Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 89

Book Tour: Author A. M. Manay

Periodically, ForeignCorrespondent participates in virtual book tours that allow authors to showcase their books to a broader audience. Today I am hosting fellow RRBC/RWISA author A. M. Manay and her new YA Fantasy novel, Hexborn. The descriptions, book blurb, and biographical information are provided by the author.   Enjoy. Ron Yates

                                                         AUTHOR BIO

[image error] Thank you so much, once again, for your support!!

 

Musings in a Writer’s Mind When He Should be Writing

I get a lot of strange emails. Sometimes they contain little bits of wisdom, and when they do, I file them away on my computer for future reference.

Today, I want to share some of these musings with you. Perhaps you will find them interesting. Perhaps not.

In any case, take a look. You may find something you like.

I had amnesia once — maybe twice.
I went to San Francisco. I found someone’s heart. Now what?
Protons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.

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If the world were a logical place, men would be the ones who ride horses sidesaddle.
What is a “free” gift? Aren’t all gifts free?
They told me I was gullible and I believed them.
Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and, when he grows up, he’ll never be able to merge his car onto the freeway.
Experience is the thing you have left when everything else is gone.
One nice thing about egotists: they don’t talk about other people.
My weight is perfect for my height–which varies.
I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not
How can there be self-help “groups”?
If swimming is so good for your figure, how do you explain whales?
Show me a man with both feet firmly on the ground, and  I’ll show you a man who can’t get his pants off.
Is it me — or do buffalo wings taste like chicken?

Finally, a few interesting facts that you can use to win a bet or two.

There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos. [image error]
There is one slot machine in Las Vegas for every eight inhabitants.
The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off.
The most popular first name in the world is Muhammad.

And this little tidbit for those of us who use keyboards.

The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.” uses every letter of the alphabet, which is why it was always used in typing tests.

 

 

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people

Robert Frost once said, “If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.”

He was right. All of us need a little humor now and then in a world where levity often seems in short supply. The other day, I received an email that contained the following “Signs of the Times.”

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Read ‘em and enjoy! And as a bonus, check out the Henny Youngman one-liners and a couple of quips from two other folks at the tail end of this post.

A SIGN IN A SHOE REPAIR STORE IN VANCOUVER: We will heel you. We will save your sole. We will even dye for you.

A SIGN ON A BLINDS AND CURTAIN TRUCK: “Blind man driving.”

Sign over a Gynecologist’s Office: “Dr. Williams, at your cervix.”

In a Podiatrist’s office: “Time wounds all heels.”

Sign in the Army Recruiting Office: Marry a veteran, girls. He can cook, make beds, sew, and is already used to taking orders.

On a Septic Tank Truck: Yesterday’s Meals on Wheels”

At an Optometrist’s Office: “If you don’t see what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right place.”

On a Plumber’s truck: “We repair what your husband fixed.”

On another Plumber’s truck: “Don’t sleep with a drip. Call your plumber.”

At a Tire Shop in Milwaukee: “Invite us to your next blowout.”

On an Electrician’s truck: “Let us remove your shorts.”

In a Non-smoking Area: “If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and will take appropriate action.”

On a Maternity Room door: “Push. Push. Push.”

At a Car Dealership: “The best way to get back on your feet – miss a car payment.”

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Outside a Muffler Shop: “No appointment necessary. We hear you coming.”

In a Veterinarian’s waiting room: “Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!”

At the Electric Company: “We would be delighted if you send in your payment on time. However, if you don’t, YOU will be de-lighted.”

In a Restaurant window: “Don’t stand there and be hungry; come on in and get fed up.”

In the front yard of a Funeral Home: “Drive carefully. We’ll wait.”

At a Propane Filling Station: “Thank Heaven for little grills.”

In a Chicago Radiator Shop: “Best place in town to take a leak.”

  And the best one for last.

Sign on t back of another Septic Tank Truck: “Caution – This Truck is full of Political promises.”

[image error] Henny Youngman

How many of you remember Henny Youngman? He was known as the king of one-liners that often were punctuated by the sound of the lone drum.

. Here are several of his best:

My neighbor knocked on my door at 2:30 am this morning, can you believe that….. 2:30 am?!  Luckily for him, I was still up playing my Bagpipes.

I saw a poor old lady fall over today on the ice!!  At least I presume she was poor – she only had $1.20 in her purse.

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

A guy complains of a headache. Another guy says “Do what I do. I put my head on my wife’s bosom, and the headache goes away.” The next day, the man says, “Did you do what I told you to?” “Yes, I sure did. By the way, you have a nice house!”

My girlfriend thinks that I’m a stalker. Well, she’s not exactly my girlfriend yet.

A man goes to a psychiatrist. The doctor says, “You’re crazy.” The man says, “I want a second opinion!” The doctor says, “Okay, you’re ugly too!”

I was so ugly when I was born; the doctor slapped my mother.

My wife said: ‘I want an explanation and I want the truth.’ I said: ‘Make up your mind.’

A car hit a Jewish man. The paramedic says, “Are you comfortable?” The man says, “I make a good living.”

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Went for my routine checkup today and everything seemed to be going fine until he stuck his index finger up my rear! Do you think I should change dentists?

I was behind a rather large woman at the checkout. She had on a pair of jeans that said, ‘Guess.’

I said, “I don’t know……..maybe 350 pounds.”

And finally here are a couple of extras:

 

“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know

I’m not dumb…and I also know I’m not blonde.” – Dolly Parton

 

“When I was a boy, the Dead Sea was just sick.”

-George Burns

 

I will close with a bit of Chinese wisdom:

There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it. – Chinese Proverb.

Where free speech should be promoted, free speech is under attack

(I have posted often on this topic. Here is commentary from Rachel L. Brand, Associate Attorney General of the United States. She makes excellent points about the erosion of Free Speech and the First Amendment at universities—places where a diversity of opinions SHOULD be available to all students, but sadly, are not. Ron Yates)

By Rachel L. Brand,  Associate Atty General of the United States

Free speech is under attack at college campuses across the country.  The problem is not limited to a few colleges barring radical speakers to avoid a riot.  Universities large and small, public and private, are restricting students’ and professors’ speech or enabling others to silence speech with which they disagree.

These restrictions take a variety of forms.  For example, speech codes at many colleges ban speech that is “offensive,” a subjective standard that allows college administrators to arbitrarily ban speech they find disagreeable. For example, Georgia Gwinnett College stopped a student from speaking about his religious faith because it “disturbed the comfort of persons” – even after he had gotten a permit from the school to speak.[image error]

Other schools claim they allow free speech but impose so many rules and procedures that it is almost impossible for speakers to reach an audience. Pierce College in Los Angeles, for example, limited students’ “free speech” to a space the size of a couple parking spots and required a permit to speak even there.  At a community college in Michigan, a student was arrested and jailed for handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution because they didn’t have a permit.

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Even where they don’t limit speech directly, schools’ actions often enable students to silence others’ speech through shouting, threats of violence, or actual violence.

Sometimes schools fail to prevent students from intimidating and even attacking speakers, as happened at Middlebury College, where student protesters violently shut down a debate and physically assaulted one of the school’s own professors.   In other cases, schools’ policies effectively encourage this behavior by imposing special limitations on speakers they deem controversial.

A new policy at Berkeley, for example, imposes a curfew, security measures, and location restrictions for events that administrators decide are likely to “interfer[e] with other campus functions or activities.”  It doesn’t require much creativity to turn this policy into a heckler’s veto.  If you disagree with a speaker about to visit campus, simply declare his views offensive and threaten to riot, and the speaker will be sidelined.

The net result of these policies has been a narrowing of the views expressed on campuses and therefore the range of views students hear.   The heart of a university education used to be exposure to a wide range of ideas and the opportunity to debate their merits in order to inform one’s own positions and learn to articulate them persuasively.  This has apparently taken a backseat to students’ desire to be comfortable and affirmed.  University administrators, faculty, and students – not to mention the parents and taxpayers who are footing the bill – should be concerned that the quality of higher education is diminished by this change.

And everyone should be concerned about threats to free speech, regardless of their political beliefs. It should not give anyone comfort that she disagrees with the speech that is being silenced at the moment. Viewpoints that are mainstream now may quickly become minority views, and vice versa, as has happened repeatedly throughout history.  That is why protecting even unpopular speech in the short run benefits everyone in the long run.

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When public universities restrict speech, it has constitutional implications as well.  The First Amendment prevents government institutions from imposing speech restraints such as arduous permitting restrictions or arbitrary curfews, particularly if the school discriminates against certain viewpoints.  Yet this is precisely what many university speech policies do.

The U.S. Department of Justice is not standing on the sidelines while public universities violate students’ constitutional rights – we are backing free speech lawsuits against universities that violate the First Amendment.  Thursday, we are filing a brief supporting a group of Berkeley University students who allege that the University’s policy imposing stricter rules on controversial speakers violates the First Amendment.  This is the third suit in which we have filed such a brief, and it will not be the last.

Defending the fundamental constitutional rights of all Americans is a core part of the Department’s mission, and defending free speech rights is particularly important.  Free speech is not only a fundamental right, but, as James Madison said, the “effectual guardian of every other right.”  Free speech enables citizens to advocate for all their other civil rights and is the single most powerful bulwark against government tyranny. This is perhaps why our Founders protected it in the very first amendment in our Bill of Rights.  It is also why the Department of Justice is working so hard to protect it – free speech is too important for the Department of Justice not to speak on its behalf.

Rachel L. Brand is Associate Attorney General of the United States. As Associate Attorney General, she serves as the third-ranking officer in the Department of Justice.

 

 

An Idea to Save Book Stores and Help New Authors

One of the saddest events of the past ten years or so has been the inexorable demise of the brick and mortar bookstore. Fully half of the bookstores in the United States have vanished in the past ten years.

Gone are places like Borders, Crown Books, Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, Kroch’s and Brentano’s, Oxford Bookstore, Atlantic Books and Davis-Kidd Booksellers.

A few are still hanging on. Barely. Barnes & Noble, for example, and Follett’s, Book Off USA, Hudson News and places like the sprawling and immensely popular Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon.

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But for the most part, physical books stores are being shoved aside by online booksellers like Amazon, Alibris, AbeBooks.com, Biblio.com, ValoreBooks, etc.

The exception to this trend was recent reports by CNBC and Wall Street Journal that Amazon is planning on putting up a physical retail bookstore across from New York City’s Empire State Building.

So far there has been no confirmation from Amazon.

But even if that were to happen, most experts see the demise of brick and mortar bookstores continuing as more and more readers chose to buy their physical and e-books online.

So what can be done?

I recently received an e-mail containing an intriguing idea.

It came from author Doug Preston, who along with co-author Lincoln Child, has written such bestselling books as Relic, Riptide, Mount Dragon, Gideon’s Sword and The Lost Island.

 Preston attached a note containing an idea for saving bookstores and helping authors sell more books in them. The idea was from author Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, who has written books like The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and Why We Broke Up.

Rather than paraphrasing Handler’s note and idea, I will include it here verbatim and add some final thoughts:

“Dear comrades-in-ink,

  “Whether or not you are an author published by Hachette (as I am), you may lately feel as if you are engulfed in a rather unpleasant flood — as if the fate of your books is whirling dreadfully out of your control, battered by the waters of some enormous South American river, the name of which I cannot remember at the moment. 

“While all this fierce sword-fighting rages on without you, you may find yourself feeling even more hapless and hopeless than authors usually do, while your local independent bookstore struggles with a similar feeling that it’s some sort of jungle out there.

[image error] There is Nothing Like a Bookstore

“As a tonic, allow me to suggest a new program, cooked up by assorted interested parties and named, after some tipsy debate, Upstream.  The idea is to connect authors with their local independent booksellers to offer signed books as an alternative to, say, larger and more unnerving corporate machinations. Upstream was test-piloted this summer and is now spreading steadily, like optimism or syphilis.

“How does it work?  Easily, hopefully.  Here are some numbered steps.

“1. Choose and contact a bookseller close to your home.  If you cannot find one, the good folks at Indies First, coordinated by the American Booksellers Association, can be of service.  They are quite excited about the launching of this new and hopefully enormous campaign.

“2. The bookstore will order and sell your books; you will sign them.  Perhaps you’ll stop by at regular intervals with your pen, or perhaps you can convince, with cake or gin, the bookseller to come to you.

“3. Both you and the bookseller will promote this arrangement as best you can, spreading the word not only about an exciting source of signed books to your readers anywhere in the country but about a program anyone can join. 

“Feel free to tell your publicist you’re participating.  Upstream should be in full swing in time for the holidays when signed books are good gifts for loved ones and distance acquaintances alike.

“Will Upstream rescue us all from strife and worry?  Of course not.  But the hope is that it will remind both authors and booksellers of their local, less monolithic resources, and improve general esprit de corps at a disheartening time.

“With all due respect,

“Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket.”

It sounds like a great idea. I have yet to approach any of my local bookstores about it, but I plan to. It seems like a win-win proposition. It’s an opportunity to have authors in the store signing books and for readers to interact with authors.

E-book sales are fine. I have nothing against them. In fact, most of the sales of my books have come as a result of Kindle, Nook and Kobo.

But as convenient as e-books are they are also impersonal. You can’t sign an e-book or talk to readers.

And let’s not forget. What exactly are e-books? They are a collection of computer code that we essentially lease from companies like Amazon. Think about it. You can loan your physical books to as many people as many times as you wish.

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But that is not the case with e-books. You may think you own an e-book, but you don’t. If you want to loan a Kindle e-book to a friend you must make sure the person you are loaning it to is using compatible e-book software. Then you can lend it only once for 14 days–and even then, you need to belong to Amazon’s “Prime Program,” which costs extra.

For an author like me, another frustration with e-books is this: if everybody on a train or bus or plane is reading an e-book, I can’t tell what they are reading. There are no covers, so I don’t know if they are reading one of my books (highly unlikely) or one by J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, or Stephen King.

Finally, (and for me this may be the most important point) I like bookshelves. And I want bookshelves with lots of books sitting in them. An office or den or family room without a bookshelf filled with books seems naked to me.

Maybe that’s why I like brick and mortar bookstores and why I hope they never vanish entirely.

They have LOTS of bookshelves filled with books that you can pick up, handle, thumb through, take home and put in your bookshelves.

It’s one of life’s simple pleasures.

 

Dealing with Rejection Letters from Agents & Publishers

If there is one thing most authors have in common, besides the sheer agony that sometimes accompanies the writing process, it is the dreaded Rejection Letter from an agent or publisher.

I don’t know who got this one from Harlequin, but it had to be devastating to the person receiving it.

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I have received a few rejection letters–though none like the one from Harlequin.

Most authors–even wildly successful authors–have also received their share of rejection missives.

Don’t believe me?

Just take a look at this list of rejection letters that were sent by publishers and agents to world-renowned, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors. It is simply part of the creative process, and you need to keep moving ahead–just as these authors did.

“The American public is not interested in China,” a publisher wrote Pearl S. Buck. Her book The Good Earth  becomes the best-selling US novel two years running in 1931/32, and wins The Pulitzer Prize in the process.
Alex Haley  writes for eight years and receives 200 consecutive rejections from publishers and agents. His novel  Roots  becomes a publishing sensation, selling 1.5 million copies in its first seven months of release, and going on to sell 8 million.
“He hasn’t got a future as a writer,” a publisher opines. Yet, publication of  The Spy Who Came in From the Cold  leads to its author, John le Carré, having one of the most distinguished careers in literary history.
“Hopelessly bogged down and unreadable,” a publisher tells Ursula K. Le Guin in a 1968 rejection letter. She was not deterred, and her book The Left Hand of Darkness  goes on to become just the first of her many best-sellers and is now regularly voted as the second best fantasy novel of all time, next to  The Lord of the Rings .
The Christopher Little Literary Agency receives 12 publishing rejections in a row for their new client, until the eight-year-old daughter of a Bloomsbury editor demands to read the rest of the book. The editor agrees to publish but advises the writer to get a day job since she has little chance of making money in children’s books. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone  by   J.K. Rowling  spawns a series where the last four novels consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history, on both sides of the Atlantic, with combined sales of 450 million.
“It is so badly written,” a publisher tells this author. Dan Brown is not discouraged, however, and tries Doubleday where his book makes an impression.  The Da Vinci Code   eventually sells 80 million copies.
“Too different from other juvenile (books) on the market to warrant its selling,” says a rejection letter sent to  Dr. Seuss . His books have racked up $300 million in sales, and he is now the 9th best-selling fiction author of all time.
J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye was rejected multiple times by New York publishers until an editor at Little, Brown, and Company bought it. To date, the 1951 novel has sold more than 96 million copies and has been translated into almost every major language.

See what I mean?

Editors, agents, first readers who dig through the publisher’s slush pile–all are quite capable of making bone-headed decisions about other people’s work. And they do it all the time.

So if you have a stack of rejection letters sitting on your desk or stuffed into a file cabinet, don’t despair. You are not alone. [image error]

 

What you should do, instead of becoming despondent and inconsolable, is read those rejection letters carefully and look for the constructive criticism in them.

In most cases, you will find some–though as one publisher told an author many years ago: “This manuscript should be buried under a pile of rocks and forgotten for the next thousand years.”  (That book went to become a bestseller and was even made into a movie. Its name: Lolita.)

Phrases like that can be a bit disheartening–even to the most thick-skinned scribbler.  So far I have not received anything quite so venomous…though I have had my go-rounds with a few agents and editors who couldn’t see the value of book on which I was working.

Now that I am writing fiction rather than nonfiction, I am finding that I no longer care what an agent or publisher may think of my work. I find that especially satisfying when I can see that customers on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Goodreads like my book and are giving it mostly 5-stars with a handful of 4-star ratings.

That tells me that I must be doing something right.

The key is believing in yourself and the story you are telling. You will NEVER please everybody. There will always be those who don’t understand or simply don’t like your book or books. That’s life.  But it is critical that you DO NOT stop believing in what you are writing. Does that mean you should ignore valid and constructive criticism?

 

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No, it does not. If somebody has taken the time to tell you what is wrong with your book or why he or she didn’t like it, you should also take the time to consider that criticism and learn from it.

It doesn’t mean you should just give up, stop writing and walk away from your computer. Writing is a skill that cannot be taught–at least not in the same way one learns calculus or biology.

It must be learned. And we learn to recognize good writing by reading.

Then we learn how to write by by writing, writing, writing–even if the writing we do is terrible, with way too many adjectives in place of strong action verbs or way too many compound-complex sentences that give readers migraines as they slog through page-long paragraphs.

Reading should be fun–not a chore. And only you, the writer, can dictate that.

So if a rejection letter says your prose is ponderous and pretentious, or your story is tedious and byzantine, you might want to take a hard, critical look at what you have written.

And after doing that if you still disagree with the author of that rejection letter, then, by all means, plow ahead. You may be right, and that agent or editor may be wide of the mark.

Time and book sales will tell.

 

 

 

 

 

How to Handle a Negative Book Review

There is an adage that says “any publicity is good publicity–even if it is bad.” Why? Because the objective is to get people talking about you and your book.

If you are like me, I don’t believe a lot of the negative reviews I see on sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, etc.  In fact, I will often comb through all of a book’s reviews to see if others are saying the same negative things about a book. If they are not, I will typically rely more on the positive reviews than the bad ones.

Sometimes I will buy a book with bad reviews just to see if it’s as bad as the reviewers say it is. Often, it isn’t.

I spent most of my life as a journalist. I KNOW what it is like to have one’s work criticized mercilessly by nasty editors. The key is to look at negative comments of your work for “constructive” criticism and then be open-minded enough to use that criticism to improve your writing, your pacing, your plot, your characterization, etc.

Of course, there are those trolls who merely live to “trash” other people’s work. Those reviews are easy to spot. They will write that the book is “dumb” or “boring” or “trashy” without backing up their opinions with anything constructive. Writers need to let those criticisms go and not obsess about them.

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Check out Amazon’s reviews. You will see books like War and Peace and Gone With the Wind getting one and two-star reviews or ratings.

Indeed, you will find bestsellers with lots of bad reviews. For example, the last book in the popular Hunger Games Trilogy has racked up something like 500 one-star reviews on Amazon. And John Locke has a 3-star average on his popular Saving Rachel (a Donovan Creed Crime Novel) and almost as many 1-star reviews as 5-star reviews. Despite that fact, his books are selling tens of thousands worldwide

The point is: You Can’t Please Everybody, nor should you try. You need to write what you are passionate about, tell a good story and leave the naysayers behind and eating your dust.

Somone once said that writing a novel is hard; panning it is remarkably easy.

Having said all of that, it is a blow to the ego to see a bad review of one’s work pop up on Amazon and elsewhere. It’s like a punch in the gut. It makes you angry. You want to find out where the author of that lousy review lives and set their house on fire or beat them senseless with a baseball bat.

Don’t. Instead, focus on the GOOD reviews your book as received. And have a sense of humor about it all.

All authors get bad reviews (more on that later). Don’t take it personally. The criticism is about your ideas and the way you presented them, not about you as a person. Most sophisticated readers can distinguish a rant from a genuine review.

Sometimes if a book gets a bad review, other readers who disagree will challenge that reviewer’s conclusion. That can set off a useful discussion of the book and cause readers to buy the book just to see who is right.

Don’t forget; you didn’t write your book to generate reviews. You wrote it to appeal to readers. You had a story to tell, a point to get across, a desire to inform and even educate readers. Reviews–good or bad– are merely marketing tools.

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True, good reviews may feed your ego, cause intellectual indigestion and lead you to believe you are the next Hemmingway, J. K. Rowling or Ursula K. Le Guin. My advice: deflate your ego and remain planted on terra firma.

If the reviews you are reading seem to be an unnecessary distraction and are causing you to alter the way you write or the way you present a story, you may want to stop reading reviews altogether–even the good ones.

You need to believe in yourself, not in what some snarky reviewer says. Look for the constructive criticism and avoid the hateful rants.

Work to get more reviews. Good reviews often will invalidate bad ones and on sites like Amazon, will shove the negative reviews down the page.

Finally, take what the late Elmore Leonard said about writing to heart: “If it sounds like writing….rewrite it. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”

(Next Time: Dealing with Rejection Letters from Publishers)

 

 

 

 

19th Century Newspaper Editors Imagine Newspapers of the Future

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post that discussed how people in the past predicted the future and I promised a sequel. Here it is with another sequel to follow.

Back in 1895, several prominent newspaper editors were asked to speculate on what newspapers would look like in the 20th Century. Some of their predictions were quite uncanny, and some were, well, a bit off the mark.

Here are a couple of examples:

Felix Agnus, Editor of the Baltimore American:  “Today I saw a new invention that distributes written messages to its customers, the matter clearly printed on convenient sheets. The inventor tells me he can afford to place these at a very moderate cost in offices or in homes. All it needs is a long roll of paper. It does the rest. Now, what is to prevent the people of the next century from having their news continuously? As soon as an event occurs, it is broadcast over the wires and is immediately printed by the automatic machine. How will a newspaper published once a day compete with a scheme such as that?”

 Sounds a lot like something we used to call a telex machine. They never made it into homes, at least not on a large scale, but they were in just about every newsroom in the world.

Then there was this prediction from A.G. Boynton, editor of the Detroit Free Press: “Keeping…with the limits of the possible, this much is safe to forecast….there will be great and marked progress in independence—that the newspaper of the twentieth century will not be tied, as the newspaper of the nineteenth century is far too often, to a party, a sect or a creed.”

Sadly, Mr. Boynton’s vision of today’s newspaper has proven to be more aspiration than reality. News today is too often skewed by reporters, editors, producers, and publishers to fit their own political agendas or worldviews. I should acknowledge, however, that for a while in the 20th Century the concept of trying to achieve some form of objectivity and fairness in reporting was rigidly adhered to in the best newspapers. At least it was at the newspapers I worked at.

Mr. Boynton’s predictions and others appeared in an article that appeared in the Tacoma Daily News March 30, 1895.

We can enjoy this 120-year-old article because of Readex, a company that for seven decades has specialized in providing access to primary source research materials such as early American Newspapers. Here is a link to the Readex blog: http://www.readex.com/blog   and a link to the actual article: http://www.readex.com/sites/default/files/Notable%20Forecasts%20Tacoma%20Daily%20News%2003.30.1895.pdf

Many of these editors had already personally witnessed amazing advancements in newspaper publishing; the Readex article pointed out.  They had seen newspapers progress from the old Washington hand press to enormous printing presses capable of producing tens of thousands of newspapers in just a few hours; from the Pony Express and stagecoach to the telephone and telegraph; from hand-setting type to typesetting linotype machines and the halftone photo reproduction process.

And while some of the predictions may seem a little quaint, given The Internet and today’s 24-hour news cycles, I am amazed at how prescient these editors were.

Here is James Elverson, editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

  “The chief characteristic of the twentieth-century newspaper must necessarily be correlated with the twentieth-century scientific inventions….If the flying machine is perfected, every first-class reporter will have one. If the airship is a success, they will distribute tons of newspapers daily. If telegraphy becomes an exact science, the inmost heart of man will be revealed daily to the public. If Esoteric Buddhism gathers the world to its bosom and Mahatmas drops messages about the present, past and the future through newspaper roofs from the desert of Gobi, then every first-class newspaper will have its staff of Mahatmas to preach ethics to its readers. Pneumatic tubes may distance trains; photo scopes may reproduce pictures 10,000 miles away, and possibly the kinescope may be so adapted that every reader may have one in his house in which to view the scenes of which he reads in his favorite newspaper, the photographic strips, therefore, being issued as supplements. Possibly we shall not use type anymore, but by some complex arrangement, issue rolls that shall run through phonographs. Then, as the twentieth-century man sits down to breakfast he can have the news read to him while he sees every event in the kinescope, and at the same time he can swallow his morning meal.”

Sounds a lot like watching CNN or FOX while eating your oatmeal. And don’t forget, this was BEFORE the invention of radio or television.

 Percy S. Heath, editor of the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, may have foreseen the ubiquitous “Op-Ed” page of today’s newspaper:

“A forum, where the people may go with ideas and grievances, and appeal to public opinion. This to my mind will be the feature and the characteristic of the future newspaper. I believe the forceful utterances of the press will come directly from the people; that the intelligent reader is becoming every day a man or woman of opinion, of fixed ideas, and that sentiment will be expressed more and more freely through the press by those not directly connected with it. There will be less arbitrary editorial expression. The ‘fourth page’ will contain that thought of the reader which up to this time the editor has sought to forestall or anticipate.”

Charles W. Knapp, editor of the St. Louis Republic, seems here to presage the way many of us customize the news we get from our online newspapers.

To fulfill its mission perfectly, (the newspaper) will be issued not once, or twice, but half a dozen times every day. Perhaps also the great fin de siècle newspaper of the twentieth century will be published in several different editions varying radically in the character of their contents, so as to meet the varying wants of different classes of subscribers and at the same time obviate the undue enlargement of its size. It is bound to be more comprehensive in the exhaustive completeness of its information than the newspaper of today, but it will not be necessary for every reader to take the whole daily encyclopedia. Those who wish will have the opportunity to designate specific classes of news to be sent to them, and in some degree, every subscriber will have the privilege of ordering his newspaper made to fit his own individual and particular wants.”

.George A. Robertson, editor of the Cleveland World sees newspapers using several “new” inventions to collect and disseminate news faster. He also sees the use of more photography.  However, his vision falls a little short when it comes to his altruistic view of the 20th Century newspaper.

“Already within sight are numerous remarkable inventions that will be made use of to improve the newspaper of the future. A machine is already patented and in limited use that sends messages by wire ten times as fast as the present telegraphic code and these messages are automatically written out as they arrive. This will be employed by the coming newspaper in improving its news facilities. A machine for transforming pictures by wire will be fully perfected within the near future, and there will be such a cheapening of engraving processes that newspapers will be much more fully and beautifully illustrated than at present. Telegraphic accounts of happenings in all parts of the world will be accompanied, as received, with engravings ready to be dropped into the forms….Sensationalism is on the wane and the time will come early in the next century when the newspaper that lies will be considered as despicable as the man who does the same thing now. The twentieth-century newspaper will not be entirely composed of the record of the ‘evil that men do,’ but some the good things will also be mentioned.”

Finally here is Frank A. Richardson, editor of the Baltimore Sun. While I applaud his optimism concerning the human condition and his laudable vision of scrupulous and truthful editors, there are far too few of these trustworthy souls toiling in today’s newsrooms.

“As mankind with the march of time becomes more noble and elevated, the newspaper, which is at once the leader and the follower of public sentiment, must share in this. Therefore I should say the newspaper of the twentieth century must be conducted on a higher plane. Its great aim must be to instruct and purify, rather than merely amuse for an idle hour and increase its circulation by pandering to the baser instincts of humanity. There are a few striking instances among the leading newspapers of this day where the desire for gain is not made the paramount consideration. In the twentieth century, this will become more and more apparent, for incentives to the contrary course which exist now will disappear. The newspaper of the next century will be guided by the hand of strictest truth and honor, for policy, if not conscience, will make it so.”

Perhaps the most troubling part of this story is the fact that of the 13 newspapers polled in this 1895 exercise, only four are still being published today. That none of the editors could foresee the demise of their own newspapers is not surprising to me.

The 1890s were an optimistic decade in American history with a young nation just beginning to flex its political and economic muscles on the world stage.

Given the gloomy, often deplorable world we live in today with its poverty and wars waged by religious fanatics like ISIL with its beheadings and mutilation of innocents; its pervasive drug use; the decline of the traditional family; the inexorable secularization of society and with it the relentless obliteration of morality, integrity and civility; I wonder how today’s 21st Century editors would foretell the world of the 22d Century.

With much less optimism I would wager.

 

More Predictions From the Past: “Oranges will grow in Philadelphia”

In my continuing examination of the way people of the past predicted the future, here is yet another look at some interesting forecasts from long ago. My previous post on predictions from the past was posted earlier this week.

Why am I blogging about this? Because, as an author of historical fiction I sometimes wonder what my characters thoughts might be about the future. What kind of world do they envision? What will life be life 100 years hence? How will things like communication and transportation change? What of society, morality, conflict, and warfare?

I think adding those kinds of observations to characters in historical fiction novels adds another dimension to their personas. For one thing, all of us wonder at one time or another what the future will bring. Why not the characters we create in our historical novels?

Recently someone sent me an electronic copy of a Ladies’ Home Journal article from 1901 that talks about future predictions–what the world will be like in the year 2000, just 17 years ago.

Here’s a summary of those predictions. Enjoy:

There will be 500 million people in the USA. (Close, but no cigar. There are 317 million of us in a world population of 7.1 billion)

 The average American will be 1 – 2 inches taller because of better health due to reforms in medicine, sanitation, food, and athletics. (Well done. The average height of American males in 2014 is 5 ft 9.5 in and 5 ft 4 in for females. In 1900 it was 5 ft 7.5 for men and 5 ft 2 in for women. Science says a better diet, better health care, better sanitation are all contributors)

 The letters “C,” “X” & “Q” will be abandoned from the alphabet because they are unnecessary. (The last time I looked those letters were still in the alphabet–and entirely necessary)

 Hot and cold air to heat/cool a house will come from spigots. (We call them vents today, and yes, most homes are heated and cooled by forced air HVAC systems)

 Mosquitoes and flies will be virtually extinct. (Sigh, not quite. The pesky insects are still with us.)

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Foods will not be exposed to air before being sold, and storekeepers who do expose them will be arrested. (Well, if not arrested, then fined by health and food inspectors–IF they are doing their jobs)

 Coal will not be used for heating or cooking. It will be scarce but not exhausted. (It is neither scarce nor exhausted, and it is still used to electrical power plants. So in that respect, this prediction is off the mark–though few, if any, folks use it as fuel for stoves and ovens.)

 No more streetcars in cities. (This is pretty accurate, though some cities are bringing these once ubiquitous urban conveyances back).

 Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance (same day publishing) and will be in color. (Very prescient calculation)

 Trains will go 150 MPH. (NOT in America, sadly. But in Europe and Japan they do)

 Automobiles will be cheaper than horses. (Hmm. Not true UNLESS you are talking about a stable of Kentucky Derby winners)

 Everyone will walk 10 miles. A man or woman who cannot walk 10 miles will be considered a weakling. (I would wager that not everyone in today’s world can walk 10 miles. Weaklings, I am afraid, abound)

 You will be able to travel from the USA to England in 2 days. (How about in just a few hours? An unfathomable concept back in 1901)

 There will be airships. (There will be, but most today are seen hovering over football stadiums)

 There will be aerial warships and forts on wheels. Fleets of airships, hiding in dense, smoky mists, will float over cities and hurl deadly thunderbolts onto unsuspecting foes below. Giant guns will shoot 25 miles or more and destroy entire cities. (Airships no, but squadrons of stealth bombers and fighters capable of launching nuclear weapons that can destroy whole cities are here)

 There will be no more wild animals, except in menageries. The horse will have become practically extinct. Food animals will be bred to expend almost all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products.  (While the prophet here was wrong about wild animals and the horse, he or she was relatively accurate about domestic animals. Not a pleasant existence for many of today’s domestic animals)

 Telephones will be everywhere.  (Yep…everywhere…and are we better for it? That is up for debate.)

 Grand Opera will be telephoned into private homes. (I assume this prediction is not about the Grand Ole Opry. In any case, music of all kinds is indeed in our homes–via cable, satellite, etc.)

 Store purchases will be made by “tube.” Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. The same for mail. Fast automobiles will distribute purchases from house to house. (Hmmm. Was this person envisioning FedEx, UPS, etc.? Possibly. But thank God the pneumatic tube idea never came to pass. Can you imagine a city linked by millions of pneumatic tubes whisking refrigerators and flat-screen TVs from Best Buy or Costco in giant tubes of forced air? I think I would rather live in the Amazon basin)

 Strawberries will be as large as apples. (Why? Will they taste better? I don’t think so.)

Roses will be as large as cabbage heads and come in many colors, such as black, blue and green. (I have nothing against multi-colored roses, but why as large as cabbage heads? Will they look better? I doubt it. Who wants a black rose?)

 Oranges will grow in Philadelphia because science will have discovered how to raise in cold climates many fruits now confined to much hotter climates. (Was this person envisioning “hothouse” vegetables and fruit that have little or no flavor?)

 Few drugs will be swallowed or taken into the stomach. Drugs needed for the lungs, for instance, will be applied directly to those organs through the skin and flesh. They will be carried with electric current applied without pain to the outside skin of the body. The living body will for all medical purposes be transparent. Not only will it be possible for a physician to actually see a living, throbbing heart inside the chest, but he will be able to magnify and photograph any part of it…via rays of invisible light. (This prediction is quite amazing. Almost everything it suggests is fact today.)

Man will see around the world. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles in a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. (Another prescient forecast, possibly foreseeing satellite TV broadcasts that we take for granted today.)

 A university education will be free to every man and woman. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing, and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions. In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools. (Interesting ideas…some of which have indeed been adopted. I am not so sure about those etiquette and housekeeping classes though.)

 So what do you think? How accurate was the Ladies’ Home Journal of 1901? I give them an “E” for Effort.

 

 

 

Famously Wrong Predictions From the Past

Predicting the future can be a daunting, if not a sometimes embarrassing occupation. I have already posted on this topic a few times because as a writer of historical fiction I think it adds something when characters look ahead and wonder what the world will be like in one hundred or two hundred years.

Unfortunately, not all of us can be accurate prognosticators. Even the geniuses and giants of science and industry have faltered from time to time.

Here are a few examples:

“Theoretically, television may be feasible, but I consider it an impossibility–a development which we should waste little time dreaming about.”-–Lee de Forest, 1926, inventor of the cathode ray tube

 “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”–Thomas J. Watson, 1943, Chairman of the Board of IBM

“It doesn’t matter what he does, he will never amount to anything.”-–Albert Einstein’s teacher to his father, 1895

“It will be years – not in my time – before a woman will become Prime Minister.” —Margaret Thatcher, 1974

[image error] Margaret Thatcher

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”-– Western Union internal memo, 1876

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” –– Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962 

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”-–H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927, pooh-poohing the idea of sound in film. 

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”-– Bill Gates, 1981 

“Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” –– Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872 

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” –– Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1946

“We don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.” — Hewlett-Packard’s rejection of Steve Jobs, who went on to found Apple Computers 

“Airplanes are interesting toys, but they have no military value.”-– Marshal Ferdinand Foch in 1911

[image error] Marshal Foch

“With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn’t likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market.”-– Business Week, 1958 

“Whatever happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping.” –– Frank Knox, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, on December 4, 1941, three days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” –– Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, October 16, 1929, thirteen days before the “Black Tuesday” stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression.

   Then, there these gaffes from the past:

King George II said in 1773 that the American colonies had little stomach for revolution.

An official of the White Star Line, speaking of the firm’s newly built flagship, the Titanic, launched in 1912, declared that the ship was unsinkable.

In 1939 The New York Times said the problem of TV was that people had to glue their eyes to a screen, and that the average American wouldn’t have time for it.

An English astronomy professor said in the early 19th century that air travel at high speed would be impossible because passengers would suffocate.

Someone once said that an optimist is someone who thinks the future is uncertain.

But I always liked this variously ascribed quote:

“The future isn’t what it used to be.”

Amen, brother.