View 781 Sunday, July 07, 2013

I took most of the week off. Niven and I got some work done on our next book, and Friday we spent the day at the Los Angeles Zoo in search of inspiration for some scenes. More on that another time.

The Arthur C. Clarke Prediction of Sexual Behavior

Meanwhile, over at the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) members site, there began a complicated conversation about sexual harassment. The discussion was heated but mostly involved hypothetical cases. Then there came a report of an incident involving an editor I once worked with and a female editor I have never met, at a convention party. The offended party posted something on line, and a SFWA official reposted that in the SFWA discussion. Since neither party was a member of SFWA and the event was not an SFWA event, I failed to understand why this was SFWA business; and in what must have been a fit of absence of mind, I said so.

There was a storm of response, at which point I seem to have lost the rest of my senses because I got involved: so far no one had specified what the accused had done, merely that it was sexual harassment. There were other discussions, none of any actual incidents; and since no one seemed to know any actual cases, I decided to supply one in which the facts are not at all in dispute, it was all very well known to nearly everyone fan or professional in the science fiction community thirty years ago, and the principals were pretty well beyond being harmed by talking about it since the major figure has been dead for decades.

I did have an interest in the subject, because in his 1953 book Childhood’s End Arthur C. Clarke had predicted that the development of reliable contraceptives and a foolproof paternity test would end marriage and sever the connection between procreation and sex: it would bring Western Civilization (and thus everyone else) into a culture of sex for pleasure and recreation unrelated to marriage and child raising. I had discussed this with him a couple of times in the 1980’s, and his comment was “Well, I was right wasn’t I? Isn’t that where we are going?” ( http://the-american-catholic.com/2012/04/03/arthur-c-clarke-on-how-to-destroy-marriage/ )

At the time Arthur was writing Childhood’s End he met, courted, and married Marilyn Mayfield, a young American divorcée with a young son. They lived together for less than six months, and separated before the publication of Childhood’s End; the divorce proceedings took a decade, and involved legal and financial issues to the point that Arthur avoided coming to the United States lest he be served with demands for money. When his friends asked him about his marriage, he indicated that he did not want to talk about the subject, although he did tell me once that “She was very young and I was set in my ways, and it was all doomed from the beginning.” He made it very clear that he was not blaming her, and I never heard him say an unkind word about her; of course he didn’t say very much at all about the subject. Arthur was unfailingly kind to his friends, but he seldom discussed his personal life even with much closer friends than I was.

But as I look at the changes in Western sexual customs and courtship I am often reminded of Clarke’s sociological prediction. Apparently the extent of the hookup culture is disputed, but every month or so I seen another article on casual sex, hooking up, and current college practice both at Spring Break and normal times. And of course there are the Tom Wolfe books Hooking Up and I Am Charlotte Simmons. But there was nothing about hookup culture in the SFWA discussions either inside the SFWA membership forums, or in the open discussions resulting from the distorted picture put together by the ‘leak’.

The discussion of sexual harassment at SF events was mostly abstract, and for some reason I decided to inject into it a well known story that seemed relevant. The facts were never in dispute and the whole story was widely known in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. To wit: Randall Garrett, a popular science fiction author with a large number of publications to his credit – he made a living at SF even before his Too Many Magicians novels, selling tons of stories at a few cents a word – was a very popular figure at SF conventions. He was often asked to perform, which he did: he sang ballads interpretively. A couple of favorites were “Have Some Madeira, my Dear”, and “Thais” (actually a poetic review of the opera Thais turned into a ballad). His performances were usually accompanied by a volunteer from the audience, some young woman who would dance interpretively as the ingénue in the Madeira song, or the courtesan in Thais.

Randall had another very well known practice. After a few drinks, he would roam the convention parties looking for women he did not know, making certain that this was someone of age ( most often late twenties or older ). He would then approach, stand well out of reach without any physical contact, bow, and say “HI. I’m Randall Garrett. Let’s F—.” This happened many times at many conventions between 1970 and about 1980, after which he was disabled until his death in 1987. His habit was known to nearly everyone of importance in the science fiction community. I know of no one who encouraged him, and many told him to stop it, but he persisted, giving the argument that he never made physical contact, he never pursued or persisted unless he was actively encouraged to continue, and he was doing no more than offering casual recreational sex. He would also cite the argument that women had as much right to desire non-relationship recreational sex as men – he could cite articles from women’s magazines stating that idea.

The one time he came to a convention that I had any authority over – a SFWA Nebula Awards event I chaired – I looked up Randall and told him to cool it, and was greeted with a hurt look for suggesting that he would act that way at that sort of event. I don’t know what he would have done if a fan convention chairman had given him the same instruction. For all I know that happened and he obeyed. It was not a common topic of discussion with us. In those time, before the Internet and cheap long distance telephone calls, there were many friendships among science fiction writers who met mostly or even exclusively at science fiction conventions, and communicated at other times chiefly through US Post Office letters, which is to say, not very often. I had many such friends, and Randall was one of them. In addition I saw him at SCA events, and when I visited my close personal friend Poul Anderson in the Bay Area. Randall was a frequent visitor at Poul’s home.

Randall had friends all over the world, whom he met yearly at the World SF Conventions. I doubt many of them approved of his unique form of courtship, which became famous as it continued year after year.

I related this in a closed SFWA discussion. I mention it now because someone within the organization has, in direct violation of the rules, copied my post along with others contributed by other participants including past presidents, into an open web site. I found out about it thanks to email from some of my readers.

Well before I knew there was any interest in this matter outside the SFWA web site, I regretted ever getting involved in the ‘sexual harassment’ discussions inside SFWA. There was a storm of condemnation heaped upon my head. Most of it accused me of approving of Randall’s performance, which I did not, or of insufficiently condemning him. Did I not understand that leaving aside his explicit language, the very offer he made was demeaning, and treated the woman as an object whose only purpose was sex, and was definitely sexual harassment, and anyone who did not agree to that view was disgusting, and Garrett ought to have been thrown out of SFWA and thrown out of SF fandom, and anyone who did not agree to that was a disgusting sexist. Generally this was stated in stronger language than I use here.

There weren’t a lot of people saying this. Few, actually. But they said it often, and in answer to any attempt on my part to explain what I thought I was doing – I told you I temporarily took leave of my senses.

I found all this rather depressing which is one reason I haven’t been commenting on much of anything this week.

My point in bringing up this case was to try to persuade my fellow SFWA members that whatever they cared to say or do about sexual harassment at SFWA events, it was not our job or our place to try to dictate rules for SF conventions because SF writers don’t put on the conventions. They are put on by fans, and science fiction fans have a very long, and very strong, tradition of tolerance of almost anything except violence. Con convention parties are, to use Jack Chandler’s phrase, Liberty Hall. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard. (Which sounds silly when I say it, so I guess you have to read one of Chandler’s Rim novels). Fans welcomed diversity before diversity was considered a good thing to welcome. Sex, race, gender, manner of dress, language, everyone is pretty well welcome in SF events and parties. And the fans knew all about Randall, did for years, and did nothing whatever about him.

The question becomes one of defining harassment. We can all agree that no woman – or man, or child, or anyone else – should have to put up with sexual harassment. Bad manners, rudeness, and the like are another story. I recall one fan party in Canada which was busted by the Regional Police because there was a performance of a folk singing group that involved an obscene pillow (known as the penisaurus) witnessed by mundane hotel guests (who weren’t allowed in the party because they hadn’t badges, but one pleaded to be allowed to watch, after which she called the cops in disgust). The people with the penisaurus were not condemned. The Regional Police were. Fandom is tolerant.

And Randall would and did insist that whatever else you could say about him – outrageous was acceptable – it was not harassment. To harass someone is to persist with unwanted attention, and he didn’t persist. He didn’t grope. He didn’t touch. He wasn’t threatening in any way. He offered recreational sex with no compensation. When asked what responses he got he said a few less than 10% accepted or at least discussed the possibility, about 10% tried to slap his face (he was agile so most weren’t successful), and about equal numbers said No rather nervously, said no with laughter, or said no thank you or even No, but thank you for the offer. I have neither confirmation nor challenge of his data. One correspondent said her husband tells her that the 10% acceptance is an old urban legend. If so I suspect that it derives from Randall because I never heard that claimed by anyone else.

It was also insisted that the language itself was harassment. I can’t argue with that, because I don’t use that language in the first place. Certainly in Randall’s day one might go weeks without hearing what has become known as the F-bomb; but that is hardly true now. Now probably hears several per minute in some concerts and parties. It’s just not rare. To which the argument is made that the very offer is harassment and demeaning and rude and –

I certainly won’t argue against naming it outrageous, rude, bad manners; the question is whether it rises to the level of harassment. When I was mad enough to care I was trying to make that distinction: there are plenty of things happening around us that are discomforting and unpleasant, but are they so harmful that there ought to be rules and enforcements prohibiting them? Clearly the Regional Police thought the penisaurus rose to that level and sent a squad of cops out to protect everyone from the penisaurus, but I suspect not many readers here would agree that this was a good use of police resources. I know few SF fans would think so.

For the record, I know of no one who encouraged Randall to continue this experiment, and I know many who tried to persuade him to give it up. I don’t know his motive for continuing it. It wasn’t intimidation or some kind of power play. There’s no evidence that he got any enjoyment out of dominance or anything resembling it. Nearly everyone who knew him including many who condemned this particular practice agreed that all around he was a nice guy with a contemptible quirk. In any event I’m not his advocate and I am not defending him. My whole point in bringing him up is that if you can’t come up with a reasonable consensus on what ought to have been done about Randall Garrett, then abstract discussions of rules and penalties aren’t likely to be useful. At least I think that was my point. By now I am sufficiently weary of the subject that I don’t really know.

It’s late and I ought to be in bed. I will leave this for the night, and with luck perhaps forever. It does remind me of Clarke’s prediction of the future of human sexual relations. Given fool proof paternity identification, and reasonably efficient contraception (not involving abortion) the emotional connection between sex and procreation will dissolve, and the very notion of chastity as a virtue will disappear.

And while I was thinking along those lines, I got mail accusing me of wishful thinking about the hookup culture. There really isn’t one. It’s just wishful thinking on the part of boys who can’t get dates, and a way of insulting a whole group of young women by calling them promiscuous. Although the writer of that note was infuriated with me, I found it hopeful, because it insisted that promiscuous was not virtuous, and implied that chastity remained a virtue, and thus that Clarke’s prediction was wrong. But then I picked up a copy of the LA free paper the LA Weekly with some of its articles about hooking up, and Vogue had a lead item on how the star of a bachelorette reality show was shocked to discover that none of the 9 young men courting her on TV was really interested in a permanent marriage, and I wonder about it all.

We may continue this discussion another time, but I don’t really plan to. I just want to get the whole depressing subject out of my system.

And I do note that even the mainstream press is beginning to realize I didn’t make up my stories about bunny inspectors.

Salve sclave.

View 776 Thursday, June 06, 2013

Anniversary of D Day, the most complex and expensive event in the history of mankind.

I have been bogged down all week. I started this two days ago. Still just checking in.

Every time we think the IRS scandal is as bad as it gets, it gets worse. Given that the IRS was used to cripple the get out the vote efforts of the Tea Party and all organizations claiming to be patriotic or civic duty directed, and all religious operations, and given that it was Obama’s ground game that won, it is hard not to conclude that this was the key to Obama’s win.

It also means that we know how to win in 2014 and 2016.

This was recommended to me some time ago. I read it and thought it worth recommending, but various distractions intervened. Rather than keep this as a Firefox tab, I recommend it to your attention without comment.

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/it-can-happen-here/?singlepage=true

I find myself increasingly approaching the state of the famous absent minded professor, who one day was walking through the Yard and was approached by some students who wanted an expansion of a lecture. They were impressed. Then he asked, “Gentlemen, in which direction was I going when you stopped me?” They pointed. He said, “Thank you. Good. I’ve had my lunch.”

I find I can focus on the subject at hand and give myself a good accounting, but I often have to refer to the Internet for details such as names and dates. The other day I could remember a phrase, and I knew who had said it, but I could not remember his name, or the name of the book in which it was said. Fortunately I could remember he had written A Tale of Two Cities. As I was Googling that work I realized that he had also written A Christmas Carol and that was written by Charles Dickens so I didn’t have to complete the search. It was an odd experience. On the other hand I can sometimes remember incidents that took place forty years ago. I gather it’s not uncommon. Fortunately I now live in the Internet age…

I am doing the last intro work for the California Reader. Thanks to those who have expressed interest in it. Real Soon Now

I’ll try to do a bit of mail tonight.  And if you haven’t read my rather ancient essay on the Voodoo Sciences recently, this would be a good time.  It’s still extremely relevant.

I was asked in another conference to show some pictures of where I work, and having done that I was about to erase the file when I realized that it might be of interest to some of you, so I paste it on to the bottom of tonight’s View.

My office has grown over the years, and the downstairs office suite where John Carr and any temporary associate editors worked is now my wife’s.

We rebuilt the front part of the house with this upstairs office suite for me. I actually do a good bit of creative work on a laptop in what used to be the room of the oldest son resident, but now that all four of them have moved into quarters of their own it is a combination guest room and monk’s cell – a room without Internet or distractions like telephones, and most of the books are high school text books. But I spend most of my time here,

I’ve been a bit under the weather and this place has slowly settled into the muck – it’s a real mess.

View of my work chair and the three computer screens I keep open. The window faces onto a second floor veranda where I keep humming bird feeders, and two big ceramic dishes that serve as bird baths and watering stations. There’s a brick waist high wall around the veranda and I put out bird seed most days. There has been the same family of California Jays since we moved here in 1968, and they have learned that if they yell loud enough I will go out and give them peanuts. The squirrels have learned to listen for the jays and come running. The resulting contest between jays and squirrels is a more even match than you might suppose. The chair is by Henry Miller and is expensive and I recommend anyone spending many hours in a chair to get one.

View from my chair into the conference room. Alas the conference table is covered with stuff. That’s the room in which we held the meeting that resulted in the SSX presentation to the White House. It eventually became a scale model of SSX called DC/X. That mess on the left is a counter on which I keep the chemistry lab of vitamins and other supplements. I am sure that about half of them do me good and the other half make expensive urine, but I don’t know which ones are effective and which aren’t so I take them all.

View of the conference room looking east from the west end.

And the same room looking west from the reading corner in the bay window on the east end.

Sorry the place is such a mess. I really do intend to clean it up and have a nice tea party for local SFWA members. My wife says I can’t invite anyone over until I do some cleanup and throwing out. I have to agree she’s right.

There’s a bit more, a room originally intended for the printer because this was designed before Laser printers and the Diablo was so loud you didn’t want to be in the same room with it, and another room of the northeast side of the conference room (dubbed the Great Hall) which is a pure store room. The printer room now holds the network server and cable modem and lots of tools, as well as a microwave and small refrigerator. It’s larger and more complicated than I need now, but in the 80’s we had meetings of the Space Advisory Council, and I was turning out a number of anthologies as well as fiction and three monthly science/computer columns, so all those facilities made more sense than they do now. But it’s a comfortable place to work, and a nice place to have friends over for tea.

View 772 Wednesday, May 01, 2013

I don’t do breaking news, but sometimes a breaking story triggers a thought. The breaking news is that three suspects have been detained in matters related to the Boston Marathon bombing. I put it that ambiguously because the exact connection with the bombing isn’t clear, but television is showing them shackled and in civilian clothes being perp-walked into a courthouse. Presumably we will learn what they are charged with.

Early reports said that they were charged with lying to federal agents about removing property/evidence from the room of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The early report didn’t say anything about being charged with removing anything, only for saying they had not removed anything. This may well have been incorrect – early reports often fudge things – but it reminded me of the Martha Stewart case. Ms. Stewart was charged with lying to a federal officer by denying that she had done something that was not a crime even if she had done it. The conclusion to draw from the Martha Stewart case is that you should not cooperate with any federal officer for any reason whatever, lest you end up in a jail cell. When I was growing up we were taught that the authorities were our friends and we had a civic duty to cooperate with them; but surely not at the peril of being sent to Club Fed because you said you hadn’t done something that wasn’t a crime to begin with? Unless you have perfect memory, you are likely to get a detail wrong. If you have a detail wrong, you can end up in jail.

As this story breaks the story is more clear cut, involving a backpack and laptop being removed from the room, with the backpack eventually being recovered from a junkyard. I haven’t heard anything about the laptop. The story on the news is that the three new suspects found firecrackers whose powder had been removed in Tsarnaev’s room, and removed those as well.

The question here is not trampling on the rights of the suspects, two of whom appear to be “undocumented” or “expired document” immigrants aka illegal immigrants, but the wisdom of the Martha Stewart prosecution. Once Washington proves beyond doubt that they can get you once they decide to do it, you need to think twice about cooperating with the feds for any reason. That conflicts with normal civic habits – which is the point. When you set out to prove that you have arbitrary power and intend to use it, it sends a message. The message in this case is that cooperating with the feds may have a very bad outcome; lawyer up and plead the fifth, even if all they ask you is for the time of day.

This is of course not a favorable attitude for a republic, and actually it’s even worse for the plebiscitary democracy a lot of intellectuals hope we will evolve into. But that’s another essay.

We await actual charges in the Boston Marathon case. We can predict that the authorities will do almost anything to avoid attention on the fact that the Russian repeatedly warned us about Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Death by database.

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2314048/Tamerlan-Tsarnaev-placed-U-S-terrorist-watch-list-multiple-warnings-Russian-authorities-FBI.html>

—

Roland Dobbins

We were told that the Patriot Act and the Bush-Cheney security actions had made this sort of thing impossible. Has something changed since January 2009?

andrew j offutt, RIP

Andrew Jefferson Offutt, 78, of Haldeman Heights, passed away on April 30, 2013 at his home after an extended illness. He was born August 16, 1934 in Louisville, KY, the son of the late AJ and Helen Spaninger Offutt.

Offutt spent his childhood years in Taylorsville, Ky.  He graduated the University of Louisville in 1955, which he attended on a Ford Foundation scholarship. He began a full time writing career in 1969 and published more than fifty books.

Offutt served two terms as President of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and was a consultant to Writers’ Digest Criticism Services. He was Guest of Honor at more than eighty science fiction conventions.

Offutt is survived by his wife of 56 years, Mary Joe (Jodie) McCabe Offutt and four children: Chris (Melissa) of Oxford, MS; Jeff (Jian) of Fairfax, VA; Scotty Hyde (Jim) of Bowling Green; and Melissa of San Diego, CA. Other survivors include five grandchildren; Sam, James, Stephanie, Joyce and Andrew Offutt.  He is also survived by his sister, Jane Offutt Burns, of Lubbock, TX.

Chris

I never approved of his preference for lower case spelling of his name, and sometimes teased him about it. He was an old friend and was Treasurer when I was President of SFWA, and remained Treasurer for some years until he became President. We only met at conventions, and over the years the times when we were at the same convention became fewer and fewer, but we generally found time for a short meeting when we did. Farewell old friend.

I was looking around the old View column and came upon http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view476.html which has the story of Tarquin and the Poppies.  At one time everyone knew that story – it was taught before eighth grade – but I expect it is not so much known now.  If you have a moment it is worth your time. Further down as some other items from the time that are still rather current.

Dear Jerry.

While I share your dismay at the disappearance of Greek and Latin from core curricula, I am proud to report that the Classical spirit lives on in this university’s response to the Olympian tragedy that overtook the Boston Marathon,

Harvard has just staged funeral games in memory of the fallen:

http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-funeral-games.html

—

Russell Seitz

A story of the land of the free.  Of course California is further along the road than many. but here is what the rest of you have to look forward to in this brave new world that has such people in it.

http://www.today.com/health/parents-police-removed-our-child-after-we-sought-second-medical-6C9708419

It is, I suppose, the business of the state to protect the innocent, unless they are not yet born; and mere parentage does not allow one to question the duly appointed authorities, lest children be harmed (so long as they have been born). Child protection services have a job to do, and they must do it. And yet, one wonders. If the people are not qualified to make their own decisions should they be allowed to vote? If one is not qualified to question the experts, then how is one qualified to choose them?  And where does egalitarian democracy lead us? History would say rule by bureaucrats who have qualified to hold their jobs, and who can form unions. The public schools might be an example.

Freedom is not free. Who shall pay the prices? But if you limit freedom in the name of some higher end such as the protection of children from their parents, where is the end of that? The state wants a monopoly on all the means of violence, and puts the protection of its officers ahead of almost anything else: the Long Beach Police who shot a man dead on the front porch of his friend where he had gone because he felt impaired to drive and was playing with a garden hose nozzle as if it were a pistol have been found to have acted within policy, although at no time had they made their presence known to the man who was playing with the hose nozzle.  One has no right to sit on the front porch and play with a toy pistol. Best to shoot him dead before he harms an officer of the state.  And had the parents of the child resisted, in this land of the free–

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

And on that score

“They wanted to keep Mr. Curtis in custody while they built a case. They knew early on he wasn’t the right guy, but they fought to hold on to him anyway.”

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/original-ricin-suspect-was-held-despite-evidence-pointing-to-another-man/2013/05/01/ad4dab40-b192-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_print.html>

Roland Dobbins

Criminal justice experts said the political pressure from Washington to solve the ricin case would have been intense, particularly since the president was targeted and it occurred around the same time as the Boston Marathon bombing. Some experts said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks taught law enforcement officials to do everything possible to prevent attacks, even if it means arresting the wrong person.

“There would have been unlimited armchair quarterbacking if he was the guy and more letters went out while they continued to investigate him,” said Chris Swecker, who retired as chief of the FBI’s criminal division in 2006. “When the stakes are this high, they have a sense of urgency to move faster.”