Author: Pat Chiles

An expatriate Southerner in the Midwest, writing about writing and whatever dadgum else interests him. Author of the science fiction thrillers FROZEN ORBIT, FRONTIER, and ESCAPE ORBIT, published by Baen Books.
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Sayonara, Suckas

This will be my last post before heading off into the mountains for a couple of weeks.

Pack? Check.

Boots? Check.

Sunscreen? Check.

Ben-Gay? Nope, not ever.

Forest fires? Check.

Snakebite kit? Check.

Bear repellent? Check.

Since I’m not nearly well-known enough yet to arrange for a guest blogger, I’m afraid this is it until July. But since I’m such a nice guy, Perigee will be on sale for $0.99 until then. If you haven’t read it yet, by all means give it a whirl. You’ll be tested when I get back.

See ya!

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On Liberty

More additions to the ongoing List of Horribles:

CBS News Confirms Reporter’s Computer Hacked

Feds Say: “Pilots Have No Rights”

$#!+ is getting real, people. And don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Judging by the deluge of new disclosures, it certainly feels like a dam is breaking. It should be clear by now that our government has been turned against us. The thugs within their ranks have become emboldened by the Leftists in charge.

The Left hates us and it’s time we faced up to that ugly notion. They hate us because we refuse to yield to their notions of what’s best for us. Given the opportunity, I have no doubt many of them would turn violent. Spend a few minutes trolling lefty blogs and Twitter feeds if you need convincing. Of course, a lot of it is bluster from impotent pencil-necks so I’m only worried about the ones who achieve power.

The funny thing is, thoughtful Liberals (not Leftists – there is a distinction), Libertarians, and Constitutional Conservatives have common cause here. Fortunately it appears that people are slowly coming around to that, which is the only way this can end well. A Venn Diagram of all three groups ought to intersect with “civil liberty” square in the middle.

The Democrats have been taken over by their most radical elements and are openly attempting to “fundamentally transform” our country. They have a very limited window of opportunity which is why they’ve become so brazen. Republicans, on the other hand, haven’t really had much in the way of principles since the Depression. They generally take Constitutional governance slightly more seriously than Democrats, but in the end they’re led by spineless opportunists who will twist their principles beyond recognition for the sake of appearing bipartisan. If you only go through life trying to please everybody, eventually all you’ll do is piss everybody off.

It pains me to acknowledge that Reagan was an aberration tolerated by the party establishment only because he knew how to win. He won because his guiding principles were crystal clear and he did what he set out to do. Sticking to the fundamentals has overwhelming appeal if the people have reason to trust you. Our best chance right now is still to take over the GOP and force out the establishment weenies. That may change after a couple more election cycles.

We all have something at stake here. If the state is allowed to continue abusing subgroups of citizens, they can and will do it to all citizens. Don’t delude yourselves with the notion that you have nothing to hide, because it’s already started: there are so many laws, and so many more regulations carrying the force of law, that if the Feds wanted to wreck your life they could find a reason.

We have to rein in this behemoth or it may be too late. What does the Constitution matter if a bunch of overzealous enforcers, crafty lawyers, and slimy politicians continue to find “legal” ways to skirt pretty much every God-given right we have?

Where does it end? I don’t know, but I can tell you where it begins: right here, where you sit. Your neighborhood, your town. Just attend a few city council meetings to see what we’re up against. Look at the kinds of people who enter politics at the local level, and it’ll be easier to understand why they’re so disconnected at the national level: they were to begin with. These people have their own agendas and got where they were by knowing how to manipulate people.

Which is why we have to be wary, even with good news. How many politicians rode the Tea Party wave into DC only to reveal they were taking advantage of popular sentiment? I’m convinced a large percentage of politicians are in fact sociopaths, which only makes our task harder. Defeating those who operate without empathy or conscience is tremendously difficult, but it can be done. Stand up for what’s right in every small thing, and the big things will follow in time.

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Mars Attacks!

The UK Telegraph ran a story today about the private efforts to send people to Mars. Nothing really new here for anyone who follows this stuff, but it’s interesting to me that this is being treated seriously by the popular media and not just other space fanboys.

But if we’re going to do stuff with the potential to be suicidally dumb, we’d better get serious about our spacefaring capabilities. Those Star Destroyers aren’t going to build themselves.

Is there intelligent life out there? Beats me. I tend to doubt it, but that’s only because of my Christian faith. It’s not a concept that I take all that seriously, though it wouldn’t be a shock if there’s other life out there – finding microbes on Mars or sea creatures on Europa wouldn’t be any more theologically jarring than finding a new species at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

Finding sentient life would be an entirely different matter, and I have to admit it would shake me to my foundations if it happened. And I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded guy: I’ve made peace with the concept of evolution alongside the creation story in Genesis. My God is big enough, and science can’t explain everything. A lot of fellow believers haven’t reconciled themselves with that – too many, in fact, have blown off science entirely because it challenges their belief system and they just don’t want to have to think about it.

Presuming there is intelligence out there, how can we be sure they’d be good neighbors? I never bought into the starry-eyed presumption that the only way a civilization could make it that far was through peaceful coexistence, because anything else would have surely resulted in their annihilation.

Well, isn’t that nice? Think happy thoughts. Happy people. Happy trees. Shiny shiny.

What a load of crap.

Real scientists will no doubt tut-tut my ignorance but it seems to me that if there are other civilizations in the universe, there’s only a few reasons we haven’t heard from them:

1. They’re really that much smarter than us and don’t think we’re ready for it.

2. They’re no smarter than us and haven’t been broadcasting for long enough.

3. They’re smarter than us and know the neighborhood’s not safe, so shut up already before you attract any more attention to yourselves!

The first time I read about hypothesis (3), I was stunned that it hadn’t been advanced earlier: what if everyone who can communicate doesn’t because there’s a really good reason not to? Should we be carrying on like we’re in the ol’ Griswold Vacation Wagon, broadcasting our suburban-honky naivete to all the gang-bangers within earshot? Because if predators count on anything, it’s the prey’s ignorance that they’re being stalked.

Of course, I’m always looking for reasons to stock up on ammo.

 

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A Snow(den) Job

Speaking of Ace of Spades, I highly recommend reading his take on the NSA scandal. Short version: Snowden may well be more than a little disingenuous.

That’s putting it kindly. The longer this goes on, the more it appears he may be full of crap:

Snowden’s backstory is not entirely accurate. Booz Allen says that his salary was 40 per cent lower than thought and a real estate agent says that his house in Hawaii was empty for weeks before he vamoosed. Does the fact that he only worked for three months with Booz Allen and the NSA suggest he was planning a hit and run all along – that he took the job with the NSA with the intention of stealing the documents?

Sure looks that way. I’ve really not known what to make of this latest development in ScandalPalooza, but the longer it goes on the less faith I have in Snowden’s good intentions and veracity. And Ace makes a really good point about the big picture:

I am jealously guarding the primacy of my favorite scandals, the IRS, James Rosen, and Benghazi, plus the perjury. I do not like other scandals sharing the limelight. I do not think they add to my favorite scandals. I think they steal spotlight. I think they crowd the stage.

And I want my Stars front and center.

Here’s the thing: The IRS scandal is plainly a partisan illegal political scandal done for corrupt motives.

Unconstitutional ones, too. This gets to the very heart of the American experiment.

The NSA scandal, if it pans out, is an illegal scandal, yes, but unlikely done for partisan or corrupt motives. It would be a case of overreach and constitutional violation, yes, but probably not with partisan or corrupt motives.

And it’s the latter that hang someone. Mistakes or differences of opinion do not. If the NSA turns out to be an overreach, but one done without partisan or corrupt motives… well, no one’s getting impeached for going too far to protect the American people from a terrorist attack.

George Bush got reelected on that platform, for crying out loud. He practically announced, “I intend to go too far.”

Yes. There is seriously frightening stuff going on, but the NSA kerfuffle ain’t one of them. In fact, it doesn’t surprise me at all. I kind of figured it was something they were already up to, since pretty much the whole world routes through American internet servers. It is not the same thing as collecting phone records on every single Verizon customer, but it’s quickly being conflated with it.

Don’t let yourselves get played. Benghazi didn’t burn over a stupid YouTube video, and the NSA tracing foreign internet traffic won’t bring down the Republic. A weaponized IRS, DOJ, and EPA turned against roughly half the population just might.

 

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Patriot Games

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF MAJOR-LEAGUE DOUCHEBAGGERY.

Call me lazy, but I’m a firm believer in learning from the mistakes of others rather than making them myself. Via The Anchoress (h/t Ace), an essay from 1941 that’s as fascinating now as it surely was 72 years ago: Who Goes Nazi?

The answers may surprise you. Or not:

It’s fun—a macabre sort of fun—this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?” And it simplifies things—asking the question in regard to specific personalities.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Wow. Any of it sound familiar? Know anybody like that?

Nope, no Nazis here. Move along…

The longer I live, the more interesting history becomes thanks to a perspective which can only be gained by living a full life. The sweep of time became blindingly obvious to me when too many of our citizens so easily forgot the economic and cultural lessons of the 70’s and 80’s. Keynesian economics never works, and Socialism is just Communism with better manners.

Though we like to pretend otherwise, we’ve absolutely forgotten the brutal lessons of the 30’s and 40’s, namely that appeasing tyrants works out exactly the way Churchill described: like feeding an alligator in the hopes that he ignores the really tasty meal…you. Doesn’t work. Never did. Never will.

No Nazis here either. Oh, wait…

And by the way, Keynesianism didn’t fare any better back then either. While a lot of people have come around to the realization that the New Deal actually prolonged and worsened the Great Depression, it wasn’t entirely ended by WWII either. It would only end when FDR passed from this Mortal Coil, taking his “bold, persistent experimentation” to the grave with him.

Never mind that such a construct implies that we citizens are the lab rats…all for our own good, of course, which is how this stuff always begins. Tyranny is sneaky like that.

So the question is, which era are we about to repeat? I suspect the answer is “a little of both,” which raises another question: which side will we be on this time? Which side do you choose?

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Where Things Stand

Jonah Goldberg is right on target, as usual:

…a man who came into office hell-bent on restoring faith in government is on the verge of inspiring a libertarian revival.There have always been (at least) two Barack Obamas. There is the man who claims to be a nonideological problem-solver, keen on working with anybody to fix things. And there is “The One”: the partisan, left-leaning progressive redeemer.

…

The dilemma for Obama is that neither is panning out because both incarnations rely on trust. The president never had much trust among Republicans, and he lost what he had when he opted to steamroll the stimulus and, later, Obamacare, on a partisan basis.

Of course, that’s not how most Democrats have seen things. They’ve seen the last five years as a tale of Tea Party–fueled madness and racism. The conviction that conservatives are crazy, stupid, and/or bigoted in their opposition to Obama is what has allowed the two Obamas to exist side by side. Both iterations could blame the Republicans for any shortcomings or failures.

…

And then the floodgates opened. The IRS compromised the integrity of the domestic agency that is supposed to be the most immune to politics. Worse, the White House’s best defense was that it was simply asleep at the switch as the agency went rogue — in ways that just happened to align with the president’s oft-expressed ideological and political preferences.

This one’s hard to clip from because every paragraph is worth reading. So hop to it!

 

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What’s the Big Idea?

I’ve whined about struggling with the follow-up to Perigee a few times, which I guess makes this one of those times. The successful indie writers say one should be able to crank out two or three books a year…yeah, riiight. I’m not sure how anyone can manage that with both day job and family. Since I choose to spend time with my kids, unfortunately that means ya’ll lose out on biannual doses of storytelling brilliance. You guys aren’t going to be the ones selecting my nursing home when the time comes, so it’s important for me to keep the boys happy now so I don’t end up in some state-sanctioned Uncle B.O.’s Gulag Acres.

Next week’s big hiking trip has been crowding out what’s left of my mental space for the last month or two. That’s not a bad thing. Two weeks of living outdoors in the Rockies is likely to be even better.

Why? Because I’ve done all I can do with the new book until now. The story’s there, all of the characters are established, major scenes are written…but it’s still not done. If anything, it feels maybe 2/3 complete. I could fill in some yawning gaps and toss it out nice n’ quick-like, but it would just be a sequence of events and you guys would hate me for it. Ever read one of those books that was just a progression of set pieces that led to a conclusion? That’s what I’m trying to avoid, because this book has the potential to be big. The story arc certainly has a lot of kick-ass elements to it…but what ties them together? Why should we care about any of it?

That’s why it’s crucial to figure out what the story’s really about. It’s got to be more than “Event A leads to Crisis B which is resolved by C.” Figuring that out sometimes requires stepping away from the keyboard and clearing your head – you know, that whole forest/trees thingy. By that, I mean what’s the Big Idea driving events and motivating your characters? What concepts are you exploring? Granted this is more of a concern in sci-fi than in technothrillers, but even a straight-up thriller needs to have a theme that pulls it all together. It doesn’t have to be obvious…in fact, it shouldn’t be lest you end up just being preachy.

Or worse: boring.

So to recap the story: Art Hammond’s bunch at Polaris AeroSpace are now flying tourists on free-return orbits around the Moon. As you may have gathered from the posted excerpts, one ship runs into a bit of trouble and is reported missing after disappearing around the lunar far side. Our heroes, of course, leap into action and face more than a few unexpected twists as they set off to find their friends somewhere in lunar orbit.

There are certainly plenty of readers attracted by the setting alone – but more are attracted by a compelling reason for it. Otherwise, it’s just another space-rescue drama. Been there, done that. So what’s it really about? Well, I can’t say too much without giving up the story. Suffice to say that in a world where a few individuals can wreak unprecedented havoc, it is likewise individuals who have the means to stop it. What makes the difference is their will to overcome their fears, doubts, or past failures. And the sides we choose aren’t always as clear-cut as we’d like them to be.

So yes, the missing link has been found, so I can promise you we’re not in for just a fictional re-telling of Apollo 13.

Eventually I’ll even settle on a title.

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Falcons to Mars

Clark Lindsey at NewSpace Watch linked to a PopSci cutaway of SpaceX’s latest work-in-progress. It’s not new, but still cool:

SpaceX Falcon Heavy. Credit: Popular Science

OK, it’s Popular Science fanboy stuff but I love this kind of inside-y look.

And by the way, I was right about what “MCT” stood for! From Elon’s mind to my keyboard…

“No near term plans to IPO @SpaceX. Only possible in very long term when Mars Colonial Transporter is flying regularly.”
https://twitter.com/elonmusk
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Tearing Down Walls

About dadgum time something like this happened.

We are well into a complete remaking of the relationship between reader and author, where publishers are not really necessary. The types of services they provide certainly are, but their lock on distribution is long gone. Writers will always need editors, proofreaders, cover artists, and book designers…but we no longer have to become indentured servants to do so.

Who knows if ITW and SFWA will follow suit, but their insistence on “recognized commercial publishers” wore out my patience a long time ago. Traditionally-published authors have told me that most books under the old model might sell only 1,500 copies. That made sense considering how long it might stay out on the shelves at Barnes & Noble…it used to be 6 to 8 weeks, now that’s been whittled down to 2 or 3 weeks. If that’s your primary sales channel, your last name had better be Rowling or Clancy. If not, then don’t quit your day job. But in the Age of Zon, shelf life is virtually unlimited. Perigee has sold 3,000+ copies so far, so what’s the new threshold of success? Should it be pure volume, or sales over a given period?

The resolution allows for self-published books as professional credit toward membership, as long as three important criteria are met. Self-published books presented by authors applying to join the Union must contain an International Standard Book Number (ISBN), must demonstrate commercial intent, and must be peer reviewed before being forwarded to the membership committee of the Union for approval based on existing criteria.

To be fair, I get the “peer review” part. Some people will slap a cheesy cover over whatever words they’ve vomited onto a Word doc and manage to con people into buying it by plugging a few sock-puppet 5-star reviews on it. So yeah, there has to be some measure of quality control. But this whole notion of requiring authors to be in the trad-publishing Cool Kids Club seems pretty outdated and more than a little insulting as time goes on. What about guys like Boyd Morrison? He had respectable sales as an independent and was picked up by a major publisher only to get dumped before his contract was up. So he’s back in the indie world, and hopefully doing better for it.

Why should anyone care, though? I’ve asked myself that – and I suppose my only interest is in the opportunity to commiserate with other writers whom I might never encounter otherwise.

It could be fun. Or not. Maybe they’re all just a bunch of wiener-heads.

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Creepy Crawly Critters

Because I’m about to embark on a ten-day backpacking trip in the high country, outdoorsy stuff has been on my mind a lot. Then this little tidbit from Field & Steam shows up in my email:

If you would like to see mosquitoes at their most impressive, visit the Arctic or Subarctic in summer. There you’ll encounter them in clouds, literally, and if you don’t have a headnet you’re in trouble because they’ll go up your nose and in your mouth and in your eyes. I’ve fished Kasba Lake in the Northwest Territories, and while the lake itself is bug-free, if you fish the feeder streams you’ll encounter mosquitoes in numbers beyond counting. I dressed in chest waders, a rain jacket, gloves, and a headnet with not an inch of skin showing, and so they didn’t bother me, but if you have to take a leak you are in deep trouble, and if you have to go Number Two, God help you.

The insects are the only thing I don’t miss about the south. During the wait between college and the Marines, I worked for a land surveyor. It was about as miserable of a job as you could imagine in the summer: every day we’d come home drenched in sweat and covered in ticks, chiggers, and skeeter bites. About once or twice a week you could count on upsetting a few hornets or yellow jackets…the First Rule of Surveying was “If you see somebody running, don’t ask questions -just follow them.” And we won’t talk about snakes. Ever.

This little jaunt we’re going on will be in the Rockies, not Alaskan bogs or Southern marshes, so I doubt hope we won’t encounter swarms of man-eating ‘skeeters because they’ve always been particularly attracted to my blood type, which to their little insect taste buds must apparently taste like chocolate. Or pizza.

All this is by way of letting ya’ll know the blog will dormant starting next Saturday (the 15th) through the end of the month, as I’ll be on a little stroll through the mountains with Oldest Son and a gaggle of grabasstic teenagers. Don’t go breaking anything while I’m gone.

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