Friday 9pm More on the Business of Writing
S. C. Butler (M)
Elaine Isaak
Melinda Snodgrass
Ian Tregillis
Last year we did this program item, and people enjoyed it so much
that we’re doing it again! Find out what the writer needs to know
and do to become (financially) successful (or, at least
responsible). It’s not all creativity or perspiration, no matter
what you’ve heard before!

Friday 10pm Bad Books I Love
S. C. Butler
Kathryn Cramer
Theodora Goss
Paul Levinson (M)
Feorag NicBhride
Choose your favorite piece of mindless mush, and persuade us to look
at it a second time. Admit those guilty pleasures! (C’mon, you know
you want to!)

Saturday2pm The City and Science Fiction
S. C. Butler
Alexander Jablokov (M)
James Patrick Kelly
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Steven H. Silver
From the planet-spanning urbs of Trantor or Coruscant to the
steamfunkier precincts of New Crobuzon to the vastly vertical
Spearpoint of Alastair Reynolds forthcoming Terminal World what s
your favorite skiffy megalopolis? Would you move there tomorrow?
Would it actually work as a technological/societal/economic
artifact? In an advanced, post-scarcity society, would people even
want to pig-pile together? What will cities be like in the future?
(And what would you prefer them to be?)

Saturday5pm Autographing

Sunday 11am Reading (0.5 hrs)

The books are smetimes glib to a fault. They are surveys of their times, not in-depth analyses. McDougall’s tone is ironic and conservative, with a touch of the gleeful cynic as well. But the conservatism is not the false conservatism of the current day, which wishes to conserve nothing but ts own power. It is an older conservatism that does not believe in the perfectability of humanity, and views all such attempts as vainglorious, dictatorial, and more than a little self-serving. In short, it is a scholarly point of view that is very much out of step with mainstream progressive American scholarship (the NY Times savaged the book), or the conservative backlash that currently represents the other side of the debate.

Whatever you think of the theme, it is a great read. McDougall has no sacred cows (except maybe Lincoln), and savages everyone from the Transcendentalists to the Know-Nothings. (Having been forced to worship Emerson and the Transcendentalists at my New England college I enjoyed their skewering very much.) He views the Civil War as a disaster for all parties, with the freeing of the slaves barely making up for the century of Black American sufferng that followed. His main thesis, that the US has always been a nation of self-interested hucksters draping ourselves in moral hypocrisy in order to justify our ambition and greed is, in my opinion, completely accurate. And very appropriate, given our current natonal condition.

It’s a beutifully written and very interesting book. If you like the bashing of sacred cows, do yourself a favor and take a look.

I think more than a few readers are going to take Amazon’s side because of the lower pricing Amazon proposed. Many readers don’t care whether an author makes a living - American consumers want what they want as cheaply as possible, whether it’s books or golf balls. There’s a reason media started referring to American citizens as ‘consumers’ in the seventies and it’s not a pretty one. Amazon certainly attempted to spin the issue this way in their unattributed statement on the Kindle forum.

It will be interesting to see how the media spin the story. Will they take Amazon’s side and portray the retailer as the Defender of the Consumer? Will they take MacMillan’s side and portray Amazon as the internet bully? Will they take no one’s side? Taking no one’s side is probably the same as taking Amazon’s side, if today’s NYTimes piece is any indication. The article took no position, but it did quote the Amazon line about MacMillan’s monopoly on its own books with a straight face.

Who needs publshers? I wonder if Amazon is offering a 40% deal to selected bestselling authors right now.

Oy.

We never are going to achieve anything if that’s always our excuse.

An antique.