Author: Glenn Hauman

Ted Chiang.
Ted F. Chiang.
Damn, he can drive me nuts.

I just picked up the collection Stories Of Your Life (and others)
and damn, he’s good. This may be the only book I’ve ever seen on Amazon
with a five star average rating, across the board. Yes, he’s that
good.
Ted has the single best batting average in science fiction. He’s had
eight stories published in the last twelve years– this collection
reprints his complete professional fiction output. In that time, he won
the Campbell New Writer Award in 1992, a Nebula Award and a Hugo
nomination for his first published short “Tower of Babylon”, another
Nebula and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and a Hugo nomination
for “Story of Your Life”, a Sidewise Award and another Hugo nomination
for “Seventy-Two Letters”, and this year’s Locus and Hugo Award for
“Hell Is the Absence of God”. Everything the man’s published has gotten
nominated for something.
His first six stories picked up over twenty award nominations and six
wins.
You might think I’d want to pay him the ultimate writer’s compliment:
“I hate him and I want him dead.” Except that isn’t true. I’d say I
wish there was a way to get him to write slower so the rest of us would
have a chance except A: I don’t want to deprive myself of any of his
stories, and B: I don’t think it’s possible for his output to be any
slower than it is.
Why is this bugging me? Because I know the guy, have for years. I went
to Earl L. Vandermuelen High School in beautiful Port Jefferson, New
York with him. We worked together on the school paper, the Purple Parrot,
where we were part of a glorious revolution. The paper had run out of
its budgeted money by December of that year, and had become a paper of
pure apathy– the last issue was two pages on a monthly schedule. Ted
and I worked under the bundle of energy known as Eddie Chang (no
relation) and by the end of the year we had raised money, resurrected
the paper, gotten it on a bi-weekly schedule (the last issue was 14
pages, and if that sound puny, please remember that this was a year
before Pagemaker) and the former newspaper advisor stepped down from
his post amid allegations of kickbacks from the printer.
Ted wrote at the time, “Things always work out oddly… how does the
Parrot work? I really don’t know; it always looks on the brink of
death, and it always survives anyway. The Parrot’s a very strange
bird.” But it was fun stuff.
The next year, he was layout editor of the paper and I was assistant
layout and graphics editor. We spent a certain amount of time at
loggerheads– no specific death threats– but we still managed to put
out some damn fine work. And at the end of the year, we still liked
each other. He’s the last signer in my yearbook for the year that he
graduated.
He wrote a regular science fiction review column for the paper the
first year. The column was met with a certain amount of incredulity– a
review column of science fiction books? In a high school newspaper? Who
reads this thing, and why is it taking up valuable space which could be
used to run pictures of cheerleaders? Ted knew it was unexpected and
made self-depreciating comments about the column in it all the time.
Still, Ted persevered, with reviews of Spider Robinson’s Stardance, the Niven/Pournelle Inferno, Asimov’s Winds of Change, and even a review of I-Con III,
where he proceeded to state that Harlan Ellison was only 5’2, thereby
proving that Harlan does not in fact read everything ever published
about him. And since this is appearing on the Internet, it’s unlikely
he’ll read this either.
Ted has a sense of humor so black it could have been used for set
changes. I was reasonably sure that his Indian spirit animal was
Eeyore. The next year, the sf review column was replaced by a more
general criticism column, which read like H.L. Mencken’s secret diary.
Echoes of a lot of Ted’s stories can be found in his high school years.
“Tower of Babylon” maps very closely to a story he wrote for the high
school literary magazine. “The Story of Your Life” discusses light
refraction through glass, and the name of that column he wrote in high
school was “The Critical Angle”.
I have probably had more face time with him than any of his editors. I
also haven’t seen him in fifteen years– had I known he was going to be
at Worldcon this year, I would have gone to San Jose to say hi.
But I figured he’d wouldn’t show up. Why? Because he’s been incredibly
quiet and isolated. He’s almost become the science fiction equivalent
of J.D. Salinger. Even though he attended the Hugo Awards ceremony this
year, he didn’t pick up his own award. This article may be the most
biographical information anybody has ever written about him, and that’s
info that a decade and a half old. The phrase I heard used to describe
him today was “shockingly humble”. But I don’t think it’s just that.
I think that Ted is still not ready to believe that he’s standing in
the ranks of people like Asimov and Clarke, Heinlein and Spider, Niven
and Pournelle. And he lives in Washington, away from most SF pro
enclaves, so he doesn’t get as much support from other pros as he
should.
That’s what’s bugging me. After 18 years, this humility routine and
belief that “nobody reads my stuff” is getting really tiresome.
Take a bow, fella. You deserve it. And to steal your stealing of
Shakespeare, “If we should meet again, why, we shall smile.”
By the way, Paul and Ed say hi, and please say hello to Michelle from
me when you get a chance. And hey– wanna write some media tie-in
stuff? It’s not so bad once you get used to it.

Yes, it’s true. Everybody on the planet is a telepath but you, and we’re all thinking about you behind your back.

…and just now came across James Kosub’s comments and post about Oaths,
where he states that it’s unreasonable that the memory of September 11
lasted for 400 years into the future.
To this I say, nonsense.
People remember a wide variety of things from that long ago, although
the fragments can be somewhat jumbled. But saying that we don’t
remember it because certain other events had a higher body count is
just silly. People remember the Great Chicago Fire, but it wasn’t even
the biggest death toll of the day. 300 people died in the Chicago fire.
But on October 8, 1871 the logging town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin
also caught fire, as well as the surrounding forest. 1,150 people died
there. But the town’s telegraph lines burned down along with everything
else, so the news was late getting out, and got dwarfed by the news of
Chicago, as well as the colorful story about the lantern.
In the case of Corsi, what got passed down was not the death of the
2500 civilians, but the idea of sacrifice and duty that came from the
firefighters. The men who ran into certain death, and the ones who knew
it and went anyway. Particularly if it was a family heirloom, probably
from someone who died that day doing what Corsi was doing, putting
herself in harm’s way. Lense didn’t even need to know what 9/11 was to
know what a firefighter is, and to know that this was the tool of
someone who died, not in battle, but in service– and that it probably
inspired Corsi to put her life on the line doing the same thing.
Regardless, James has no idea how the future will play out. For all he
knows, 9/11 could very well bring out that future of death and
destruction he speaks of. Ever seen a Muslim in the Star Trek universe? 9/11 might be the beginning of why.

Is it possible it will be forgotten by many? Yes, as so many other things are.
But to proclaim knowledge of what will be remembered in the future (and
who will remember what, and for what reasons) is just, well,
presumptive.

…why the name View From Above?
You could suppose that I am trying to provide the simple above-the-fray
commentary. Or you could assume that I am delivering verdicts and
pronouncements from on high. While these things may be true, the main
reason is that I’m a tad, shall we say, oversized. How oversized? Oh,
I’m about five foot eighteen inches tall. And I have been known to wear
shoe lifts on top of that. And since I haven’t come across anybody
using the name as a blog name, I figured I’d best grab it.
And now, I have to finish packing as I’ll be out of town for a few
days. I’ll see you all on Monday, probably.

Actually, I’m stealing this one from Avram Grumer:
“If you quote a political speech and don?t link back to the full text
(or at least provide a good reason why not), I?m going to presume that
you?re lying. This is the web, people. Google makes the minimal
standard of good faith I?m proposing here pretty damn easy to meet.”
By the way, this is why I also distrust people who don’t allow comments
on their site– it shows that they aren’t willing to let other people
talk about their ideas. My favorite example of this, BTW, is John Ellis.
A shame, too– he’s so good on many topics, but he has a couple of
gigantic blind spots in his worldview that really skew his analysis.
Take, for example, his latest column for Fast Company, where he talks about leadership:

If adversity is the test of character, then so far, today’s
CEOs are failing miserably. By turns disagreeable, petulant, and
self-pitying, they have as a group failed their employees, their
investors, and their customers. They border on the pathetic.
Here’s what real business leaders do. They go out and rally the troops,
plant the flag, and make a stand. They confront hostile audiences, and
they deal with the press. They go after the short sellers. If the issue
is confidence, they conduct themselves confidently. If the issue is
trust, they make their company’s business transparent. If the issue is
character, they tell the truth. They do not shirk responsibility; they
assume command.
Here’s what leaders don’t do. They don’t blame underlings. They don’t
blame their predecessor. They don’t complain about press coverage. They
don’t whine about Wall Street. They don’t mindlessly cut research and
development. They don’t fire 4,000 people in the hope that it will bump
up their company’s stock for the weekend. They don’t obfuscate,
dissemble, or lie. They don’t hide behind a retinue of handlers and
lawyers and public-relations fools.

Perfectly reasonable. But does he apply the same criteria to our “CEO
president” who does all of the things he says leaders shouldn’t do? No.
Of course, there’s a certain amount of family loyalty– John Ellis is George W. Bush’s cousin. More, he was Fox
News?s senior decision desk official during Election Night 2000, and
called both the Florida and national election for George W. Bush, being
the first network to do so.

And yes, he doesn’t take comments on his site. Can’t imagine why.

There are a few new faces here, so I should try and get some ground rules down.

First, I split my time between a few different blogs– the one I stage manage for Peter David, which has little of me in it. There’s the Malibu List
blog, which is a group blog of all sorts of weird things, and then
there’s this place, where I post things of a more personal and
political nature. As a results, posts here tend to be longer, rather
than quickly tossed off links– although you will see a few of those as
well. (The other two blogs also explain why this one isn’t quite up to
full speed yet, and why some of the colors look weird, and so on.)
And who am I? Well, I’m an occasional SF author, editor, publisher,
producer, web designer, inventor, auctioneer, and business type person.
You’ll get more details as we go along but for now, back to work for me
finding new and interesting things to talk about…

So there I was at a wedding last night, escorting a lovely young lady
while my wife was out of town at a concert. I was seated at the table
with the lady’s aunt, Diane Sullivan, who also happened to be the
mother of the groom. We got to chatting, and she asked what I did for a
living. I mentioned that, among other things, I worte science fiction
form time to time.
“Really?” she said. “I used to work with Fred Pohl. I was the associate
editor of Galaxy and If and Worlds of Tomorrow
back in the mid-60’s.”
Boggle. If I was a coffee drinker, I would’ve been doing a fair
impersonation of Danny Thomas then.
If you’re moderately versed in the field, you have an idea of what was
coming out then. If you don’t here’s a partial list: The discovery of
Larry Niven from the slushpile. The serialized version of Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,
along with Niven’s “Neutron Star” and Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No
Mouth, and I Must Scream.” Samuel Delany. Issac Asimov. Roger Zelazny.
Yikes.
I’m going to try and drag her to the SFWA Authors & Editors Reception this November, I know there are a lot
of people who will want to meet her.
Oh, and the wedding was a happy event too. Although, to be fair, it’s
not the first wedding I’ve been to where the Imperial March from Star Wars was played– but it was the first one where I didn’t anticipate the possibility of it happening.

… a glossary of blog terms. So if you’ve ever wondered how people can talk about Fisking the Wanker in a family blog, well, it’s not quite what you think.

But close. It is often an exercise in masturbation.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has been doing a wonderful job on the, shall we say, uneven treatment between standard drug users and those who happen to be the governer’s daughter.

If it was anybody else, under the drug laws Jeb and his family would be kicked out of housing paid for by the government,
even though they didn’t use the drugs themselves.
Instead, I’d like to call on the citizens of Florida to vote in
November and do it for them. Assuming, of course, that they let you
vote.

From The Mysterious Stranger
by Mark Twain:
“Look at you in war — what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!”
“In war? How?”
“There has never been a just one, never an honorable one — on the part
of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this
rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud
little handful — as usual — will shout for the war. The pulpit will
— warily and cautiously — object — at first; the great, big, dull
bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why
there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, “It is
unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.” Then the
handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue
and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have
a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others
will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out
and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the
speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes
of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those
stoned speakers — as earlier — but do not dare to say so. And now the
whole nation — pulpit and all — will take up the war-cry, and shout
itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth;
and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will
invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked,
and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and
will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of
them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just,
and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of
grotesque self-deception.”
Nominations for the loud little handful have already been filled.