Where I stand on things

The idea for this blog began, like, five years ago.  It all started when a guy I used to be friends with and I had arguments on Facebook.  Basically, the way I somewhat jokingly put it, since I didn’t believe the current practice of capitalism wasn’t the bestest, most perfectest thing in the universe, I was just a dirty socialist who wanted to use the dark arts to resurrect Stalin.  At some point I realized that many of our disagreements stemmed from him just assuming my position on matters.  I didn’t agree with him, therefore I must think X, when in reality I’d often think Q.  And I didn’t fully understand his position on matters, but a large part of that was him refusing to tell me, even after I repeatedly asked him to.  Admittedly, part of why I wanted to nail down some of his positions was so I could point out any contradictions I could find.  I figured all of this out about the time he unfriended me.

Of course, part of why my positions on things aren’t easy to understand is because I don’t hold to some grand philosophy which dictates my views.  I know a couple of times he’d call me something like a, Ramsey-style neo-socialist, or something, and I’d have Google that to see what that even meant.  And often, I’d have to look up the explanation to see what it meant.  Decades ago, I noticed that people were rarely just X.  They were often X, subsection 3, paragraph VII, or whatever.  Which isn’t so bad, but often the X, 3, VIIs will see the X, 3 VIs as “The same as Hitler.” It seems so many disagreements – especially amongst those you’d think would be allies – are just battles over minutiae. 

So I’ve pretty much abandoned trying to explain myself in some neat, little box with fourteen layers of description.  Instead, my … ideology I guess, is summed up with stuff that would fit on a bumper sticker.  Which is probably annoying in that instead of having a solution for a specific problem, I’m more likely to wonder why that problem exists in the first place.  Or, I’ll want to solve some other problem that, two or three dominoes later, solves or greatly reduces the original problem. 

I’ve spent some time trying to explain that better, only to get more and more in the weeds or just sounding pretentious, so let’s move on.  These are the bumper sticker sayings that best explain my views on … life in general.

No ideology is perfect.

A sad moment was when I realized my former friend was an ideologue, because I view ideologues as … basically idiots.  The way to defeat an ideologue is to show that their ideology isn’t perfect.  If there was a perfect ideology, it would obviously be perfect and there wouldn’t be any questions about it.  No such perfect ideology exists, therefore, ideologues are defeated.  No matter how great your ideology is, there is a flaw in it that you conveniently overlook.

A year or so ago, I came up with the idea that in the Race of History, backing any ideology – be it capitalism or Catholicism – is backing the wrong horse.  The Racetrack of History is littered with dead ideologies, from feudalism to the Ancient Egyptian religion.  Why should the horses still running have a different fate?  I’d say it’s better to back the racetrack, the bedrock of reality.

And yes, I realize how stupid it is of me to say my ideology is that no ideology is perfect.  That’s the flaw I’m overlooking.

People are people.

I don’t care what skin color, gender identity, sexual identity, whatever identity you have, humans should all be treated like humans.  Admittedly, some humans are assholes, and I do my best to avoid/ignore them.  And while I will say I hate some groups of people, what I mean is I hate their ideology.  If pressed on the matter, what I really am is often just confused and saddened that so many people can’t see how idiotic/repugnant their ideology is: Flat-Earthers and Trump supporters, for example.  If they changed their ideology and stopped being assholes, I’d no longer hate them. 

Meaning is where you find it.

I think it was back in my college years, one day I was thinking about clones and wondering at what point in the cloning process could you “abort” the clone.  My clumsy answer to that evolved my stance on abortion.  I did write a blog a couple years ago with some of my thoughts on abortion, which explains things a bit more.  But the point of this is that my understanding of a real-world issue was changed by me probably thinking about the plot of some mediocre scifi story.  It’s often the little, personal, things that change us the most.

A rising tide lifts all boats.

This is basically my economic philosophy.  Would this policy help the poorest not be as poor?  Good.  Would this policy make the richest even richer?  They don’t fucking need it.

Probably a lot of people readily agree with that, but for those who don’t, let me give you an example.  I’m a writer with ebooks for sale.  For people to buy my ebooks, several dominoes need to fall.  They have to read English, have an interest in the types of stories I’m telling, have access to the internet, and to have enough disposable income to buy my books and enough free time to read them.  The people who have to work 80 hours a week just to buy food, even if they’d love my books, can’t afford to buy them.  So if the minimum wage was raised, that would increase the number of people who could afford to buy my ebooks.  And if I made enough money from my ebooks sales, I could afford to buy things I wanted.  All of which would make for a stronger economy. 

Do not knowingly harm others.

Our technology is evolving faster than our laws that govern the use of that technology.  Thinking about this, I realized that either we’ll continue making more specialized laws that will likely be outdated by the time the politicians get around to voting on them, or we could try simplifying our laws to broadly cover situations.  I wondered what the broadest, most simplistic law there could be, and I came up with: Do not knowingly harm others.  I thought that was a pretty good answer, until I started thinking about it.  What actually counts as harm?  Big things like murder and rape are clearly bad, but what about hurting someone’s feelings?  Years ago, an ex-girlfriend broke my heart.  Yes, that’s a part of life, but she did it in a way that left scars that, honestly, still haven’t healed.  She chose to do some things, even though a reasonable person would know I would be hurt by them.  If this law was in effect, could I take her to court?

Art is never finished, only abandoned. 

That is a line attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci.  And as a writer who’s read a story forty times and will still occasionally find a typo, I think that’s a perfect description of art.

Thoughts on Starship

I typed this up and scheduled it to post just before Starship’s second test flight.

My thoughts on Starship?  Meh.

I was extremely excited in 2008 when SpaceX became the first private company to put a payload into orbit on their Falcon 1 rocket.  As a big space supporter, I saw this as the first step on the road to the space future I’d been dreaming about.  I figured it was just a matter of maybe a decade or so before we’d see private rockets launching private astronauts to private space stations.  I was super excited for the future.

I was a bit bummed when the Falcon 1 was retired, but the Falcon 9 would be a better rocket to launch people on.  And the first fights were of the cargo Dragon capsules which would lead the way to crewed Dragons.  So I was still super excited.

Now, I know that the space business isn’t known for speed.  That it takes years to design, and build, and test craft long before they even launch.  But even knowing that, there were some unnerving things with SpaceX.  At some point, I read that they had contracts to launch 60 satellites in the next five years, which works out to a launch a month.  At the time, that was a pretty tough launch cadence.  But at the time, they had launched only five or six times in a year.  And sometime in this “They need to speed things up” thinking, they started making changes to the booster and the fueling.  Which is great, but for awhile it seemed about every mission was delayed because they had issues with the densified fuel.  As an armchair rocket person, I wondered why they didn’t just build five or six of the boosters they knew worked to keep launching satellites to get through their backlog, and to give them some time to work on their new boosters on the side.  And I’m sure there are a hundred reasons not to have done it that way, but from the outside looking in it seemed like a missed opportunity to keep the launch cadence up while still experimenting.

Still, these experiments lead to boosters being recovered and launched again, and again.  Reusable rockets are fantastic.  They are a clear necessity to the space future I want.  And yes, now it’s a slow week if only one Falcon 9 launches, but most of the flights are for Starlink.  Don’t get me wrong, space internet is a great idea, but far from the private space stations and moon bases and stuff I’ve been waiting for for … over a decade now. 

And yes, the cargo Dragon got upgraded to a Crew Dragon, and they are flying astronauts to the ISS and to orbit, but I read they stopped building Crew Dragons.  Which I don’t understand.  There are people who will pay to orbit the Earth, and I’m sure there are friendly nations who would love to have missions with their astronauts, and someday there will be private space stations needing craft to carry crew to.  And again, as someone from the outside looking in, it’s like, “You have something that’s working, why aren’t you continuing with it?”

To step back a bit, there’s the Falcon Heavy.  Which, when it was announced, I was thrilled by.  I’m a Return to the Moon person, and surely the Falcon Heavy could land rovers or cargo to start building up a moon base.  But then, it will launch next year.  It will launch next year.  It will launch next year.  And it finally launched, but then we only had like four launches in five years.  Now, I understand it’s a bit like putting the cart before the horse of why build a satellite needing this much lift if a rocket capable of that lift isn’t flying yet.  But we’re coming up on six years since Elon’s car was launched.  And yes, we’ve had four flights this year, with one more scheduled.  But it almost feels like they spent all this time to build this big rocket, and then found it hard to find things to launch with it.  Which seems like a bit of a misstep. 

And now to Starship.  After years of waiting for the Falcon Heavy, I knew not to get too excited for this even bigger, more complex rocket.  And after all this time, I don’t really care.  Like, either it will be like the Falcon Heavy and start to hit its stride four or five years from now, in which case I might be more excited, or it will hit its stride in a year or two by launching Starlinks.  What would get me excited is if they announced a plan to launch Starship with an expendable upper stage so they could put this Skylab type space station up.  That I would like.  But nothing else about Starship seems that exciting.  Yes, there’s the Human Landing System for Artemis 3 and 4, but what happens beyond that?  Will it just be for those missions, or will there be more to build up a private moon base?  You’d think, if they had the systems to land people on the moon, why not continue to do that?  But I’ll point out, they apparently stopped building Crew Dragons.

What is the future of Starship, and of SpaceX?  They’ve pretty much stopped talking about Mars, which I always found annoying.  (I mean, I am the author of The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars.) But is their future just … Starlink?  It’s tough to get excited for this big rocket if I don’t really care what it will be used for.  It’s like, even though I’m a Return to the Moon person, I don’t really care for the SLS.  Because I want a continual, sustained presence on the moon, and a billion-dollar rocket that launches once a year, maybe, isn’t how you do that.  And I don’t know if Starship will do that.  Honestly, at this point I’m more excited for New Glenn, only because, while I don’t know what they’ll do with it, it doesn’t have as much baggage as Starship or SLS. 

I think all of this comes down to me being tired of waiting.  I think there are to be fourteen missions that will go to or flyby the moon in 2024.  Seven of these will launch on Falcon 9s, two on Falcon Heavies, and one on Starship.  And even though I’m a Return to the Moon person, I’m not overly excited.  Probably because for decades I’ve heard plans on moon bases, but all have fallen through.  When the next humans land on the moon, I will be happy, but there will a bit of dread in the back of my mind that it will be another Apollo Program where we stop going after a couple of missions.  I don’t think I’ll feel like the future is finally here until there is a permanently crewed Lunar base.  Will Starship play a role in that?  Who knows.

Random Story – For want of a lug wrench

This is just an odd little story from my life.

One Saturday in February, maybe 2006, I was going to meet with some friends and go to a matinee movie and then get some dinner.  The theater was only five minutes or so from my apartment, but we had still planned to meet fifteen or twenty minutes before the movie started.  I got in my car and backed out of the parking spot, but something seemed wrong.  I pulled back in and got out to see that my left front tire was flat.  Not having time to change it, I went back in and called one of my friends – who had a cell phone – to ask if he could pick me up.  And by the time he dropped me off that night, it was dark, so there was no point trying to change my tire then.

On Sunday, after lunch I planned on changing my tire.  I’d had my car for a couple years by this point, but I had never needed to change a tire on it before.  When I got it, I had looked to see if there was a spare, and there was a small one and a jack, and I didn’t think any more about it.  Well, I went out and opened my trunk, and got out the spare, and the jack.  I looked around, but couldn’t see a lug wrench.  I knew some jacks had a handle that doubled as a lug wrench, but that wasn’t the case with mine.  So I had no way to take the old tire off.  Fortunately, I had a can of Fix-a-Flat which I think had been part of an emergency road kit I got for Christmas a few years earlier.  Unfortunately, since it was the middle of February, it was frozen solid.  I took it in, but a couple hours later there was still a solid block in it.

Thankfully, Monday was President’s Day and I had the day off from work.  The Fix-a-Flat had thawed and I went out and put it in the tire.  And nothing happened.  So I called another friend – who lived closer – to ask if I could borrow a lug wrench.  He came out and I soon had the old tire off, and found out why the Fix-a-Flat did nothing: there was a foot long slice on the inside of the tire.  The strut, or something, had broken and there was a nice sharp chunk of metal that sliced though the tire.  I’m not entirely sure when this happened, because you’d think I’d hear something snapping and a tire being punctured.  Maybe it broke just as I parked Friday night, and there was a slow leak with the slice happening when I pulled out on Saturday.  Who knows.

Anyway, I soon had the small spare on, and set off to the Sears Auto Center about a quarter mile from the theater.  My friend followed me in case something happened, but I made it safely to the store.  I then spent an hour or more – on my day off – waiting for my car to be fixed. 

Sometime that week – possibly even on Tuesday – after work I went to the Walmart near where I worked for a lug wrench.  I can’t remember why I didn’t just get one at Sears.  Probably I just wanted to be done with it all, and didn’t think about getting my own lug wrench until I got home.  I think I had to walk down an aisle two or three times before I finally saw them on the bottom shelf.  I bought one, walked out to the parking lot, and threw it in my trunk.

I was about to say that I haven’t used it, but one time two or three years later, I was going to the apartment of the woman I was dating at the time, and as I drove along I thought something wasn’t right.  I pulled over and found one of my tires was flat.  I’m pretty sure it was on the left side, but I don’t remember which one.  I was soon able to get the spare on, and I think where I pulled over was within sight of the Sears Auto Center, so I went and got my tire fixed.  I think I just picked up a nail or something somewhere, so it wasn’t a huge deal.  Though it did ruin date night.

When I got my new car, five or six years ago, I checked and I think the handle for the jack that came with it is also a lug wrench, but I threw my once used lug wrench in the trunk.  I’ll keep it with me for every car I have from now on.

2023 Election ebook sale!

I know that a lot of people are tired of being told that every election for the past decade is THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER!  But it’s true.  The fastest way for the anti-democratic forces to seize power is if The People can’t be bothered to vote.  And they have too much power as it is.  To keep our democracy, we need to vote, in this election and every election. 

The tiniest part that I’m doing is having a sale of five of my ebooks.  All I ask – and there’s no way for me to know – is that if you’re an adult American you vote in this Election.  Here’s a site to help you find your polling location.  And you don’t have to wait until after you vote, if you grab my books now, you can have something to read while you wait in line. 

If you’re an American under 18, you can still get my books.  All I ask is that once you turn 18 you register to vote.  Information on how to do that should be on your state’s website.  You can also grab my books if you’re not an American.  I just ask that you participate in your country’s political system, because the anti-democratic forces are not limited to the US.

The following five ebooks will be free to download from Friday, November 3, through Tuesday, November 7.  The title links take you to the US site for the book.

 

Political Pies

Everybody complains about politics, but does anyone do anything about it? My attempt to do something about it is to collect forty of my short stories with a political element into my Political Pies anthology. The stories are either politically neutral or equally condemning of the national parties. Instead of trying to sway you to one ideology or another, my goal is to just get people thinking about politics in the hopes a rose might grow out of all the political manure.

 

The Most Powerful Man in the World and other stories

The Most Powerful Man in the World and other stories is a collection of five, short, scifi stories to provide a sample of my writing.

A being from the distant future with almost unlimited powers comes back to help Ian Steele make the world a better place in “The Most Powerful Man in the World.” One bookstore customer has an entirely different reason for wanting books in “Black Market Books.” “Motherhood” tells the story of Thomas Gillespie, the surrogate mother for a baby AI. “Storyteller” is about an author thinking his book into existence. And “Deadworld” is about the alien world humans are reborn on – in alien bodies – after we die.

 

A Man of Few Words

A Man of Few Words is a collection of fifty of my flash fiction stories. What would really happen if a “T-Rex on steroids” attacked a city? Why do science fiction writers make the best lovers? How does a company get to Second Base with VIPs? I explore these questions and more using less than 1,000 words and in various genres from humor to horror and general fiction to science fiction.

 

Duty

For reasons of safety and avoiding paradoxes, Time Travel Incorporated assigns a Guardian to all its travelers. So when there is an accident during political historian Roj Hasol’s trip back to 1968, it’s his Guardian Susan who sets out on the arduous task of cleaning up the mess.

 

The Future is Coming

As a science fiction writer, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how technology will change the way we live. I’ve come up with these ten short essays about science fictional elements that will – almost certainly – one day become science fact as a way for people to start coming to terms with them. Because I’ve spent time thinking about clones and AIs, I feel I’ll be okay when they do finally show up whereas most people will probably freak out. I hope these essays will get people to start thinking about the future because, no matter what we do, the future is coming.