Eric Flint's Blog, page 270

WHAT THE HELL, LET’S DO IT AGAIN – STILL MORE ON THE HUGO AWARDS

James May, who keeps posting here, is the gift that never stops giving. In one of his most recent posts, he insists once again that the SJW (social justice warrior) hordes are a menace to science fiction. So, in this essay, I will go through his points one at a time to show how ridiculous they are whether examined in part or (especially) as a whole.

Let’s start with his first two paragraphs:

“I don’t have to pretend anything. It’s not my imagination this crusading feminist movement exists nor that it’s baked into core SFF at every level as the new go-to ideological orthodoxy. In fact they do amount to squat. This is a very specific ideology that speaks a very specific faux-academic language and has very specific goals and issues. It is radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist to its core and its central bogey man is the straight white man.

“As an example, just the 5 ideologically same-page winners of the Nebulas last year alone outnumber the entire imaginary racially and sexually supremacist culture supposedly bound by a similar opposite number ideology from Burroughs in 1912 to Niven/Pournelle in 1974. There is no semantic or thematic ideology that binds Burroughs, Heinlein, Van Vogt, Asimov, Herbert, Zelazny and Niven into such a club. That is a matter of record, as is the non-fiction writings of those 5 2014 Nebula winners.”

The first thing to notice about this rant is that in the name of attacking a “crusading” movement which is an “ideological orthodoxy” that “speaks a very specific faux-academic language” James May immediately proceeds to…

Use crusading terminology which is ideologically orthodox and speaks a very specific faux-academic language: “It is radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist to its core.” That phrase is practically dripping Rush Limbaugh-speak.

He then informs us that all—yup, each and every one—of the 2014 Nebula winners were “ideologically same-page” which is a “matter of record.”

Wow. A dire menace, indeed.

By the way, the five Nebula winners last year were:

          Novel: Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie
          Novella: “The Weight of the Sunrise”, by Vylar Kaftan
          Novelette: “The Waiting Stars”, by Aliette de Bodard
          Short Story: “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”, by Rachel Swirsky

I’m not quite sure who James May is categorizing as the fifth horsewoman of the apocalypse, but I’ll assume he’s not objecting to the movie Gravity which won the Ray Bradbury Award. Although I will note that it’s highly suspicious that the movie stars a woman. Granted, Sandra Bullock is an Academy Award winner and a number of her movies have done very well at the box office. Still… why couldn’t they have made a man the central figure in the movie? Why the gratuitous choice of a female?

It’s suspicious, at least, and possibly further evidence that the dread radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist crusade has been at work here.

But, moving on, I’ll assume that James May’s objection is to Nalo Hopkinson winning the Andre Norton Award for Sister Mine. (Boy, you want to talk about an inflammatory radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist title!)

Here’s what’s most interesting, though. Having leveled the accusation, James May does absolutely nothing to substantiate it. He simply makes the assertion that all the winners are part of this “radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist” cabal and goes on his way.

This is quite typical of the anti-SJW crowd and it’s something George R.R. Martin has criticized a number of times. These people make sweeping generalizations at the drop of a hat and they paraphrase with wild abandon. Scrupulous documentation of their claims? Not so much.

Okay, moving on to his next paragraph:

“100% of the most important Hugo winners last year were all supporters of this cult. How do I know that? It’s easy. Their obsession with whites, men and heterosexuals together with equally odd phrases like “white privilege,” “white savior,” cis normative,” “neurotypical,” “rape culture” and much more mark their lingo as much as “gracias” marks Spanish. They stand out like a sore thumb and don’t even try and hide this stuff; quite the contrary. If you’re not reading their non-fiction comments it has nothing to do with people who are. This stuff is a simple matter of record.”

A simple matter of record which…

Again, James May feels no need to record.

In one of my former lives I was a TA in the history department at UCLA. In that capacity, I read and graded a lot of essays written by students in which they attempted, with greater or lesser success, to advance an historical proposition.

So far, James May’s essay advancing the proposition that science fiction as a genre—or at least its most prestigious awards—have been overwhelmed by a radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist crusade is getting an F. He’s made no attempt to substantiate a single one of his claims. Literally, not one.

But, finally, after the first three paragraphs of his tirade, he starts presenting concrete evidence. He begins by quoting from the two most recent presidents of SFWA (which, for those of you who don’t know, is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, an organization of F&SF writers).

“Hard as it to believe, somewhere right now, a white, straight male is explaining to a woman or POC (person of color) what they =really= meant.” – Steven Gould, science fiction (SF) author and president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA)

“I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word ‘privilege,’ to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon.” – John Scalzi, SF author, winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, five time nominated, three time winner of the Hugo Award, Nebula Award nominee and president of the SFWA

James May apparently finds both of these statements outrageous and proof positive of the pervasive influence of the radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist crusade. Presidents of SFWA, no less! Oh, the power they wield…

I’ll start with the second statement, that of John Scalzi. Which:

I agree with completely.
Think is quite witty.
And the truth of which James May himself is a perfect illustration.

Moving on to the statement of Steven Gould, I find myself in complete agreement with it also. All Steven is doing here is referring to the common—indeed, well-nigh ubiquitous—practice known as “mansplaining.”

What is “mansplaining”? As an accomplished mansplainer myself in my youth, I feel competent to address the subject. I will do so by using an incident from my own past.

Mansplaining has been around for, oh, a very long time. Way back in 1968 or thereabouts—almost half a century ago—I was sitting around a table in UCLA’s Student Union. One of the people at the table was a woman about my own age (21, at the time) named Ronnie. In the course of expounding on something or other, I happened to use the term “chicks” to refer to women.

Ronnie immediately objected to the term. Not stridently, but still firmly. She said she found it demeaning to women.

Immediately, my mansplaining reflex kicked in and I mansplained to her that the term “chick,” so far from being derogatory to women, was actually a term of jocular affection, much like referring to men as “guys.”

Ronnie got a stubborn look on her face and said she didn’t like it. Period.

At that point, thankfully, other reflexes kicked in. Because whatever else I’d imbibed from my parents, one of the things they’d taught me was what is called Good Manners. And when someone tells you that he or she doesn’t like being called something, it is simple Good Manners to cease and desist. It doesn’t matter what the “merits” of the issue might be. “Merits” are irrelevant. What’s really involved is basic decency and respect for another person.

The only people who don’t understand that are boors and oafs—that is to say, the very people Steven Gould is referring to in the quote.

I stopped using the term “chick” around Ronnie. And, quite soon, stopped using it altogether because upon inquiry I discover that a lot of women didn’t care for it either. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that Ronnie became a good friend and wound up marrying one of my close friends and roommates, to whom she is still married to this day. Perhaps that’s partly because he stopped using the term “chicks” also. Amazing how that works.

Since this seems astonishingly difficult for the James Mays of the world to understand, I will try to explain it by subtracting females, gays and lesbians, and people of color from the equation, because I suspect his hyper-alertness for any trace of the much-feared Political Correctness Gestapo may be clouding his judgment.

My friend and frequent co-author David Weber is male, white and straight. (And for good measure, he’s also politically conservative and a devout Methodist.) He prefers—for whatever peculiar reasons he may have—to be called “David.” I try my best to adhere to his wishes, simply because it’s his name and that’s what he wishes. See reference to “good manners” above.

Occasionally, I lapse and call him “Dave.” In my defense, there are way too many David and Daves in my life—three co-authors, Weber, Drake and Freer; an old friend (Dave McDonald), a relatively new friend and fellow author (David Coe), a brother-in-law, the list seems endless. It’s sometimes hard to keep them straight.

But here’s what I’ve never done. I’ve never mansplained to David that his first name should really be “Davey” because in my superior wisdom I have come to understand that he is intrinsically a “Davey.” Should he not—the author of the Honor Harrington series (okay, the protagonist is a damn woman but we’ll let that pass)—share a name with the bold frontiersman Davey Crockett rather than the effete and probably-influenced-by-radical-lesbian-centric-racialized feminists David Bowie?

No, no, Eric Flint knows best. David should be a Davey. And if he objects, then clearly he too is being influenced by the radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist crusade. (Sadly, there’s already a lot of evidence to that effect. Leaving aside the suspicious behavior involved in making a female the central figure in a series devoted to manly military action, there’s all the evidence scattered thought the rest of the series. Let’s start with the fact that the Queen of the Star Empire is, first, a queen; and second, she’s black. Why didn’t he pick a white guy, dammit?)

Steven Gould is also quite correct is saying that mansplaining is alive and well today. Indeed, at this very moment and for the past several years, we’ve all been presented with a splendid and very prominent case of mansplaining.

For some time now, Daniel Snyder, the billionaire owner of the Washington Redskins football team—and a boor and an oaf of the first order—has been mansplaining to American Indians that the term “redskins” is not derogatory to them as they so erroneously believe, but is instead a term of honor and respect.

All right, let’s move on and see if James May can come up with something better than taking exception to two statements which are completely accurate and non-objectionable.

Finally, we get to something that seems more substantial:

 “SFF is, alas, dominated by white westerners” – Aliette de Bodard, science fiction and fantasy (SFF) author , five-time nominated, two-time winner of the Nebula Award and two-time nominee for the Hugo Award, SFWA member.”

Oh, the horror. Well, okay, the only horror is in the one word “alas.” The rest of the sentence—“SFF is dominated by white westerners”—is a simple statement of fact.

Why does de Bodard think “alas” needs to be added to the sentence? I have no idea—and since James May (typically for his crowd) always quotes out of context, I have no way of knowing. She may simply have been making a wisecrack, along the lines of the joke favored by many of my Latino friends: “Alas, poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States.” I’ve always thought that was pretty witty, and since I know the history involved I don’t have any trouble understanding why a Mexican might feel that way. But I’ve run across people who are deeply offended by the joke since it fails to appreciate American Exceptionalism. (A term which has no coherent meaning except for serving its proponents as a general purpose Get Out Of Jail Free card. “It’s not America’s fault if we did X,Y, or Z. We’re exceptional. Rules don’t apply to us.”)

Alas, having been influenced by the radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist mindset myself—starting many years ago, at that—I have picked up the unmanly habit of trying to put myself in someone else’s position. On the other hand, maybe that’s part of the reason I sell a lot of books.

Moving on, we come to this outrage:

I’m increasingly less likely to pick up a book if it is another straight white dude story.” – Kate Elliot, Nebula-nominated SFF author and SFWA member

And this one, in a similar vein:

 “Sunil Patel@ghostwritingcow It is no coincidence that my book review column features no white male authors. They can have EVERYWHERE ELSE.”

Um. As “outrages” go, these are pretty lame. Any reviewer has the right to review whichever author she wishes to. I wonder if James May is equally outraged by the fact that Soldier of Fortune magazine rarely (in fact, never, so far as I know) reviews romance novels.

But leaving that aside, the key issue here goes right to the heart of the whole dispute we’re having. What James May does, following the standard playbook of the anti-SJW crowd and at least some of the Sad Puppies, is go around and collect statements—almost always taken out of context—that he feels exhibit the outrageously radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist attitudes of the “Social Justice Warriors.”

In half the cases, from what I can tell, there isn’t anything outrageous about the comments anyway. But even if they were all “outrageous,” I repeat what I’ve been demanding since my first essay;

SO FUCKING WHAT?

The real issue is whether any of this amounts to anything beyond a tempest in a teapot. The fact that someone somewhere makes a jackass comment does not mean that either that person or the comment have any real significance to The Big Wide World. The claim James May has to substantiate is his claim that it does really matter. But he never makes any attempt to do so. He seems to think, as do all the people who share his stance, that it’s enough to simply quote an outrageous statement by somebody, somewhere, sometime, to prove that This Is A Really Big Deal.

No. It’s. Not. And I will substantiate my claim.

Let’s start with this last issue, concerning the unwillingness of some reviewers to review books written by white men, or at least their increasing reluctance to do so.

As a professional author, this is supposed to outrage me….

Why?

I very rarely get reviewed anyway, in much more prominent venues than the ones being managed by Kate Elliott and Sunil Patel. To the best of my knowledge, in a career that has now spanned almost two decades in the course of which I have published almost fifty novels and a fair amount of shorter fiction, I have gotten a total of two—count ‘em, two—major reviews in major SF magazines. (For the record, a review of Mother of Demons in SF Chronicle and a review of 1632 by Charles de Lint in The Magazine of F&SF.) Both of those reviews date back many years ago. There may be a few reviews I missed, but it can’t be many. For sure—I just checked their own data base—I have never gotten a review in Locus other than a few very short reviews by Carolyn Cushman a long time ago, mostly of some novels I co-authored with Mercedes Lackey. This, despite getting a large number of my novels on Locus’ own bestseller list.

So it goes. Nor is this peculiar to me. Many popular authors—not all, but many—don’t get reviewed in SF magazines or do so very rarely. (They do, however, get reviewed quite often in publishing trade journals like Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist and Kirkus. But while those have an effect on distributors and library buyers, they’re almost never read by the mass audience.) When I mentioned some time ago to Lee Modesitt that I’d never gotten a major Locus review, he nodded and told me he hadn’t gotten a review in something like fifteen years.

Why does that happen? The reasons are somewhat complicated but it’s a subject for another day. Just believe me when I say that it does.

And… who cares? My career does not depend on Locus reviews, or those in any other SF magazine or web site. It never has and it never will. That’s because all the SF magazines put together are so many—or rather, so few—very small fish in a very large pond. For every F&SF reader who’s heard of Locus, there are at least twenty or thirty who’ve heard of me. And there are at least a hundred who’ve heard of David Weber or Mercedes Lackey.

Meaning no offense to either Kate Elliott or Sunil Patel, I simply don’t care whether they review my work or not. So why am I supposed to be outraged by their attitudes? Especially when they have every right to hold that attitude and act on it.

This is just silly. Am I supposed to be outraged that Soldier of Fortune magazine has never reviewed any of my novels either, despite the fact that lots of my novels have lots and lots of really really manly action in them?

And don’t bother telling me that Soldier of Fortune doesn’t claim to review SF novels. I know that. But if that magazine has the right to delineate its intended subject matter and audience, then why doesn’t Kate Elliott or Sunil Patel?

As for the statements he quotes from two recent SFWA presidents…

Again, even if their statements had been outrageous—which they weren’t—so what? Is James May under the delusion that SFWA is a mighty organization that controls the careers of authors and whose presidents wield power unmatched since Tamerlane strode the stage of history?

If he does, he can check with John Scalzi or Steven Gould—or any previous president of SFWA going back to the ghost of the organization’s founder, Damon Knight. They will quickly disabuse him of the notion.

Okay, moving on. Let’s look at the next instance of outrageous SJWism.

“sounds like something a straight white cis dude does, secure that his position and privilege will always be there.” – Veronica Schanoes, Nebula nominated SFF author and SFWA member”

Ooooooh…  Now this does look really juicy. There’s no question that Schanoes’ statement is saturated with radical-lesbian-centric-racialized-feminist-speak. Jeepers. When my eyes fell on “straight white cis dude” my head…

I’d say “my head almost exploded” but that’d be a bald-faced lie. Actually, I just laughed.

I’m going to stop here because after a while this gets to be a pointless exercise. The more posts James May and people who think the way he does put up here, the more something becomes blindingly obvious.

Is there anything in the world that does not upset them? I mean, Jesus H. Christ. How fucking insecure can you get?

The best James May can come up with is a handful of statements—okay, two handfuls—all of them taken out of context, and at least half of them statements that I have no problem with anyway. (And I can’t tell whether or not I would with the rest because context is actually important.)

What James May has completely failed to do is back up his central thesis, which is that “this crusading feminist movement” is “baked into core SFF at every level as the new go-to ideological orthodoxy.”

At every level? Really? Does that include the level of sales to the mass audience—which is far and away the most critical level there is? If so, then please explain the ongoing popularity of such “cis dude” (God, I love that term) white authors as Jim Butcher, David Weber, Raymond Feist, R.A. Salvatore, Brandon Sanderson, Terry Brooks, Neil Gaiman, John Ringo, Terry Pratchett, Kevin Anderson—oh, it’s a very long list. (And my apologies to any cis dude whom I overlooked.)

Not to mention John Scalzi, Larry Correia and, well, me.

It finally occurred to me to conduct an experiment. Since some people complain so loudly, constantly and angrily about the all-pervasive power and influence of the “social justice warriors” (aka SJWs) I decided to find these monstrous creatures.

So, this being the Age of the Internet, I searched for them on Google. And…

Made a fascinating discovery.

They seem to exist mostly in the minds of their enemies.

I’m not kidding—and you can do this experiment for yourselves. Right at home!

All you have to do is Google “social justice warriors.” Here’s what you’ll find:

Of the entries on the first few pages—I stopped somewhere in the middle of the fourth page—only one of them, so far as I could see, is clearly pro-SJW. Leaving aside several entries about a new game called “Social Justice Warriors,” most of the links are to sites which are hostile to “social justice warriors,” and some of them rabidly so. The most entertaining (to me, anyway; okay, sometimes I’m a little quirky) is a site that seems mostly devoted to “pick up” advice to (presumably young) men unsure of how to go about getting laid.

What stands out to me is that so far as I can tell most of the shrieking about “social justice warriors” comes from people who seem to have a level of insecurity and anxiety that can only be described as astronomical. (That’s a more polite way of saying “pathological.”) Let an author (hell, anyone) anywhere make a statement that in any way offends their oh-so-very-offendable sensibilities, and they immediately start screaming that they are being downtrodden by the SJW behemoth.

As I was about to post this essay, I saw that James May had just put up another post in my web site that, by God, did name more names. More than a dozen!

Okay… What the hell, once more into the breach.

Here’s May’s post, in its entirety, with my comments afterward:

Comment: Hugo nominated Skiffy and Fanty podcaster Cecily Kane: “The straight white dude perspective is basically the Dunning-Kruger effect apex of all civilization.”

John W. Campbell nominee two years running Requires Hate: “Beetori Sritruslow @talkinghive 9h9 hours ago It’s like white men literally don’t understand how anything works.”

SFF Convention Guest of Honor and Game Developer Brianna Wu: “Women seeking equality on one side. Vicious sexists on the other. White, cishet men with all the power, smiling as they decide what’s fair”

SFF author and blogger Amal El-Mohtar: “White people talking about how inclusive fandom used to be when there were fewer brown people & queers to make them uncomfortable.”

2016 WorldCon Guest of Honor Teresa Nielsen-Hayden: “I was being unfair to all the perfectly reasonable straight white guys out there.”

Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award-winning SFF author Ken Liu: “‘authentic’ seems often to mean ‘what white people would approve'”

WisCon organizer and blogger K. Tempest Bradford: “You know, whiteness is a hell of a drug. It really is.”

SFF author Sunny Moraine on diversity: “If your writing is full of white men, it’s shitty writing.”

SF blogger, Readercon panelist Natalie Luhrs: “Man, so great seeing all these white dudes talking about how fucking awesome they are for standing up to G—-Gate.”

WisCon SF Convention organizer and panelist Jaymee Goh: “Seems lately every week is white stupidity week. And they complain about a month in a year!”

Reviewer at Lightspeed Magazine and writer Sunil Patel: “Curious: how many of you refuse to watch/read something if it’s about Yet Another Straight White Man?”

Reply from SFWA member and Nebula nominee Kate Elliott: “Same is true of books. I’m increasingly less likely to pick up a book if it is another straight white dude story.”

Second reply from another SFF fan: “I’m taking a yearlong break from books by men, full stop, and dramatically scaling back on stories about them.”

Last reply from SFWA member and review editor of SFF at Publisher’s Weekly Rose Fox: “Alas, my job doesn’t let me refuse.”

We have here a total of fourteen Outrageous Statements. Or, at least, Statements That James May Finds Outrageous. So let’s go through them.

First, we have to subtract the three statements that actually aren’t outrageous at all. Those are the statements by Teresa Nielsen-Hayden, Ken Liu and K. Tempest Bradford. Nielsen Hayden’s statements is an apology for perhaps being a bit over-the-top and acknowledging that the world has plenty of “perfectly reasonable straight white guys.”

How is this “outrageous”? It seems perfectly sensible to me—even commendatory, in that it indicates an ability to self-criticize which is sadly lacking in some other parties in this dispute. I will name no names. (But I could. Oh, yes, I really really could.)

Ken Liu’s statement (“‘authentic’ seems often to mean ‘what white people would approve'”) is also perfectly non-outrageous. My only criticism of it is that he’s being too narrow. I would have added that not only does “authentic” often seem to mean “what white people would approve” but so do such terms as “reasonable,” “un-biased,” “normal,” “classic” (does anyone remember that jackass TV announcer who recently remarked that Viola Davis was not “classically” attractive?)—oh, the list goes on and on.

Does this make me, as a straight white man, a “self-hater”?

Trust me, if I told my wife—or daughter—that I was a “self-hater” they’d fall down laughing. No, it just means I’m not an insecure jerk, that’s all. I don’t automatically get upset whenever someone criticizes common bad traits of white people or male people or straight people because I often agree with them.

Then, finally, there’s Bradford’s “outrageous” statement: “You know, whiteness is a hell of a drug. It really is.”

Yup, it sure is—as is belonging to any elite group in a society. In earlier times, nobility was a hell of a drug. As I and multiple co-authors have spent a fair time of time in the 1632 series depicting. In modern capitalist times, being wealthy is a hell of drug. If you don’t believe me, contemplate the public behavior of Paris Hilton—and even more, the behavior of her younger brother Conrad. (If you’ve forgotten the juicy details, here it is: http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/celebrity/paris-hiltons-brother-conrad-hilton-charged-after-alleged-flight-ruckus-n299691).

So let’s start by subtracting those three perfectly reasonable statements. That leaves eleven Outrages. Of those, however, no fewer than eight of them—those by Cecily Kane, Brianna Wu, Amal El-Mohtar, Natalie Luhrs, Jaymee Goh, Sunil Patel, Kate Elliott and “another SFF fan”—are impossible to assess properly without knowing the context.

Which, as always, James May neglects to provide. He seems to think it’s enough to quote someone saying anything that seems to be negative toward white men or men in general (or sometimes all white people) to “prove” that they are “social justice warriors” and—this is the real laugh, as I’ll get to later—are really really really having a profoundly negative impact on science fiction awards.

For Pete’s sake, I’ve been known—and way more than once—to say negative things about a) white people; b) male people; c) straight people; d) any possible combination of the above. Sometimes my comments may have been a little uncalled-for—maybe; then again, maybe not—but if you put any of them in context I’d probably defend 99% of them. Maybe even one hundred percent of them.

Okay, so that brings us down to three Outrages that might be worth considering. Let’s start with the one by “John W. Campbell nominee two years running Requires Hate.” The statement itself actually belongs in the previous category, i.e., those that require context to assess properly. The statement is “It’s like white men literally don’t understand how anything works.” A statement which…

Hell, I’ve been known to mutter myself when confronted with a particularly egregious example of the White-Man-Deeply-Offended Syndrome. If you aren’t familiar with that syndrome, just go back and read all of James May’s posts. Most of them are classic illustrations of it.

The reason I decided it needed to be singled out isn’t the statement itself but the origin of it. “Requires Hate” has a rather notorious reputation, and it is indeed the case that a number of her statements are screwy at best. If you’re not familiar with the controversy surrounding her, let me introduce you to a magic word:

Google.

Moving on, the next possible really really outrageous statement is this one:

SFF author Sunny Moraine on diversity: “If your writing is full of white men, it’s shitty writing.”

This statement isn’t really outrageous. That’s because it’s too stupid to generate much in the way of outrage. In one short sentence, Sunny Moraine—whoever the hell she is, and we’ll get to that in a moment—has dismissed such novels as Tolstoy’s War and Peace, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick—not to mention the epic of Gilgamesh and Homer’s Iliad. If she thinks she can write better than that, have at it. But don’t anyone—especially her—hold your breath.

Finally—finally—we get to the only one of these fourteen “outrages” that amounts to a hill of beans. And it doesn’t actually amount to a hill of beans, but just to a little bitty pile of beans. That’s this one:

Last reply from SFWA member and review editor of SFF at Publisher’s Weekly Rose Fox: “Alas, my job doesn’t let me refuse.”

She was responding to the previous comments by Kate Elliott and “another SFF fan” to the effect that they are less likely (in the case of Elliott) or absolutely refuse for one year (in the case of “another SFF fan”) to read books about straight white men.

But why, you ask, have I singled out the comment from Rose Fox when I gave those by Kate Elliott and “another SFF fan” a pass and assigned them to the “need to know context” pile?

It’s because Elliott and “another SFF fan” are referring to their personal reading habits whereas Rose Fox mentioned those preferences in the context of referring to her actual job, which is that of being a reviewer for a trade journal. In other words, it’s conceivable that her attitude might be biasing her professional reviews.

I hasten to add that I have no reason to believe they actually are biasing them and I am making no accusations. I am simply bringing the issue up in order to demonstrate that…

Speaking of the relative sizes of hills and/or piles of beans…

James May has huffed and puffed and produced exactly one bean. A pinto bean, I believe. He has demonstrated that there may exist one (out of many, I might add) reviewers working for Publishers Weekly who might—might, mind you; there is no evidence of it—be biased in their reviews of works by straight white males.

Oh, the horror. On the other hand, given that I’m a straight white male author and I’ve gotten several starred reviews from Publishers Weekly—including of my best-known novel, 1632—I guess I’ll be able to go to sleep tonight without checking under my bed to see if a Social Justice Warrior Maniacally Anti-Cis Dude (God, I love that term) book reviewer is lurking there waiting to pounce and rend me to pieces.

All right, enough on the statements themselves. It’s now time to deal with the ultimate absurdity of James May’s argument. Let us suppose, for the moment, that each and every one of the fourteen Outrageous Statements that May cites were actually outrageous—and clearly so, regardless of context.

So. Fucking. What.

Who are the originators of these fourteen statements? In what sense do they constitute, either one or all, a Really Big Force in the world of science fiction awards?

Of the fourteen statement-makers (or should I call them Outragiosas?) only three of them have any real prominence in the world of science fiction: Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Ken Liu and Kate Elliott. And none of them, taken alone or together, is able to do more than exercise a moderate—I mean, really moderate—influence on people who vote for Hugo awards. (Or Nebula awards.)

Of the remaining eleven, leaving aside the Publishers Weekly reviewer, they’re either minor authors, podcasters, bloggers or local convention organizers—and two of them seem to have as their major “power source” the fact that they’ve been panelists at SF conventions.

Panelists? For Pete’s sake, every SF convention in the country usually has dozens of panelists, most of them people who are generally unknown outside of their local convention areas.

My point here is not to sneer at minor authors, podcasters, panelists, or any of the rest. Like almost every author, I was once a minor author myself. (Oh, and such a wee tiny minor author I was, too, for more years than I like to remember.) My point is simply that, objectively speaking, people in these positions are not the great shakers and movers in the world of SF awards. Insofar as anyone is—which is itself a dubious proposition. As a rule, people who vote for Hugo awards are not standing at attention before the reviewing podium at Nuremberg waiting for The Leader to tell them which way they must vote. My cat sneers at them for their lack of discipline.

Bah. Again and again, we get the same thing. One or another person generally aligned with or supportive of the Sad Puppies comes charging up with a fistful (sometimes two!) of quotes torn out of context from people most of whom—meaning no offense to anyone—nobody has ever heard of outside of their immediate friends and family. These quotes—many of them perfectly fine and most of them impossible to judge out of context—are then presented as “evidence” (sometimes even “proof”!) that the dreaded Social Justice Warriors are indeed a mighty and omnipresent force in the world of SF awards.

I’d say I was at a loss for words except that I’ve spent some time now demonstrating that, push comes to shove, I’m pretty much never at a loss for words. But I figure I’ve devoted enough words to the issue for the moment and will close by simply citing another magic phrase:

The scientific method. In which a hypothesis, having been advanced, is then subjected to empirical scrutiny. Sometimes known as “fact checking.”

His Father’s Eyes – Snippet 07

His Father’s Eyes – Snippet 07

He sobered and shook his head, his gaze holding mine as he took another mouthful of ice cream.

He finished that first bowl a few minutes later, and I went back and got him a second. And when he finished that one, I brought him half a sandwich, which he bolted down as well.

Sometimes, getting some food into my Dad brought him around a bit, helped him reconnect with reality. Not this time. He continued that odd wincing, and he went on and on about being prodded and burned. I’d been with him through a lot of a different hallucinations, but again I couldn’t shake the feeling that this one was different.

His skin had lost that sallow quality, though, and once he’d had enough to eat, I managed to convince him to shower, shave, brush his teeth, and put on fresh clothes. By the time I was ready to leave, he was back in his chair, staring at the horizon. I could tell he was hurting still, but I didn’t know what else to do for him.

“I have to go for a while, Dad. But I’ll come back later, all right?”

He didn’t so much as glance at me.

“Dad–“

“If you’re here, they’ll know where to find you, and then you’ll be in trouble, too.”

“I’ll take my chances. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

He didn’t argue the point further. I kissed his forehead, got in my car, and headed back into the city to keep my lunch date with Billie. She would have understood if I had asked her for a rain check, but I wanted to see her, and I also wanted to get my check from Nathan Felder.

Once I was back on the road and close enough to Phoenix to get a decent signal on my ancient cell phone, I called my Dad’s doctor to ask him about what I had seen and heard. He didn’t have much to say, at least not much that was helpful. But he did end our conversation with this gem:

“The truth is, Jay, your Dad is getting older, his condition is worsening, and it will continue to worsen. Trying to define what’s ‘normal'” — I could hear the air quotes — “is almost pointless, because normal for him is always changing; it’s always deteriorating. What you’ve described for me is no worse than what I might expect for any patient with his history. I’m sorry, but that’s the unvarnished truth.”

And because you’re a sorcerer like your old man, and because you go through the insanity of the phasings month in and month out, full moon after full moon, this is your future as well.

He didn’t have to say that last; we both knew he was thinking it.

I thanked him and ended the call.

The moonrise was still hours away — tonight’s moon would be a waxing gibbous. We were four nights from the full, three from the first night of July’s phasing. And already I felt the moon tugging at my mind, as insistent as a needy child, as unrelenting as the tide.

In another few days, even before night descended and the moon rose to begin the phasing, it would start to dull my thoughts and influence my mood. Right now it was a distraction and not too much more. But at the mere thought of those nights to come, I shuddered.

I wasn’t insane yet; Namid still held out some hope that with time, and with hard work, I could learn enough about casting to mitigate the effect of the phasings and perhaps put off what I had always assumed was my inevitable descent into madness. But flirting with lunacy, even if just for a few nights, still terrified me. I spent those nights alone. Always.

I wanted to believe that I had no choice in the matter. Even as a weremyste loses control of his mind, he also loses control of his magic, the power of which is augmented by the phasing. In other words, at those times when I’m least able to reign in my runecrafting, its most likely to boil over, endangering anyone who’s near me. Still, during our years together on the force, Kona had offered many times to stay with me and keep me from hurting myself or others. Last month, Billie had done the same; it occurred to me that she might have intended to again this month. For all I knew, that was why she wanted to see me.

I would tell her exactly what I had told Kona repeatedly: “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”

But both Kona and Billie were too smart to be fooled by that, even if I was content to go on deceiving myself.

What I really should have said to them was, “I’m ashamed to let you see me this way.”

I had seen my father at his worst, on days when he was far, far less lucid than he had been today. I knew what moon-induced madness looked like; it was ugly, messy, humiliating. I didn’t want to share it with anyone. I could barely stand to see it in my old man, much less in myself.

So I drove back into Mesa, to Solana’s, the little burrito place Billie and I had gone to so many times that it was fast becoming “our place.” And along the way, I tried to find the words to refuse the offer I knew was coming.

She was already seated when I got there. The lunch rush had started, but I assumed she had ordered for me; I always got the same thing: chicken and black beans, extra guac and pico, no sour cream.

Reaching the table, I stooped and kissed her lightly on the lips. Then I sat.

“You ordered?”

She nodded. “And paid. That’s two in a row. You owe me.”

In spite of everything, I smiled, glad to see her, happy to be distracted from my Dad.

Billie and I had met less than two months ago, while I was working on the Blind Angel murder case, and we hadn’t exactly hit it off at first. She was a journalist, the owner of a blog site called Castle’s Village. As a cop, I had developed a healthy distrust of journalists, and the first time or two we spoke I had Billie pegged as a typical reporter: nosy, ruthless, interested in nothing but the story, and completely unconcerned with those who got in her way as she went after it.

I was wrong. She was smart as hell, and, yes, she could be relentless in her pursuit of a story. But she cared more about getting it right than getting it first, and I had seen her go to incredible lengths to double and triple-check her facts before posting an article to her site. She was also warm, funny, and caring. She had these amazing emerald green eyes, and ringlets of brown hair that cascaded over her shoulders and back. And, most remarkably, she seemed to like me every bit as much as I liked her, which was quite a lot.

Watching me watch her, she took my hand, concern furrowing her brow.

“What’s the matter?”

“What makes you think something’s the matter?”

She gave me her “Are-you-really-that-stupid?” look. “You have a lousy poker face, Fearsson. I’ve told you that.” She leaned in, her arms resting on the table. “Is it something with your case?” she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

That was another thing I liked about Billie: she considered my work exotic and exciting, even when I was doing nothing more than tracking down the Mark Darbys of the world.

“No. The case is solved. In fact, I need to get my check from Mister Felder when we’re done with lunch.”

“Wow, Fearsson. That took you all of one week. I’m impressed.”

“It was ten days,” I told her. “And that matters because I get paid by the day.” I waved off the compliment. “Anyway, I wasn’t exactly dealing with a criminal mastermind.” I took a long breath, my gaze dropping to our interlaced fingers. “It’s my Dad. He’s not doing so well.”

She frowned. “I’m sorry. Something specific or . . . ?” She trailed off, allowed herself a small self-conscious smile, even as her brow remained creased. “I’m not sure how to ask the question.”

“I know what you mean. And I don’t really have an answer. It seems different to me. Worse than it’s been. But the doctors tell me its part of the normal downward spiral.”

She winced, reminding me of my Dad. “Not what you want to hear.”

“Not at all.”

Before I could say more, my phone buzzed. I pulled it from the pocket of my bomber and checked the incoming number. Kona, at 620, which is what we called Phoenix Police headquarters in downtown Phoenix.

I flipped open the phone — yes, I still have a flip phone. “Hey, partner. What’s up?”

“Justis, I am having a day. You busy right now?”

I’m having lunch with Billie.”

“Tell her ‘Hi’ from me. How soon can you get away?”

“Seriously?” I said. “You want me to tell her ‘Hi,’ and then you want to know how quickly I can ditch her?”

“Pretty much,” Kona said, seeming to find little humor in the situation. “I’ve got a dead body here, and I think I need for you to take a look at it, if you know what I mean.”

“You think he was killed with magic?” I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.

“Yup. So how soon can you be here?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the airport, terminal three. And that’s the other thing you ought to know. We think there was a bomb on this guy’s plane.”

 

 

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 28

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 28

“Indeed, he provided me with a letter to be opened in case he was killed or presumed dead. I have opened the letter, and it informs me of the hidden location where the queen is secluded, awaiting the birth of her child. I am instructed to use my judgment in this matter, but if I believe the persons of the queen and the child to be endangered. I may, if I deem it prudent, choose to interpose my forces between them and the danger presented.

“Spain remains the greatest danger to our country, to our Queen, and to the prince — or princess. If the cardinal is still alive, the Spanish are a danger to him as well.”

“What does that mean?” Sherrilyn asked. “We’re going to deploy against an invader? Or are we going to go looking for this marauding band of outlaws that killed the king?”

“I will need to decide,” Turenne said. “I don’t know if finding the king’s killers is practical.”

“I agree. And I agree with the comte de la Mothe,” Sherrilyn said. “From everything I’ve heard about Monsieur Gaston, I have to believe he was involved in this attack.”

“And not the Spanish?”

Sure, she thought. This could have been Pedro Dolor. He could have pulled this off. But it doesn’t feel right . . . it’s something he could do, but not really his style. It’s too obvious, too direct.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I do think we need to be where Monsieur Gaston — King Gaston — can’t take control of our forces. If that means marching toward the Spanish border, then we’d better do it. Unless . . .”

The duc de Bouillon, who was still standing next to her, stroked his chin. “Indeed, Mademoiselle Colonel. Unless what?”

“Unless we think that Gaston isn’t legitimately the king. Unless we think we don’t owe him allegiance.”

The room was completely quiet.

“What are you suggesting, Colonel?” Turenne said. “You can speak freely here.”

“If you don’t want Gaston to be king, Marshal, you can make that happen. I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, but it’s in your power. In our power.”

“You’re talking about civil war,” Turenne said quietly. “It ripped our country apart half a century ago. People take sides. Innocent people die. It exposes us to the predations of France’s enemies — and believe me, Colonel, France has enemies. Is your USE prepared to take sides in such a conflict?”

“I — I don’t know.”

“Does the Principal know?”

The question caught Sherrilyn by surprise. She wasn’t sure what Turenne was asking — what he implied.

“I have no idea. I don’t work for him anymore, Marshal. I work for you. Do you want me to ask him?”

“Have you not done so already?”

“No. You’ve clearly read my mail,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. She was a little bit scared, but refused to show any of it. “I haven’t asked him a damn thing. I’m guessing that the United States of Europe doesn’t have any interest in nation building, but they’d also prefer that there wasn’t another war going on — there are enough of them happening already.”

“So they will stand by and watch,” Bouillon said. “They will treat Gaston’s actions, direct and indirect, as no more than a sort of coup de theatre.”

I stayed in the back, Sherrilyn thought, to stay out of the way; and now I’m center stage.

“I can’t say. I don’t speak for the government. And other than personal contacts, I don’t speak to the government.” I’m really not a spy, damn it, she thought. Really not. Just someone trying to get along.

And next time I see you, Ed, I’m going to punch you in the mouth.

“Are you looking for advice?” she asked.

“Why, naturally,” Bouillon said. His voice had a bit of an edge to it, but his smile — the Tour d’Auvergne smile, the one Turenne employed to great effect — was broad and cordial. “Say on.”

“Turin is over the mountains, right? A couple of hundred miles. If Gaston is coming from there to France, he’d come this way.” Turenne nodded. “If you’re worried about being conflicted in your loyalty to Monsieur Gaston, then the best thing is not to be along his route. Wherever we go, whatever we decide to do, let’s not meet up with him.”

“We have a radio, Colonel,” Turenne said.

“Does he?”

“There is some indication that he does, and that he has a confederate in Paris with whom he has been in contact. Could he not simply . . . send us an order?”

“He’d have to know how to find us — our call sign, I guess, and our frequency. I was never in the Signal Corps, so I don’t know the details. But there are a hundred reasons why radio contact fails; the best reason is if we just go off the air. Then he’d need to find us — and we could work hard at not being found.”

Turenne beckoned to his brother. Bouillon gave Sherrilyn a slight bow and walked to join him; they conferred very quietly for a few moments. Then Turenne turned to his assembled commanders and said, “You have twenty-four hours to break camp and be prepared to move. The quartermaster and his assistants will organize transportation for equipment not otherwise assigned, including your laboratory, Professor Glauber.” He nodded to his “alchemist,” who looked stunned by the possibility. “We will travel as light as possible, particularly the infantry; tell the men to take only what they must.”

“Where are we headed?” de la Mothe asked.

It was Turenne’s turn to offer the Tour d’Auvergne smile, which he bestowed in Sherrilyn’s direction. “It remains to be seen,” he said. “We will go where we’re needed.”

****

By the first grey light of the new day, Maddox’s Rangers were ready to ride. Turenne was there to see them off — most of the rest of the officers were still asleep, though a few were working on plans to get their units ready to pull up stakes.

“You will give my respects to those whose lands you traverse,” he said. “If they take issue with you — ”

“They shouldn’t.”

“They could. I know that you will keep the men in line and I won’t receive a report of lands laid waste. But the southerners tend to be prickly about armed forces crossing their territory. Still, I don’t think anyone will be so foolish as to — ”

“Start something.”

Turenne smiled. “As to start something. Up-timers always seem to possess le mot juste. Before I send you on your way, do you have any last minute advice?”

“Actually, yes. I’m concerned about the up-timer team up north, the folks working on the steam engines. They need to know about the king’s death.”

“Surely they know.”

“But there are others who don’t. Before you go silent, I’d like to ask you a favor — send them a message about King Louis’ death and the succession of Monsieur Gaston. But don’t encode it: send it in the clear.”

“Because . . .”

“Because it’ll be overheard.”

“By ‘the Principal.'”

“. . . Yes. And others. They need to know, Marshal. I don’t think they’re our enemy — your enemy. France’s enemy.”

“Plenty of people will overhear, Colonel.”

“I don’t think that’s a problem. Do you?”

Turenne thought for a moment, and then smiled again. “No. I do not.”

 

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 27

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 27

“And the cardinal’s as well?”

“It wasn’t mentioned, Highness.” She looked at the pad, running her finger slowly down the long message. “The king and a number of guards. That’s what he said.”

“Ask him,” Gaston said. “Ask if the cardinal’s body was recovered.”

Terrye Jo looked at Monsieur Gaston curiously, but after a few seconds she turned her attention to the radio and sent the question.

The answer came back quickly: NON.

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t recovered.”

Gaston made no secret of his anger this time: whether or not he was upset by the news of the king, he was clearly upset that the incident had not killed Cardinal Richelieu. It was almost as if . . .

“He is certain.”

“I made sure to have him repeat the message, Sire. The soldiers were his guards — Cardinal guards — ”

“The Cardinal’s Guard. Yes. They have a distinctive uniform.”

“Your servant said so. He said that the king was dressed as a Cardinal’s Guard.”

This time it was even more confusing: Gaston was upset, but in a different way — she wasn’t sure why — but she was even more convinced that this report wasn’t a surprise for him.

He knew this was coming.

“The king is dead,” Gaston said at last. “I am now king. I shall have to proceed to Paris at once.” He turned away, adjusting the lace on his cuffs. “There is much to do. I . . . may require your assistance.”

“The duke made it clear that I am to help you in any way you require, Highness,” she said. “If there is a message — ”

He turned back to her. “I will need a skilled telegrapher in Paris. It is my wish that you accompany me.”

“I’d have to discuss that with Duke Amadeus — ”

“I shall speak with him, Mademoiselle.” He walked to the door. “You should prepare to leave as soon as possible,” he said, and left the radio room before Terrye Jo could answer.

Lyon

Turenne’s commanders tramped up the hill through the rain to the villa, stomping into the entry room with their muddy boots. The Marshal had arranged for three grooms to be on hand to clean them, so as not to ruin the carpeting in the ground-floor morning room where the council was to take place.

He was not much inclined toward that sort of meeting. Turenne’s army was as much a modern, professional force as Sherrilyn had seen down-time: particularly over the winter and into the spring, it had become more and more like the sort of army that the USE was developing — organized, well supplied, with specific tasks and responsibilities. It still had some good old-fashioned seventeenth century brawling (and the occasional duel: that was illegal in France, but Turenne turned a blind eye to it — he would rather have such deep-seated feuds resolved in camp than on the battlefield); but by and large, it was a well-delineated chain of command, with a small number of senior officers that dealt directly with their Marshal and handled their respective departments.

Thus, when he called the commanders — including her — together for a conseil de guerre, it was an occasion. It took a little time for them all to assemble, and a little longer for them all to settle into seats. She found a place in the back near Johann Glauber, Turenne’s munitions expert and the man who had developed the new percussion caps. Most of the commanders steered clear of him. He was a little wild-eyed and had a sort of persistent chemical smell around him that tended to spook down-timers.

When the Marshal came into the room they all got to their feet. He was accompanied by another man who bore a distinct family resemblance, though he was older and a little more weathered. Most of the people in the room knew who he was, and some of them doffed their hats to him. He caught Sherrilyn’s eye and seemed to fix his attention directly on her, as if there was no one else in the room.

“Most of you are acquainted with my older brother Frédéric,” Turenne began. “As Prince of Sédan and duc de Bouillon, he outranks me — everywhere but here.” He smiled. “I thought his insights would be valuable.

“We have received confirmation of something that some of you may have already heard. Our sovereign lord, King Louis, is dead.” Turenne took his hat off and bowed; everyone else did likewise. “There was an attack of some sort at some distance from Paris, on a party that included His Eminence Cardinal Richelieu and His Majesty. The king’s body has been conveyed in state to Paris, but there is no word on the cardinal — whether he is dead or alive, there is no news.” The officers began to murmur, and Turenne held up his hand, quieting them.

“There is no way to know,” he continued, “who might have performed this criminal act. The person who benefits the most from the king’s death is his brother, but I have intelligence that indicates that he spent the winter in Tuscany with the queen Mother and is now visiting his sister, the duchess of Savoy, in Turin.”

“He was behind it,” de la Mothe said. “You can count on it.”

“There is no way to know that. It is possible that a group of Spanish horsemen ambushed the king’s party; there are certainly agents provocateurs for Spain within our borders, reporting to — or working with — the Marquis de Mirabel, King Philip’s ambassador in Paris. It is known that in the past he corresponded with Her Majesty.”

“There is no reason to believe that the queen is complicit,” the duc de Bouillon said quietly. His voice was very similar to Turenne’s, quiet but forceful. “At least at this time.”

“She wouldn’t benefit from his death,” de la Mothe said. “With the king dead, Gaston would have no more use for her — he’d send her back to Spain.”

“These are reasonable inferences,” Turenne said. “But there is a further complication: the queen is with child, and is due within the month. Monsieur Gaston has no son: if the queen gives birth to a boy, he would be Gaston’s heir. That makes her either valuable — or vulnerable.”

“I have a question,” Sherrilyn said, raising her hand. The other commanders turned to her; she lowered her hand to her side, feeling a bit silly at the gesture.

“Frédéric,” Turenne said. “It is my honor to present my commander of sharp-shooters, Colonel Sherrilyn Maddox, a Grantvilléuse.”

Bouillon made his way across the sitting-room to where she sat. As he approached she stood, wondering if she should bow or curtsy. Instead she stuck out her hand and he took it, offering a firm grasp. Before he let it go he turned it this way and that, as if examining it.

“A pleasure,” he said at last, letting it go. “Henri has told me a great deal about you, and I have made the up-timers a matter of personal interest. I have collected reprints of a number of interesting books from your wondrous future world.”

“We seem to fascinate lots of people.”

“You do,” he agreed. “You certainly do. Now. Mademoiselle Colonel. What is your question?”

“I’m just a hired gun here, but most of your — most of the Marshal’s — troops are Frenchmen. Their loyalty is to their king, I’d guess; and now their king is going to be Gaston. What does that mean for us?”

Bouillon smiled and turned to face Turenne. “An interesting question, Henri. What do you intend?”

“It is my decision,” Turenne said. “But that is partly why I have assembled you here — to advise me. I do not trust our new king: but he is, or soon will be, our king nonetheless. Cardinal Richelieu assigned me here, and gave me specific directions. Until I know the circumstances of this criminal attack upon our late monarch, I must assume that those directions are still in force.

 

His Father’s Eyes – Snippet 06

His Father’s Eyes – Snippet 06

This deepened the myste’s scowl. “There are no guardian angels, Ohanko. There are sorcerers and mystes, and they rarely act out of altruism.”

“So you believe that someone wants me alive for a specific reason?”

“I do not know what to believe. I will have to think on this at greater length.” He started to fade from view. “Tread like the fox, Ohanko. Do not screw up anymore.”

I chuckled. “Thanks, ghost.”

I heard another rumble, like the whisper of approaching thunder. A moment later he was gone.

I stood, stretched my back, and crossed to the answering machine, which was a relic from a time when devices like this used tiny little cassette tapes. I had several messages, most of them from prospective clients. One was from Billie Castle, who was, for lack of a better term, my girlfriend.

“Hey, Fearsson, it’s me.” I couldn’t help the dumb grin that spread across my face every time I heard her voice. “I know you’re working, and I know we have plans for Friday, but I was wondering if you had time for lunch tomorrow. Nothing fancy — I was thinking the burrito place on Main, near the mall. Call me in the morning.”

I made a note to call her, and jotted down numbers and names from the other messages. Then I dragged myself back to my room and fell into bed, too tired even to bother pulling down the shades.

I woke with the sun, went for a run and showered, and then called Billie to confirm our plans. After grabbing a bite to eat, I got in the Z-ster and drove out to Wofford, west of the city, where my Dad lives in an old trailer.

I go out to see him most Tuesdays. I bring him groceries and other supplies. Sometimes I cook for him. Sometimes I do no more than sit with him and listen to him ramble on and on about God knows what. Every once in a while — maybe one week in five, if I’m lucky — I catch him on a good day and we sit for hours talking about baseball and stuff in the news and police work; he was a cop, too, until his mind quit on him and he lost his job.

Today was Thursday, but I hadn’t liked the way he looked or sounded a couple of days ago, and I wanted to check in on him again. It was a slow drive out of the city — there weren’t any quick drives left in Phoenix — but by nine o’clock I was on U.S. Sixty, following a lonely stretch of road past sun-baked telephone poles and dry, windswept desert. Reaching the rutted dirt road to my father’s place, I turned and steered the Z-ster past the stunted sage, a plume of pale red dust billowing behind me.

I could tell before I reached him that Dad was no better off today than he had been the last time I saw him. He sat slumped in the lawn chair outside his trailer, beneath the plastic tarp I had set up for him a couple of years before, He had his eyes trained on the horizon, and his old Leica binoculars rested in his lap. He wore dirty jeans and a threadbare white t-shirt; they might have been the same clothes he’d been wearing on Tuesday. His sneakers were untied; he didn’t have on socks.

The same way I could judge Namid’s moods by how roiled his waters were, I could tell what state my father was in by the care with which he dressed. When he didn’t change his clothes or bother with socks or shoelaces, it meant he was out of it, and had been for a while. I hoped he’d been eating. Hell, I hoped he had slept in his bed rather than in that old chair.

I parked and got out, squinting against the glare and the dust.

“Hey, Dad,” I called, raising a hand.

He didn’t respond, or even turn my way. I could see that he was muttering to himself. Every few seconds he seemed to wince, as if he were in pain. He hadn’t shaved since the last time I saw him; his slack cheeks were grizzled, making him appear even more haggard than usual. His white hair, unkempt and probably in a need of a washing, stirred in the desert wind.

I walked to where he sat and kissed his forehead. He stank of sweat and his breath was rank. His gaze found mine for a second or two but then slid away again, back to the horizon and the mountain ranges that fell away in layers until they were lost in the brown haze hanging over the city.

“How are you doing, Dad?”

He didn’t take his eyes off the desert, but he shook his head. “Not so good,” he said, his voice strained, the words clipped.

As interactions with my Dad went, this was better than it could have been; at least he had responded to my question, which meant that he was communicative and aware of my presence. Sometimes I didn’t even get that much from him.

I pulled out a second lawn chair and placed it beside his. Sitting, I leaned forward, peering into his eyes. Like mine, they were a soft, smoky gray, and today they appeared glazed, sunken.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“It Tuesday already?”

“No, it’s Thursday. But I was worried about you when I left the other day, so I thought I’d come back.”

He answered with a slow nod, his gaze following the flight of a hawk.

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

“It’s this burning,” he said, whispering the words. “It’s . . . The burning. I can’t make it stop.”

I laid the back of my hand against his forehead, checking for fever. His skin felt cool and dry.

“What burning?”

“They’re burning me, like brands, searing my skin, marking me as theirs.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why, but look at me. Look!” He held out his arms, the undersides bared to the sky, his hands trembling. “Look!” he said again. A tear slipped from his eye and wound a crooked course down his lined face. “So many burns!”

Hallucinations like this one were a common element of my father’s psychosis. A doctor would have told me not to be too concerned: this would pass, and this state was as normal for him as any other. Hell, doctors had told me exactly that on other occasions when his behavior bordered on the bizarre and unsettling.

But as relieved as I was by his lack of fever, and the absence of wounds on his arms, I couldn’t help feeling that this particular delusion was taking a greater toll than others I’d seen him endure.

“Who’s doing this to you, Dad? Who’s burning you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, the words thick with tears, his eyes still fixed on the slack, unmarred skin of his forearms. “They think I matter still. Again. They think I matter, but I don’t.” He swiveled toward me. “You do. You matter. You be careful, boy. They’ll come for you before long. But me . . .” He shook his head again. “I don’t know what they want, or why they think I matter. But they’re here, and I want them to go. I don’t like this.”

“You do matter, Dad.”

“No!” he said with sudden ferocity. “This isn’t the time for sentimental shit! I. Don’t. Matter. But they don’t know it! They don’t! They don’t! They’re searing me with their brands and their torches. They’re poking and prodding and hurting and pushing just to see how far they can take me, just to . . . Just because.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

“I . . .” He closed his eyes, still wincing every few seconds. “A long time,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

“Good. What can I fix for you?”

“Ice cream.”

“Dad–” I stopped myself. The doctors would have told me that when my father was like this, getting calories in him was the most important thing. He was sixty-four. He didn’t have to eat his peas and carrots before he had dessert. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll get you some.”

No response.

I stood, stepped into the trailer. Usually, with my father in such a state, I’d expect to find his kitchen an utter disaster. But it wasn’t. It was worse: it remained exactly as I had left it Tuesday afternoon. I would have bet every dollar in my pocket that he hadn’t eaten since the lunch we’d shared then.

I packed a bowl with mint chocolate chip — his current favorite — and got him a tall glass of ice water as well. Returning to his side, I gave him the water first.

 

He took it, glanced up at me, eyed the water again. He took a sip, closed his eyes once more. Then he tipped the glass back and drained it in about six seconds.

“You want me to get you more?”

He nodded.

I handed him the ice cream and went back inside. I was out again in mere moments, and already the bowl was mostly empty. He still flinched again and again; whatever was bothering him hadn’t gone away. But in these few minutes his color had improved and his eyes had grown clearer.

“They don’t like this,” he said, pointing at the bowl with his spoon, a knowing grin lifting the corners of his mouth. “Not even a little.”

“Who don’t?”

“They can’t burn me as easily when I have this in me. And the water. That, too. They like that even less.”

“Who’s burning you, Dad? Can you tell me now?”

 

 

AND AGAIN ON THE HUGO AWARDS

          I swore to myself—again—that I was I was going to stay away from this ruckus after my first two essays (one long, one short) but some of the posts put up on my web site have worn down that resolve.

          A friend of mine once said “ignorance can be fixed; stupid is forever.” I suspect he’s right, but I will sally forth once again in the hopes that some of these seemingly-stupid statements and arguments are really just the product of ignorance.

          Let me start with this statement, from a recent poster named James May (and don’t complain, dammit; once you post on MY web site, you’re fair game):

“The social justice warrior argument is not specious but right on point. When you have SF authors writing posts about white privilege and others saying straight out they won’t review white men then that represents a sea-change, and a very new one, only 3 years old or so. That sort of thing is not occasional but obsessive and daily and it is not the usual right vs. left, although it is often couched in those terms. That is why people make the mistake of stretching this conflict years and even decades back rather than the months back it deserves.”

          I have two points to make about this, one of which is:

Who the hell are you talking about outside of your right wing echo chamber where idiot acronyms like “SJW” mean something?

          But I’ll get back to that. My first point—picture me spluttering my coffee all over the place when I read it—has to do with this statement:

          “When you have SF authors writing posts about white privilege… that represents a sea-change… This is why people make the mistake of stretching this conflict years and even decades back rather than months it deserves.”

          Excuse me? SF authors have been writing about racism—AKA “white privilege”—for decades. And they came very late to the party. Eighty-eight years before the first Hugo award was handed out, a lowly be-damned politician had this to say on the subject of white privilege:

          “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

          The politician’s name was Abraham Lincoln and he said the above in the course of his second inaugural address as PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

          But according to James May, outraged as he is by “social justice warriors”—once known as the entire Union army led by a fellow named Ulysses S. Grant—this is all the product of a very recent ruckus caused by whoever his contemporary “social justice warriors” consist of.

          The truth is this, as uncomfortable as it may be for some people to hear it: Science fiction can claim credit for a lot of things, but one thing it cannot claim credit for is its track record on issues of racism and sexism. Our genre, at least until very recent times, has been in the rearguard, not the vanguard, of the fight for social justice.

          For decades it was all but impossible to get science fiction publishers to put people of color on the covers of science fiction novels. I can remember sitting in Andre Norton’s living room a few years before she died listening to her excoriate SF publishers for their cowardice on the subject.

          For decades women were either entirely absent from SF stories or, if they did appear, usually appeared as one-dimensional characters. And for a number of SF authors—I will name names, and we can start with Keith Laumer—a female character was doing well if she achieved one-dimensionality. The women in his stories generally amounted to nothing more than walking and occasionally talking pin-up girls. (And if you’re wondering as to my expertise on the subject, I’m the one who edited Baen’s multi-volume reissue of the writings of Keith Laumer.)

          Nor does SF’s none-too-glorious track record when it comes to social justice begin and end with issues of race and gender. There’s a reason the hero of my first published novel, Mother of Demons, is a Jew. It’s because when I was a teenager I was disturbed—well, no, I was actually pretty damn pissed—that there seemed to be no Jews in the worlds of the future depicted in science fiction.

          “What?” I can remember demanding to myself. “Did Hitler somehow win World War II after all?” And I made a solemn vow in the way that fourteen-year-old boys will that if I ever wrote a science fiction novel I would damn well make my hero a Jew. Truth be told, I didn’t really expect I’d ever make good on the promise. But I didn’t forget it, and when the time came—rather to my surprise—I did.

          I am a gentile, by the way. You don’t have to be a Jew yourself to be displeased by science fiction’s tacit accommodation to anti-Semitism even in the years after the Holocaust.

          And puh-leese don’t anyone bother putting up outraged posts pointing to exceptions to the rule.

          Yes, I know there were exceptions to the rule. There are always exceptions to any rule. But that doesn’t change the rule itself—and there’s a reason the word is “rule.”

          Let me quote from Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language:

Rule (n): a principle or regulation governing conduct, action, procedure, arrangement, etc.

Rule (v): to exercise dominating power or influence; predominate.

          So spare me your whining about the exceptions. They didn’t RULE. The rule was that, until shamefully recently, the track record of science fiction when it came to social justice stank to high heaven. A genre that claimed to be in advance of society was actually trailing far behind, on issues of race, gender, or anything that involved “social justice.”

          All right, enough on that. Now I want to get to my next point, which is this:

          I am sick and tired of listening to people whine about “social justice warriors”—or “SJWs,” as they usually call them. I am sick and tired of them for two reasons.

          First of all, I am a social justice warrior. Not an “SJW,” not a figment of the fevered imaginations of right-wingers, but the real deal. As a teenager, I was active in the civil rights movement; as a young man, in the anti-Vietnam war movement. By the time I was in my early twenties I decided I was a socialist—which I am to this day—and I spent the next quarter of a century as a full-time political activist in one or another socialist organization. During that time I devoted most of my energy to political struggles in the industrial trade unions. At one time or another, I have been a longshoreman, a truck driver, a steelworker, an autoworker, an oil refinery worker, a meatpacker, a machinist and even for a few months a genu-ine glass blower.

          I fought corporate bosses at all times and on some occasions, union bosses—including some fairly hair-raising experiences dealing with goons from the national leadership of the Teamsters union, during the early 70s when I was a participant in the fight for democracy in that union.

          I fought for a just distribution of wealth and—more importantly—a reorganization of the way wealth is produced in the first place. I fought for civil rights and women’s rights, and the first rally I ever attended supporting the nascent movement for gay and lesbian rights was held in a black church in Detroit, Michigan back in 1977. And, throughout, I fought against the imperialist tendencies of the American political establishment in foreign affairs.

          Listening to you anti-SJW types whine about your persecution just makes me laugh.

Persecution?

          Boy, are you a bunch of pikers. I have had three murder attempts made on me because of my political beliefs and activities. I can’t remember any longer how many times I’ve been threatened with murder. I have been badly beaten by a mob of right-wing thugs in broad daylight on a public street and the man I was with was crippled for life. (That happened just outside of Birmingham, Alabama in June of 1979. Did the police ever investigate? Be serious. Of course not.)

          I have been physically assaulted because of my political beliefs on perhaps a dozen occasions. Being fair about it, while most of those assaults were carried out by right-wingers, some of them—perhaps a third—were carried out by Maoists. I have no idea how many times I’ve been threatened with physical assault. I lost track decades ago.

          I have been arrested by the police on several occasions. No charges were ever filed, mind you, since they were so bogus no prosecutor would have taken them up. But this is a typical form of police harassment. They can legally hold you in jail for 24 hours without pressing charges, and if you don’t want to miss a day’s work you have to post bail—and if you don’t just happen to have several thousand dollars handy you have to pay a bail bondsman a percentage which you’ll never get back.

          Since I was in my early twenties I’ve known that most careers were closed to me because of my political beliefs and activity. Those include any career in the military, any career in government above the level of a postal clerk, any managerial career in any major corporation—the list goes on and on.

          But you know what? I never once pissed and moaned and groaned about it. I took it for granted because I knew from the outset that if you set yourself in really sharp opposition to the powers-that-be—I’m talking about the real Powers-That-Be—you are bound to pay a price for it. That’s been true in every society back to the Stone Age. I know it—and every real fighter for social justice knows it.

          So shut up. Listening to you right-wingers piss and moan about being victimized because you don’t get nominated for Hugo awards is tiresome. You are the biggest wusses who ever walked the face of the earth.

          Point two. There’s a reason you never actually name these fearsome “SJWs” you constantly carp about. That’s because if you did, you’d immediately become a laughingstock.

          Here’s the truth. Yes, there are people in the world who are insufferably holier-than-thou when it comes to right conduct and righteous thinking. Yes, there are people in the world who will shriek at anyone whom they believe to have engaged in any sort of transgression of proper social norms—and they invariably have the longest and most tender toes in the world. It seems no one can help but step on them, no matter what you say or do.

          To which the proper response is simple. You ignore them and go on your way. And you can do this because outside of a few departments in some universities they don’t amount to a hill of beans. They may make a lot of noise—if you insist on staying in their vicinity, at least—but they have no power worth worrying about.

          That’s why whenever I get into an argument with one of you anti-SJW-warriors, I always say:

NAME NAMES, goddamit. Either name names or shut up.

          And…you never name names. Not because you can’t, but because if you did it would immediately be obvious that these fearsome and ferocious and tyrannical Social Justice Warriors are actually a small bunch of noisy twits who have no real influence over anybody or anything.

          You want to know why Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen and many other authors they like don’t get nominated for Hugo awards or win them? It’s as simple as it gets, and it’s the same reason I never get nominated and Mercedes Lackey never gets nominated and Michael Stackpole never gets nominated. It’s because the subjects that interest us and the way we write about them aren’t either the subjects or the style of writing that most of the people who vote for Hugos either like or think is worthy of getting a Hugo award.

          Period. There’s nothing more to be said.

          Those people have every right to their opinion—just as I have the right to shrug my shoulders and get about my business because, push comes to shove, I don’t care what they think. Or at least, I don’t care enough to change what I write about and how I write.

          I will close with a third point, tangentially related to the first two, which is this:

          While I think the Sad Puppies began this exercise in hyper-ventilation with their screeching about “SJWs”, they are not the only ones who have been guilty of it.

          It is now time for me to state a truth which, while it may surprise or disturb or distress or just plain annoy some people, still needs to be said:

          What is at stake here is not the fate of western civilization—or even the fate of science fiction. The forces of Mordor are not lining up to conquer Middle-earth and we do not face the prospect of eternal rule by Sauron.

          It’s a fricking brawl over an award that the vast majority of the human race has never heard of and could care less about.

          I know Brad Torgersen. He’s not only a friend of mine, he’s one of the people who helps me maintain this web site—and his last contribution a few days ago was to clean up and improve the formatting of an essay I wrote which, among other things, criticized him.

          As the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, he is…

          Well, sadly lacking in the necessary qualities. Just for starters, his wife Annie is not only African-American but about as far removed as it gets from shy and demure and she’d skin him alive if he made any moves in that direction. Whenever the three of us get together to argue politics, she’s way more likely to be on my side than his.

          I don’t really know Larry Correia. I’ve met him only once, at an SF convention, in the course of which we had a political argument that lasted for perhaps an hour. Gee, what a shocker: conservative libertarian Mormon disagrees with commie atheist. Stop the presses!

          For the record, however, our dispute was friendly and cordial and he struck me as a pretty nice guy. I have been told as much by a number of people who know him far better than I do whose opinions I generally trust.

          So he also seems like a pretty unlikely candidate for the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.

          Then there’s Theodore Beale, aka “Vox Day.” Now we come to a far more suitable candidate, Great-Dictator-Reborn-wise. He shares Hitler’s general attitudes on race, certainly, although I don’t know where he stands on the subject of Jews. And he’s even to the right of Hitler on the subject of women. Far to the right, in fact. Hitler thought women should stick to their proper roles in child-rearing, managing households and church activity—“Kinder, Kūche, Kirche”—but he wasn’t actually opposed to women learning how to read and write and he didn’t support honor killings.

          But there are two great differences between Beale and Hitler that make it impossible for Beale to play that role either.

          To start with, whatever his other depravities, Hitler wasn’t a petty chiseler. Whereas Beale is nothing but a petty chiseler. He chisels when it comes to his opinions, always trying to play peekaboo and slime around defending what he obviously believes. And he’s trying to win Hugo awards by petty chiseling.

          But it’s his other characteristic that really disqualifies him for the role of Great Villain in this morality play.

          In a nutshell—and completely unlike Adolf Hitler—Theodore Beale is a fucking clown with delusions of grandeur. This is a man—say better, pipsqueak—who rails to the heavens about the decline—nay, the imminent doom!—of western civilization due to the savageries of sub-human races and (most of all) the pernicious—nay, Satan-inspired!—willfulness of uppity women, and likes to portray himself as the reincarnation of the feared Crusaders of yore, all the way down to wielding a flaming sword.

          And… the best thing he can figure out to do with his time, money and energy is to hijack a few Hugo awards. That’ll show the sub-human-loving treacherous bitches!

          The world trembles and shakes, just like it does in the imagination of a mouse whenever that mouse imagines itself to be an elephant. Except no mouse who ever lived was this stupid.

          On the flip side of the equation, I also know John Scalzi. I first met him online a few years ago, as another participant in a group organized by Charlie Stross to combat the tendencies of most publishers at the time to follow the lead of the music industry—specifically, the Pied Piper known as Digital Rights Management (DRM)—when it came to so-called “piracy.” Cory Doctorow was another member of the group.

          Ironically, in light of their later stereotyping by some people in “the Baen crowd,” all of the participants in that group were admirers of Baen Books’ policy on electronic publishing. As was…

          (roll of drums)’

          Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the Tor editor who seems to serve the anti-SJW crowd as Chief Dastardly Villain Number One, except when John Scalzi does. I’ve only met Patrick once, at a Tor party at a convention (don’t remember which one, but it was probably one of the World Fantasy cons), and what he wanted to talk about was his support for Baen’s policy. “The only publisher who really knows what they’re doing when it comes to electronic publishing,” was the way he put it.

          I can’t say I’m exactly friends with John Scalzi, since we’ve only met a few times and then briefly. But we’re certainly on friendly terms and I have to say that the depiction of him by the anti-SJWers is every bit as laughable as the depiction of Brad Torgersen or Larry Correia as the second coming of Attila the Hun.

          Lessee… a middle-aged white guy who writes military SF about old white guys and riffs on Star Trek is… a social justice warrior literary author.

Gee, who knew?

          By the way, many readers have told me that—as is true with me—they assumed that Scalzi was a right-winger because—as is true with me—he likes to write military SF. Some of them—as is true with me—even manage to read several novels by him without being disabused of the notion. Proving once again that the novel someone reads is not necessarily the same novel the author wrote.

          The point I’m trying to get at here is that everyone in this debate/brawl/ruckus/call-it-whatever-you-choose needs to be a little careful lest you fall into Theodore Beale’s rabbit hole and start having delusions about both friends and enemies.

          I think one side in this dispute is wrong—that’s the side championed by Brad and Larry. I think that, not because I think the Hugo awards don’t have a lot of problems—I do, and I explained those at length in my first essay—but because their analysis of the problem is so wrong as to be downright wrong-headed. But I don’t think they pose a mortal threat to social justice, western civilization, science fiction or even the Hugo awards themselves.

          Why did they launch this brawl and keep pursuing it? Well, I’ve always been a devotee of Napoleon’s dictum: “Never ascribe to malevolence what can be adequately explained by incompetence.” I don’t think there was anything involved except that, driven by the modern American right’s culture of victimization—they are always being persecuted; there’s a war on white men, a war on Christmas (no, worse! a war on Christians themselves!), blah blah blah—they jumped to the conclusion that the reason authors they like weren’t getting Hugo awards or even nominations was because of the Great Leftwing Conspiracy against the righteous led by unnamed Social Justice Warriors—presumably being shuttled around the country in their nefarious plots in black helicopters—and off they went.

          If they’d simply said: “We think the Hugos have gotten too skewed against popular authors in favor of literary authors,” there’d have still been a pretty ferocious argument but it never would have reached this level of vituperation.

          But simply stating a problem wasn’t good enough for them. No, following the standard modern right-wing playbook, SOMEBODY MUST BE TO BLAME.

          Enter… the wicked SJWs! (Whoever the hell they are. They’re to blame, dammit.)

          I think the same mindset explains Larry Correia’s otherwise incomprehensible initial championing of Vox Day. I don’t think Larry thought much about it, frankly, or took the time to find out who “Vox Day” really was. I think he just figured if liberals don’t like him, he must be okay, following the same rightwing trope that led American right-wingers to initially champion Phil Robertson and Cliven Bundy until they were shocked to discover that they were actually vicious racists.

          (Gee, who knew? Answer: anybody with a half a brain not blinded by right-wing victimization culture.)

          Then—as predictably as the sunrise—the Sad Puppies’ campaign of blame and character assassination triggered off a response that often got just as savage as their own campaign. Sometimes, in fact, exceeded it in savagery. I think the other side in the dispute—insofar as it consists of one “side” at all—is mostly right on the substance of the dispute but is sometimes way off base in the way they characterize their opponents. Characterizing either Brad Torgersen or Larry Correia as a racist, a misogynist or a homophobe—as a number of their opponents have done—is just slimy and disgusting.

          (Yes, I know about Brad’s recent stupid and mildly-homophobic wisecrack about Scalzi, which John responded to perfectly. Sorry, folks, that constitutes residual prejudice, not “homophobia.” Get a grip. Just as every nitwit who shrieks on a web site somewhere about the omnipresence of male chauvinism is not a fearsome Social Justice Warrior, every middle-aged white guy who makes a stupid remark about who is and who isn’t gay is not the Waffen SS.)

          To put it more briefly—not my strong suit, I admit; why do you think I write novels?—I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and stop hyper-ventilating.

          I’m not attending the Worldcon this year. That’s not due to this controversy, it was a decision I made more than a year ago when I looked at my travel schedule for 2015. There was no particularly reason for me to attend, it’s an expensive proposition—in time even more than in money—so I’m not.

          And I never buy a supporting membership just to vote on the Hugos. Why would I? I’ve never cast a vote on the Hugos, even when I’ve attended the convention itself. Why? First, because I don’t care very much (if at all) who wins. Second, because I’ve rarely read more than one or two of even the nominated novels much less the short fiction so I would feel dishonest casting a vote for “the best” story when I haven’t read most of them.

          Nonetheless, I will provide my advice for those who are planning to vote and are not sure how to handle this controversy. My advice is simple: vote the same way you would for any year’s Hugo award. It doesn’t matter who got Story X, Y or Z on the ballot. That has always, being blunt about it, involved a lot of sausage-making behind the scenes. Wherever they came from, these are this year’s nominees. So vote for whichever story you like—or cast a vote for “no award” if you don’t like any of them enough.

          I will close by providing links to two essays that I strongly recommend to anyone who has been interested enough in what I have to say to read this far. The first is by Samuel R. Delaney, one of the great figures in science fiction, on the subject of racism—a subject about which he not only knows far more than people who screech about “SJWs” but has actually thought deeply and very intelligently about, which they have not.

          The second is by Michael Stackpole and expresses many of them things I’ve tried to express and often better than I have.

http://www.nyrsf.com/racism-and-science-fiction-.html

http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=3583

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 24

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 24

Chapter 14

Chateau de Baronville, Beville-le-Comte

Katie Matewski took the queen’s hand by the wrist and looked at her watch, counting the pulses as the second-hand swept around. The watch had belonged to her mother and had probably cost $10 back in the day — but now it was a priceless up-timer artifact, a jewel of the clock-maker’s art crafted in miniature and wrapped around an up-timer’s wrist.

Despite her now regular contractions, Queen Anne took notice of the watch, as if it was part of the French crown jewels.

“My ladies are still suspicious of you,” she said. “They would rather that a proper midwife handle this duty.”

“Imagine if I were a man,” Katie said after a moment. She took a pencil from the pocket of her coat and made a notation on the chart by the bed.

Anne looked shocked. “A man? For a birth?”

“Well,” Katie answered, “I was delivered by a man. So were my brothers and sisters and cousins and . . . well, most doctors are men, Your Majesty. At least where — when — I come from.”

“Doctors, yes . . .” a contraction made her tense; she bit her lip. “But this is no matter for doctors.”

“It is up-time. But I suppose it’s really the province of women in this time. No matter — I’m here now, by arrangement, and it all seems fine. There are a dozen things I wish I could do but the technology isn’t here. . . but how do you feel?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that question during childbirth.”

“First time for everything, Majesty.”

Anne reached down below the sheet and tentatively touched the outside of her womb, winced, and lowered her hand to the bed, clenching the sheets.

“The little one is strong.”

“That’s good.”

“He will be a forceful little prince.”

“If he’s a boy.”

Anne frowned. “I have had masses said for months and have sent donations to many shrines in France with requests for their prayers. He will be a boy.”

I hope you’re right, Katie thought to herself. “Yes, Majesty.”

There was a small commotion at the door. Madame de Chevreuse, who had been sitting quietly with her rosary across the room, had moved with astounding speed to stand in the way of a pair of men who appeared intent on entering.

“Let me pass,” said the one in the lead, who was wearing a bishop’s vestments. “I am here with my brother Achille on behalf of His Most Christian Majesty to witness the birth.”

Madame de Chevreuse stepped aside. The two men entered the room. The bishop was an impressive gentleman of middle age dressed in episcopal finery, though he wore no hat. He walked to the bedside and offered a bow to Queen Anne; she extended her hand, letting go of the sheet. He took hold of it and when she made to bring his episcopal ring to her lips, he placed his other hand on hers and smiled.

“Majesty, I am so glad to be received by you today.”

“Thank you for being here, Your Grace. The Bishop of Chartres is most welcome in our chambers.”

“It is my honor to visit so distinguished a guest within my diocese.”

“You honor –” another contraction struck; they were coming close together now. Katie wanted to step forward but decided that it could wait for pleasantries to be concluded. “You honor us with your presence, My Lord d’Étampes de Valençay.”

“I have said regular masses for you and your child. In the interest of your comfort, we shall repair to the side and stay out of the doctor’s way.” He looked from Anne to Katie.

“Please remain close, Your Grace.”

“I shall be no further than a few feet away, Your Majesty.”

Anne let go of his hand and turned her head aside. Sweat beaded on her forehead. As Bishop Léonore and his brother withdrew, Katie stepped forward.

“With your permission, Majesty,” she said, “I would like to check your dilation.”

Anne pulled the sheet aside. “When the next king comes into the world,” she said, gritting her teeth, “his arrival must be visible. Madame Katie, attend, s’il vous plait.”

Near Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines, France

Fifty miles is a stiff ride, even for experienced horsemen. The king was accustomed to riding to the hunt. But that had become a stylized affair, with pauses and servants and luncheons. No one with the pedigree of the Most Christian King of France had to work very hard or ride very fast. As for the cardinal, though trained as a soldier and a skilled horseman, he was no longer in practice.

But the need was great, and the motivation was strong: aches and pains be dispensed with and weather be damned. By mid-morning the sun had been shrouded by clouds; by the time they entered the Forest of Rambouillet the ground was cloaked in fog.

At last, late in the afternoon, Cardinal Richelieu called a halt in a clearing beside the road. The dozen Cardinal’s Guards took up their customary positions. One of them dismounted and walked over to where the cardinal stood next to his horse. Servien was nearby, attending to the mounts’ harnesses.

“This is exhilarating,” the king said. “Exhilarating.” He pulled off his gloves and shrugged his shoulders, adjusting the cloak of the Guard.

“I am gratified to hear it, Your Majesty,” Richelieu said. “I trust you are holding up well.”

“It’s like a hunt,” Louis answered. “Except, except that there is no quarry.”

Richelieu didn’t answer, but raised one eyebrow. There is a quarry, my king, he thought. It is all of your enemies.

“Do you think she has given birth yet?”

“It is difficult to say, Majesty. If she began her labor early in the morning, it would be close now. I directed Léonore d’Étampes de Valençay, my lord bishop of Chartres, to attend the queen. He will be at the chateau by now.”

“I am sure that Anne will be pleased to have a, a man of his stature on hand.”

“He is very good in such situations. His brother is not quite as subtle, but Achille is as brave a man as serves Your Majesty. If there is any trouble at Baronville, he will be a good one to have on hand.”

“Trouble? What sort of trouble?”

“I expect none . . . but I am inclined to be careful, Sire.”

“That is most wise, my friend. I –”

Somewhere nearby in the foggy gloom there was the sound of a high-pitched whistle.

“What was that?”

“I am not sure,” Richelieu said. He turned away from the king and signaled to the captain of his guard.

And then, as if it were a scene from a costumed drama, a score of mounted men, hooded and weapons drawn, burst from the wood on either side. The scene erupted into chaos. Those Guards who had not dismounted urged their horses into the fight, moving to form a protective ring around Richelieu and the king.

“Who dares to attack thus?” Richelieu shouted. He stretched out his hand and drew a flintlock pistol from his saddlebags.

“Don’t worry,” Louis said. “There is not a bandit alive whom I cannot best in combat.” He ran a half-dozen steps and swung himself up onto his horse, drawing a sabre and placing himself in the path of a handful of oncoming attackers.

Richelieu was too stunned to respond. All around him, Cardinal’s Guards were engaging in close combat with the attackers. His own men were getting the better of them, but two of them had already fallen. Of the four that were charging toward King Louis, two were drawn aside by Guardsmen. All wore cloaks with hoods that hid their faces, but the two that came closer were familiar in some way. There was something about the way they sat their horses, Richelieu thought — or something more simple: the shape and length of their arms and legs…

The first of the two remaining attackers rushed headlong at Louis, who was partially turned away. With skill and grace that surprised even Richelieu, the king turned with precision and swung his blade, knocking the man from his saddle and onto the ground. Blood gushed from the man’s side; the wound was probably not fatal but severe enough to take the king’s assailant out of the action.

The second attacker, just behind, seemed enraged by the act. He charged forward, hurling his strength and momentum into the thrust of his sword. King Louis, off balance due to the powerful blow he’d just struck, was unable to deflect his opponent’s blade in time. The sword point entered his chest, easily penetrating the tabard and shirt below it and driving into his heart.

The wound was instantly fatal. From ten feet away, Cardinal Richelieu watched as the swordsman’s hood flew back, revealing his face — and it was then that he recognized him: César, duc de Vendôme, légitimé de France.

“Treason!” he cried.

In the dim light Cardinal Richelieu could see that Vendôme recognized who he had stabbed. A look of surprise and horror crossed his features. Clearly, he had not realized the identity of his opponent, garbed as the king was in the uniform of a Cardinal’s Guard.

It was still treason. Richelieu cocked his pistol with both hands.

*****

In the moment before he struck the blow Vendôme recognized the man who stood between him and his target. But it was too late to stop — much too late. Even if it had been possible to consider restraining the killing stroke, years of experience in combat put it beyond question. Louis XIII was no fop. He was a strong man with skill and experience in sword work. To stop would have simply been suicide.

The king was not the man he’d wished to kill, and for a moment the duc de Vendôme regretted the all-consuming hatred of Richelieu that had distorted his vision. Even wearing the uniform of a guard, César should have recognized his sovereign. He knew Louis very well and had sparred with him personally. The way he sat his horse, the way he handled his blade… He should have heard the voice, the one he had known since they were children together. Maybe that would have stayed his hand.

But the moment of regret was brief. They were still in the middle of a fight and the duke had other opponents to deal with. One, in particular. As the king fell from his seat to the forest floor, Vendôme drew the sword from his victim, and turned his attention to Richelieu.

Who, he saw, had a pistol aimed directly at him.

*****

The cardinal fired. Though he was a man of the cloth and not very familiar with personal combat, Richelieu had steady nerves. The shot did not go wild but struck Vendôme in the head. Unfortunately, the ball glanced off rather than penetrating the skull, sending the duke’s hat flying. His face covered with blood, Vendôme half-slid off his saddle. Richelieu did not think he was dead — not yet — but he was certainly stunned. He began to reload the pistol.

But before he could finish reloading a ball struck him. The shot seemed to come from nowhere. It was quite possible the man who fired it had no idea where it had struck.

“Kill them all!” Richelieu heard someone shout. He was sure it was not one of his own men. “Leave none alive!” And then, as if the mercy of the Lord descended upon him as the dew of Hermon, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duke de Richelieu, fell into blackness.

 

His Father’s Eyes – Snippet 03

His Father’s Eyes – Snippet 03

I took a long breath, and then I eased around the corner, keeping my back to the building wall, and placing each step as softly as I could. Darby didn’t notice me. I sidled toward him, wondering as I did what spell I ought to try next. Mark was bigger than I had thought — maybe six foot four, and nearly as wide as he was tall. He was soft around the middle, and with his shaggy curls and thick features he bore more resemblance to a pastry chef than to a linebacker, but still he had at least six inches and sixty pounds on me.

Most times I might have been able to take him anyway. I was wiry and I kept myself in shape. But my muscles had atrophied a bit in the past few weeks. For this evening at least, I was hoping to rely on magic rather than brute force. That said, I was doing all right. My physical therapist had warned me that my leg might start to hurt if I tried to do too much, but for the moment it felt good. Too good.

Overconfidence in a sorcerer — or in an investigator for that matter — can be deadly. In this case it wasn’t that bad; it was just stupid. As I drew closer to Darby and the car, I slid my lead foot into an empty bottle that had been left by the side of the building. It fell over with a clinking sound, rolled in a circle and bumped up against the building again.

Darby spun. “Who’s there?”

He sounded scared, and his eyes were wide. But he was looking bigger by the moment, and in the time it took him to whirl in my direction, he had pulled out a .380 — in that light I couldn’t tell what brand. Not that it mattered.

He was staring at the bottle, and still had given no indication that he could see me. But I didn’t like the way he was holding his weapon; I half expected him to fire off a few rounds in my general direction, to be on the safe side.

I cast another spell, three elements this time. My fist, his jaw, and an impact that would rattle his teeth. It was a simpler conjuring, and I didn’t have time to wait for the magic to build. I cast, and an instant later, he reeled. I charged him, the leg that had been shot going from “fine” to “crap that hurts!” in about two strides. If I survived the night, my PT was going to kill me.

Darby must have heard my footsteps, even though he still couldn’t see me. He straightened, aimed his weapon — straight at my chest as dumb luck would have it. I knew I wouldn’t reach him in time. I wasn’t moving well and the distance was too great. I tried to recite that same three-part spell again, desperate to do anything I could to knock him off balance.

But I didn’t have time even for that. I saw his finger move. An image flashed through my mind: me lying on the filthy pavement, still shrouded in my camouflage spell, bleeding out because no one could see me. Until I died, at which point my casting would cease as well. Spells die with the sorcerer; it’s one of the fundamental rules of magic.

I’m a dead man.

Flame belched from the muzzle of his weapon, three times. The reports roared, echoing off the building. And in that scintilla of an instant — not even the blink of an eye — I thought I sensed a frisson of power ripple the air around me.

Then it was gone.

All three shots should have hit me. The distance between us wasn’t great, and Darby appeared to know how to handle a firearm.

But he missed. Somehow, incredibly, he missed.

He stared, not really at me, since I remained camouflaged, but at the spot where he’d been aiming. Then he glanced down at his pistol.

For a moment, I could do little more than gape myself, amazed at the mere fact that I was still upright and breathing. But he was still armed, and I didn’t feel like trusting to good fortune a second time.

I went back to the fist spell, staggering him again. And before he could recover, I closed the distance between us, hammered a real fist into his gut, and knocked him to the ground with another blow that struck high on his temple. The pistol clattered on the pavement and I kicked it beyond his reach.

He stirred, but before he could push himself up, I planted a foot in the middle of his back, forcing him back down to the ground. For good measure, I pulled out my Glock and pressed it against the nape of his neck.

“Don’t move, Mark.”

He stiffened.

“I’m feeling twitchy, and I’m a little pissed at you for taking shots at me. So I’d suggest you do exactly what I tell you to.”

“Who the hell are you?”

I pushed harder with the pistol. “Shut up.”

He gave a quick nod.

“Now, I want you to put your hands out to the sides where I can see them. Slowly.”

He stretched his arms wide. He had turned his head to the side and I could tell he was trying to get a look at me.

Casting the camouflage spell had been complicated; getting rid of it was easy. Three elements: Darby, me, and my appearance, warts and all. Not that I have warts . . . As I said, there’s nothing inherently magical about the elements themselves; more than anything, having them in my head, reciting them a few times, helps me focus my conjuring. Other conjurers might have used other techniques, but this one worked for me.

One second he couldn’t see me, the next he could.

“Whoa,” he said, breathing the word. “How’d you do that?”

“Do what? Kick your ass? It wasn’t that hard.”

“No, I mean–”

“You’re going to answer some questions for me.” I pulled a small digital recorder from the pocket of my bomber.

“The hell I am. I know my rights.”

“I’m not a cop, and you have no rights.”

“If you’re not a cop–”

“I’m a PI. I was hired by Nathan Felder to find out who’s been robbing his stores.” I switched on the recorder. “What’s your name?”

No answer. I smacked the top of his head with the butt of my pistol — just hard enough to get his attention — and then pressed the barrel against his neck again.

“What’s your name?”

“Mark Darby,” he said, his voice low enough that I wasn’t entirely confident the recorder would pick it up.

“How long have you been stealing goods from Custom Electronics?”

“I don’t know what–”

I smacked him again.

“Ow! About four months.”

That matched what Felder told me when he hired me.

“Who are you working with?”

He clamped his mouth shut.

Before I could ask him again, I heard a siren wail from not too far away. I listened for a few seconds, long enough to know that it was coming in this direction. Felder would not be happy.

“That’s your fault, Mark. If you hadn’t shot at me, no one would have called the cops.”

“I guess I have rights now, don’t I?”

 

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 23

1636: The Cardinal Virtues – Snippet 23

Chapter 13

Paris

The balcony doors were open to the crisp spring air, contrary to the admonitions of all down-time physicians. The view was magnificent: he could see the imposing façade of the Eglise-St.-Eustache, now nearly finished after a century of on-and-off labor.

Claude de Bourdeille, Comte de Montrésor, was fond of St. Eustache. His grandfather had been also. Most people only remembered the Seigneur de Brantôme for his memoirs and writings — entertaining, yes, but a trifle too lurid and explicit for the common person’s tastes. Yet he had had an artistic eye as well as a critical pen, and he would have been very pleased to see the great church in this almost-complete state.

As for the rest of Paris, and the rest of France . . . Montrésor was not sure what he would have thought of that. The Ring of Fire had changed everything: politics, culture, science, and — for those who did not understand what divine or infernal purpose might have brought up-timers into this century — religion as well.

What he was not fond of was waiting. Or, to be honest, being summoned: the letter from Louis de Soissons had been insistent, almost to the point of rudeness. Louis was a prince of the blood and acted the part. He was a Bourbon to the hilt, as arrogant as his royal cousins. No lesser person would have commanded Montrésor’s attention.

Montrésor had almost reached the limit of his patience when the count himself swept into the room. He walked to where Montrésor stood near the doors.

“Claude. So good of you to come.”

“I could hardly refuse. But you should realize that I have been observed.” He waved out the window. Down below, on the Rue Saint-Antoine, near the steps of Saint-Eustache, there was a man loitering. He was plainly dressed and was looking up at the balcony.

Louis, Count of Soissons, stepped closer and looked down.

“Quality. One of the cardinal’s finest. Servien — and not the one who stays so close: his older cousin Abel, the one that styles himself Marquis de Sablé.”

Montrésor sniffed. “They are all the same.”

“They are not,” Soissons said. “But it is of no matter.” He reached into his doublet and drew out a sheet of paper. “They can watch all they want. I have news, and shortly your master will have it as well.”

“What news?”

“Our friend in the red robe is on his way to see the queen give birth. He has just received a message by radio, and has left the city.”

“Where is he going?”

“Somewhere to the west, not terribly far from Paris, Claude. I’m not sure just where. The queen — and soon the next king of France, assuming the blessed event is successful.”

“Monsieur will be glad of the knowledge, but he will not be pleased that the birth is imminent.”

Monsieur, the title given to the heir to the throne, currently belonged to Gaston d’Orleans, the king’s younger brother. Montrésor had the honor at the moment to be Monsieur’s favorite, which was enough to keep him away from his beloved Paris. He had spent altogether too little time here, in part due to the constant suspicion of Cardinal Richelieu. Ever since Montrésor had decided to attach himself to Monsieur Gaston, his comings and goings had been carefully watched by the spies and intendants and other little creatures employed by the red-robed menace who ruled this kingdom and its weak-willed king. As a result he had thought it best to remain by Monsieur’s side or at his estate in the country, depriving himself of the pleasures of the great city — and incidentally depriving the cardinal of information on his friends and activities.

Soon, Montrésor thought to himself, that will all change.

“How did you get this information, did you say?”

“A radio transmission. There is a radio at the chateau.”

“And you have a spy at the Louvre who relayed the message. Very clever, Monsieur le Comte — I am surprised that you could break Richelieu’s security –”

“I didn’t, Claude. I merely intercepted the transmission.” Soissons smiled. “I have intercepted all the transmissions.”

Montrésor frowned, baffled. “I don’t understand. If you . . . intercepted the message . . . then how was it received by the cardinal?”

“You don’t really understand radio, do you?”

Montrésor put on his best expression of noble disdain, as if the entire matter was beneath him. “Some up-timer matter. I’m sure it is a wonder.”

Soissons sighed. Gaston — Monsieur Gaston, who should have been, and might someday be, king of France — was arrogant, petulant, self-absorbed and at times ruthless: but at least he wasn’t an idiot. The count wondered how long Montrésor — elegant, cultured Montrésor, who was near cousin to an idiot — would last as Gaston’s favorite.

“A radio message,” Soissons said patiently, “is not like a letter. It is like a town crier — one that speaks a different language that only its recipients can hear.”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“The town crier goes from place to place and gives out the news,” Soissons said. “Except this one speaks — I don’t know, Catalan. And no one in the town square speaks Catalan except one person, and he understands what the crier says.”

“So you bribed the Catalan speaker.”

“No,” Soissons answered. “No. I found someone who speaks Catalan and hired him. So when the crier gives the news, I hear it too, and understand it.”

“So. . . the people where the Queen is in seclusion are sending you messages as well?”

“Yes. No, not exactly.” Soissons ran a hand through his hair. “The radio there is broadcasting — shouting — a message. Richelieu is receiving the message, and so am I.”

“Is that possible? I thought a radio talked to another radio.”

“A radio talks to all the radios that might be listening at the time. They use a code, but it’s primitive enough that it was easily broken. Everything His Eminence hears, my radio hears as well. He has no idea that I am listening in, of course — but now I know where he is going.”

“I assume that you are having him followed.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Better than that, Claude. If all goes well, our good cardinal will never reach his destination.”

Forêt de Rambouillet

César, duc de Vendôme, légitimé de France, sat on his charger, appreciating the quiet moment that occurred just before battle. To call what was to come a battle, of course, was an exaggeration at best; but the quiet was reassuring nonetheless. The weather enhanced the quiet. The rain had mostly gone, replaced by a faint drizzle and a fog that shrouded the late afternoon light.

This feeling joined with the elation he felt to be back in France. He had been away from his beloved country, having left in haste four years earlier, just after the arrival of the infernal Ring of Fire, exiled from France for perceived offenses against the crown. But it was not his younger half-brother, the king, who had exiled him. It was his advisor, his minister, the very incarnation of the Devil Himself: Richelieu.

He hated that name and hated the man who owned it. He had made sure to teach his sons to hate him as well — just as Hamilcar had instilled hate into his sons in ancient Carthage. François, who was now with César’s other half-brother, Monsieur Gaston, and Louis, who sat on his own horse beside him, had learned the lesson well.

“Father.”

César sighed, the quiet broken. “What is it, Louis?”

“Do you ever think about fate, Father? About what might have been?”

The duc de Vendôme smiled and looked at his son. Louis at twenty reminded him very much of himself at the same age: tall, handsome, smart — and ruthless. A fine trait, he thought to himself.

“I should like to say ‘never,’ ” he said. “But the truth is that I think about it all the time. The God-cursed up-timers have made us all consider what might have been and what might never been. There have been so many changes since they arrived. . . but imagine if they had come thirty or forty years earlier. Things might have been different. Very different.”

“Do you think you might have been king?”

“I don’t know.” César reached up and smoothed down his long moustaches. He kept them in a style a few years out of date in France; Louis was far more trim and in fashion. “I am the eldest son of King Henri. My mother, your grandmother, was the king’s first and greatest love — perhaps his only true love: Gabrielle d’Estrées. When she died, still as his mistress, he held a state funeral.”

“La Belle Gabrielle.”

“Just so. My father always thought she had been poisoned, along with my youngest brother who died with her. He mourned her death most piteously — I was not quite five years old, but I remember that he was inconsolable. The procession included every person of note, and made its way to Saint-Denis for the funeral mass — and then out to Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône where she was interred at Notre-Dame-la-Royale de Maubuisson in solemn ceremony. It was a wonder.”

“The queen must not have been happy.”

“Hah.” César leaned aside, hawked and spat. “She did not arrive for a year thereafter. King Henri did not marry for love, just as he did not embrace the One Faith from piety. He became a Catholic to become the king of France and he chose a wife to give him offspring. The old brood mare gave him just what he wanted: sons and daughters, my brothers and sisters. The queen — the lady Marie — brought us all together, princes and princesses of the blood and royal bastards. No one ever forgot their status. I was constantly reminded of it, and so was my brother Alexandre.”

His fist clenched where it held the reins of his horse. The mount, sensing the motion, stirred and neighed quietly. César ran his free hand gently through its mane and it quieted.

“Monseigneur Richelieu has much to answer for.”

Louis knew that his father and his uncle Alexandre had run afoul of the cardinal and they had both been sent to the Bastille for a plot against him. Alexandre had not survived the experience.

“And he will answer,” César said. “Most assuredly. With the intelligence given us, we are here to make sure of it. You and our other fine gentlemen — ” he waved behind at the troop of horsemen waiting quietly in the fog — “can do whatever you wish with the guardsmen who travel with him: but Richelieu is mine.”

As the last statement hung in the air, there was a high-pitched whistle in the distance.

César de Vendôme turned to look back at his troop. He raised a gloved hand and gestured toward the road, lost in the fog ahead. The men pulled forward the hoods of their cloaks and, at a signal, galloped together toward their quarry.

 

His Father’s Eyes – Snippet 02

His Father’s Eyes – Snippet 02

Chapter 2

The image flickered in my scrying stone, like a candle guttering in the wind, before becoming more fixed, more substantial. I hadn’t been sure the spell would work, but there he was — “he” being Mark Darby, an employee at Custom Electronics, in Mesa, who had been stealing computers, phones, stereo equipment, and pretty much anything else you could think of. He was by the loading dock at the rear of the store, shoving boxes into the back of a beat-up old Subaru wagon.

“Gotchya,” I whispered, still peering down at the stone.

Darby’s bosses had known for some time that someone on their staff was robbing them, but they didn’t know who; only that he or she had been clever enough to avoid detection for the better part of four months.

Until now.

Not that the magical vision I’d summoned to the stone was proof, at least not the kind that I could use in any court of law.

“No, your honor, I don’t have any surveillance tape. But I cast a seeing spell and saw him in this shiny piece of agate . . .”

Right.

But now that I knew for certain who the thief was, I had no intention of letting him get away.

I got out of the Z-ster, my silver 1977 280Z, which was parked along a side street near the store, closed the door with the care of a burglar, and began to limp toward the loading dock.

If someone had told me a year ago that getting shot could be a good thing, I would have said that person was nuts. And I know nuts. I’m a weremyste, which means that for three nights out of every month — the night of the full moon, and the nights immediately before and after — I lose control of my mind and my magic. It also means that eventually, the cumulative wear-and-tear of those monthly phasings will leave me permanently insane. As they have my Dad.

But this is about the risks of my profession, as opposed to the dangers of my runecrafting. I’m a private investigator, owner and president of Justis Fearsson Investigations. And not so long ago I was shot — twice, as it happens — by a powerful sorcerer named Etienne de Cahors, who was known here in Phoenix as the Blind Angel Killer. He didn’t survive our encounter, mostly because I had help from Kona Shaw, my old partner on the Phoenix police force.

Bringing down the bastard responsible for the Blind Angel murders, a killing spree that had terrorized the Phoenix area for the better part of three years, was enough to make me a hero. Ending up with a couple of bullets in me was icing on the cake and it got me in the headlines. Business, which was slow before then, had been booming ever since. Except that for the first several weeks I had one arm in a sling and my leg bandaged from hip to knee, and so I couldn’t do much more than sit on the couch in my home and answer the phone. People were lining up to hire me, and I was every bit as eager to get to work. But for more than a month I had no choice but to decline more jobs than I had worked in the previous year.

I still miss being a cop — losing my badge about killed me — but if I can’t be on the force, working as a PI is the next best thing. Despite the reward money I’d collected for killing Cahors, I didn’t want to sit on my butt catching up on the latest in daytime drama; I wanted to do my job. So about ten days ago, when I was cleared by the doctors and my physical therapist to start working again, I took the first offer that came my way. The doctors and PT told me to take it easy, and I really have tried to be good. But it’s not like there are volume settings for investigative work. You’re on or you’re off. Despite my limp, and the lingering twinge in my arm, I was on again, and I was glad.

I reached the back of the building, and peeked around the corner to get some sense of how far I was from the loading dock. Pretty far, it turned out. Custom Electronics was one of those huge warehouse stores that seem to go on for miles, and so I was still at least one hundred yards from Darby and his wagon. But the old floodlights shining high over the loading area were strong enough for me to see him. They would also be strong enough for him to see me when I stepped around the corner.

I ducked back out of sight and hesitated, unsure as to whether I could pull off the spell I had in mind.

I had spent a good deal of my recovery time honing my casting — my runecrafting, as Namid would call it. There was nothing like almost dying at the hands of a renegade runemyste to motivate a person. Namid, who oversaw my magical training, had taught me a number of new spells, including the variation on a standard seeing spell I had used to track Darby. Two nights ago, we had worked on camouflage spells, which, in theory anyway, would make me virtually invisible to the man. I’d practiced such spells before, and I was growing more comfortable with them. Problem was, I had never used one out on the street, when it really mattered, and I had no confidence that I could pull it off on my own, without Namid instructing me each step of the way.

Then again, I didn’t have any better options. If I could have made myself fly, or given myself superhuman speed, I would have. But magic doesn’t work that way, at least not for weremystes who still have way too much to learn about runecrafting. I had my .40 Glock 22 in a shoulder holster beneath my bomber jacket, but I didn’t think Darby was armed, and I wasn’t aiming to hurt the guy. My goal was to catch him in the act with enough clear evidence to convince his employers of his guilt. Those employers had impressed upon me that they didn’t want to involve the police in any way, for fear of embarrassing the company.

The most simple of the spells I cast required three elements; this one would require more. Seven probably. Certain numbers carried more power than others: three, seven, eleven. I’d never managed to cast a spell with eleven elements; I had trouble keeping track of all of them. But I could handle seven.

Darby, me, the wall of the building, the dim light of those floods, the cement under my feet, the chain link fence and bushes behind me, and Darby again. Seven elements. The truth was, it didn’t matter what those elements were, so long as I could keep them fixed in my mind long enough to cast the spell.

I recited the litany to myself six times, and on the seventh go-round, I released the magic that had been building inside me. I felt the spell settle over me, as light as mist, as reassuring as a blanket.