"We had been told, on leaving our native soil, that we were going to defend the sacred rights confered by us on so many of our citizens settled overseas, so many years of our presence, so many benefits brought by us to populations in need of our assistance and our civilization.
"We were able to verify that all this was true and, because it was true, we did not hesitate to shed our quota of blood, to sacrifice our youth and our hopes. We regretted nothing, but whereas we over here are inspired by this frame of mind, I am told that in Rome factions and conspiracies are rife, that treachery floursihes, and that many people in their uncertainty and confusion lend a ready ear to the dire temptations of relinquishment... Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow-citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire
"If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware the anger of the Legions!"
-Marcus Flavinius, Centurion of the Augusta Legion as quoted by Jean Larteguy in The Centurions
I first read The Centurions seven years ago in the library at West Point. I have not read it since because I do not speak French and English copies range from two hundred to five hundred dollars. The novel depicts not the Centurions of Rome's famed Legions, but the professional soldiers of France fighting in Indochina. It is a very good book but I have always wanted a copy first and foremost so that I could find the glorious quotation the heads this entry in it's entirety.
I was lucky in that Alistair Horne includes the full quotation at the begining of the second part of his book A Savage War of Peace, a history of the French-Algerian war, which I am currently reading (and for which I did not pay five hundred bucks- for those of you with a historical bent, there's a link down and to the right on this very page. Go ahead, it's for a good cause, well at least from MY viewpoint ;).
I was thinking what a wonderful propaganda voiceover this could make; open with images of deploying units for "on leaving our native soil", shift to images of Iraq under Saddam's regime and Afghanistan under the Taliban, then after "was true" shift to images of fighting in both theaters and then boots-rifle helmet arrangements and flag-draped coffins of fallen soldiers for "our quota of blood." For factions-conspiracies-treachery- well you can all think of plenty of material in America for that. Article 88 prevents from expounding to heavily on the subject. For "ready ear to the dire temptation of relinquishment," one could show peace protesters. Then close out with some more fighting and some stock footage of our most powerful formations maneuvering and spewing fire. Something dramatic and instrumental would play in the background, but not cheesey and lilting. Precussion, simplicity, the music of war.
Now if I could arrange stuff like this, I might actually enjoy being the PAO. Sadly, I have to go now to write my Family Readiness Group Newsletter instead. If my job were any more nutless I'd be a gelding.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Futue History 10:23 AM
While I will not publish anything I'm trying to sell on here, for obvious reasons, I will occasionally use this format to narcisiticly ramble about my ingenious ideas for my latest story.
The last thing I submitted to Baen's Universe was a story about hunting werewolves in the Canadian Rockies. I got some decent feedback, a few people liked it pretty well. But after two revisions it's still getting as much criticism as praise and definitely no sign of getting picked up by the magazine. I am not disheartened by this, becoming a professional writer is a lifetime project, especially when you've got a real job and life to worry about in addition to your literary aspirations.
I'm not abandoning the story, but I'm tabling it to get back to science fiction for awhile. Though I am not a hard science major I want to write science fiction with PLAUSIBLE science. This is not to say I want to innundate readers with a bunch of technobabble; but one of the things that most appeals to me about science fiction is that it is the literature of the possible. The new gee-whiz gadgets are inconsequential next to the time honored elements of any good story, but the future offers magnificent backdrops that are all the more tantalizing because they just may be within our reach.
Several of the best science fiction authors have constructed what devotees have titled "Future Histories." More than just a series of books, Future Histories are webs of short stories and novels that may or not may be closely intertwined yet all fall within a singular coherent fictional universe running parallel to our own. Most of these Future Histories have identical or similar timelines to our own up to a few decades (or centuries for those authors who do not want to be around when their ideas are proven impossible) into the future. Michael Resnick has several dozen novels and short stories that all fall within the Birthright of Man universe. Isaac Asimov wrote the Foundation series as a Future History. Gordon R. Dickson wrote a series of novels and shorts known as the Childe Cycle (or more popularly as the Dorsai series) which included elements from as far back as the 13th Century in history and as far forward as the 26th century.
Justin, you haven't mentioned you-know-who yet!
Oh, of course the richest and perhaps best-loved Future History was written by... you guessed it, Robert Heinlein. His future history stretched from the 1970's (thirty years in his future at the time) to the 41st Century. Incidentally, the first future history story, Life-Line, was the first story he ever wrote and he sold it on the first submission- as he did everything else he ever submitted for the rest of his life- lucky bastard. Heinlein wove hundreds of characters and plots into a world that some times feels as real as our own, though always with a touch of Mark Twain-esque humor. And when it turned out that Mars and Venus were NOT inhabited by sentient life, the old rascal introduced the concept of time travel and parallel universes into his Future History. So, no wonder Mars isn't inhabited, we're just in the wrong universe.
Very nice, Justin, are we approaching a point?
Simply this; I'm infected with the same virus. I want to write not only good individual stories or series, but craft entire universes out of the ether. Everything I write either falls into an enormous history I'm constucting or spawns a new one, I'm incapable of writing something and then walking away from it. I have to wonder what happened a thousand years later or a hundred years before.
In the universe I've created the next century is dark. That's because that's how I see it unfurling. Fundamentalist Islam isn't going anywhere. And in the mean time Russia, China and others are increasing their military readiness. The era of peace and brotherhood is not at hand.
In this world the fundamentalists of the muslim world continue to gain support as conditions worsen and the Western powers make either half-hearted or ill-directed efforts to snuff them out. About half way through the twenty-first century a quarter the population of Europe is muslim (ridiculous? go check the birth and immigration statistics in Wester Europe for the last few years). A coalition of Arab nations assembles enough conventional military power to make a power grab, supported by local insurgents, in the Balkans. This goes unchallenged by Western Europe and the United States and the Russian expeditionary force sent to stop them is defeated in detail.
Inevitably the whole of Europe falls to the Caliphate. Russia stands on the sidelines this time, remembering the abandoment of the previous war. Israel and the United Kingdom stand besieged. Christians and Jews are placed under the dhimma, atheists, hindus, buddhists, and so on, are jailed or executed. From Portugal to the Ukraine only Switzerland stands sovereign thanks to bloody resistance in the Alps. The Pope-in-Exile proclaims the renewal of the Crusade from Geneva.
The Caliphate, whose willing members stretch from Mauritania to Indonesia, bites off more than it can chew when it goes to war with India and China simultaneously. The US military finally gears up enough to be a serious force in the conflict. Europe is liberated and the siege of Israel is lifted and the Caliphate's situation becomes desperate. As allied forces conquer first North Africa then Central Asia, the madmen in charge orders his affiliate terrorists to release the Green Plague, a biological weapon which kills twenty-five percent of the world's population before nano-scientists are able to design a nanite antibody to kill the virus.
The retribution is awful. The allied powers, save for Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States strike every Muslim medical center they can find with tactical nukes. The Muslim population suffers the worst for the plague. Islamdom shrinks from 2 billion in 2085 to 250 million in 2090 at the end of the Last Jihad.
In the ensuing chaos states are redefined. Devestated Mexico and Central America become protectorates of the United States. Israel stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. Europe is gripped with a fundamentalist backlash against the brutal ten-year occupation of the Caliphate. The former European Union is reformed as the European Alliance under the acknowledged leadership of the Vatican. China and India are gripped by trans-national genetic socialist revolution and unite as the new Xiaoist Collective, named after the originator of eugenic-socialism. (Summary- Lennin, Mao and Marx mistakenly waited for the "new man," Xiao and his followers intend to engineer him). In Russia a brilliant general and his corps of disciplined troops emerge as the only thing saving the motherland from utter anarchy and he finds himself the new Tsar.
There are no Muslims left in Europe, the lucky ones were simply deported. In the United States, though legally protected, they are subject to racial violence in frequency and intesnity unheard of since the 1960's. Israel and the UK likewise. In China and India the eugenic socialists have used the same nano-tech cure to enslave the entire muslim populations of their countries.
This is the state of the world on January 1st, 2101.
Justin, do you really hate Muslims so much?
As a matter of fact no, I don't. Mohamed Al Muslim is no better or worse per capita than John Q. Christian or Herchel P. Jew. But right now there is a dangerous trend to underestimate the fundamentalist and violent elements within Islamic society. The vast majority of Muslims are not evil. The vast majority of Germans were not evil in 1939 too. It won't matter if they and we allow the cancer to grow to the point where we, either out of necessity or out of righteous anger, are forced to use extreme measures to defeat them.
I hope this future does not come to pass, yet I will write it in the hopes that westerners and moderate muslims alike will realize the need to oppose the fanatics before a greater conflagration becomes inevitable. All my stories will take place after the Green Plague and the Last Jihad. I've fought fundamentalist Islam for years now, I have no desire to write fiction about it except as background.
Okay... I should probably edit this, but it's freaking 2300. Time for me to call Michele and go to bed!
The last thing I submitted to Baen's Universe was a story about hunting werewolves in the Canadian Rockies. I got some decent feedback, a few people liked it pretty well. But after two revisions it's still getting as much criticism as praise and definitely no sign of getting picked up by the magazine. I am not disheartened by this, becoming a professional writer is a lifetime project, especially when you've got a real job and life to worry about in addition to your literary aspirations.
I'm not abandoning the story, but I'm tabling it to get back to science fiction for awhile. Though I am not a hard science major I want to write science fiction with PLAUSIBLE science. This is not to say I want to innundate readers with a bunch of technobabble; but one of the things that most appeals to me about science fiction is that it is the literature of the possible. The new gee-whiz gadgets are inconsequential next to the time honored elements of any good story, but the future offers magnificent backdrops that are all the more tantalizing because they just may be within our reach.
Several of the best science fiction authors have constructed what devotees have titled "Future Histories." More than just a series of books, Future Histories are webs of short stories and novels that may or not may be closely intertwined yet all fall within a singular coherent fictional universe running parallel to our own. Most of these Future Histories have identical or similar timelines to our own up to a few decades (or centuries for those authors who do not want to be around when their ideas are proven impossible) into the future. Michael Resnick has several dozen novels and short stories that all fall within the Birthright of Man universe. Isaac Asimov wrote the Foundation series as a Future History. Gordon R. Dickson wrote a series of novels and shorts known as the Childe Cycle (or more popularly as the Dorsai series) which included elements from as far back as the 13th Century in history and as far forward as the 26th century.
Justin, you haven't mentioned you-know-who yet!
Oh, of course the richest and perhaps best-loved Future History was written by... you guessed it, Robert Heinlein. His future history stretched from the 1970's (thirty years in his future at the time) to the 41st Century. Incidentally, the first future history story, Life-Line, was the first story he ever wrote and he sold it on the first submission- as he did everything else he ever submitted for the rest of his life- lucky bastard. Heinlein wove hundreds of characters and plots into a world that some times feels as real as our own, though always with a touch of Mark Twain-esque humor. And when it turned out that Mars and Venus were NOT inhabited by sentient life, the old rascal introduced the concept of time travel and parallel universes into his Future History. So, no wonder Mars isn't inhabited, we're just in the wrong universe.
Very nice, Justin, are we approaching a point?
Simply this; I'm infected with the same virus. I want to write not only good individual stories or series, but craft entire universes out of the ether. Everything I write either falls into an enormous history I'm constucting or spawns a new one, I'm incapable of writing something and then walking away from it. I have to wonder what happened a thousand years later or a hundred years before.
In the universe I've created the next century is dark. That's because that's how I see it unfurling. Fundamentalist Islam isn't going anywhere. And in the mean time Russia, China and others are increasing their military readiness. The era of peace and brotherhood is not at hand.
In this world the fundamentalists of the muslim world continue to gain support as conditions worsen and the Western powers make either half-hearted or ill-directed efforts to snuff them out. About half way through the twenty-first century a quarter the population of Europe is muslim (ridiculous? go check the birth and immigration statistics in Wester Europe for the last few years). A coalition of Arab nations assembles enough conventional military power to make a power grab, supported by local insurgents, in the Balkans. This goes unchallenged by Western Europe and the United States and the Russian expeditionary force sent to stop them is defeated in detail.
Inevitably the whole of Europe falls to the Caliphate. Russia stands on the sidelines this time, remembering the abandoment of the previous war. Israel and the United Kingdom stand besieged. Christians and Jews are placed under the dhimma, atheists, hindus, buddhists, and so on, are jailed or executed. From Portugal to the Ukraine only Switzerland stands sovereign thanks to bloody resistance in the Alps. The Pope-in-Exile proclaims the renewal of the Crusade from Geneva.
The Caliphate, whose willing members stretch from Mauritania to Indonesia, bites off more than it can chew when it goes to war with India and China simultaneously. The US military finally gears up enough to be a serious force in the conflict. Europe is liberated and the siege of Israel is lifted and the Caliphate's situation becomes desperate. As allied forces conquer first North Africa then Central Asia, the madmen in charge orders his affiliate terrorists to release the Green Plague, a biological weapon which kills twenty-five percent of the world's population before nano-scientists are able to design a nanite antibody to kill the virus.
The retribution is awful. The allied powers, save for Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States strike every Muslim medical center they can find with tactical nukes. The Muslim population suffers the worst for the plague. Islamdom shrinks from 2 billion in 2085 to 250 million in 2090 at the end of the Last Jihad.
In the ensuing chaos states are redefined. Devestated Mexico and Central America become protectorates of the United States. Israel stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. Europe is gripped with a fundamentalist backlash against the brutal ten-year occupation of the Caliphate. The former European Union is reformed as the European Alliance under the acknowledged leadership of the Vatican. China and India are gripped by trans-national genetic socialist revolution and unite as the new Xiaoist Collective, named after the originator of eugenic-socialism. (Summary- Lennin, Mao and Marx mistakenly waited for the "new man," Xiao and his followers intend to engineer him). In Russia a brilliant general and his corps of disciplined troops emerge as the only thing saving the motherland from utter anarchy and he finds himself the new Tsar.
There are no Muslims left in Europe, the lucky ones were simply deported. In the United States, though legally protected, they are subject to racial violence in frequency and intesnity unheard of since the 1960's. Israel and the UK likewise. In China and India the eugenic socialists have used the same nano-tech cure to enslave the entire muslim populations of their countries.
This is the state of the world on January 1st, 2101.
Justin, do you really hate Muslims so much?
As a matter of fact no, I don't. Mohamed Al Muslim is no better or worse per capita than John Q. Christian or Herchel P. Jew. But right now there is a dangerous trend to underestimate the fundamentalist and violent elements within Islamic society. The vast majority of Muslims are not evil. The vast majority of Germans were not evil in 1939 too. It won't matter if they and we allow the cancer to grow to the point where we, either out of necessity or out of righteous anger, are forced to use extreme measures to defeat them.
I hope this future does not come to pass, yet I will write it in the hopes that westerners and moderate muslims alike will realize the need to oppose the fanatics before a greater conflagration becomes inevitable. All my stories will take place after the Green Plague and the Last Jihad. I've fought fundamentalist Islam for years now, I have no desire to write fiction about it except as background.
Okay... I should probably edit this, but it's freaking 2300. Time for me to call Michele and go to bed!
Labels:
dark days ahead,
Science Fiction,
writing
Monday, January 5, 2009
Sit in Front of the Typewriter and Open a Vein 5:43 AM
This is the first official "tortured writer" post of this publication. It probably will not be the last.
I posted the third revision of my werewolf story this morning. I am incredibly grateful for Baen's Universe, the online magazine of professional quality short science fiction and fantasy because it gives a possible venue for newbees to get picked up and a guaranteed feedback system for us to polish our skills.
The issue is that for several years working on a completely amateur (and very solitary) venue I only received criticism from people who love me. This is not to say I don't value that criticism. My wife has pointed out so many absurdities and gaffes in my thought process before I could even put them into print that I fail to see how anyone writes without a supportive spouse. They either must stumble painfully through it or just not make as many mistakes at baseline.
The point is that at Baen's, they offer no-punches pulled criticism, which is exactly what an amateur like me needs to get to the next level. The only issue is that it stings like a bitch. The paradox is thus; to write something worthwhile you have to get personally invested into it. YOU have to believe in it or sure as hell no one else will; however, to survive the editing process, you MUST NOT take it personally when someone rips your beloved creation to shreds, points out gaping holes in your logic and tells you that your carefully worded passages failed to move them.
I'm still learning this skill. Right now, every time I post a story I immediately start chewing my nails until the first response. Then I am usually depressed because the quickest response is usually one of the editors who points out, correctly, all the things that keep the story from being pro quality. At this point I generally sulk and question my own skill at anything and lament the fact that I ever took it into my head to try and write fiction. This phase lasts until the next post, this one usually from one of my fellow newbies, who also has criticism to offer, but feels enough fratnernity to offer up praise and encouragement as well. This makes me feel better as sometimes the praise is accruate and flattering. (I do not blame the editor for not patting me on the ass, it's not his/her job to make me feel better about myself).
Michele, bless her heart, usually finds herself bemused at this stage because while her best attempts to cheer me up over the previous 12-48 hours were received gratefully but with visibly limited effect, a few lines of encouragement from a complete stranger somehow manage to brighten up my whole outlook on the practice of writing science fiction. I understand her frustration and I apologize and tell her that her opinion matters most in almost all things, and especially in terms of her opinion of me as a person as a whole, but that deep in my heart I assume her bias.
It doesn't matter that she has ripped apart more than one of my drafts for being shallow or illogical or just plain bad, somehow I always assume that at the end of the day she's going to like what I produce. Which is a good and necessary feeling; I feel sorry for anyone married to someone who didn't believe in them. It's just that it feels good to know that someone who has no vested interest in your happiness likes what you've written- even if you haven't quite sold the editor yet.
So today I'm back to biting my nails and trying not to check the boards every five minutes. Wish me luck. Who knows, this could be the draft that does it, or at least the first to get a kind word from the editor.
I posted the third revision of my werewolf story this morning. I am incredibly grateful for Baen's Universe, the online magazine of professional quality short science fiction and fantasy because it gives a possible venue for newbees to get picked up and a guaranteed feedback system for us to polish our skills.
The issue is that for several years working on a completely amateur (and very solitary) venue I only received criticism from people who love me. This is not to say I don't value that criticism. My wife has pointed out so many absurdities and gaffes in my thought process before I could even put them into print that I fail to see how anyone writes without a supportive spouse. They either must stumble painfully through it or just not make as many mistakes at baseline.
The point is that at Baen's, they offer no-punches pulled criticism, which is exactly what an amateur like me needs to get to the next level. The only issue is that it stings like a bitch. The paradox is thus; to write something worthwhile you have to get personally invested into it. YOU have to believe in it or sure as hell no one else will; however, to survive the editing process, you MUST NOT take it personally when someone rips your beloved creation to shreds, points out gaping holes in your logic and tells you that your carefully worded passages failed to move them.
I'm still learning this skill. Right now, every time I post a story I immediately start chewing my nails until the first response. Then I am usually depressed because the quickest response is usually one of the editors who points out, correctly, all the things that keep the story from being pro quality. At this point I generally sulk and question my own skill at anything and lament the fact that I ever took it into my head to try and write fiction. This phase lasts until the next post, this one usually from one of my fellow newbies, who also has criticism to offer, but feels enough fratnernity to offer up praise and encouragement as well. This makes me feel better as sometimes the praise is accruate and flattering. (I do not blame the editor for not patting me on the ass, it's not his/her job to make me feel better about myself).
Michele, bless her heart, usually finds herself bemused at this stage because while her best attempts to cheer me up over the previous 12-48 hours were received gratefully but with visibly limited effect, a few lines of encouragement from a complete stranger somehow manage to brighten up my whole outlook on the practice of writing science fiction. I understand her frustration and I apologize and tell her that her opinion matters most in almost all things, and especially in terms of her opinion of me as a person as a whole, but that deep in my heart I assume her bias.
It doesn't matter that she has ripped apart more than one of my drafts for being shallow or illogical or just plain bad, somehow I always assume that at the end of the day she's going to like what I produce. Which is a good and necessary feeling; I feel sorry for anyone married to someone who didn't believe in them. It's just that it feels good to know that someone who has no vested interest in your happiness likes what you've written- even if you haven't quite sold the editor yet.
So today I'm back to biting my nails and trying not to check the boards every five minutes. Wish me luck. Who knows, this could be the draft that does it, or at least the first to get a kind word from the editor.
Labels:
writing
Friday, January 2, 2009
Good Job, Thus Far, Honey 11:43 PM
My lovely, talented and indescribably wonderful wife is monkeying with my blog to get the coolest possible layout. So far I like it. Expect me to be hawking my favorite books as soon as Michele signs me up for the amazon.com program to do so. That's right, my wife is three or four times more computer literate than me. She also is the first line of sanity for everything I write and my sounding board for every serious thought or feeling I've had in the past four years. She's also a better driver and all-around smarter- and I'm not even going to get into how attractive she is.
I guess this post could be summarized by saying that my wife rules.
I guess this post could be summarized by saying that my wife rules.
Labels:
Michele
The Sentient Machine as Character 10:48 AM
Skynet. HAL 2000. The Cylons. A multitude of science fiction authors have engaged the idea of machines becoming self-aware and they have, almost without exception, portrayed this as varying degrees of catastrophic for the human race. Skynet and the Cylons committ near genocide on the human race. HAL 2000 tries to kill Dave. Etc, etc, al infintium. This is not a criticism; I enjoy Battlestar Galactica, 2001 and Terminator (especially BSG) a great deal. Nor do I have an issue with the assumption that the advent of artificial awareness will result in violence. Given our history, it's not a bad guess at who we'll react to just about any sudden dramatic change.
Robert Heinlein, aforementioned in the TANSTAFL post, offered up a different view. In several of his stories computers are portrayed as achieving sentience, but are sympathetic characters. The two books which most strongly embrace this feature are The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Time Enough For Love. In the first a government computer named Mike becomes self-aware and befriends Lunar revolutionaries out to establish a free and sovereign state on the Moon. In Time Enough For Love there are actually several, arguably, sentient computers, but the one that matters the most is the computer Minerva, who falls in love with her primary user and eventually transfers her consciousness to a biological body in order to marry him.
One can argue that this seems entirely too optimistic, but I find it even more fascinating than a doomsday scenario. Put it this way (for all you BSG nuts out there) the Cylons are an effective and terrifying bad guy when they nuke humanity and use their human appearance to deceive, seduce and betray mankind. They are fascinating, however, once you realize that Athena really, no bullshit, loves Helo, and that Caprica Six really, no bullshit, feels guilt for her part in the war. And so on, and so on. As each cylon becomes more and more human, the story gets more interesting and rises far above, no offense to Arnold, the simplicity of the Terminator.
The question that interests me is this; how would a society function in which artifical constructs with self awareness were legal citizens with similar or identical rights and priveleges to biological beings? How would division of labor work? What shape would relationships between the biologicals and the artificials take? This is assuming, of course, they've reached a stage of not trying to kill each other. No, Matrix scenarioes don't interest me either, nor any lesser extrapolaiton where humans have willingly or unwillingly given up their dignity to the machines. Us as pasty meat sacks playing endless virtual video games is not something I wish to write about.
It's an interesting thought, I think... wow. I'm going to leave that pun there. And there's nothing you can do about it.
Robert Heinlein, aforementioned in the TANSTAFL post, offered up a different view. In several of his stories computers are portrayed as achieving sentience, but are sympathetic characters. The two books which most strongly embrace this feature are The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Time Enough For Love. In the first a government computer named Mike becomes self-aware and befriends Lunar revolutionaries out to establish a free and sovereign state on the Moon. In Time Enough For Love there are actually several, arguably, sentient computers, but the one that matters the most is the computer Minerva, who falls in love with her primary user and eventually transfers her consciousness to a biological body in order to marry him.
One can argue that this seems entirely too optimistic, but I find it even more fascinating than a doomsday scenario. Put it this way (for all you BSG nuts out there) the Cylons are an effective and terrifying bad guy when they nuke humanity and use their human appearance to deceive, seduce and betray mankind. They are fascinating, however, once you realize that Athena really, no bullshit, loves Helo, and that Caprica Six really, no bullshit, feels guilt for her part in the war. And so on, and so on. As each cylon becomes more and more human, the story gets more interesting and rises far above, no offense to Arnold, the simplicity of the Terminator.
The question that interests me is this; how would a society function in which artifical constructs with self awareness were legal citizens with similar or identical rights and priveleges to biological beings? How would division of labor work? What shape would relationships between the biologicals and the artificials take? This is assuming, of course, they've reached a stage of not trying to kill each other. No, Matrix scenarioes don't interest me either, nor any lesser extrapolaiton where humans have willingly or unwillingly given up their dignity to the machines. Us as pasty meat sacks playing endless virtual video games is not something I wish to write about.
It's an interesting thought, I think... wow. I'm going to leave that pun there. And there's nothing you can do about it.
Labels:
Heinlein,
Science Fiction,
writing
