Recently, I exchanged several emails with a newer writer– David Boultbee — on the subject of plants genetically engineered to remove toxins from land and water, and the exchange got me to thinking. A number of years ago, when I was a full-time environmental regulatory consultant, a number of cities were experimenting with various ways in which growing plants could be used to filter and purify sewage and waste water, including removing heavy metals and various types of organic and bacterial contamination.

That was twenty years ago, and there’s been surprisingly little progress in his area, particularly given the need. That brings up the question as to why such progress is so slow… and the answer, I believe, is quite simple. It’s not a question of biology or even development costs, but the structure of our economic system.

Growing plants in large concentrations effectively constitutes agriculture. These days, agriculture is largely unprofitable on anything but a large scale, and the greatest amount of profit doesn’t usually lie in producing and selling the raw material, but in the distribution and end-point sales. That’s why orange growers, almond growers, and others form grower cooperatives that attempt to control the product all the way from production to final [or next-to-final] sales.

Now… even if a genius biologist does produce an oilseed plant that’s got a huge amount of oil that could be refined, where does the profit lie? With the refiner and distributor, who need to build an enormous infrastructure in order to make profits competitive with other industries in order to obtain the capital necessary to build that infrastructure. And in what industries do the highest profits lie? In those that produce small goods with low production costs with a high demand and an existing market.

Agricultural products seldom fit that market. Take wheat. It’s practically ubiquitous, world-wide, and while different varieties have been developed for different uses and climates, within those climates any competent farmer can grow it. The entire U.S. farm subsidy program was developed because too much of too many agricultural products were being grown, with the result that the prices were so low that too many farmers went bankrupt, to the point that, as noted above, only large farms — or specialty farms — remain profitable.

So… what happens if the biologists develop miracle plants? Before long, the entire world has them, and they cost less, and the profit margin is low — and they’ve either replaced products that had a higher profit margin, or they replace pollution control technology that does. And whole industries lose substantial profits. You can see why certain industries just might not be exactly supportive of really effective large-scale and widespread biotech. Biotech is just fine in making new high-margin pharmaceuticals, but fungible energy supplies or pollution control remedies, those are a different matter.

This isn’t a new story in human history. Way back when, sometime before, say, 200 B.C., there was a plant that grew in the Middle East, well-documented in more than a few writings, paintings, and even sculptures. Taken in some oral form, it was apparently a reliable contraceptive. It became extinct before the Christian era. Why? Because it filled a social need, a desperate one for women in poor societies who felt they could not afford more children, but no one could see a profit in growing or preserving it. Now, whether this plant was as effective as the various writings claim isn’t really the point. The point is that people thought it was, and yet there was no profit in cultivating it, and thus, it was hunted out and used until there were no more left.

So… I have grave doubts that we’ll see many biological solutions to our energy and environmental problems until someone can figure out a way to make mega-profits out of any new biological developments.

Although we science fiction writers like to claim that we predict or foreshadow the future in our work, historically our record isn’t really as great as we’d like to think, for a number of reasons, some of which I’ve discussed in previous blogs.

Arthur C. Clarke predicted communications satellites and the like very early and effectively, something like 60 years ago, but he also predicted we’d have cities on the moon and be able to travel to Jupiter by 2001. That was six years ago, and the way things are going, it may be sixty before any of that occurs — if it does at all. In The Forever War, Joe Haldeman predicted that we’d have interstellar travel by now. Isaac Asimov did all right in anticipating the hand-held computer/calculator [as he said, he even got the colors of the display for the first calculators right], but we’re nowhere close to his pocket-size fusion generators, intelligent humanoid robots, or even affordable automatic irising doors. Most of my incorrect speculations lie in my early short stories, and I’m content to let them remain there in obscurity. I tend not to have made as many incorrect speculations in recent years, not because I’m necessarily brighter than other writers, but because all of my SF novels are set far enough in the future that enough time has not yet passed to reveal where I may have been wrong. Writing the near future is indeed a humbling experience, and I prefer not to be humbled in that fashion.

For one reason or another, many of the past staples of science fiction have never come to be. We don’t have wide-scale use of personal hovercraft or helicopters, and likely never will. Despite quantum mechanics and linked electrons, it’s doubtful that we’ll ever have instant doors or transporters to other locales, even on earth. And for all the speculations about genetic engineering [or natural mutations] that will bring agelessness or immortality to us, research to date seems to suggest that while life spans can be extended and physical health as we age greatly improved, there are several biological stone walls to attaining great age, let alone immortality, one of which is that greater cellular regenerative capacity appears to be linked to greater carcinogenic propensity. As for a cloned copy of you — or me — that’s not going to happen anytime soon, either, if ever, because recent research appears to indicate that even identical twins aren’t, due to prenatal conditions, genetic “expression,” and other factors.

Against this backdrop, I am pleased to announce that astronomers have just discovered a billion light-year long void in the universe, a space absolutely devoid of normal matter, without stars or galaxies. A full report will appear in a future edition of Astrophysical Journal. For those of you who have read The Eternity Artifact, you will understand my pleasure at having one of my speculations proved right. At this point, however, since the locale is more than 6 billion light years away, there is no way to ascertain whether the reason for this void is as I postulated in the book. But… I did put it in print almost three years before the void was discovered.

“Coincidence” or not, sheer undeserved good fortune or not, I’ll take consolation in having at least one of my far-fetched speculative postulates being confirmed.

The other day I received an interesting response to my blog about the impact of social change in science fiction on readership. The respondent made the point that she felt, contrary to my statements, that fantasy had more social change depicted in it because at least there were more strong female characters in fantasy. Depending on which authors one reads, this is a debatable point, but it raises a more fundamental question. Exactly what are social change — and feminism — all about, both in genre literature and society?

The other day there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, which reported on the study of performance of mutual fund managements. The study concluded that the results from funds managed by all-male teams and those by all-female teams were essentially the same. The funds managed by mixed-gender teams reported significantly less profitable returns. The tentative rationale reported for such results was that mixed-gender teams suffered “communications difficulties.” Based on my years as a consultant and additional years as an observer of a large number of organizations, I doubt that “communications” are exactly the problem. In mixed-gender organizations, where both sexes have some degree of power and responsibility, I have noted that, almost inevitably, men tend to disregard women and their advice/recommendations to the degree possible. If their superior is a woman, a significant number tend to try to end-run or sabotage the female boss. If the superior is a male, because women professionals’ suggestions tend to get short shrift, the organization is handicapped because half the good ideas are missing, either because they’re ignored, or because women tend not to make them after a while. Maybe one could call that communications difficulties, but, as a male, I’d tend to call it male ego and insecurity.

What does this have to do with feminism in speculative fiction? A great deal, it seems to me, because merely changing who’s in control doesn’t necessarily change the dynamics below the top. This is one of the issues I tried to highlight in my own Spellsong Cycle, as well as in some of my science fiction. In “Houston, Houston, Do You Read,” the solution proposed by James Tiptree, Jr., [Alice Sheldon] was to eliminate the conflict by eliminating males. As a male, I do have a few problems with that particular approach.

In Sheri Tepper’s Gate to Women’s Country, the males get to choose to be “servitors” to women or warriors limited to killing each other off, while the “violence” gene [if not expressed in quite those terms] is bred out of the male side of the population.

Ursula K. LeGuin addressed the dynamics of gender/societal structure in The Left Hand of Darkness, suggesting, it seems to me, that a hermaphroditic society would tend to be just as ruthless as a gender polarized-one, if far more indirect, and not so bloodthirsty in terms of massive warfare.

In the end, though, the question remains. In either fiction or life, is feminism, or societal change, about a restructuring of the framework of society… or just about which sex gets to be in charge?

Heaven — or something — save us writers from the amateur reviewers, and some professionals, who pan a book with phrases similar to “trite plot” or “worn-out character type” or “overused plot device,” “all too typical young hero,” “standard PI,” etc., ad infinitum.

Far be it for me to be the one to say that all books all writers write are good. They aren’t. Nor will every book I write appeal to those who read my work. It won’t, and probably shouldn’t. But… those of you who are reviewers or who aspire to be reviewers, please, please, don’t display your ignorance by basing your judgments on “worn-out” character types or “overused plots.”

As Robert A. Heinlein noted in his “Channel Markers” speech to the U.S. Naval Academy more than 35 years ago, there are NO new plots. There are only a limited number of basic plots. As a result, there are no overused or trite plots. There are writers who handle plots badly, for a myriad of reasons, just as there are writers who handle them well. There are writers whose characters do not fit the plots, but the problems don’t lie in the “plot.” They lie in how the plot was or was not handled.

Almost every plot Shakespeare used in his plays was cribbed from somewhere else or someone else, but his work remains “fresh” and “original” after more than four centuries because of the way in which he handled those very common plot elements.

The same type of analysis applies to characters. Certain archetypes or types appear and reappear in novels, not because they’re tired or the authors are lazy, but because they’re necessary. If one writes a courtroom drama, there will be good attorneys and bad attorneys and brilliant attorneys. There may even be marginally competent attorneys and evil ones, but there won’t be moronic ones because they can’t pass the bar. Mercenaries will almost always be ex-military types, because that’s where one gets that kind of experience. Private investigators will almost always be ex-police or ex-military, or possibly disbarred attorneys, for the same reasons. In fantasy, knights should almost always be either wealthy or older retainers of the wealthy who have worked their way up from common armsmen, or professional military, because in any half-realistic society, those are the only way to gain the resources and experience. Pilots need to have a high degree of training and education and good reactions — and good judgment, because they’re in charge of rather expensive equipment and lives.

All too often both critics and social reformers tend to forget that stereotypes arise for a reason. They’re real. There are “good cops” and “bad cops.” And whether one likes it or not, if you see a large minority male in gang-like attire emerging from an alley and heading in your direction at night, discretion is indeed the better part of valor, stereotype or no stereotype. The same is true of the sharp-dressing WASP male who wants to sell you a large bridge for the smallest of sums. Obviously, stereotypes and archetypes can be and are overused, but slavish avoidance of such is as much a contrivance as overuse.

Likewise, try not to criticize a writer because he or she writes a particular kind of book. I don’t see reviewers trashing mystery writers, or “literary” writers, or romance writers because they write the same type of book time after time. One can note that the writer continues to write a particular type of book — but if you say that, make sure that’s all that writer writes. You can certainly point out that the writer didn’t handle it as well as in the past — or that the writer improved, but don’t trash it because you wanted the writer to write something different.

So… if you want to review… go ahead. Just try to do it with a touch of professionalism and understanding.

Recently, Steven King wrote an essay that appeared in The New York Times suggesting, at least as I read it, that one of the reasons for the decline of short fiction was that all too many short works of fiction were written for the editors and the critics, and not necessarily for the readers. Among the host of those who have commented, Scott Edelman, the editor of SciFi Weekly, has just written a response that points out that, while it wasn’t King’s intention, effectively King has said to readers that there are so few good short fiction stories that all of the good ones are in King’s anthology and that readers really didn’t have to look farther.

Both King and Edelman are correct in noting that the short fiction market is “broken.” After all, eighty years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald was paid as much for any number of his stories sold to popular magazines that just two story sales in a year earned him more than the average annual earnings of either doctors or U.S. Congressmen — and he sold far more than two stories a year. Even then it took money to live in Paris.

There are some gifted short fiction writers in F&SF, and so far as I know, not a one of them can make a living purely off short fiction. By some counts more than a thousand short speculative fiction stories are published annually. This sounds impressive, unless you know that around a thousand original speculative fiction novels are published every year, and novels pay quite a bit more. The sales of major F&SF print magazines have been declining for years, and until the advent of Jim Baen’s Universe last year, the rates paid for short fiction have been low, and essentially static.

It’s also a well-known, if seldom-stated, fact that the majority of F&SF magazines are edited as much to promulgate and further the editorial preferences of the editors as to appeal to the full range of potential readers.

Jim Baen was well aware of these facts, and so is Eric Flint. That, as I understand it, was the reason why they created Jim Baen’s Universe, the online magazine. In fact, Eric once told me that his goal was not to publish stories designed to win awards, but to publish outstanding stories that would entertain and challenge readers, and that he felt that too many editors had lost sight of that goal. So far as I’ve been able to determine, Universe has a higher rate scale for writers than any of its F&SF contributors, and Eric and Mike Resnick are obviously working hard to create a magazine that will boost the F&SF short fiction market and increase reader interest.

Yet, interestingly enough, neither King nor Edelman ever mentioned Universe, and how it came to be, and Edelman certainly ought to have been aware of it. Why didn’t he mention it? I don’t know, but I do know that it’s a part of the debate/issue that shouldn’t be ignored.