I continue to hold that nearly all human beings are rational actors within their own frames of reference, and that to understand why we do what we do, want what we want, and believe what we believe requires that we be willing to look at how someone’s frame of reference differs from our own.

I continue to be increasingly vexed by the sheer number of humans whose frame of reference is objectively defective, and who seem to lack the analytical tools needed to recognize the defects.

Yes, I understand that that’s going to sound presumptuous and arrogant to some. Who do I think I am, claiming that my frame of reference is superior to Mike Huckabee’s, or Ken Ham’s, or Jack Woolfson’s, or Roy Moore’s, or Darryl Issa’s, or the next eleven people to post to Facebook outraged over something that isn’t true or couldn’t happen?

Well, who do I have to be?

Someone who believes that there is one objective, knowable reality.

Someone who sees science as a powerful tool for getting closer to the truth of that objective, knowable reality. Yes, it’s messy and often there’s a lot of ‘wasted’ motion, but over time error gets squeezed out.

Someone who understands that at times error needs to be squeezed out of me.

Someone who can accept “We don’t know yet” as a valid answer but not a stopping point.

Someone convinced that the more we know, the better choices we can make, and the more likely we are to succeed in our endeavors.

Someone who’s glad that his children were born into a time and a place where killers such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, cholera, scarlet fever, and smallpox are all but banished as threats–when instead of being fatally ambushed by a blizzard we get to complain afterward that it was ‘disappointing’–when there is (in principle) light and heat and food enough for all–when we can communicate with a friend across the globe or a spacecraft across the Solar System–when we can walk around with 10,000 books in our pocket…I could go on but shouldn’t need to. When technology works, it’s because science got it right.

It’s not a perfect or a perfectable world. This isn’t the STAR TREK future, where all human want and care have been erased by good intentions and limitless energy. But I truly wonder how many antivaxxers, and creationists, and climate deniers would rather be living in 1815, or 1315, or 1015 instead of the 2015 which the pursuit of a materialist reality through science has made possible.

Opinion is not expertise.

Ask the next question.

https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2015/01/survey-reveals-large-gaps-between-scientists-and-general-public-climate-chang

I was cleaning out some old paperwork this evening and happened on my original GE Information Services account registration from May, 1989. That is to say, a letter from GE with my temporary password, in a vintage dot-matrix font, and my canary-yellow NCR copy of the signed Access Agreement. That’s right, signing up for an online service required streetmail and carbonless multipart forms. Those were the days–

I was lured to GEnie by a special flat-rate offer for members of SFWA, and as the SF community there grew it gradually supplanted CompuServe’s SF&F Forum as my primary online hangout. I wasn’t the only one, either–for several years GEnie was the gravitational center of fandom online. It also helped breathe life into SFWA, with over a quarter of the membership present and able to interact as they never had before.

GEnie had an interface that was strictly text, with no provision whatsoever for graphics. But it had mail, private messaging, a bulletin board (where most of the activity was found), and multi-user chat rooms. The written word reigned supreme. And while the SFRT was by no means immune to flamewars, the level of conversation was more like an online sercon than an online Comicon.

Eventually Jeffrey Dwight (sff.net) wrote a much slicker user-end interface called Aladdin for GEnie, but the days of the text-only dialup were numbered. Between GEnie’s various Customer Prevention Plans, a couple of changes of ownership and business model, and the attraction of shiny baubles like AOL and the Web, the SFRT died a death of a thousand cuts, the worst of which being the 1996 pricing change.

I wandered away, too, but came back for the wakes held in the chat rooms in the Last Days. The lights went out for good on December 30, 1999. Mind you, Genie continued to bill me (and everyone else still on the books) for four more months–that was what it had become.

But I made many friends there, some professional, some personal, and not a few still enduring. I sharpened my rhetoric in grand debates about Big Ideas, was treated to a surprise RTC birthday party, flirted shamelessly with the Ladies of the SFRT, mourned the deaths of people I had only known in phosphor, witnessed the rise of empires and the fall of villains.

Good times.

I wrote THE QUIET POOLS, EXILE, my STAR WARS trilogy, and part of THE TRIGGER with Sir Arthur during the GEnie years. I probably lost a novel, perhaps two, to late nights pounding the keys online. But writing is a fundamentally solitary (if not lonely) undertaking, and those were years when my only office was in the basement and most of my face-time friends were confolk I only saw when visiting fandom’s Flying Islands. Who’s to say that the SFRT community didn’t help keep me sane and in the game?

That’s how I choose to remember it, anyway.

The shortlists for the Writers Guild of America’s Screenplay Awards were released earlier today. Several that I voted for made it. There are four nominees I still need to see. Time for a movie marathon evening. ☺ (I have screeners for all but GUARDIANS, which I saw in the theater.) Here are the lists:

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Boyhood, Written by Richard Linklater; IFC Films

Foxcatcher, Written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman; Sony Pictures Classics

The Grand Budapest Hotel, Screenplay by Wes Anderson; Story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness; Fox Searchlight

Nightcrawler, Written by Dan Gilroy; Open Road Films

Whiplash, Written by Damien Chazelle; Sony Pictures Classics

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

American Sniper, Written by Jason Hall; Based on the book by Chris Kyle with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice; Warner Bros.

Gone Girl, Screenplay by Gillian Flynn; Based on her novel; 20th Century Fox

Guardians of the Galaxy, Written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman; Based on the Marvel comic by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

The Imitation Game, Written by Graham Moore; Based on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges; The Weinstein Company

Wild, Screenplay by Nick Hornby; Based on the book by Cheryl Strayed; Fox Searchlight

Let’s not sugar-coat it: this has been a dismal year in my corner of the cosmos.

It’s seemed as though every day or two Facebook has delivered news of death, disease, distress and despair in the lives of my friends and acquaintances in and out of the industry.

My emotional seismometer has recorded tremors of all flavors and sizes, punctuated by the 8.0 event of my own mother’s death October 1–the aftershocks of which continue to rumble through the landscape here. Just this week, I discovered a new ICD code and a new word: dysthymia.

But I don’t want to end the year on that note. So let me close the book on 2014 by sharing what I’m going to focus on for 2015. This comes from a new bio I wrote for ChamBanaCon earlier this month:

‘K-Mac has resumed work on FRAGMENTS, which will complete the story begun in VECTORS, and on two new projects:  a space-war thriller tentatively titled SLIPDRIVER, and an untitled magical realism time-travel novel. He is also assembling a collection of his best short works for e-publication. Donations of Pepsi Max, thin-sliced white American deli cheese, and beer nuts in support of these endeavors are welcome, as are random hugs and words of encouragement.’

I don’t have a publisher yet for any of those projects, but this is an era rich with possibilities. I can’t tell yet which of them will catch fire and shift from creeping in low gear to speeding in high, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

May each of you find comfort for your travails, company for your travels, and your own reasons to look forward to 2015.

Ad astra!

I’m delighted to announce the official end of my extended gafiation. Gafiate. Gaffing. Whatever the noun is. Starting again–

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve accepted an invitation to be Guest of Honor at ChamBanaCon 45 next November. Thank you, Brenda Sinclair Sutton & Co., for venturing into the woods to find me.

I’ll post a link here to all the details once they’re online.

This will be my first con appearance of any sort since the Black Book Band played at Duckon in 2005, and my first GOH badge since Conclave in 2003. So be gentle. I hope to see some old friends there, and to meet some new ones

There are far too many in my circle of love and my wider circle of friends and acquaintances who’re going to have trouble generating their usual allotment of Merry this season, thanks to the grief and trouble that have shadowed them this year. Some will justly be unable to generate any at all.

We’ve had our own troubles here, so I think I can empathize with anyone whose outlook has more Bah, Humbug! than Having A Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Holiday Here! in it.

If this describes you, then this message is for you:

May you find the strength to carry you through your troubles, one day, one step, one moment at a time.

May you forgive yourself for not living up to whatever Currier & Idylls, Normal Rockwell expectations were imprinted in your brain by a carol-singing, commerce-driven culture of compulsory emotional conformity. It really is okay to cry at Christmas, if crying is what you need.

Conversely, may no one–especially yourself–make you feel guilty if, despite what’s weighing on you, you find yourself laughing or having fun.

May you have the wisdom to know that caring for yourself is not only allowed, it’s a prerequisite to caring for anyone else. Breathe. Sleep. Eat well. Give yourself down time. Sit on the porch and watch the snow fall. Play with your pet. Listen to good music, or make some. Whatever strengthens and sustains you. Whatever contains the promise of joy.

And may tomorrow be a better day, lit by a warmer light, walking a smoother path, carrying a lighter burden.

Blessed be,

Michael

The best thing about Black Friday week is that that’s generally when award-season screeners start to arrive. The number seems down this year. I might be judging too quickly, but I wonder if the studios are starting to have second thoughts about this method of getting their productions in front of WGA eyeballs.

Disney’s INTO THE WOODS arrived today, and that will probably move right to the top of the stack. Previous UPS and FedEx envelopes have contained:

> Universal’s CHEF (a very strong auteur turn by Jon Favreau, who wrote, directed, produced, and played the lead – if you could use an antidote to terribly serious stories wherein the characters are crushed by the bad things that happen to them, I’d recommend this smile-maker)

> Warner Bros.’ THE JUDGE (terrific performances by Robert Duvall and Robert Downey, Jr., in an emotionally explosive story about father-and-son estrangement)

> Fox Searchlight’s WILD, which is next on my list and promises to be a tour de force by a Reese Witherspoon we haven’t seen before

> Richard Linklater’s BOYHOOD from IFC Films

> the A24 crime drama A MOST VIOLENT YEAR

> Clint Eastwood’s AMERICAN SNIPER, which I think is going to take just the right frame of mind to draw me in

> NIGHTCRAWLER from OpenRoad, written and directed by Dan Gilroy

> Universal’s GET ON UP

> from Sony Pictures Classics, WHIPLASH, LOVE IS STRANGE, and FOXCATCHER

> THE FAULT IN OUR STARS from 20th Century

> GONE GIRL (Regency), which has the look of a very creepy rat-in-a-trap thriller

I think I’m going to have to just skip all the Yule parties…

Life really is what happens to you when you’re busy making sensible plans.

I had hoped that by now I would have a deal in place to bring at least six of my novels not currently available in digital editions back into “print,” as well to bring together my favorite short fiction in a first-ever collection.

Though I did resolve the rights issues, otherwise those goals are still a work in progress.

Beyond that, I knew that the first eight months of the year were going to be full of sound and motion, between my two youngest graduating from high school and my oldest earning a Ph.D., with a German exchange student here for three weeks and a son in Germany for four, with a college search, a senior recital and an open house to be mounted on a Social Security budget.

September was going to be when I’d finally have a chance to sit down and start working in earnest on something new.

But I didn’t anticipate that the mothers of two family members would go to the emergency room within days of each other in July, let alone that one would go from there to weeks of rehab, and the other to hospice.

I feel secure in saying September is not going to be anything like what I was planning on. And that when it ends–especially if my September drags on into November, or February–I’m going to need the boost that your support provides that much more.

All of you. And more of you. It would mean a great deal to me to come out on the other side of this gantlet and find that a thousand people were on board with my attempted reboot, saying with as little as a Facebook Page Like, “Go for it–we want to read that next book you haven’t written yet.” An emotional kickstarter.

A thousand people is about 1% of my reader base for past solo works. A thousand people to rebuild my rocketship and relight its engines. I don’t know how to find them–but collectively, you do. I’d be grateful for your help.

There are more galaxies than there are human beings.

So, I trust no one will mind if I help myself to -that- one. No, down one shelf. A little to the left. Yes, the little barred spiral. That will do nicely. I’m going to build a cabin there, with a wraparound porch and a view of the Fire Nebula over the ammonia lake. Earth can be so unbearable in Methane Season.