.  Amazon Canada.  Amazon Austrilia.  Draft2Digital (multiple sellers, accessable through the linked page.)

Snippet – The Ancient Lie (The Unwritten Words II)

Prologue I

It was bitterly – bitterly – cold.

Alden Majuro, Patriarch of House Majuro, pulled his
fur-lined coat tightly around him as he started the ascent to Ida.  Five years ago, the trip would have taken
only a few hours – a day at most – and would have been accomplished in relative
comfort.  His wealth, power and magic
would have ensured a private coach on an iron dragon.  But now, it had taken nearly two weeks to make the trip, travelling over
shattered roads and passing through burned-out villages, towns and cities
fighting desperately to keep their independence from warring kings and
princes.  It felt as if the Empire had
never existed at all.  It felt …

Wrong, he
thought.  It feels wrong.

It had been an interesting trip, for all the wrong reasons.  He hadn’t seen anything himself, but there
had been stories … always stories. 
Tales of miracles, of things beyond the limits of any known magic; tales
of ghosts and resurrections and hundreds of other deeds he would have sworn
blind were impossible.  The stories were
spreading, radiating out from the forbidden zones.  It wouldn’t be long before they were
everywhere.  He wondered, morbidly, if
they’d already reached Ida.

Dark clouds, forebodingly pregnant with snow, hovered
around the peaks as he made his way up the slippery road.  Ida had always been isolated, even though it
had been part of the Empire.  The
population had kept itself apart, relying on their mountains to protect them
from their larger and more powerful neighbours. 
Now … the weather was growing even worse, freezing bandit gangs and
invading armies with a dispassion Alden could only admire.  It was possible to believe, as he reached the
top and walked towards the gates, that Ida would remain civilised even as the
rest of the world plunged into chaos. 
The mountain folk knew better than to throw away everything they’d built
at the behest of a king or rogue sorcerer.

The guards eyed him narrowly, then nodded.  “Her Majesty has sent for you,” the leader
said, stiffly.  “Come with me.”

Alden nodded and followed the guard through winding
streets, towards a palace that looked to have been hewn out of the mountain
rock itself.  Snow started to fall,
covering the dark buildings in a wintery haze. 
The handful of people on the streets hurriedly sought shelter,
suggesting there was worse to come. 
Alden didn’t relax until they were inside the palace, where it was
mercifully warm.  He stripped off his
coat and changed into dry clothes with a sense of relief.  His outfit was so sodden that the washerwomen
would have to use powerful spells to dry it.

He stepped into the next room and frowned.  A young woman was standing by the window,
studying him.  She was … small, almost
mousy.  Her dress was practically
colourless.  She was the sort of woman he
would have ignored, back at the Peerless School.  And yet … his eyes narrowed as he realised
who she was.  Elaine, First of Her Name;
Elaine, the Last Empress of the Golden Empire; Elaine …

Alden swallowed, suddenly unsure of himself.  He’d sent a message before he’d left,
naturally, but there had been no time to wait for a reply.  Who knew how
the Empress would react, when she laid eyes on him?  She’d refused to stay in the Golden City and
rule, even though it was her birthright. 
And they told strange tales about her … Alden knew, if she chose to be
displeased at his intrusion, it might be the end of his lifeline.  She was the Empress!  If she wanted to kill him, she could.

He bowed, stiffly. 
“Your Majesty.”

“I gave up the title.” 
Elaine’s voice was soft, but there was a quiet strength in her tone that
warned him not to underestimate her. 
“It’s just Elaine, if you
please.”

“As you please,” Alden said.  “I … I need to consult with you.”

“I read your letter.” 
Elaine gave no hint of her feelings. 
“You left out the specifics.”

Alden nodded. Reaching into his pouch, he produced the
letters from Isabella.  “We received
these tidings from the Summer Isle,” he said. 
It occurred to him, too late, that Elaine and Isabella – his estranged
sister – were practically contemporaries. 
“There are strange … things on
the island.  Or there were.”

Elaine took the letters and read them, quickly.  “Gods. 
Entities.”

“Yes.”  Alden met
her eyes.  “Very strange entities.”

“Yes.”  Elaine read
the letters twice, skimming over the text to reread the important points.  “And clearly not part of the former canon.”

Alden’s eyes narrowed. 
“They say you know everything,”
he said.  “Do you know them?”

Elaine looked back at him, evenly.  “Do you know what happened to me?”

Alden shook his head. 
There had been rumours, of course, but none of them had ever been
substantiated.  And then the families had
had worse problems to worry about. 
Elaine … had been allowed to slip into obscurity.  If Alden were honest, at least with himself,
he would have to concede that the families hadn’t wanted her to stick around. 
The last thing they wanted was a ruler who had the power and will to
make them behave.

Not that it matters,
he thought, with a hint of the old bitterness.  Once,
our word was law from one side of the continent to the other.  Now … we barely command one city.

“I absorbed all the knowledge in the Great Library,”
Elaine said, slowly.  “Everything, from
the mundane to the forbidden.  It’s all
in here.”

She tapped the side of her head.  Alden stared, torn between astonishment and
fear.  The Great Library had been sealed
for the past five years, the wards denying entry to each and every person who
tried to visit.  And the woman in front
of him knew everything in the library? 
Elaine was formidable, perhaps more formidable than she knew.  There was more than just books of magic in the library.  There were history books that had been banned
and removed from circulation long ago.

“There are … hints
… of something, right from the Dark Ages before the first Grand
Sorcerer,” Elaine said.  “Stories of … things. 
Of entities with striking power. 
Of … the Empire, as it was in those days, practically devising a
religion.  Of cutting and pasting elements
into a single consistent theology …”

“Blasphemy,” Alden said.

“Is it?”  Elaine
shrugged.  “It’s hard to tell these days,
isn’t it?”

“Yes.”  Alden
conceded the point without rancour.  He’d
studied history in school.  There was
very little on the era before the Empire, very little that could be
substantiated.  His tutors had liked to
pretend the Empire had always existed.   “And they’re seemingly linked to the
forbidden zones.”

He sighed.  “What
else can you tell me?”

“Very little.” 
Elaine turned to peer out the window. 
Snow brushed against the glass, dropping down to the streets below.  “Whatever truths there were, in the old
texts, were removed long ago.  There were
… just a list of warnings and instructions of what not to do.”

Alden stepped up beside her, watching the clouds growing
darker.  “And you think those
instructions were connected to the … gods?”

“Call them entities,”
Elaine said, sharply.  “Once you start
accepting them as gods, you will
start worshipping them.”

“We do worship
the gods,” Alden said.  “Don’t we?”

Elaine shrugged. 
“How many of those gods were actually real?”

Her voice hardened. 
“How many people liked the idea of an Emperor or an Empress until one
actually turned up?”

“Touché.”  Alden
shook his head.  “If these … entities … are real …”

“Then we may have a problem,” Elaine said.  “And there may not be much I can do to help
you.”

Alden glanced at her, surprised.  “But you know everything!”

“I know the words written,” Elaine said.  “But the words unwritten?  Those, I don’t
know.”

She shrugged.  “You
may have had a wasted journey,” she cautioned. 
“But stay a while.  Her Majesty
wishes to speak with you.  And we may
find something you can use, given time.”

“I hope you’re right.” 
Alden looked back out the window. 
He’d hoped Elaine would have answers for him.  Instead … she seemed to be as ignorant as
himself.  “And if you’re not …?”

“Then we may find ourselves in the grip of greater powers,” Elaine said.  “And that never works out well for anyone.”

Prologue II

“I can’t help him, Goodwoman,” the Hedge Witch said.  “He’s dying.”

Goodwoman Charlotte barely heard his words as her son
started to cough, again.  She had no idea
what was wrong with him, but … he’d been coughing and vomiting for weeks, steadily
growing weaker and weaker until he was on the verge of death.  Golan was five,
the age where he should be starting in the fields with his father or learning a
trade with his uncles.  Instead … she
glared at the Hedge Witch, cursing the bastard under her breath.  He’d taken every last coin she’d been able to
scrap up, from her extended family, but what had he done?  Nothing, damn him.  Her son was dying …

Golan coughed, harder this time.  There were flecks of blood on his lips.  Charlotte reached for him, drawing him into
her arms as the coughing intensified. 
Golan was dying … he’d only been hers for five years and he was
dying.  Charlotte was a farmwife, from a
farming community.  She knew death came
early and often, to young babes only a few weeks and months old, but … she’d
thought Golan had survived the most dangerous part of his childhood.  She’d dared to love him.  She’d told herself he was the most handsome
boy in the world, a boy who would grow into a man who’d make her proud.  Instead …

The Hedge Witch was talking, but Charlotte barely heard
him as her son coughed his life away. 
Golan felt cold, too cold … she shuddered, helplessly, as he coughed
one final time and fell still.  She
didn’t need the Hedge Witch’s worthless spells and poultices to know her son
was dead.  The man was babbling away
about something, probably something to do with his payment … Charlotte barely
cared.  Her son was dead.  Her son was dead … she knew she should send
to the fields, to summon her husband for the funeral rites, but … it was
hard, so hard, to care.  She wanted to
die herself, if it meant her son came back to life.

Strong arms touched her, held her.  Others took the body from her arms, taking
him to be washed before he was placed on the pyre.  Charlotte knew she should be the one to wash
him – she’d brought Golan into the world, it was her duty to see him out – but
she couldn’t bring herself to insist on her rights.  It would have been an admission, to herself
if no one else, that it was hopeless, that her son was dead.  Golan had been so alive, his face practically glowing with life.  Everyone had loved him.  How could he be dead?

She was barely aware of anything until she stood in front
of the funeral pyre, staring at what remained of her son.  Golan had been stripped, washed and dressed
in a simple white shift, then placed on top of the wood.  Her husband stood next to her, holding her
gently.  She wondered if his family had
already started asking him to cast Charlotte aside, to find another wife …
someone who might be more fertile, who might bear a healthy child.  There was no room for sentiment on the farm,
no room for anything … she cursed them all, glaring past the pyre to the tiny
shine beyond.  Golan had been a good
boy.  What good were the gods, if they couldn’t save one child?

The priest started to talk, his words blurring together
into a meaningless babble.  Golan was
gone, yet … Charlotte refused to believe. 
Her son couldn’t be dead.  She
wanted to attack the priest, to tear him limb from limb for daring to suggest
there might be something good in her
son’s death.  How dare he?  The smiling, warmly
dressed man … the man who collected tithes that went … where?  What good did he do?  Hatred washed through her breast, demanding
release.  She wanted to strangle him with
her bare hands.

“Hold.”

She looked up, astonished.  No one would interrupt a funeral, yet …
someone had.  A tall man, wrapped in a
ragged grey cloak that brushed against the ground.  Charlotte swallowed, hard.  A wandering preacher … they went from
village, seeking alms and converts. 
She’d been warned not to have anything to do with them, ever.  The priest had made it clear that the
wanderers were not true preachers,
yet … there was something about the man in front of her that drew her to
him.  He felt more … real, as though he was larger than
life.  She could feel his presence even when she kept her eyes decently lowered.

His voice throbbed with power.  It seemed to be for her and her alone.  “He is not dead.  His story is not yet told.  He can come back, if you believe.”

Charlotte stared at him, heedless of the gathered
crowd.  “Bring him back!”

The priest took a step forward, raising his cane.  “Begone!”

“No.”  The
preacher’s voice grew darker.  No, the world was getting darker.  “You begone.”

Lightning stabbed down, from a darkening sky.  The priest’s body lit up, then disintergrated
in a flash of tearing white light. 
Charlotte was rooted to the spot, unable to move.  The rest of the crowd scattered, strong men
and women running in all directions, as if they were scared out of their
minds.  They were brave, faced with
something they understood, but this … Charlotte didn’t blame them for
running.  The unknown was always
terrifying.

“I can bring him back, if you embrace my lord,” the
preacher said.  “Do you vow to devote
yourself to him?”

“Yes.”  Charlotte
didn’t have to think about it.  “Yes,
yes, yes!”

The preacher placed his hand on Golan’s chest.  Charlotte watched, feeling something new blossom to life within her heart and
soul.  She had never truly believed in
the gods, not when they seemed to turn their backs on their people.  But now … hope became faith, became belief
… she felt something surrounding
her, blessing her.  Golan’s body
twitched, his eyes opening …

“Mama?”

Charlotte reached for him, yanking him off the pyre.  He was alive! 
Her son was alive!

“Embrace my lord,” the preacher said.  “And serve him for the rest of your days.”

“I will,” Charlotte promised.  Tears streamed down her face, No price was
too high, for the return of her son.  The
villagers were already returning, drawn by the miracle in her arms.  “I will.”

And she knew, whatever happened, that she would keep her promise. �

Chapter One

The tiny hut was empty, save for a single fire in the
exact centre of the room.  It burned with
an eerie flame, as if it were more magic than mundane.  Shadows flickered around the chamber, growing
and lengthening as the flames threatened to die down.  It was easy to believe that something lurked within the shadows,
that they were gateways to realms that existed beyond the reach of human
perception.  There was a sense that
anyone who walked into the shadows wouldn’t come out again.

Isabella, formerly of House Majuro, knelt on one side of
the fire, staring into the flickering light. 
She’d spent the last few months studying the old magics – if indeed they
were magics – and yet they kept
scaring her, as if they were something greater than she could comprehend.  She was a trained sorceress, yet … there
was something about the old magics that worried her more than she dared
admit.  Magic, her magic, was hers.  The old magics were something from before the
dawn of recorded time, something … something borrowed.  She couldn’t
escape the feeling that, one day, she’d have to pay a terrible price for what
she’d learnt.

And my family may
condemn me to death, if they find out, Isabella thought.  It was impossible to deny, even to herself,
that she was studying forbidden rites. 
She’d been taught what to watch for, back when she’d graduated from
school.  They’ll say I’ve crossed a line.

She sighed, inwardly. 
She wasn’t the person she’d been, for sure.  The powerful sorceress who’d deliberately
broken the rules, ensuring she’d be kicked out of training and be disowned by
her family, was gone.  So was the mercenary,
who’d fought for Prince Reginald in his bid to lay claim to the Summer
Isle.  It was hard to be sure, but …
was she the sole survivor of Lord Robin’s Free Company?  So many were dead or missing, their fates
unknown … it was possible.  And … she
wondered, sometimes, if she’d recognise herself in the mirror.  If she looked.  She’d never been particularly vain – mercenaries
couldn’t afford it – but she knew she was growing older.  Her dark hair was already tinged with white.

A wisp of wind crossed her face.  She looked up.  Mother Lembu knelt on the far side of the
fire … she hadn’t been there a second ago. 
Isabella was no longer surprised by such things, but … she shook her
head.  Mother Lembu, Patron of Women, was
something very inhuman, whatever aspect she wore.  The rules didn’t apply to her.  Isabella was still trying to work out what
rules did.

She forced herself to look the entity in the face.  Mother Lembu was wearing her motherly aspect,
a warm friendly appearance that reminded Isabella of her mother.  And yet, there was something about her appearance
that was impossible to pin down.  It wasn’t
that it was constantly shifting, although it never seemed to be quite constant.  It was that … she shook her head,
slowly.  She rather suspected that, if
someone else saw the entity, she
would look like their mother, as if
the entity was trying – deliberately or not – to manipulate their perceptions
and feelings..  It made her wonder what lay
behind the entity’s smile.

“Daughter.”  Mother
Lembu’s voice was motherly too, just like Isabella’s mother.  It grated on Isabella’s very soul.  “You have studied well.”

“Thank you.” 
Isabella knew it was true, even though there was something curiously
slapdash about the rites and rituals she’d been taught.  The potions and poultices she’d made, at Mother
Lembu’s direction, had nothing in common with the art she’d been taught at the
Peerless School.  “You’re a good teacher.”

Mother Lembu looked charmed, as if she accepted it as her
due.  Isabella wondered if she’d noticed
the sarcasm and chosen to ignore it or, perhaps, missed it altogether.  It was hard to tell.  Mother Lembu didn’t seem to have the
emotional range of a human, let alone the tutors who’d drilled brewing into her
head.  They would have noticed the flattery instantly and given her
detention.  Mother Lembu … wasn’t
human.  Isabella reminded herself, again,
that her tutor had little in common with her.

And she isn’t
teaching me out of the goodness of her heart, she thought.  She’ll
want something in return, sooner or later.

She settled back on her haunches, calming herself.  They were effectively trapped on the Summer Isle,
at least until spring came.  Isabella had
seen the towering waves, pounding the coastline and destroying any boat foolish
enough to set sail.  Havant and the Red
Monks had done something, something
that ensured the storms were stronger and nastier than any in recorded
history.  The cynical part of her mind
noted they hadn’t had to work very hard. 
The Summer Isle had always been isolated from the mainland.  Crossing safely was never easy, even during
the summer months.

“There is symbolism in all things,” Mother Lembu said,
once again.  “You must be aware of it at
all times.”

Isabella nodded. 
She’d heard it before, time and time again.  And yet, it was hard to believe.  She’d been taught rational magic, magic that
worked the same way for everyone.  It was
hard to wrap her head around spells that called on entities and petitioned them
to do the work … and that the spells might not work, if the entity in
question was having a bad day.  She knew
spells – rituals, really – that could only be carried out under a full moon, or
after a week of careful purification, or … she tried, hard, to keep her face
under tight control.  She’d been warned
about spells that required such odd precision. 
They were almost always dangerous beyond belief.

And not without
reason, she told herself.  The more
she knew, the more she worried about what was happening on the mainland.  She wasn’t even sure her letter to Alden had
reached its destination.  The effects are either very small, and thus
hard to detect and counter, or terrifyingly big.

She listened, silently. 
She’d commit everything to paper, once the lecture was over.  Mother Lembu hadn’t raised any objections to Isabella
writing everything down, even though she had
to know the notebooks would get Isabella into real trouble if the Inquisition – or what was left of it – ever
found them.  Isabella suspected Mother
Lembu expected the notebooks to go wandering, sooner or later, and fall into
the hands of someone who’d try the rites without any real awareness of the
dangers.  And if they did … there were
times when Isabella seriously considered destroying the notebooks herself.  The spells she’d been taught took years to master.  The rites and rituals could be carried out by
anyone.

Which is why they’re
regarded with such horror, she thought, cynically.  The
Grand Sorcerers didn’t want everyone practicing
magic.

Mother Lembu caught her eye.  For a moment, she seemed to have three
shadows.

“Are we paying attention?”

Isabella nodded, quickly. 
Mother Lembu had three aspects: a maiden, a mother and a crone.  Isabella had never seen the crone, but … she’d heard stories.  She knew she never wanted to come face-to-face with the crone.  If the stories were true …

“You were explaining how certain rites call on different
entities,” she said.  Thankfully, she’d
long since mastered the art of mentally recording everything she was told for
later consideration, even if she wasn’t paying precise attention.  It had come in handy at school … and, also,
when her father had started yet another lecture on The Proper Duties to One’s
Family.  “And how they must all be bribed
for the ritual to go ahead.”

“Placated,
dear,” Mother Lembu said.  She gave Isabella
a warm smile.  “The gods are not bribed.”

If you say so, Isabella
thought.  They were bribed, as far as she could tell.  Some entities wanted specific offerings,
others seemed to be happy with whatever they were given.  And they bestowed their blessings in response.  Who is
actually in charge?

She considered the question as Mother Lembu resumed her lecture,
outlining the precise gifts that must be offered to certain entities and the
meaning behind them.  Who had the
power?  The shopkeeper, who had the food
someone wanted to buy, or the customer, who had the money the shopkeeper
wanted?  Or was it a mutually beneficial relationship?  She understood why someone might want to
curry favour with the gods … entities,
she corrected herself sharply.  But what
did the entities get out of it?  How did
they benefit?  Or were they just slaves
to the handful who knew how to call on them?

“So,” Mother Lembu said. 
She clapped her hands, as if she knew Isabella’s conscious mind hadn’t
been paying attention.  “Have we studied
enough?”

“Yes, Mother,” Isabella said.  She hastily reviewed what she’d been told, in
case Mother Lembu wanted to quiz her.  “I
think that’s enough for the day.”

“You need some rest,” Mother Lembu agreed.  Her voice dropped.  She gave Isabella a sly wink.  “And your young man in your bed.”

Isabella blushed, furiously.  Reginald – Crown Prince Reginald of Andalusia
– had asked her to marry him, after the final battle with Havant and the entity
behind him.  She wasn’t sure how she felt
about it.  She liked him – she loved him,
in some ways – but she didn’t think she wanted to live the life of a
queen.  Queen Carline, Reginald’s mother,
had died giving birth; Queen Emetine, wife and murderer of King Edwin of the
Summer Isle, had gone mad.  The entities probably
hadn’t helped, Isabella was sure.  She’d
heard enough of the queen’s ranting to know she’d been sold a bill of goods.

“He’s gone to Racal’s Bay,” she said, stiffly.  She didn’t want to have that conversation, not with an entity who reminded her so strongly
of her mother.  Her mother … these days, her mother would
probably approve of Reginald as a prospective husband.  It wasn’t as if there were many sorcerers
left.  “And we haven’t decided yet …”

“Remember what I taught you,” Mother Lembu said.  “You can use him to perform rites.”

“I know.” Isabella felt her blush deepen.  “But I won’t ask him to do it.”

“You should.”  Mother
Lembu shrugged.  “You’ll need it.”

Isabella looked up, into the entity’s eyes.  “Is that true?”

“Yes,” Mother Lembu said.

“Oh.”  Isabella wasn’t
sure what to make of it.  Predicting the
future was yet another sign of forbidden arts … although, her tutors had
admitted dryly, most people ran into trouble because they predicted the future unsuccessfully.  And yet … nothing she’d been taught, in the
Peerless School, had offered any real hope of predicting the future.  Sure, she could say that someone would be
hexed in the very near future – and then hex him herself – but it wasn’t real. 
“How do you know?”

Mother Lembu gave her an enigmatic smile.  “There are layers you have yet to reach, my
dear.”

I’m sure there are,
Isabella thought.  Her lessons had been
detailed, but … she was starting to think that she was gaining a generalist
education.  There were tricks that were
well beyond her, hints of rituals that Mother Lembu had never taught her to
perform.  And just what are you keeping from me?

“I look forward to reaching them,” she said, out
loud.  She wasn’t sure that was
true.  “Can you teach me how to predict
the future?”

“Maybe.”  Mother
Lembu’s smile deepened, until it became the expression one might expect to see
on a prowling tiger.  It was hard to look
into her face without feeling cold.  “When
you’re ready.”

“Ready to learn?”  Isabella
asked.  “Or ready to pay the price?”

Mother Lembu merely smiled.  “You don’t have to leave now.  Why don’t you ask for something from me?”

Isabella frowned, aware that – once again – the rules had
changed.  Mother Lembu wanted something,
but what?  Permission to do
something?  Or … just a test, to see what
Isabella would do?  What she’d ask for,
given the chance?  Or … or what?  Isabella gritted her teeth in
frustration.  She knew how to play the
game, back home.  She knew the rules and
the price for breaking them.  Here …
she wasn’t so sure.  The slightest
mistake could condemn her to an eternity of suffering.

She looked back into the fire.  The flames seemed to reach towards her.  “What should I ask for?”

“What should  you ask for?” 
Mother Lembu seemed amused.  “Nothing
may be known until it is spoken.”

Isabella lifted her eyes. 
“You keep saying that.”

“And it’s always true,” Mother Lembu said.

For you, Isabella
thought.  But for me?

She took a breath. 
“Answer me a question,” she said, with scant hope the question would be answered.  “Where do you come from?  All of you.”

Mother Lembu looked displeased.  It was … it was a very motherly kind of displeasure, the kind of displeasure that
suggested one had disappointed one’s parents beyond all hope of
redemption.  Isabella felt a pang – a
sense of dismay, an urge to throw herself on her knees and beg forgiveness – that
nearly overwhelmed her.  If she hadn’t
been so familiar with parental disappointment, if she hadn’t been so used to
coping with her father’s anger and her mother’s tears, it would have overwhelmed her. 
Even so, it was a near-run thing.

“I would ask you to ask a different question,” Mother
Lembu said.  Her voice was so even Isabella
knew she was angry.  “But I know you will not.”

Because you’ve seen
the future, Isabella asked herself, or
because you know me?

She frowned, reminding herself – once again – that
overestimating someone’s powers and abilities could be as dangerous as
underestimating them.  It was easy to
work oneself into a paralysis born of self-doubt, of fear that one’s opponent
was simply too powerful and too capable to stop.  She’d learnt the hard way that – sometimes –
those who were too impressed with their own abilities had feet of clay, that
they could be brought down through a careful use of magic and skill.  And that others, boastful braggarts who got
on her nerves, had a great deal to boast about.

“We were born in the light, children of the Great Old
Ones and Sons and Daughters of Mankind,” Mother Lembu said.  “They were the raging storm.  We were the passion and the glory and the everything.  We were born of their desire to be something
more, shaped by their determination to remain unchanged for an endless eternity.  And we came to take their place.  We caged them, imprisoned them, and ruled for
eternity.

“And then eternity came to an end.”

“Eternity doesn’t end, by definition,” Isabella said,
tartly.  She suspected Mother Lembu had
to tell the truth, but … there was nothing stopping her from telling the
truth in a manner that made it impossible to understand.  Or simply mislead her.  “What happened?”

Mother Lembu waved her hand.  The fire died.  The chamber was plunged into darkness.  Isabella sensed … things, crawling closer and closer until they were practically
breathing down the back of her neck.  She
clenched her fists, ready to lash out. 
The sense of something behind her,
not quite touching her, was
overwhelming.  The only thing that kept
her from throwing a punch was the grim certainty that it might be the last thing
she ever did.

“The Great Old Ones were big.”  Mother Lembu’s voice
echoed in the darkness.  “This world is a
fragile structure.  It was never meant to
bear their presence.  Mankind was never
designed to see them.  Madness always
followed in their wake.  And then we were
born, children of the Great Old Ones and Mankind alike.  We fought the Great Old Ones.  We caged them.  We banished them.  And then we were banished too.”

Her voice rose.  “We
were betrayed.”

Thunder cracked. 
The air seemed to grow very hot, just for a second.  Isabella felt something all around her, pressing down on her.  She heard a creaking sound, then … the air
cleared.  She opened her eyes, without
ever being quite sure when she’d closed them. 
The door was open.  Light was
streaming though.  And Mother Lembu was
gone.

She sat there for a long moment, gathering herself.  She’d been in hundreds of fights, physical and
magical, but … this was different.   She had never felt so vulnerable, not even
when she’d picked a fight with an older student at school.  There, at least, there had been limits.  She could lose, but she couldn’t die.  Here … she knew she was confronting powers
that were older than her entire family, powers that played by rules she didn’t
even begin to understand.  Her training insisted
there would be an underlying logic, somewhere. 
She just had to find it.  But everything
she’d seen in the last few months suggested there was no underlying logic.

Perhaps the lack of
logic is, in itself, a form of logic, she thought, as she staggered to her
feet and brushed down her trousers.  The system is logically illogical.

She snorted at the thought, then took one last look
around the chamber and walked out the door. 
The building was a tiny stone shack, a short distance outside the city’s
walls.  Mother Lembu had insisted on
holding their lessons there, even though she would have been welcome in
Allenstown itself.  Isabella had no idea
why, but she suspected it was something to do with territory.  She and Reginald had killed the entity who’d
nearly destroyed the city, yet … Isabella shrugged.  She had a feeling she should be
relieved.  Mother Lembu was not
human.  Better to keep her at a distance.

But that might not
be possible, she mused.  The cold air
brushed against her skin as she headed back to the gates.  The
world isn’t what it was.  And the
entities may be here to stay.  





/

Specific Story/Series Updates

Specific
Story/Series Updates

Seeing people keep asking …

Mirror Image

I’ve just done the second set of edits.  There were a couple of plot holes that needed
filled and a scene needed expansion, so there will probably be a third set
before the book gets published.  And we
need a cover. 

SIM in General

Post Mirror Image, there will be four-five more books
that will hopefully wrap up the series. 
I do have ideas for future books, with or without Emily herself, but
they’re a long-term project at the moment.

Favour The Bold

Being edited.  I
hope to have it published in eBook in a week or so.

The Empire’s Corps
in General

I’ve not decided if I want to write another side story
between Favour the Bold and Knife Edge yet.  The current concept is Bread and Circuses, a look at socialism, but the plot hasn’t gelled
yet.  I’m still trying to think of more
side story concepts … any ideas?

Angel in the
Whirlwind

Debt of Honor and
Debt of Loyalty have been completed,
but publication has been delayed because I was ill.  I’m not sure when DOH will be out.  I hope to write Debt of War by the end of the year.

A Learning
Experience

I intend to start writing Their Last Full Measure in late October.

Musings on the Campbell Awards Kerfuffle

As per usual,
please keep disagreements (and there will be some) calm and reasonable.

I’ve got a habit of trying to avoid jumping to
conclusions, posting commentary and generally taking the first reports too
seriously, whatever happens, because the first reports are – at best – often
lacking in context.  I find that waiting
often adds context, allowing me to
see a fuller picture of what actually happened
and, slightly less importantly, lets me see what other people (for or against)
have to say about it.  These days, you
just can’t trust anyone to present a full picture in the expectations you’ll
make up your own mind.  People have a
nasty habit, now, of trying to serve as ‘thought leaders’ rather than trusting
their readers.

In this case, events moved on more than I had
anticipated, although I suppose I should have expected that.  The Campbell Awards have been renamed, with
the response ranging from ‘about time’ to ‘yet another craven surrender to the
social-justice bully mob.’  The idea of
renaming the Hugo Award has been ruled out (for the moment).  Another award has been renamed.  And there is, as always, much bad feeling on
both sides. 

For what it’s worth, here are my thoughts:

I have never (knowingly) met Jeannette Ng.  I have never read any of her books.  I don’t have any real feelings, positive or
negative, for her.  That said, I do think
it’s rather cheeky to accept the award, on one hand, while bashing the award’s
namesake on the other.  It would have
made a much greater impression on me, I admit, if she had declined the award
because she didn’t care for its namesake. 
Instead, she seems to have wanted to have her cake and eat it too. 

Personally, if I knew the award’s namesake (who died
eleven years before I was born and therefore couldn’t have voted for or against
me) would have hated the idea of me winning the award for things beyond my
control, I might have indulged in a minor gloat.  But that would have been pointless.  The people who voted for or against me (and,
in the real world, for or against Jeannette Ng), were not chosen or directly
influenced by Campbell.  The award has
not only outlasted him, it has outgrown him.

It is a fundamental fact of history that all of the
greats, men and women alike, have feet of clay. 
We now know that JFK and Martin Luther King were womanisers.  We now know that Nelson Mandela flirted with
communism.  We now know that Abraham
Lincoln had some repressive instincts, that George Washington owned slaves,
that Bonnie Prince Charlie was a drunkard and a wife-beater, that … I could
go on and on.  Go back a handful of years
and you’ll discover that people who were ‘woke’ for their era are nothing of
the sort for us.  But does this mean that
we should reject what they did?  The greatest people of history are not
weighed down by their sins.  They manage
to rise above them.

John Campbell was not, even in the view of some of his contemporaries,
a very nice man.  He seems to have been
one of those people who was either loved or hated, with very little middle
ground.  (I never met him).  By modern standards (and even by some
contemporary standards) he was a racist. 
He was a sexist.  He may have been
a fascist.  (I’m reluctant to say
anything definite about that because ‘fascist’ is one of those words that has
lost a great deal of meaning through overuse.) 
This is not easy to deny.  I’ve
read a handful of his essays and some of them made me uncomfortable.  But then, Campbell would hardly be the only
writer to make me uncomfortable (and some of them are contemporary
writers.) 

At the same time, John Campbell was also one of the
founding fathers of science-fiction.  It
was Campbell who recognised the talents of people like Heinlein, Asimov and
many others.  It was Campbell who gave
them a platform and a chance to make their names.  Without Campbell, would we have Heinlein, Asimov, et al? 
Would we have a community that has – as I said above – outgrown its
founders?  Would science-fiction as we
know it today even exist? 

There seems to be an unspoken and thus unchallenged
assumption amongst many of the ‘erase Campbell from history’ commenters that a
community without Campbell would have embraced a golden age of ‘woke’
science-fiction, in which authors of colour and gender would have been
appreciated for their talents instead of being unfairly excluded.  But is that actually true?  The history of racism and race relations in
the United States is a great deal more complex than such assessments
suggest.  Real-life Benny Russell
characters faced more problems than just a single bigoted editor.  Campbell believed that their work wouldn’t
sell and he might have been right – I say might
because I don’t know.  Campbell’s job was not to purchase works
merely on their merits, but purchase works that would sell.  Publishing a story
that might not, for whatever reason, sell would be a misstep, one Campbell
might not be able to afford.  Could he
take the risk?

This was more pervasive than one might expect.  Heinlein, who was pretty much the figure in science-fiction in his
later years, had to use a number of tricks to obscure his early non-white
characters.  Mr. Kiku from The Star Beast is very clearly
non-American, for example; Rod Walker of Tunnel
in the Sky is black, but written in a way that allowed Heinlein to claim
plausible deniability if this blew up in his face.  (He did this so well that his editor raised
suspicions of an interracial romance (miscegenation, in the parlance of the
times).  And while one may make sharp
remarks about Sixth Column (written
by Heinlein, following a plot heavily influenced by Campbell), it should be
borne in mind that the crimes of the Pan-Asians of the novel pale in comparison
to the real-life crimes of Imperial Japan.

Campbell was not perfect. 
Far from it.  But his contribution
to the field cannot be denied.  It is
certainly far in excess of the contributions made by his detractors.  And yes, I feel we should not forget the good
he did, as well as the bad.

A number of commenters have claimed that POC authors feel
uncomfortable accepting awards named for people who would have rejected them,
for publication, on the grounds of skin colour. 
I don’t know if this is true.  (Jeannette
Ng accepted the award.)  I do know that I
don’t feel that way.  The award has
outgrown its namesake. 

To put this in some context, consider this.  The Order of the Garter is among the most prestigious
honours Britain can bestow.  And yet, it
was established by Edward III, who believed in a number of things I find
offensive.  He believed in the divine
right of kings, England’s (i.e. his)
right to rule France, strict social hierarchy and many other things I don’t
like.  And he wouldn’t have liked me either.  A middle-class author with ideas above his
station, daring to criticize the divine right of monarchs?  Off with his head! 

But you know what? 
If I was offered an Order of the Garter, which isn’t likely to happen, I
wouldn’t say no. 

I don’t think there’s a single person writing, these days,
who will not be judged harshly in the future. 
Depending on how things go, I’m sure there will be reviewers in 2100
who’ll sneer at me for being married when everyone knows marriage is an
outdated social construct … or, even worse, reviewers who will accuse me of miscegenation.  Judge not, least you be judged, is not always
good advice … but it is in this case.

But there’s a second major issue that should also be
taken into account.

I am a nerd.  Like
most nerds, I was nerd-shamed at school. 
I was bullied and mocked and generally humiliated for being a nerd.  And I was, for most of my teenage years,
utterly alone.  There were no other
book-readers in that hellhole, the comic-readers weren’t inclined to befriend
me and, while there were a couple of other Star
Trek/Babylon 5 fans, they weren’t inclined to befriend me either.  (The only nerd-show that was genuinely
popular was The X-Files.)  I spent longer than I want to think about
being mocked for reading, as if there was something wrong with reading.  That
sort of treatment – which appears to be common for nerds – leaves scars.  It makes it hard to empathise with others who
have their own problems, but – to us – appear to have it all their own way.

And so we cling to our nerdy status because it is all we
have.  Heinlein, Asimov and Campbell –
yes, even Campbell – are part of our community. 
To erase them is to erase our history. 
And we see that as a direct attack on us, particularly when it is
strikingly clear that the attackers have either missed the point of the story (The Cold Equations is rather more than a
“parable about the
foolishness of women and the role of men in guiding them to accept the cold,
hard facts of life”) or taken it out of context. 

The reformers, call them whatever you like, say they are improving science-fiction, that they’re
making it more inclusive.  But others – nerds like me – see it as the
popular kids imposing their will on the social outcasts.  We hate and resent it, because it brings back
memories of being bullied for being nerds. 
And, on some level, we don’t see it as much-needed reform.  We see it as nothing more than an excuse for
bullying.

To put this in some (more) context, there was – at one of
my schools – something called gay-bashing. 
The bullies would beat up kids they believed to be gay, on the grounds
that they were gay.  I don’t believe that most of them knew what
being ‘gay’ actually meant – our sex education was very poor – and, to be best
of my knowledge, no one at that school was actually
gay.  (And if they were, I would not
have blamed them for remaining in the closet and keeping the door firmly
closed.)  The gay-bashers didn’t
care.  It was just an excuse to beat up
on people and feel righteous while doing it.

I have the same feeling, sometimes, whenever someone
pokes their head into my community and insists that something must change, immediately.  As a mature
adult, I can understand that people might reasonably argue for renaming the
award, but the bit of me that was traumatised by endless bullying makes it hard
to believe.  People who demand an immediate response make
it impossible to calm down and consider their reasoning logically.  I’ve found that anyone who pushes for immediate
action does not have my best
interests in mind. 

I’m not the first person to compare this to schoolyard
bullying.  I will not be the last.

There may have been a case for renaming the Campbell
Award.  But it should not have been done now, not when a sizable percentage of
fandom would draw the wrong lesson from the kerfuffle.  From what I’ve heard, there are people who
argue that pressure campaigns work; they should do more of them.  And, on the other side, there are people who
are even more determined to resist next time,
even if they’re dying on a hill no rational person wants to die on. 

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone … and,
looking back from a (relatively) short space of time, there is no one who was
perfectly innocent at the time, but – now – is a criminal beyond
redemption.  Standards change, people
change; can you, can anyone, look me in the eye and say they will never be accused of being
‘un-woke?’  That, ten years from now,
they will be attacked for something – in or out of context – that is no longer
acceptable.  It is terrifyingly easy to
look at a handful of modern-day writers and craft narratives that bash them,
that make them out to be things
they’re not … is there anyone, realistically, who wants a world where
this is a thing? 

Frankly, we – the community – have far more important
things to worry about.  The Hugo Voters
(everyone who votes, from Sad and Rabid Puppies to SMOFs) are a tiny percentage
of science-fiction and fantasy fans.  I
don’t believe they’re even 1% of fandom. 
The more people go on about diversity and inclusion, the more harm they
do to diversity and inclusion … because the people pushing diversity and
inclusion don’t really grok humans.  Conventions are becoming less friendly to
fans and more commercialised, people are being hammered and blacklisted and
disinvited for daring to disagree with the ‘woke’ … I think, I really think,
that we shouldn’t be tearing ourselves apart and beating each other up …

After all, if there’s one lesson every nerd learns at
school, it is that there is always someone else
willing to do it.