This is response to gio's observation in the comments section of the previous post, that Heroes Die was published before Survivor hit the air (the comment presumably inspired by Del Rey's cover copy for Caine Black Knife, which emphasizes the Reality TV aspect of the Adventures Unlimited Studio system.)

This is a instance of life imitating art, I think. The inspiration for the Studio system in the Overworld novels was not reality TV, but instead role-playing games and regular old action movies and TV shows . . .

It probably, as much as anything else, was the result of a doink! moment I had while watching an episode of the old TV action series THE EQUALIZER (in which Edward Woodward played a retired covert ops guy, trying to atone for his violent past by helping out people in trouble).

Somewhere in the middle of the second season, I realized this particular Good Guy hero would shoot, stab, blow up, defenestrate or otherwise kill two or three Bad Guys in nearly every episode. So I'm sitting there watching this show, and it suddenly strikes me that this particular hero had killed something like fifty men in less than a year -- !

How does he fucking SLEEP?

Which got me thinking about the disposable victims who are a staple of every action movie from The Public Enemy through James Bond on up to the present day -- not to mention the hordes of hapless enemies cheerfully dispatched by Dungeons & Dragons player characters -- and how much fun it is to watch the extras die (or, in the RPGs, to pretend to be killing them ourselves).

So I wasn't really thinking in terms of Reality TV as much as I was Just Plain Reality . . . including the reality of human nature. I just wanted to think about what it'd be like if the heroes and villains and disposable extras were all real people . . .

I also, as a number of people around here already know, was working on a personal theory of character in literature -- that readers don't much care whether your hero is likeable, or admirable, or even a tolerably decent human being. That people don't identify so much with a character as with the character's struggle. I wanted to find out, so I cast as my protagonist a chronically depressed thug who kills people for other people's amusement.

Then I discovered I liked the guy.

Sign your comments, people. Even if you don't want to log in, you can put your name (or a name) at the bottom.

I sign everything I write, and I require that commenters here do the same. I know some of you folks are new(ish) around here, and I don't want to delete friendly comments just for being anonymous.

But I will.

On a happier note --

While I was eating lunch today, I happened to turn on Turner Classic Movies, on which happened to be The Battle Of Britain with Lawrence Olivier and Christopher Plummer. This flick happened to be in the middle of one of the big Spitfire vs Nazi Bomber scenes, which I watched with growing delight.

"Holy Shit!" quoth I. "It's the assault on the friggin' Death Star!"

Now, it occurs to me that this is hardly unknown among all you SW geeks out there, as I seem to recall, on further reflection, having read something about that very influence in one of the old Lucas interviews.

But it was still very, very cool to come to find it unexpectedly staring me in the face.

That's all.

Come on. Really?

I know very few people come by here very often any more (not even me), but no tribute to TMD? Not even one?

Camp Concentration
334
On Wings of Song

Anybody?

Even The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of, which is non-fic, but still . . .

Thomas M. Disch shot himself on the Fourth of July.

This had me on the verge of in tears, if only because that should be the first line of a new Disch novel. He was the best of the New Wave. The best. Which is probably why he ditched SF almost 20 years ago.

Yet another guy who died before I had a chance to shake his hand and tell him how much his work meant to me.

God damn it.

To continue a previous thought, and answer a comment from Modi, below:

Really, [the following poster] Robert has the right of it here. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.

As for my seeing the world from an American perspective . . . well, that's unavoidable. I'm American, and though I'm rarely (these days) proud of what my country does, I am a passionate believer in the ideals upon which this country was founded. It is the gap between those ideals and our current reality that I find so saddening. I don't think America is "better" than your country, whatever that might be. America is America, which is sometimes a good thing, but more often not.

On the 4th of July (America's Independence Day) a few years back -- not long after the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq -- I found myself watching one of the few surviving Cagney song & dance flicks, Yankee Doodle Dandy, a biography of the unabashed patriotic super-booster, George M. Cohan.

It had me in tears. Because I just can't imagine any more what it must be like to have that kind of uncritical faith in the fundamental rightness of this nation.

When I was in Washington D.C. on tour for Revenge of the Sith, I took an afternoon to walk around the Mall and visit the memorials to by two favorite presidents, Lincoln and Jefferson. I won't go into detail here . . . but I couldn't even look their statues in the eye. Out of shame for what we've let the Bush Administration do to our country.

However: we love who and what we love, despite their flaws. Sometimes because of them. Because we're still a work in progress.

I'm not entirely sure what I want to say today.

This, as anyone who knows me will attest, is an unusual state. But I feel I should say something, because today is Memorial Day.

It's common, on Memorial Day, to honor Our Brave Soldiers' Sacrifice for Liberty--usually in the Big One, known in classrooms as Word War II. I'm all into that; my father and mother both served in the Army in the Big One, though neither saw combat (my mother served in the WAC, and my father was invalided out with the initial attack of the rheumatoid arthritis that plagued him for the rest of his life.) Oh, y'know, a couple of my uncles flew bombers, and one even trained guerrillas behind Japanese lines in the Philippines, so the family story goes--these uncles having passed on some years ago, I can neither confirm nor deny these tales, but that's not the issue.

A few weeks ago, the Fabulous Robyn and I passed through San Diego on our way to my sister's wedding on Mount Palomar. Since TFR and I never get a chance for actual vacations, we took a day in SD to do some vacation-y things, including visiting Sea World. So we went to the Shamu Show (the orca performance, which is pretty damned cool, but not germane to the story I'm telling). San Diego, for those of you who don't know, is also home to one of the largest US Navy bases in the world. So as one might suspect, Sea World gets a lot of business from sailors on liberty, and they try very hard to cultivate that business, in a very respectful way. One actually gets the impression that the Sea World management means it--that it's not a cheap-ass marketing ploy. At the Shamu Show, the presenter (who is also the head trainer) came out before the show and asked that all the current soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen in the crowd stand up to take a round of applause.

They looked a little embarrassed, but they did it.

Then he asked the families of these service members--and the families of all current servicemen and women overseas--to stand up and take their own round of applause. Some of them were crying. I was close to it myself.

Then they asked for all the veterans, and families of veterans, to stand. And damn near everybody was on their feet.

And I still don't know what I want to say about this.

I guess I just think that the best way to honor the sacrifices of our veterans, and the service of our soldiers, and sailors, and marines and airmen, is to not ask them to be killed or maimed in a war we should never have started in the first place. To end the Russian Roulette of tour after tour after tour in a combat zone we should never have created. To outlaw the stop-loss process, so that our All-Volunteer Military can actually be all volunteer. To give these valiant men and women the chance to defend us from the real enemies of America, in Afghanistan and on the Pakistan border and beyond. To give them a real G.I Bill, because a college-educated veteran is the best investment we can make in the future strength and prosperity of our nation. To fully fund and staff the Veteran's Administration, so that our returning veterans can get the medical care so many of them sadly need.

To never, ever, ever again allow a rogue administration to use them to invade a nation who never attacked us. To hold accountable the criminals who wrap themselves in the flag while wiping their asses with the Constitution.

That's all. I guess.

This from a long-time friend, the novelist Yvonne Navarro. It's worth your attention.

------------
So I have to ask: Would you think that being fair is good... but only for SOME people?

On Wednesday, April 23rd, the Senate failed to pass the Fair Pay Act. What was almost worse than that defeat were the out-of-touch, old-fashioned-- and downright insulting-- statements about women. Senator John McCain (come ON, Arizona!), who didn’t even come to vote, said that instead of legislation allowing women to fight for equal pay, they simply need "education and training."

Lilly Ledbetter, whose Supreme Court case led to the creation of the Fair Pay Act, didn't need "training". She needed Fair Pay. Women today make up 56% of college graduates and nearly half of the labor force in this country. Yet women make only 73 cents to a man's dollar, and mothers only make 60 cents, for the exact same job.

Please sign the petition below in support of the Fair Pay Act. And for good measure, send Senator McCain your resume. Our goal is to send him 100,000. Think he'll get the point?
We Need Equal Pay for Equal Work--it is good law, make it enforceable.

http://www.momsrising.org/fairpaymccain

Here's where it gets personal:

The above is taken almost word for word from a Fair Pay Act website. What you'll read below, what I HOPE you read below, are my words, my story. An absolute, God's truth slice of my past:

When I was 18, I worked for a real estate firm in Chicago called Frank M. Whiston & Co. I was an accounting clerk, and I made $380.00 per month, BEFORE taxes. For this $380.00 per month, I opened, counted, and reconciled rent checks from various Chicago properties. Eight feet away from me sat a young man about the same age, and his name was Ray. He did the exact same job that I did. And for this job, Ray made $500.00 per month. He was single, so having a "family" wasn't even a flimsy excuse. He made more than me because he was a man. Period. And while I always found myself borrowing a few bucks from my coworkers every week so I could buy cigarettes (I was a smoker back then), the amount that Ray made more than me each and every month would have literally paid my entire rent.

That was in 1975. Come on, people of America. I really thought we were past that sh*t by now.

But thank you John McCain, who has informed me in no uncertain terms that I do not need equal pay for equal work. I need education and training. May I take this to mean I need MORE education and training than my male counterparts to do the SAME job so that I can earn the SAME amount of money? Perhaps, then, my male counterparts would like to PAY for that education? If being a woman means I am not entitled to equal pay, then being a man should mean men pay more taxes. Pardon me, but both make the same damned amount of sense.

If you are a woman, please go to the link above and sign the petition. If you are a man, before you close this email and forget about it, think about the women in your life. Your mother, your wife, sister, your daughter-- all of these women whom you claim to care so much about will be faced with this. It affects the woman in the next cubicle who struggles to make daycare payments and can't afford family medical insurance. It affects the friend from work you have lunch with in the plaza-- you know, the gal who brings her lunch most of the time and who can't afford to go out to lunch while coworkers of a certain gender eat out 4 or 5 times a week. The world would be a better place and politicians like McCain might actually wake the frack up if their male counterparts added their voices to the "THIS IS NOT FAIR!" scream.

It's not hard to figure it out. Fair should be fair for everyone, not just a few someones.

Thanks for reading this, and for your support.
All best,

Yvonne Navarro


-----------------------


For those of you unfamiliar with the backstory on this, Lily Ledbetter (for whom the Fair Pay Act is named) was a management executive at Goodyear; after putting in twenty-some years there, she received an anonymous e-mail revealing how much the other four executives at her level were being paid -- it had to be anonymous, because discussing executive pay at Goodyear is STRICTLY VERBOTEN.

What the e-mail revealed was that the least-compensated of those co-workers (all men), who was a number of years behind her in terms of seniority, was being paid thousands of dollars more per year than she was (despite her years of promotions and excellent performance reviews). She sued Goodyear for discrimination, and received a substantial jury award -- which was overturned on appeal . . . because, under federal law, a discrimination lawsuit must be brought within six months of the discrimination's FIRST OCCURRENCE. Note that the fact this discrimination was a corporate secret -- concealed by explicit company policy -- is irrelevant. This view of the law was upheld by our Supreme Court (in a majority opinion written by none other than Samuel J. Alito, if memory serves).

Congress undertook to rectify this manifest unfairness by writing a law which would set the deadline for discrimination lawsuits to six months after the discrimination is discovered by the injured party, as opposed to its "first occurrence."

Seems simple, yes? Simple fairness. But in today's America, nothing is ever that simple.

This law sailed through the House of Representatives, but was blocked in the Senate by Republican filibuster. Mitch McConnell, minority leader, claimed that the Republicans stood against it because this law had been specifically designed purely to enrich trial lawyers by unleashing a flood of lawsuits. (Never mind the finding by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office of just the opposite.)

It's worth noting, here, that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton took a day off from their respective presidential campaigns to return to Washington so they could vote on this bill. (For the record: both voted in favor).

Senator McCain was apparently too busy to make the trip.

That's all.

To answer Steve's question from the previous comment section:

Some of The Lies of Locke Lamora may have vaguely reminded you of my style because Scott Lynch was, at the time of its writing, still a pretty hard-core Caine fan . . . but mostly, really, it's just that Scottie's a fuckin' genius, and great minds sometimes think alike.

I've said it before: Scott Lynch is what I'd be if I were younger, smarter and better looking. Since I am none of those things, I am forced to settle for being me.

I never recognize my own style in other people's writing; to me, I don't even have a style. I just try to write the best I can. I suspect Scott works the same way. I mean, if it wasn't for my name on both covers, I seriously doubt many people would have tumbled to the fact that Heroes Die and Revenge of the Sith were written by the same guy. Maybe if some hard-core Lit Geek were to analyze the word-frequency and check for my own coinages and shit -- like they do when they're trying to figure out if Shakespeare's plays were written by Shakespeare or by another playwright of the same name -- they might come up with some kind of positive match, but short of that? I dunno.

I just write it the way I'd like it to be if I were reading it instead. If Scott's style really is similar to mine, that could be part of why I like his stuff so much. It might also just be that his stuff's really good, and I have good taste.

Who knows?

Hey.

In response to the exchange between Aaron and Songofgreyshadows:

Just so you all know, there actually is a Stover Forum on the Web -- it was set up a couple years ago by the good folks over at SFFWorld.com -- and it's a swell place to get into all the writing advice and PersonalAnecdotesAboutHowIChangedYourLife and all that shit.

The URL is, if my browser serves as a reliable memory:

Stover Forum

With thanks to Chris Billett.

Anybody who stops by will have to kick off the tarps and blow the dust away, because nobody's posted there in months. And no swearing at the President and stuff -- they have terms of service that insist everyone play nice. Which means that it's probably not the best place for Caine-Ma'elKoth slashfic, but for everything else, it works pretty well.

I also get email notification of new posts, so it's easy for me to keep track of stuff over there.

That's all.

Hey, everybody.

I just got my first royalty check for Star Wars on Trial, making it my second US book in a row (after Revenge of the Sith) to earn out its advance. This is a positive trend, and one that I hope to encourage.

Now, it's not a big check, but any royalty check is essentially Found Money -- extra payment for work which was done long ago.

So I just wanted to say thanks to all you folks out there who were willing to shell out 18 bucks to read Brin and me bicker about Star Wars.

Seriously.

Thanks

From Robert, in the previous comments section:

-I've been wondering, is there any significance to what you refer to your characters and when? I've noticed you seem to call Hari "Caine" when you're referring to his Overworld exploits and Caine "Hari when referring to his life on Earth. Also that when you referred to Kris as "Deliann" a few posts back it was specifically when referencing a point in the story when he and Caine were on Overworld. I've seen authors who stick to a specific system with referring to their characters; Dennis O'Neil stands out as he would always refer to the DC Comics character The Question as "Charlie" even though most of the world knew him as "Vic Sage". Is this choice in reference an intended separation that goes along with your "Theory of Personality", or if it's just instinctual on your part?

_____________________

Instinctual, I guess: I use Caine for the character, Hari for the Actor . . . even though he's achieved significant integration by the end of BLADE. Same with Kris and Deliann. One of the things I hope people will find interesting in CAINE BLACK KNIFE is the contrasts--and similarities--Caine Back Then and Caine Nowadays.

btw, I loved the Question. He had just returned in his own monthly series maybe a year or so before I quit collecting comics, back in the late 80s/early 90s. He was the coolest . . . and not just because he was the original model for Rorschach, either.

______________________

-Something I've wondered for a while: If authors try to implant concepts and ideas into their books and what people get from said writing is a product of their own imagination meeting the words on the page, doesn't that create a sort of paradox within the process? Just something that struck me when reading your comments (not that I disagree with them, just an idea that hit me).

______________________

I don't try to implant concepts and ideas; that way lies madness and all manner of Goodkinditude. I try to use the underlying concepts of a story in an interesting way, that's all--to let them inform and enhance the action. Scott Lynch, in a love-letter to HEROES DIE he once posted on RPG.net, described it as "opt-in fiction." He was attracted, he said, by the way the Big Ideas are there, but you don't have to think about them if you don't want to. This is a model I've tried to stick to ever since (that whole Tyranny of Praise thing, y'know?), with varying success (worked out pretty well in SHATTERPOINT and REVENGE OF THE SITH, less so in TRAITOR and BLADE OF TYSHALLE, where the ideas sometimes intrude and hijack the story).

_______________________

-And finally, are there any plans for you to be doing another book signing tour for either Caine Black Knife or your next Star Wars book?

_______________________

Not currently. I'll let you know.

From Aaron, in the comments section:

____________________________________

Meh.

So, I want to be more active and help you write more Caine novels. I'm sure your publicist has all sorts of data and crap...and I know you'll have a better idea, but here goes.

What do y'all think of the Asshole Maneuver:

1: Bombard popular blogs with content and quotes related to MWS work.

2: Subsidize tattoos or other forms of advertisement that will glean public attention.

3: Go from store to store inserting slips of paper into each and every book with clips from MWS work and indicate that they should read that work "or else."

4: Get published and dedicate our stuff to MWS.

5: End the war in Iraq - dedicate it to MWS. How?...

Make them all wear bikini clothes and shoot those who do not. No room for hidden bombs when you're mostly naked.

With these key points, I suspect change is in the wind my friends!

__________________________________________________________


I'm Matthew Woodring Stover, and I approved this message.

E. Gary Gygax died yesterday.

Nearly everybody who still hangs out here should be a big enough geek to at least know who he was. As my old friend Eric posted on his blog:

GYGAX, YOU BASTARD, YOUR FUCKING GAME RUINED MY LIFE.

And thanks.

Most folks 'round here should know, too, that the genesis of the whole Acts of Caine/Overworld cycle sprang from an attempt to "SFnalize" the experience of playing in a truly immersive AD&D campaign. In my original gaming days, our players and game-masters were all actors and writers . . . so the games were, at their best, exactly what Gygax was shooting for: interactive novels, created on the spot and in the moment by a bunch of geeks fueled by two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, and vast amounts of accumulated fatigue toxins.

I still miss them, too. As many folks around here know, I am not a particularly happy person. Those long nights hanging out in somebody's basement or living room over sheets of paper and high-impact polyhedra were pretty much the most fun I've ever had in my life, before or since.

It was also a transformative moment that has determined the course of my life: because one day it came to me that plotting a novel well involves the same skills as planning a campaign: devising exciting problems for your characters, and making sure they are personally invested in solving them . . . It really is a powerful defense against idiot plotting, because you can never depend on your players to do something stupid just to advance the story.

That's all.

They come at him one at a time, each warrior in turn charging toward honorable single combat.
Then--
They come two at a time.
By the time they begin to come in groups, they have to scramble over the bodies of their dead comrades to reach him. A pile of bodies.
A pile that becomes a wall, a rampart.
Ganner Rhysode builds a fortress of the dead.

That makes me feel inferior.

Doesn't look like much, here . . . but in context, the emotion that very, very simple, straightforward prose evokes make me wonder if I was using the same brain then that I am now.

Here's the thing:

I am very happy, and deeply honored, that my fiction has been important to several folks 'round these parts, and elsewhere. But you all should understand: it's not because I'm anything special, or because my stories have some particular depth or significance. What is special is the intersection of my words with your imaginations.

You've probably heard it said that "What you get out of it depends on what you put into it." What you may not have realized is how literally true that platitude becomes when you apply it to the act of reading fiction.

I've tried other formulations of the same sentiment, especially in Blade of Tyshalle: "What any work of art means depends on who you are when you look at it." And, once or twice, in reference to uncomplimentary reviews: "When you judge a book, the book also judges you."

These are all ways of saying the same thing. Look: a work of fiction is not words on a page, or on a screen. That's part of it, and it's not the most important part. The actual story--the Real Novel--is what unfolds in your head as you read those words.

You get it?

This is why I can find myself feeling inferior to authors some readers might not consider my equals--because their books inspire in me feelings and images and all manner of experience that I can never get from my own books.

Except sometimes, a few years down the road, when I have enough distance from a story I've penned to approach it as a reader, rather than as its author. Then I do occasionally feel inferior to my (younger) self.

So this is the thing I really want to drive home for any and all people who find something special in my books (or, for that matter, in anyone else's).

It's not the book. It's you. It's your mind doing all the work. Your commitment, your willingness to be touched, your suspension of disbelief and the power of your imagination. That's why there are many, many people who will never be moved by some story you love -- or, for some impoverished souls, by any story at all.

If you find something extraordinary in one of my books, it's because it was already inside you, and the words just helped you locate it, that's all.

And for those who don't find anything extraordinary in any of my books, fuck you anyway. Read something else, punk ass.

In response to the question "Michael" left on my last post: I don't really read much fiction any more. I recommended Scott Lynch because his publisher very considerately floated me an ARC of The Lies of Locke Lamora, which I thought was the best fantasy adventure I'd read in maybe ten years. It was, however, entirely painful for me to admit this, as Scotty is a friend of mine (as well as some fifteen years my junior) and I think he's already better at this shit than I am.

This is why I rarely read new SFF authors: professional jealousy. My reaction to a book by a new writer usually falls into one of two clearly-defined categories:

1) How Did This Pile of Dogshit Get Into Print -- and Why Is It Out-Selling My Books Ten-to-One?

or

2) This Is How I Would Have Written My Own Books, if I Weren't a Complete Fucking Loser.

You can see how this unfortunate quirk of psychology makes reading my peers kind of painful.

So I mostly read non-fiction, and classics. If I'm going to feel inferior anyway, I prefer to feel inferior to Hemingway, Chandler or Conrad, y'know?

Hey, everybody.

A couple things: Caine Black Knife looks to be the shortest (in word count) of the Acts of Caine, for two reasons:

1) unlike the other two, this one is All About Caine (he's in every single scene), and
2) I'm trying something new with this novel . . . a narrative technique borrowed from comics (and minimalist fiction), one that Scott McCloud, in his seminal work Understanding Comics, refers to as "psychological closure" -- which is a term for how our minds fill in detail that isn't actually shown. Hemingway was probably the greatest English-language master of this technique, and you all know my long-standing affection for Uncle Ernie.

So, essentially, I was (and still am) trying to figure out a way to write an entire novel without any Boring Crap -- you know, the linking narration and scene transitions, the background info-dumps, that kind of shit. Now I know some of you actually like the info-dump kind of stuff (I'm looking at you, Ilya!), but personally I can't stand it . . . and it's my story, after all. If I did it right, all pertinent questions will be answered, at least tangentially. I'm just trying to distill the story . . . if Heroes Die was a sixpack of strong beer, and Blade of Tyshalle was a magnum of amarone, then Caine Black Knife will be a gallon of barrel-proof bourbon.

If I screwed it up . . . ? Well, so it goes. Del Rey no longer expects to make any kind of serious money off Caine -- as near as I can tell, they are publishing this book due to some arm-twisting by my estimable editor, and to keep me happily plugging away on Star Wars. Which works for me.

As for the Bush Administration's ass-hattery, well . . . I get tired of being angry all the time. So I've been pretty much ignoring their crap.

If any of you are interested, I voted for Barack Obama in the Wisconsin primary . . . though if Senator Clinton stages another improbable comeback and wins the Democratic nomination, I will happily support her for President. There are many things to admire about John McCain, but his politics are not among them.

Hey.

Those of you who've stuck with me this far might still be interested: I'm proofing the copy-edit on Caine Black Knife. So it's on track for October. So far.

That's all.

And from Peter again:

On Dec 7, 2007, at 6:21 AM, Peter wrote:

Hm. That answers my question of where your caste system came from. I admit to having thought you were a libertarian, that's my mistake. I guess I assumed you sort of fit your own perspectives into the book under the guise of Duncan, as sort of a wise old man who could tell the answers as you know it. Knowing that you actually created the character gives me much more respect for you as an author, regardless of your political standings.

I guess he just does a great job of seeming to have the answers when he should when Hari needs a bit of a push, but I suppose that gets back to your idea of your characters rationalizing their circumstances into what they think they need. If so, nicely done.

Did you think that the 'Reality-TV-From-Hell' required, specifically, a business-based caste system, or did it require little more than unwashed masses and the rest is part of the eternal sci-fi idea of drawing lines into the future based on current problems and their evolving solutions?

------

A lot of people make that Stover-Must-Be-a-Libertarian mistake; one spectacularly dippy reviewer (I won't mention any names, but her initials are C. How Stupid I. M. Morgan) claimed she could tell I was a Libertarian by looking at my author photo.

Apparently it never actually strikes anyone that Duncan's good advice to Hari (essentially: keep your head down and inch toward daylight) has NOTHING TO DO with political philosophy; as for Duncan being the "voice of the author," it never seems to strike anyone that Duncan is consistently portrayed as being (periodically) ENTIRELY FUCKING BUGNUTS.

One would think someone might have noticed that Duncan gets his philosophical ass handed to him when he goes head-to-head against Tan'elKoth, who can be read as a direct personification of mystic fascism. Or that the only character who is more often right than wrong in either of those books is Deliann, who doesn't really believe in ANYTHING . . . he's just stumbling along, trying to do the right thing . . . and Caine, who doesn't believe in anything either, except that people he cares about are worth dying for.

But hey, that's the breaks.

Anyway: it takes more than the "unwashed masses" to make the Studio work, because Actors have to participate voluntarily (facing almost certain death or dismemberment -- not to mention the willingness to murder innocent people -- for the hope of economic advantage and social advancement). Unlike, say, Roman slave gladiators, who could just be given a weapon and thrown into the ring, an Actor has to play along -- has to create a character that people enjoy being, and portray that character convincingly. I could go into greater detail on the social mechanics of it, but that's the fundamental concept.


Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto

And Peter again:
On Nov 30, 2007, at 2:54 AM, Peter wrote:

I think I'm starting to get a good grip on where most of your writing comes from, so unfortunately my questions are starting to dry up into questions about suggested readings and such.

I'm still a bit curious about the caste system you used to create your future earth. It's been called dystopian, and Duncan suggests it's not libertarian, at least in the traditional sense. Yet it's based around business and exploitation, which are founded in libertarian principles as far as I can tell. The whole 'Leisureman' caste is about as libertarian as possible, and the implication of the fact that it's relatively small despite proof that advancement through the castes is possible seems to suggest that advancement is very difficult.

Some other things I've noticed about your system are that as you advance you gain the ability to simply use your power more freely (without concern for soapie intervention), and you also gain access to increasing amount of potential systematic safeguards based around your actual income. Basically, as you get higher up you can afford better protection and you automatically have implied power. As a connoiseur of political systems, I'm curious about where your system came from. I like its flavor in some ways, but in others it seems curiously and unnecessarily restrictive. Obviously you made it that way, but why?

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This is a complex question. The caste system was created originally around the necessities of the novel's premise (i.e. what sort of society would have this Reality-TV-From-Hell as its #1 form of mass entertainment?), combined with a speculative extrapolation from the realities of American society -- You Are What You Do, and increased power (whether from celebrity, political connection, or simple wealth) brings with it proportionally greater immunity from legal jeopardy. Fundamentally, it is an expression of real free-market economics. In reality, there is NO SUCH THING as a "free market" -- because every privileged class organizes government (and hence, social economics) to protect its own privileges. What makes the caste system stable is that it preserves the mythology of the American Experiment: that hard work and determination enable one to rise above one's birth or social status. This is the ultimate incentive for the less-privileged classes to support the system; the dream that someday they (or their descendants) might join the ranks of the Privileged . . . so long as nobody makes waves. The caste system also arises from what I see as the innate tribalism of human nature; each caste carries its own mythology of exceptionalism (demonstrated graphically by Kollberg's disquisition on the superior virtues of Administration in HEROES DIE). The essence of Libertarian principle is freedom from government intervention. The caste system is the opposite of Libertarianism; it depends on rigorous regulation of all forms of social and economic interaction. It's a substantial mistake to characterize me as a Libertarian; I'm not. Even remotely. Duncan is (in spirit, anyway), Hari isn't. Heinlein was, more or less . . . and his Libertarian manifesto, THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, is specifically referenced in HEROES DIE, with Pallas Ril taking on Heinlein's Scarlet Pimpernel persona of Simon Jester -- which leads her to cause more death and destruction than Caine could ever dream of . . .

I could go into a great deal more detail here, but the simple answer on the caste system is: I made it up.

In fact, when I originally conceived the caste system (back in the 80s), it seemed a great deal more outlandishly dystopian than it does today; now it largely appears to be a direct allegory for the emerging character of American society under Bushism: hands off the privileged, and fist-fuck everybody else.

Feel free to inquire further, if this doesn't answer your question.


Matthew Woodring Stover
numquam desisto