The Rough New Beast That Will Be Election 2020

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I was in junior high school that I realized how easy it was to extrapolate the future. Coca-cola cost a penny an ounce then. Eight cents for an eight ounce bottle, a dime for a ten ounce bottle, and so on. Then the ten ounce bottles disappeared from the vending machines, replaced by eight ounce bottles -- still costing a dime. In a flash, I saw that the price of Coke would be twenty cents within the year and a quarter not long after. I told this to a friend and he said, "You're nuts!"

It all happened, of course.

Much later, when ATM machines first appeared, I read the description of how they worked and pondered how you could prevent someone from making a fake deposit into a nearly empty account and then withdrawing the same amount in cash. "Of course!" I thought. "They don't credit the deposit until they see it." It was blindingly obvious.

A week later, the newspaper recounted that the fancy new machines were being reprogrammed not to credit deposits until a human being had actually seen them. Because they had discovered that scammers were making fake deposits. That was when I realized how rare it is for people in authority to make even the simplest extrapolations of the future.

So it's not in the spirit of partisanship but in the spirit of the blindingly obvious that I want to look at the next American presidential election four years from now.

The CIA has stated that the Russian government interfered in the most recent election. Accounts vary at this point. They certainly hacked into DNC computers and leaked documents that either were doctored or didn't have to be. They seem to have sponsored a flood of very savvy fake news sites. Some even claim they monkeyed where they could with electronic voting machines. (This is trickier because many machines aren't linked to the Web, rendering them close to unhackable and those that are don't have a single unified system, making the prospect expensive. But, where it matters, the Kremlin has very deep pockets.)

I am wary of the CIA. But I believe them in this case for two reasons: 1) Trump will be the next President, no matter what; there's simply not enough time to put together a case that would make the Electoral College not appoint him. 2) If the CIA were lying, then they would be committing an act of treason -- something they must surely know the next administration would take unkindly.

So. Russia committed what might technically be called an act of war. Let's leave it to the historians to argue whether it worked or Trump would have won handily without it. The issues are bigger than that now.

Whatever the facts, the Russian bureaucracy is going to believe they turned the election. Why? Because they threw a lot of money at it and they have to justify the expenditures. The cyberwarriors of other nations are going to believe it too. Why? Because the  stakes are too high not to.

Most likely nothing serious will happen to Russia as a result. This will send a message to the world.

The US is still the biggest, richest, most dangerous nation on Earth. Every nation has a stake in who sets its policies. So four years from now, we can pretty confidently expect China to involve its cyberwarriors even more heavily in the election than Russia did in this one. They'd be fools not to.

Other nations I'm not so sure about. Israel? India? Germany? Japan? Saudi Arabia? Realpolitik says they all should. Various considerations might hold some of them back. At least until the 2024 elections.

But we're facing the possibility of the first American election in which the voters are minority stakeholders.


And I want to emphasize...

I'm not arguing politics here. Just stating the obvious.


And tomorrow...

The return of a holiday tradition.


Above: Not necessarily the future US electorate.I took this image from Flagdivision.com. You can find their site and maybe buy a flag here.

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The Return of The Fall of the Towers

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My title above sounds frivolous, I admit, like something you might slap on the cover of a Lord of the Rings parody. But it neatly sums up a piece of good news for Samuel R. Delany's many admirers, particularly the well-heeled book collectors among them.

Delany's early science fiction trilogy, The Fall of the Towers, is being reissued by Centipede Press half a century after their original publication. It will be published in three distinct dustjacketed volumes, with all of the original forewords and afterwords, new artwork by David Ho, and an introduction by (cough) me.

Chip Delany was one of my earliest literary heroes and his work has never fallen in my esteem. So this was a pretty big deal for me.

Here's how my introduction begins:

Context is necessary. The nineteen year old who began writing Out of the Dead City, the first volume of The Fall of the Towers, lived in a country very different from the one we now inhabit. Men wore hats and women petticoats. Computers were intimidating behemoths that filled rooms and had laughably little processing power. Clothing, houses, and consumer packaging were all much drabber than what we are now used to. Homosexuality was thought of as a rare mental illness. People of color were treated as second-class citizens.

There was nothing in any of the above to prevent a young, queer Negro (these are the terms he himself would have used) from deciding to write a trilogy of novels – or, rather, a novel in three books – exploring the economic origins of war and the distorting effects it has on society. But at a time when black SF writers did not advertise their race and gay SF writers kept a lower profile than Delany was willing to do, it would require moxie...

By necessity, the set is not exactly cheap. You can preorder one right now for $150. Which is not a bad price for three beautifully-made hardcover volumes issued in an edition of 300 copies each.

So either you need a set or you don't. If you're in the first category, you know who you are. If you're in the second, you can find the original paperbacks easily enough -- and they include Chip's l forewords and afterwords. I think I did a pretty good job with my own intro. But there's no getting around the fact that the single best explicator or Samuel R. Delany's fiction has always been the man himself.

You can find the preorder page here.

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Sick Day Today

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Sorry.

My Favorite Government Form

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My favorite government form? That's easy. It's the one shown up above: Optional Form 60 (10-71). Also known by its Government Printing Office number GPO 1972 p-460-299.

It is a government-certified blank page. Accept no substitutes.


And as always...

I'm on the road again. I'll have a report for you when I get back.

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Classics Illustrated: The Last Day of July

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I ran across this while going through some old papers. Believe it or not, there's a Kliban cartoon which, by changing a single name, neatly summarizes a classic Gardner Dozois story. So I made that change.


And for no particular reason...

My old buddy Mike Resnick (seven times voted Most Likely to Cheat Me Out of a Hugo) recently had this to say about Hugo Gernsback:

The first guy to define science fiction was Hugo Gernsback, the man who created the first all-science-fiction magazine (Amazing Stories, back in April, 1926). He’s the guy our most prestigious award is named after, even though he had some difficulty speaking English, clearly couldn’t edit it, and usually refused to pay for it except on threat of lawsuit.

You won't find a more succinct or accurate summation of the man than that!

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Donald Trump The Magazine of Poetry

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And what rough beast, its hour come round at last...
         -- William Butler Yeats

Almost fifty years ago, in 1968,  Pamela Zoline and John Sladek, with help from Thomas Disch, edited a one-shot poetry zine titled Ronald Reagan The Magazine of Poetry. It holds a certain place in our cultural memory if for no other reason than its including J. G. Ballard's scabrous masterpiece, "Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan."

Now, one 48-year gyre later, possibly out of jeu d'esprit, possibly out of simple naughtiness, Temporary Culture  has published Donald Trump The Magazine of Poetry.

I was offered the opportunity to contribute but, not being a poet, didn't see a place for myself in the magazine's pages. But after the fact it occurred to me that something I wrote in college would have filled the bill quite nicely. Since the original magazine was a one-shot, it seems unlikely we'll ever see a second issue of its inspired offspring.

That being the case, I present my poem in its entirety below:

Envoi

Excuse me while I slit my

Collectors and patrons of poetry can find the ordering information here.


Above: Henry Wessells and accomplice celebrating the magazine's launch in New York City. Envoi is copyright 2016 by Michael Swanwick.

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Magister Jane

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The happy news of the day is that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have named  Jane Yolen the latest recipient of their Grand Master Award.

A couple of years ago, I visited Jane in Scotland. (Do you admire how subtly I slipped in the fact that we are on a first-name basis?) In the course of conversation, I mentioned how greatly I admired and envied her prolific output -- literally hundreds of books.

"Yes, but your books are all full-length novels," she said. "A lot of mine are very short."

Knowing something about how difficult very short every-word-matters works can be, I asked, "How many drafts does something like Owl Moon take?"

"Well... dozens, sometimes hundreds."

"I do not withdraw my admiration."

Grand Master is the highest accolade our field has to offer, and one that, for quality of prose and caliber of storytelling, Magister Jane well deserves. That she is also prolific is icing on the cake.

Did I mention that she's prolific? All my heroes are hard workers.


Above: I swiped the picture of Jane from her website. 

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