L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website

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Like most authors, I want my readers to have as much background information as possible, particularly about recently released books, and books that will be published in the months ahead. But it’s equally important for new readers to learn about the books already out there. Those are some of the purposes of this site.

Another reason for the site is to acquaint you all with the range of my books. Just because you liked one of my fantasies doesn’t mean, unfortunately, that you will like one of my “hard” SF novels. I’d hope that you would, but another point of this site is to give you more information so that you know more about what I’m writing and what I have written.

Thanks again for reading my work, for supporting me, and for keeping the written word alive and well!

—L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

The Latest Hot Writer
January 16, 2020

The other day I read an interview with yet another hot new [comparatively, at least] writer, in which the writer made a comment about being “frustrated with the way fantasy worlds have this stasis… a medieval stasis for ten thousand years.” Then the writer’s subsequent comment dealt with that writer’s latest work that included inventors and social change, which, while not groundbreaking, were new to the writer.

Needless to say, my first instinct was to seek out and strangle the younger [and well-selling] hot writer, given that for thirty years I’ve been writing best-selling fantasy with settings that have been anything but static, and which include technology well beyond the medieval, multiple government systems, and diverse cultures.

My second thought was to do a little research. Even a brief stint of researching suggested that, while there was a period lasting into the mid-1990s where there were some number of medieval-stasis-type cultures in fantasy, it seemed to me that fantasy writers, for the most part, tended to focus on periods in specific historical eras and riff off them, sometimes medieval, sometime Byzantine, sometimes Renaissance, sometimes Regency, as well as, in more recent years, riffs on non-European history and cultures, etc., and that very few of those writers created endless static societies(although there has been a notable and excellent recent SF novel about an apparently endless and static empire).

Very few writers (and I will claim to be one of them) create their worlds from whole(r) cloth. I use the qualifier “wholer” because what we know comes from our own background, education, and experience, and there’s likely no way to create a new world from totally “whole” cloth, so to speak, but I do know of other writers who do the same, and none of those worlds are “medieval” or “static.”

Yet this hot writer is either dismissive or unaware of a fair number of books already out there which have already accomplished what this writer has so recently completed. I have not met this writer, but my first impression is less than auspicious.

For those of you aspiring to be the next new hot writer, I suggest that a bit more humility and little more knowledge of the field would be most useful. But then, I’m just a curmudgeonly old writer who broke in using that obsolete word-setter called a typewriter and who has the equally old fashioned idea that it’s helpful to know the past of one’s field and what other writers have done and are doing.

Electoral Racial/Gender Diversity?
January 13, 2020

Senator Cory Booker has just dropped out of the Democratic Presidential campaign, following the departure of Julian Castro and Camilla Harris. Except for Andrew Yang, the remaining men and women are all white.

According to various polls, none of the black candidates succeeded in gaining more than a few percent of the support of Democratic voters, despite the fact that there are more than forty million Americans classified as black. Even with nearly sixty million Latinos in the United States, Julian Castro couldn’t raise enough funds and support to stay in the race.

In short, with over a third of the U.S. population comprised of minorities, not a single minority candidate garnered more than a few percent of Democratic voters, even though over 80% of black voters have historically voted Democrat. Although less than ten percent of black voters have voted for Republican presidential candidates in the past, and the higher levels of the Republican Party effectively remain a white male preserve of privilege, polls show that Trump has higher levels of black support than any previous Republican candidate.

Since 1980, a higher percentage and a greater number of U.S. women than men have voted in every election, and in 2016, ten million more women than men voted, and that likely accounted for the all-time high in female U.S. Representatives and Senators in Congress, but women still only account for roughly a quarter of the Senate and of the House of Representatives.

As I have noted before, gerrymandering certainly accounts for the diversity discrepancy in national offices, but I have trouble understanding it being the cause of the diversity discrepancy in Democratic Party politics. Poll after poll shows that roughly half of black Democrat voters favor Joe Biden, and more black Democrats favor Bernie Sanders than any of the black candidates. If Bernie and Joe aren’t old white males, no one is.

All of this suggests to me, old white male that I am, that diversity isn’t what black Democrats, or indeed the vast majority of Democrats, are looking for, and the fact that Biden, the most “centrist” of the remaining candidates, has the greatest support among black voters also suggests that an ultra-liberal Democrat nominee, particularly a female ultra-liberal, may well spell disaster for the Democratic Party in the Presidential election.

The Cost of Staying Alive?
January 10, 2020

In the latest issue of Science, there’s an article about Trikafta (elexacaftor/ivacaftor/ tezacaftor), the first triple combination therapy available to treat patients with the most common cystic fibrosis mutation, which was approved by the FDA this past October.

In the U.S. alone, there are more than 30,000 people with cystic fibrosis, an inherited condition characterized by the buildup of thick, sticky mucus that results in progressive damage to the respiratory system and chronic digestive system problems, and that can have other complications as well. A generation ago, children with CF seldom lived to adulthood, and even today CF sufferers seldom live to age forty. Currently, there are more than 30,000 people in the U.S. with the disease.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have a personal interest in cystic fibrosis, because almost forty years ago one of my daughters was given a preliminary diagnosis of CF, which was indeed terrifying. Fortunately, additional tests determined that she didn’t have CF, but a combination of other factors mimicking it, which were treatable, and she recovered without lasting ill-effects. But that experience definitely made me aware of the devastating effects of cystic fibrosis.

So, the development of Trikafta struck me as a godsend for cystic fibrosis sufferers… until I saw the price tag, $311,000 a year [the “list” price], every year. That’s what it will cost to provide CF sufferers with the chance to live a close to normal and productive life.

Since Trikafta is designed to deal with the most common form of cystic fibrosis, it won’t work for all CF sufferers, but even if it only works for 60%, the annual cost to those people, or their insurors, would total nearly $6 billion.

Needless to say, some medical insurance companies have already turned down patients.

Somehow, I doubt that developing Trikafta cost anywhere near $6 billion, and it strikes me that, at least from everything I’ve seen published (and I hope I’m wrong), this is just another form of medical extortion.