“We are as gods and might as well get used to it,” Stewart Brand said back in 1968. I remember reading that in the Whole Earth Catalog back in the day.
The concept appealed to me, as did the catalog and its successor, the Coevolution Quarterly. I recall thumbing through the issues, finding gems of ideas amidst a lot of odd ones. In those pre-Internet times, it was a way – along with alternative comics, music, and the underground press, not to mention the Civil Rights and antiwar movements and second-wave feminism – to find something new to chew on.
We were definitely looking for something new to chew on.
I don’t remember exactly what I thought when I first saw those words, but l suspect that part of what I thought was that they were an admonition to human beings who were starting to unlock knowledge beyond that needed for basic survival. I heard “Be careful. We’ve got more power than we understand.”
After all, I grew up in the shadow of the Bomb. We were playing with things that could blow up the whole world, and far too many of the men – and it was mostly men – in positions of power were not the sort of person who was good at taking care or planning for the long term.
But these days as I look at some of what Brand has to say, I’m not sure at all that I was correct about what he meant. I’m starting to wonder if he was thinking more along the lines of the broligarchs who are out to spread humanity throughout the universe and even think they’re going to live forever.
After reading Adam Becker’s More Everything Forever, I think those people believe they are gods, or that they’re becoming gods. Continue reading “Not Gods”…
The world is too much with me this week; this was originally written (and posted elsewhere) in 2020.
Many writers (I won’t say all writers, because I don’t know them all, but at this point I think I have a pretty decent random sample) know a bunch of different weird things. Many writers (see above caveat) were probably the sorts of kids who stored up random factoids, or had deep pools of info about odd things, or could list all the kings of England from Edward the Confessor onward (that used to be one of my parlor tricks, along with reciting the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales). Many writers research science, or history, or Alexandrian mythology, or sanitation in ancient China, or, or, or…
The thing is, if you’re the kind of person who picks up spare facts the way other people nab pocket change, it will sooner or later burble to the top of your consciousness. My husband, the Gray Eminence of rec.arts.music.beatles, can reliably identify which out-take from which bootleg two bars of a given Beatles song is from, and probably knows all sorts of arcane info about who was recording that day, and can expound at length about the cool fill Ringo was using, or why George was using that guitar or… I, who have only the laywoman’s hey-I-was-there-when-the-Beatles-were-cool-the-first-time appreciation of the music, can still enjoy Danny’s over the top minutiae. And when I need an in-house set of professional ears, I have it. Your friends and beloveds are fonts of all sorts of information, if you only think to ask. And if they don’t know, someone among them will almost certainly know someone who will know.
Mumbly-years ago I was writing a novel set in New York, in which our Hero had to go to Rikers’ Island, the NYC jail complex that sits in the middle of the East River. First thing I learned was the difference between a jail and a prison (jails are short term, prisons long term, for one thing, and are generally run by local law enforcement–sheriffs and police departments; prisons are state- or Federally-run, and are for people who are in for more than 365 days). Second thing I learned was that, at the time at least, it was very hard indeed to find out logistical facts about the prison (how do you get there? is the protocol different for lawyers and visitors? what’s the layout of the place). Now, of course, there’s a websitefor directions, with information on the various facilities, and so on, but in these long-ago days, not so much. So I asked a friend’s husband, the only lawyer I knew, if he knew any of this stuff. He didn’t, but a friend did, and after an hour of fascinating conversation I knew more about Rikers’ Island than I’d thought possible. Thus: the power of friends and their friends.
I’m a member of a list called Joys of Research, which is a stunningly valuable focused-crowd-sourcing tool: it’s simply a bunch of writers who have different areas of expertise. Ask about medieval latrine technology or the decomposition rates of bodies or the weight of an 1795 flintlock pistol and someone will know. And if no one knows, they’ll have suggestions about where to find the information. Just being able to narrow the informational sources down a little is often a huge help when you’re time-crunched.
I’m not organized enough to make a list of who of the people I know I can ask for what, but you might be. And an added benefit? You get to know people better. I am hampered by shyness and an early inculcation of the goofy notion that asking people questions was rude. (I know. I know.) But asking questions about another person’s interests is a wonderful way of deepening a friendship, especially if you’re able to ask about things your friend is really interested in. My friend Steve can talk mammalian biology until the cows come home (he might even know why the cows come home). My friend Claire knows medieval history, my friend Kevin is a go-to for herbal information and cookery; my friend Ellen is a stunning well of mid-20th century American pop-culture. When I started working on Sold for Endless Rue I discovered that my friend Tess, who had been the administrator of Clarion when I went there, knew tons about the literature of medieval medicine. Connections FTW!
And never forget that you might be the one who knows something someone else needs to know. And that feels really good too: you get to be the pro from Dover and expound on something near and dear to your knowledge base too.
I don’t normally share here what I’ve posted elsewhere, but I wrote something quickly for Facebook and realised that it meant more than I realised and so I’m sharing it. I suddenly saw that what I thought was unique and personal, told a story about Australia and Australians and the different places Jews hold in this country. It’s not a full picture, or even close to a full picture. It’s how much of Jewishness is out of sight in Australia and how some of us handle this.
In other places I am still the person I always was, in Canberra no-one wants me to give talks to to be seen in public. Most people don’t hate me, but folks who have known me for years and even decades have recently started demonstrating a whole bunch of reactions to my being Jewish. For some, I’m hurting others simply by being myself: a couple of people have recently informed me of how privileged and white I am and how much of the cause of problems (both in Australia and elsewhere) can be blamed on me. For others, I’m a low priority in their life where previously I was a close friend, and when these old friends cluster or when a group of those who think along these lines get together, if I say something it will be instantly contradicted before anyone stops to consider what I actually said.
A part of this is because I’m forever-unwell and Australia does not handle illness with much style. Most of the change has, however, happened since COVID (which taught so many of us to not be our best selves) and especially since October 7. There are whole social groups and work-related groups I’m now simply not reminded of or invited to because I’m Jewish, and there are others I may share as long as I do not assert myself too much. The most amusing part of the whole shebang (and it really is amusing) is that I am not considered an expert on much at all in the circles that do not want me round. Given that I have two PhDs and another one about to be submitted and all kinds of books written and conference papers delivered and research done and talks delivered and… I am an expert in those topics, this is a very peculiar kind of wilful blinkering.
All of this is local. It has led to big lifestyle changes and those led to some thoughts on Facebook. Those thoughts (with amendments) are the rest of this post.
I’ve talked before about being a giraffe. My giraffehood comes from being the first Jew many Australians have met.
“Oh, I’ve never met a Jew before,” a person informs me, and looks at me as if I am in a zoo. This is why I call it being a giraffe. I’m willing to talk openly about my Jewishness, so I’m a giraffe who answers questions. The questions and comments used to be mostly kind and fair. They are less so right now. At the moment, after the surprise that I’m actually Jewish, I’m informed who I am and what I think and how horrid I am if I don’t use the words they tell me to use and announce my self-hate at once. Once a week, without fail, I’m told that either I worship Satan or murder children. (For anyone wondering, I have not done or ever have wanted to do either of these things.) These questions and comments, when experienced several times a week, make me feel as if I’m on show.
Today something provoked a very different memory.
In the days before COVID and before the current rise in antisemitism (so any time until the end of 2019) I gave talks and was on panels at a couple of larger functions a year on average. Every single time, it being (mostly) in Australia people would chat with me in the foyer or over coffee afterwards. Australians chat over drinks. It’s a part of who we are. Mostly the discussion leads with comments like “I didn’t know Australia had any Jews before” or, on one very special day “Do you really have horns?” When I was much, much younger, children would actually feel my head for those horns.
Every second chat (again, on average) someone would look around to make sure that everyone else was out of earshot. They would confide in me. Sometimes they had Jewish parents but were brought up Christian “for safety”. Sometimes they were happily non-religious, but knew that their parents had been Jewish and were curious. I have enjoyed many conversations about how OK atheism for different branches of Judaism with this group of interesting people and even more conversations about why parents would choose to leave the Judaism behind and even to hide it. Sometimes those who confided in me were practising Jewish but didn’t know anyone outside their family because it was safer to be not-Jewish when out in the world. Most of these individuals had parents who were Holocaust survivors. Some were from other backgrounds but their families had also memories of persecution, often very recent. The real discussion began when they discovered we could talk about these things but that it wasn’t the whole story. I was brought up to understand that the persecution is a part of our history but (sorry Cecil Roth) the lachrymose version of Jewish history hides so much more than it explains. My history self is working on this reinterpretation of Jewish pasts for the next little while, and that’s partly because it was so important to the individuals who came to me and talked about Jewishness in secret.
I was a different kind of giraffe for these folks. I was the Jew they could talk to safely. I never tell enough about them for anyone to be able to identify them. I have many conversations after panels and after giving talks or keynotes, and these people were among the many. Their privacy is important. No-one hides such a large part of themselves without very good reason. I use my not-very-good memory to forget their names and where they live. I would have to work hard to remember those details and I simply don’t try to remember. This has led to me being very forgetful of names and addresses and friends have to always remind me, over and again. This is not a large price to pay for the safety of others.
Occasionally (like now) I will mention their existence. I’m often and usually the first person they have every spoken to outside their immediate family about anything Jewish.
The number of people who shared their confidences with me diminished somewhat when the Australian census changed its collection style. The number of people who admitted to being Jewish in Australia also dropped dramatically. It was no longer possible to guarantee addresses and names would be detached from information collected and so identifying as Jewish carried different baggage to earlier. I suspect there are many Jewish Australians whose background is not known to the Bureau of Statistics any more. I once estimated that there were around 200,000 of these people, but there is no real way of knowing. Since I don’t think those who let me know they’re Jewish are more than the tiniest % of those who don’t talk about being Jewish Australian, I know the thoughts of a few dozen people, not of everyone who hides their Jewishness in Australia.
The number of confidences diminished to zero after October 7, but this is partly because I’m no longer invited to give many talks. I’m the wrong kind of Jew for Canberra or East Coast Australia, or my expertise is no longer valued, or people want to avoid problems, so I’m not invited to the sort of meetings where someone can seek me out quietly and find out more about their heritage.
What I miss most about those conversations is the recipe-swapping. I have two really wonderful Crypto-Jewish recipes that I’ve dated to the 17th century from a person who identified publicly as Latin American Catholic. I gave them information about books and websites where they could place their heritage and understand it better without having to break their public face. This was a win-win. Once a year I cook a 17th century Jewish recipe from that hidden tradition, to celebrate how much this person knew (and still knows!) and how amazing it was to hear about it. (I also cook these dishes to honour those who were murdered at the command of the Inquisition, and this is my normal public reason for cooking: today is not normal.) At moments like that I understand why I might be a safe person to talk to about things.
Since October 7 and the diminution in places in Australia that want to hear me, there has, as I’ve said been no-one sharing these secrets. This means that there are fewer people who touch base with those who are isolated and scared. Those who found comfort in me chatting about how to write family stories or how to teach cultural differences respectfully or how to interpret foodways or all those stories about the Middle Ages are not going to talk to a rabbi or visit a community centre when hateful slogans are painted on the walls or there was a fire bomb or anywhere where there is a crowd chanting Jewhate slogans outside.
Australia has always been somewhat antisemitic. It was also one of the important places where Shoah refugees came. It’s always had a Jewish population that feels safer unseen. Moments when strangers can reach out and share their identity are so very important, given all of this.
I think one of the reasons I was considered safe might have been because it’s not been wise to wear a magen david in Canberra for about 20 years, so I wasn’t flamboyantly Jewish… I was just Jewish. Or it may be for another reason. Thinking back, I had my first conversations along these lines when I was pre-teen, so it may be something about the way I hold myself. I honestly don’t know. Several people have said it’s because I talk so much, so maybe it’s that.
When I first started having those conversations I used to feel so guilty, because I couldn’t understand why these people hid their identity. I always kept everything secret because someone had asked it and because I respected them.
These days, life in Jewish Australia is far more problematic. I can see the wisdom in being a hidden Jew.
One of the things that most terrifies me in the world – right up there with being in a hospital without someone to advocate for me – is not having the paperwork or other things I need to get the services I’m entitled to or to protect myself from some kind of officialdom.
This was brought home to me the other day when talking to someone who is helping a neighbor who needs a health aide. This person is able to do the work, but was struggling with having the right paperwork of their own to get signed up with the office that would pay them to be the aide.
They have IDs, but maybe not the right kind of IDs. They’re signed up for some things, but they’ve lost the password.
Maybe it sounds like they’ve been careless, and maybe they have been, but you shouldn’t have to be so damn careful about such things. It should be easy to get what you need, not a damn fight for every little thing.
It’s not, mind you, about certification for the job. It’s just not having exactly the right ID cards.
And they also had to get my neighbor signed up for the care, which is another complicated step in the process.
You have to prove you’re entitled to help, after all. The fact that you’re sick isn’t enough.
I can do this for myself, but then I have a law degree and have in the past done the kind of work where you help people who are in trouble due to misplaced or screwed up paperwork. I also will jump on top of a problem that has elements that could be disastrous because, as I said, this is the sort of thing that scares me.
I file my taxes on time. I pay my bills on time. I keep up with my IDs. And I still panic over this kind of stuff.
I mean, every time I’m headed for an airport, I have a coughing fit that is clearly a panic attack. (I have allergies, but this is different.) I’m tense until I’m through TSA.
And mind you, I’m an old white woman with the right paperwork and I make a point of packing carefully so that I don’t draw any attention. Continue reading “Bad Systems”…
Since then, the DOJ has generally been run as an impartial law enforcement agency, separated from the executive office and partisan politics.
Those guardrails are now being severely tested under the Trump administration.
In February 2025, seven DOJ attorneys resigned, rather than follow orders from Attorney General Pam Bondi to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Adams was indicted in September 2024, during the Biden administration, for alleged bribery and campaign finance violations.
One DOJ prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, wrote in his Feb. 15 resignation letter that while he held no negative views of the Trump administration, he believed the dismissal request violated DOJ’s ethical standards.
Among more than a dozen DOJ attorneys who have recently been terminated, the DOJ firedErez Reuveni, acting deputy chief of the department’s Office of Immigration Litigation, on April 15. Reuveni lost his job for speaking honestly to the court about the facts of an immigration case, instead of following political directives from Bondi and other superiors.
Reuveni was terminated for acknowledging in court on April 14 that the Department of Homeland Security had made an “administrative error” in deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, against court orders. DOJ leadership placed Reuveni on leave the very next day.
Bondi defended the decision, arguing that Reuveni had failed to “vigorously advocate” for the administration’s position.
I’m a legal ethics scholar, and I know that as more DOJ lawyers face choices between following political directives and upholding their profession’s ethical standards, they confront a critical question: To whom do they ultimately owe their loyalty?
President Donald Trump speaks before Pam Bondi is sworn in as attorney general at the White House on Feb. 5, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Identifying the real client
All attorneys have core ethical obligations, including loyalty to clients, confidentiality and honesty to the courts. DOJ lawyers have additional professional obligations: They have a duty to seek justice, rather than merely win cases, as well as to protect constitutional rights even when inconvenient.
DOJ attorneys typically answer to multiple authorities, including the attorney general. But their highest loyalty belongs to the U.S. Constitution and justice itself.
DOJ attorneys reinforce their commitment to this mission by taking an oath to uphold the Constitution when they join the department. They also have training programs, internal guidelines and a long-standing institutional culture that emphasizes their unique responsibility to pursue justice, rather than simply win cases.
This creates a professional identity that goes beyond simply carrying out the wishes of political appointees.
Playing by stricter rules
All lawyers also follow special professional rules in order to receive and maintain a license to practice law. These professional rules are established by state bar associations and supreme courts as part of the state-based licensing system for attorneys.
The McDade Amendment, passed in 1998, requires federal government lawyers to follow both the ethics rules of the state where they are licensed to practice and federal regulations. This includes rules that prohibit DOJ attorneys from participating in cases where they have personal or political relationships with involved parties, for example.
This law also explicitly subjects federal prosecutors to state bar discipline. Such discipline could range from private reprimands to suspension or even permanent disbarment, effectively ending an attorney’s legal career.
This means DOJ lawyers might have to refuse a supervisor’s orders if those directives would violate professional conduct standards – even at the risk of their jobs.
This is what Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon wrote in a Feb. 12, 2025, letter to Bondi, explaining why she could not drop the charges against Adams. Sassoon instead resigned from her position at the DOJ.
“Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations … because I do not see any good-faith basis for the proposed position, I cannot make such arguments consistent with my duty of candor,” Sassoon wrote.
As DOJ’s own guidance states, attorneys “must satisfy themselves that their behavior comports with the applicable rules of professional conduct” regardless of what their bosses say.
Post-Watergate principles under pressure
The president nominates the attorney general, who must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
That can create the perception and even the reality that the attorney general is indebted to, and loyal to, the president. To counter that, Attorney General Griffin Bell, in 1978, spelled out three principles established after Watergate to maintain a deliberate separation between the White House and the Justice Department.
First, Bell called for procedures to prevent personal or partisan interests from influencing legal judgments.
Third, these principles ultimately depend on DOJ lawyers committed to good judgment and integrity, even under intense political pressure. These principles apply to all employees throughout the department – including the attorney general.
Recent ethics tests
These principles face a stark test in the current political climate.
The March 2025 firing of Elizabeth Oyer, a career pardon attorney with the Justice Department, raises questions about the boundaries between political directives and professional obligations.
Oyer initially expressed concern to her superiors about restoring Gibson’s gun rights without a sufficient background investigation, particularly given Gibson’s history of domestic violence.
When Oyer later agreed to testify before Congress in a hearing about the White House’s handling of the Justice Department, the administration initially planned to send armed U.S. Marshals officers to deliver a warning letter to her home, saying that she could not disclose records about firearms rights to lawmakers.
Officials called off the marshals only after Oyer confirmed receipt of the letter via email.
Elizabeth Oyer, a former U.S. pardon attorney at the Justice Department, speaks at a Senate hearing on April 7, 2025, in Washington. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Why independence matters
In my research, I found that lawyers sometimes have lapses in judgment because of the “partisan kinship,” conscious or not, they develop with clients. This partisan kinship can lead attorneys to overlook serious red flags that outsiders would easily spot.
When lawyers become too politically aligned with clients – or their superiors – their judgment suffers. They miss ethical problems and legal flaws that would otherwise be obvious. Professional distance allows attorneys to provide the highest quality legal counsel, even if that means saying “no” to powerful people.
That’s why DOJ attorneys sometimes make decisions that frustrate political objectives. When they refuse to target political opponents, when they won’t let allies off easily, or when they disclose information their superiors wanted hidden, they’re not being insubordinate.
They’re fulfilling their highest ethical duties to the Constitution and rule of law.
I have many files open on my computer today. By tomorrow night, if all goes well, most of them will be closed and in my past. I am, you see, in the final throes of the PhD. I submit my thesis on Thursday.
The thesis is around 75,000 words long and will, like most Australian PhDs, be examined as a written text. There is no oral component, just as there was no major field component. All the skills training and short courses I took, I took along the way, and part of the PhD (though not part of the 75,000 words) is to sum my training and presentations and new skills up. This is not part of the examination. It’s part of the paperwork that accompanies it. I have four forms to fill in today and two tomorrow. This, also, is part of the system.
This PhD is different to all other PhDs that I have done in one important way. I was quite ill the whole way through. I keep finding bits of my brain spattered on the page and then spend however-long-it-takes working out what stupidities I’ve said and how to fix them. Also, I am looking for corruption from the word processors and sharing a document over and over. The footnotes were a mess and are now sorted. That’s something. Most of my time today and tomorrow will be spent the same way as most of my time yesterday: working through the document, one sentence at a time, and making sure it makes sense.
What’s something else entirely is repeated text where the memory of an earlier version has crept through. I first encountered this corruption as a problem when I worked on much larger books when I was in the public service. It’s never a problem with short stories or novellas (for me, anyhow) but the moment something has more than, say, 20 drafts and is over about 60,000 words, I need to be aware and do a re-read. I have already copied and pasted to reduce the memory of umpteen versions in a single file, but that is no longer the magic cure it was with older word processors.
I never have this problem when I only work on something for six months, and when I don’t write as many drafts. Books are more easily written using the Mozart method, where everything is perfect from the very beginning, I suspect. I cannot write that way at all these days – illness intervenes.
In fact, I’ve never been able to write academic prose that way. Three supervisors scolded me when I wrote my very first PhD. One complained about wanting to turn the pages. The others merely said it was too readable and not scholarly enough. All the rewrites for that thesis were an attempt to make it, as I was instructed “Less discursive and less interesting.” I’m more scholarly these days, because I’m around forty years older and my brain is now officially turgid, but I still write fiction more easily than any of the academic disciplines I work in.
Each PhD is in a different discipline and each discipline has a different style. I like the referencing system for this one the best, but ethnohistory is so much easier for me to write than literary studies, for instance. My brain is not configured correctly for literary studies.
What happens on Thursday? I submit the thesis, a bunch of forms and reports and then I wait. The earliest I’m likely to hear about results is 10 weeks from submission. The longest I’ve ever had to wait for results was three years. Three years is not typical of Australian examinations! Most people know within three months. Those three years cost me my first career… no-one wants to employ someone who has no idea what the examiners think about their research.
What will I do with all the time I have after Thursday? I have a vampire novel that needs finishing. I am so tempted to add footnotes and a bibliography to it. Or maybe recipes. How many vampire novels contain recipes? I will ponder this important thought while I work through 75,000 words, gradually and gently.
PS Australia is still counting votes. This is the most interesting election in years, and I wish I had time to talk about it. My electorate still doesn’t have a final result.
In it she discussed the incredible damage the DOGE (pronounced dodgy) minions are doing across our government at the behest of Elon Musk — firing employees, cancelling funds already appropriated and approved, and pulling together data that has been carefully kept separate to protect our privacy.
She also pointed out:
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests Musk’s faith in his AI company is at least part of what’s behind the administration’s devastating cuts to biomedical research. Those who believe in a future centered around AI believe that it will be far more effective than human research scientists, so cutting actual research is efficient. At the same time, Marshall suggests, tech oligarchs find the years-long timelines of actual research and the demands of scientists on peer reviews and careful study frustrating, as they want to put their ideas into practice quickly.
And she added:
If the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is an example of what it looks like when a tech oligarch tries to run a government agency, it’s a cautionary tale. Under Trump the FAA has become entangled with Musk’s SpaceX space technology company and its subsidiary Starlink satellite company, and it appears that the American people are being used to make Musk’s dream come true.
While I’ve been saying from the beginning that the damage done by the dodgy minions has to stop and while I’ve been ranting about the idiocy of so-called AI for some time, I’ve been keeping my worries about what the broligarchs in general might do to us all somewhat separate from my fears about what the grifter’s administration is doing to government.
But reading that post from Dr. Richardson reminded me that it’s all part of the same problem.
There are many terrible things being done to our government and to our people by what Rebecca Solnit calls the Stupid Coup. The nonsense at the FAA is an example of attacking parts of the government for the financial benefit of the person doing the attacking.
But there are also a lot of terrible things being done by those broligarchs to whom most of us are merely NPCs. The faith in so-called AI goes far beyond Musk, and the effort to shove it down our throats is happening everywhere, not just in the government. Continue reading “Watch What You Read at Bedtime”…
As a friend noted about her own book series, New York Publishing and I had kind of a breakup. Nobody’s fault: we just grew apart. Which is to say that after the publication of Petty Treason, the second of my Sarah Tolerance mysteries, my NY publisher decided not to pick up the third book. Write an historical, they suggested. So I did; Sold for Endless Rue. But I also finished the third book, The Sleeping Partner, which was published by Plus One Press. By that time I had a full time job, a kid who was having Hell’s own case of adolescence, and a sense of depression about my publishing prospects. I really wanted all my Sarah Tolerance books under one roof, as it were–and a roof that would not try to market them as romances (which they are not).
Time goes by. Much water under bridge. Lose one job, get another very absorbing one. Also get absorbed in work with the Book View Cafe writers coop. Child survives adolescence. I leave my involvement in Book View Cafe (again: nobody’s fault; we grew apart). Somehow manage to write a fourth book in the Sarah Tolerance series, and have ideas for a fifth and final book. And finally I retire, look around me, and realize that if I want these books done the way I want them done, I have to take on the lion’s share of publishing them.
At which point I considered hiding under the bed.
When I sold my first book there was no such thing as the internet, let alone social media. The idea was: you wrote a book. If a publisher liked it and bought it, you had some housekeeping things to do (revisions as requested, and reviewing the galleys, and if someone from the publicity office arranged an interview, you did that, too). But overall the job of the writer was to write the book, then write another book, etc., world without end. Well, times change, the internet and social media happen, and even if you have a NY publisher that’s not the way it works now.
In the 1990s I worked for a NY publisher. I am fully alive to the number of things that a publisher does. Acquiring books is only the tip of a significant iceberg. The editorial department does the acquiring, but also helps the author beat the book into publishable shape–which includes developmental editing, line editing, copy editing, and proof-reading. Editorial also helps get the marketing department going by writing (or causing to be written) sales copy, cover copy, and sales catalog materials. Production works on getting the book into physical shape–including working with Editorial on hiring and directing a designer for the cover. But also: getting the book interior designed and typeset and to the printer. Meanwhile, Marketing and Sales are getting the word out, both to the general public (via advertisements and reviews etc.) but to distributors and sellers.
It is a lot. Publishers have many people with skills and experience to do these things. I have… me. And anyone I can hire to take on some of the things I cannot do (it is a very good thing to know what your skill set is and what you cannot reliably do).
I’m not bad at some of the tasks small-press or self-publishing require: I can edit, proof-read and even copy-edit (although that’s generally something I do for other people). I can write cover copy and do cover design (although again, it’s easier when it’s not for my own work). What I find it tremendously difficult to do is the marketing/promotion side of the publishing process. And that is the stuff that many writers do for themselves: drumming up blurbs. Publishing and managing a newsletter. Fan management (a friend last week kept referring to “super fans,” and while I know such entities exist, I have a difficult time believing such people exist with regard to my work).
Take newsletters. I have a newsletter setup to go out Very Soon Now. I intend for it to be quarterly, because honestly I don’t think there’s that much news about my work even when there is news about my work. But there are people who send out newsletters monthly, weekly, even… daily. As one of my own daily chores is to clean out the Augean stable that is my inbox, I can’t imagine anyone would welcome that much contact. Perhaps the mystery inherent in a quarterly newsletter is a good thing?
Or Patreons. I admire the energy that many of my friends put into them, but when I start looking at what is required in terms of upkeep and production–not production of a book or short story, but special bonuses for the kind people who are enthusiastic enough about one’s work to support it… Again, I consider hiding under the bed.
Every writer I know has their own way of approaching promotion. I’m doing the newsletter. I’m not doing a Patreon. Or a kickstarter, at least not right now. The best use of my time is, I earnestly believe, writing. If I want my writing to be seen, I am willing to do some of the other stuff. Just not all of it. And I’m not above considering going back to traditional publishing when I complete the non-Sarah Tolerance book I’ve been noodling on. But that won’t happen until I get the Tolerances out the door.
I intended to give you the results of the Australian elections today. I kept putting it off to see if we would know more but we don’t, so this the wider picture. These are the results, then… sort-of.
Labor had a small victory, that looked on paper like a landslide. They have the Lower House but not the Upper. They’ve gained quite a few more seats in the House of Representatives, but many of them were gained by slender margins and some of them (my own, for instance) are still borderline and the votes are still being counted. It’s as if most Australians looked at the candidates and looked at elections outside Australia and said “We’re going to make our preferences matter.” When a single electorate goes to layers of preferences, counting is slow and it has to be revisited when the seat is a close call. This is happening all over the place.
In the Lower House, we voted out the leader of the Opposition and quite possibly the leader of the Greens in his/their own seats, plus gave their parties fewer seat. Dutton (Opposition) gave a graceful speech to cede everything. Bandt (Greens) is still claiming a Greens victory. He has between 0 and 2 seats in the House of Representatives That Lower House), dropping from four, but he’s focused on the number of primary votes his party received over the whole country, I suspect. They’re down, but not by much. My assessment of this is that a large number of voters do not see the hate that I see. Enough do, and so the Greens are diminished, but, unlike the elves, they’re not so diminished they will not go into the west. The far right Trumpet of Patriots, on the other hand, got so few votes that I look at the data and think “Are there any far right politicians in this parliament at all.” Our far right is the right end of the US Republican or the UK Tories, if that helps.
As I read things, most of the controversial far right and left didn’t get enough votes to get lower house seats. This includes a handful of virulent antisemites. Those candidates trying to push extreme views (not just hate of people who happen to be Jewish) also didn’t fair as well as the pre-election polls said. Our House of Representatives contains far less hate than I had expected. This is a good thing.
While the same pattern applies to the Senate, the nature of the Senate vote (namely the quota system) mean that the changes are less. The far right is diminished, but not nearly as much as in the Lower House. Greens will still have a lot of power, and may be led by someone who really, really hates Jews. In some ways the Greens holding balance of power is good: if they vote wisely, they can be a curb on extreme policies by the government, and, if they go back to the roots they’ve been avoiding recently, will also push for environmental care and social justice. This is not, however, what they did in some significant votes in the past, so the Senate may become just a mess. Everything depends on the Greens paying attention to Australia and not their inner voices.
An update on antisemitism: it’s worse this week both on the right and on the left. Voters are not the loud voices in Australia, because of our system and because we’re part of the western world’s set of shouting matches between so many people who refuse to think for themselves. This hate is largely the usual mob trying to share their bigotry. The big thing is that Australia as a whole has voted against hate and also against a Trump model of government. We remain our ratbag and mostly centre-left self. We no longer, however, have a functional left wing party (Greens are now far further left than they used to be) and we don’t have any functional right wing party (the Coalition is very close to Labor in many ways and we did not put the far right in their place). The outcome of our next election may well rest on whether anyone’s clever enough to change this.
The path our voting took supports that sense reported on in newspapers of most parties sucking right now. It also supports my view of Australia, which is that the quiet majority do their own thinking and we will not know what that thinking is until election day. This time they’ve voted for social cohesion and stability. We often do that. What looks to the world like the left, is actually the most stable option for us.
If any of this appears self-contradictory, it’s because the big thing Australia has done is quite extraordinary. It has said “All the elections outside Australia are not our story.” Australians write our own story, it appears.
For me, this means, despite the massive increase in antisemitism, we’re not following the 1930s German route. We have a lively and dangerous far right and far left, and an enormous amount of antisemitism, but the voters have said, “Not in my parliament.” We’re not doing what we did in the Morrison days, and following the US path, either.
I don’t know where we are going, but that’s a big improvement on last week. Better not to know than to know that Jewish Australia is walking into hell. We are not. Not safe. Not comfortable. Not loved by extremists on either side. But we are part of Australia and Australia itself says so. Every single Jewish candidate received a normal level of votes. None in office was thrown out of office. The question now is will the far right and the Greens accept this and reduce their polemic. If they do, then the hate will reduce and Australia will be a lot safer and I can return to my own life. I have books to write…
The latest scandal to hit the science fiction community is the revelation that the people putting on WorldCon in Seattle are using ChatGPT to vet proposed panelists. Given that a large number of people who want to be on panels are published authors who are part of the class actions against the companies making these over-hyped LLM products, the amount of outrage was completely predictable.
A number of us also pointed out that the information produced by these programs is very often wrong, since they make things up because they are basically word prediction devices. As a person who is not famous and who has a common Anglo name, I shudder to think what so-called “AI” would produce about me.
But the biggest problem I see with “AI” – outside of the environmental costs, the error rate, and the use of materials without permission to create it – is that they keep trying to sell it to do things it doesn’t do well, instead of keeping it for the few things it actually can do. Of course, there’s not a lot of money to be made from those few things, especially when you factor in the costs.
We’re at the point in tech where new things are not going to change the product that much, no matter what the hype says. Exponential growth cannot last forever. If you don’t believe me, look up the grains of rice on a chessboard story.
I’ve been thinking a lot about all the ways people are trying to use “AI” or even older forms of tech to get rid of workers and the more I think about it, the more disastrous it looks.
We don’t need more tech doing stuff; we need more people doing stuff.
It’s not just “AI”. Just try to call your bank or your doctor, or, god help us all, Social Security or the IRS (now made worse by the Dodgy Minions). When we have issues, we need people – real people, who understand what we’re calling about and can solve our problems.
The “chat” feature on a website doesn’t cut it and an “AI” enabled chat feature is probably worse in that it might well make up an answer instead of just not knowing what to do.
I’ve been thinking of health care in particular. I’ve heard a lot of talk about how LLMs can read radiology films better than radiologists, in that they don’t get bored or distracted, so they can point to any things that look out of the ordinary in reference to the kind of films they were trained on.
But of course, what they’re really doing is flagging the problems for a radiologist to look at. They don’t replace the expert; they help them do their job. It’s probably useful, but it isn’t going to make radiology any cheaper, because you still need the person to look carefully at the films.
