In some ways, the first three books of the Spellsong Cycle are among the most realistic fantasies I’ve written, particularly in dealing with sexual politics and intrigue. Interestingly enough, each of the five books received starred reviews from some literary source or another, and the last book was a book of the year for one literary review. None of my other fantasy series has received anywhere close to that sort of critical acclaim, but the books of the Spellsong Cycle don’t sell as well as those in my other fantasy series.

It can’t be because there’s no sex, since none of my books — except one, published more than 20 years ago — contain anything other than indirect allusions to sex. Is it because the main character is a middle-aged woman? Is it because the source of magic is the fairly technical application of song and accompaniment? Or is it because I dared to show certain very direct components of sexual discrimination?

All of those may play a part, but I suspect that the real reason is the same reason why my science fiction novel Archform:Beauty won plaudits and awards and only sold modestly. The success/failures of characters in both books hinge on the value of experience. No young hero saves the day against impossible odds. In the Spellsong Cycle, Anna bides her time, utilizes the bitter lessons of academic politics and a failed marriage to position herself so that, when the time comes, she can act effectively. She doesn’t hate men, but she has few illusions about either their strengths and weaknesses, and she’s not any easier in assessing those of her own “fair” sex, either.

In Archform:Beauty, the experiences of the five viewpoint characters — all told from the first person — interact and combine to create the resolution, and like most such resolutions in life, the results are bittersweet and mixed… and, also like life, anything but world-shaking.

This does bring up a point that has certainly been debated for years, if not centuries, and that is whether, except in exceedingly rare cases, books that hew closer to the realities of human emotions and experiences can ever be wildly popular. Is popularity based on the defiance of experience, the dream of identifying with what we as readers know to be impossible, but would still like to believe? Does it matter?

This might seem like an “eternal question,” but in a sense, it’s anything but eternal, because in terms of human culture, the modern novel is an extremely recent innovation. While epic tales date back millennia, and one of the first examples of what we would consider a novel is the eleventh century Japanese work, The Tale of Genji, such examples were either essentially oral traditions or hand-written longer works with extremely limited circulation. The modern novel needed the printing press, and a number of scholars suggest that Richardson’s Pamela, published in 1740, is the first of the modern novels.

And in practical terms, until the 1950s, and the wide-spread advent of paperback books, novels tended to be restricted to those who could afford them, and not a large percentage of the population could. While book publishers were clearly interested in profitability, “popularity” didn’t become the dominant issue with book publishers until the late nineteenth century, and didn’t become an overriding imperative until the last 50-75 years.

But the interplay of popularity and content do raise further questions. What is the point of publishing a book? To sell as many copies as possible? To make a great profit? To entertain? To enlighten? To educate? To raise issues? What trade-offs do publishers make… and why?

I’ve certainly been fortunate as an author to have been backed by a publisher who has allowed me to raise issues, sometimes less than popular ones, in what I’ve hoped is an interesting and entertaining manner… and I’ve seen other publishers who do, but I have to wonder, as I watch the media conglomerates strive for market saturation and pure profitability, how long truly thought-provoking books will be widely published.

I came across a comment by a reviewer that condemned [yet again] one of my characters [not Van Albert, surprisingly enough, who has taken much abuse over the years since The Ethos Effect was published] for killing “innocents” when she destroyed a city ruled by those who had inflicted great evil on others for generations. The evil wasn’t questioned, but the extent of the “collateral damage” was, and it was questioned on the grounds that it was akin to condemning all Germans in WWII because Hitler was the German head of state.

Now, it could be that I’m just cynical and jaundiced because I spent some twenty years in and around national politics in Washington, D.C., but evil governments aren’t just foisted off on hapless people. All those evil lobbyists? Are they really so evil? I mean, if General Conglomerated Amalgamations doesn’t get the contract for the SPX-Vortex, the good people of West Podunk will lose a thousand jobs. And if we don’t contract out to Halliburton and Blackwater, why… to keep the war going in Iraq we might have to extend Army and National Guard tours of duty, or even re-institute the draft, and isn’t it much better just to handle these disagreeable tasks with good old American private enterprise?

There’s something about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.

And the same realization should permeate good fantasy and science fiction. That evil king who tortured peasants and abused young women in ways too degrading to mention… did he do it all alone? Who supplied the torture tools? Who staffed the dungeons? Who grew the food that fed the castle? Who made the spears and swords? Were all his subjects so cowed by his army that they could do nothing? Perhaps, but what cowed the army and the generals? They had the majority of weapons, and why couldn’t they suggest that torture wasn’t a good idea? Besides upsetting people, it’s really not very effective in getting accurate information.

The same questions arise in SF, in future high-tech terror states. Exactly who’s behind all the spying, the loss of freedom, the midnight raids? Is it just the president, the prime minister, the head of the military? Or might it be also the industrial combine that supplies surveillance gear, and the people who work there who want to keep their jobs and their paychecks? Or the weapons manufacturer and its employees… or the communications giant..

As I and others have noted, no government in history has survived against the will of the majority of its people. Many haven’t even survived against the will of a small and determined minority. That does have a tendency to suggest that when evil individuals rule a land, fictional or real, they do so with either the tacit acceptance or the willing support of the majority of the populace. And under those conditions, just how innocent are the “innocents” who accepted the benefits of that government while claiming it wasn’t their fault?

In short, does the responsibility for evil rest solely on the designated head of state? It’s so convenient and reassuring to think so, but should we, as writers, really foster that comforting illusion?

Last week, my editor, his assistant, and I were “discussing” some elements of a book I’d turned in. I use the word “discussing” in very loose terms. My editor was having a hard time with the situation in the book. I won’t go into the specifics here, because some of you might read the book, but both my editor and I did agree on the facts, on the credibility of the situation, and the culture. But, in essence, the issue turned on one point — that to be sympathetic to the reader the protagonist should find a “better way” to resolve the issue. Either that, or all the “bad” characters should be so overwhelmingly evil that no matter what the protagonist did, every reader would cheer.

I resisted this — and time and your future comments will reveal exactly how readers do in fact react — because I’ve gotten more than a little tired of culture-centric societal illusions, in particular, American culture-centric illusions. I’m not talking about ideals, where we strive to do better, and often fail, but illusions.

I’m certainly not the first writer to tilt at this windmill, and I seriously doubt that I’ll be the last. In Slaughterhouse Five, for example, Kurt Vonnegut took dead aim at the American illusion that all it takes to become rich is hard work and virtue.

I’ve addressed this issue before, if not presented in quite that way. In The Ethos Effect, the protagonist discovers that his own culture has turned from a relatively open democratic society into a xenophobic, militaristic, homophobic, and repressive society that opposes all efforts, internal and external, to return to what we might term a relatively free society. He takes drastic steps, and more than a few readers were appalled, making the almost inevitable and rhetorical statement that there had to be a”better way.”

And my discussion with my editor, not surprisingly, centered on that same great American illusion — that there’s always “a better way,” a better solution to a problem that involves less work, less cost, and sometimes, less loss of life. The problem is — sometimes there isn’t, and no one wants to face it.

If we really want to get rid of some ten thousand homicides annually in the USA, i.e., those committed with firearms, “all” we have to do is collect all the guns. That would be the most effective way, wouldn’t it? Just try it, and you’ll see how far that gets you. The illusion, because a vocal and large minority opposes gun control, is that we can reduce those homicides through a “better way.” So, in search of that better way, we enact this and that regulation, and this and that restriction, and the impact is statistically minimal. We create the illusion of doing something, and that’s “better” than giving up society-wide gun ownership. Of course, all those regulations haven’t made much of a dent in the homicide numbers, and there is no “better way” both to allow weapons and reduce gun-related homicides.

We also foster an illusion of equality, and we’re quick to cite the Declaration of Independence, in that “all men are created equal.” I’m sorry. While the birth process is the same, the results are anything but equal. A crack baby is seldom, if ever, going to be equal to a healthy one. A child born to less advantaged parents will always have a greater struggle to achieve what can be attained by one born to more privileged parents. And all the Head Start and pre-natal care and enrichment programs won’t erase all of that inequality. Am I saying such programs aren’t worth anything? Heavens, no. I’m saying that, necessary as they are, they won’t bring about complete equality, not even complete equality of opportunity, because for a society to function well, the best qualified people should be hired and promoted. Like it or not, individuals in any society are not equal. But fostering the illusion of equality allows people to ignore the realities of inequality, the true costs of remedying even just a portion of it — and the fact that it will always exist.

All societies have illusions. They always have, and they always will, but to me, one of the tasks of a writer, in addition to entertaining, is to at least occasionally draw back the dark curtain and shed a few rays of light on such illusions, even if indirectly through fictional or fantasy cultures… and even if it means occasionally disagreeing with my editor.

As some of my readers know, I was trained as an economist, and economists occasionally lapse into statistics, and, in this case, I will offer some figures associated with recommendations about purported quality of the books that you read.

Last month, the vaunted Locus published its list of recommended books released in 2007, 40 in all, of which 22 were science fiction and 18 were fantasy. Since these books were deemed to be of quality by Locus reviewers, as someone who is skeptical of any one source, particularly any one source of experts, I decided to make a comparison of the Locus findings to the reviews, or lack thereof, in Publishers Weekly.

Of the forty books Locus listed as superior, PW gave exactly 11 (or 27.5 %) starred reviews, their mark of quality. I would have made a similar comparison with other “authorities,” such as Booklist and Kirkus, but, alas, I don’t have access to their full databases, nor do I wish to pay their exorbitant rates for that privilege, but I will note that a number of books which did receive starred reviews from other sources such as those were not included on the Locus list. In the interests of full disclosure, I will point out that none of my books figure into these statistics, since nothing I published for the first time in 2007 received any listings by Locus or starred reviews [not that I know of, at least] from anyone else.

Having some interest in statistical oddities, I also noted that the Locus list predominantly featured male authors [72.5% of the recommended books were authored by males]. The breakdown by gender and genre did change slightly, since 77% of the SF titles were by males, as compared to a mere 67% of the fantasy titles. From my infrequent perusing of Booklist and Kirkus review summaries, I do retain the impression that at least several of the books receiving starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus, and not included in the Locus list, were written by women.

For another comparison, the final Nebula ballot lists five novels. So far as I can determine, exactly one of them got a starred review from PW, but three of the five were on the Locus recommended list. And, of course, four of the five Nebula nominees were written by men.

All this suggests that there’s definitely a difference in who and what are considered quality between those officially “in” the F&SF field, and those not so in. But then, haven’t we always known that?

ADDENDUM: After I originally posted this, the thought occurred to me, as it might to many readers, that the selections by Locus reviewers and the Nebula voters might merely reflect the gender distribution of authors and titles in the F&SF field. So I did a quick analysis of the 2008 advance title listings of the twelve publishing imprints that are projected to issue more than 30 books. Of the twelve, six will publish more titles by men, and six will release more titles by women. Overall 56% of the more than 750 titles listed for those imprints will be authored by men and 44% by women [and I gave 1/2 credit to each gender where there were mixed gender co-authors]. To me, that does seem to suggest a certain gender disparity.

A great deal of campaign rhetoric seems to concern itself with issues involving institutions or faceless groups — the greedy corporations who shift jobs to third world countries, the illegal immigrants who take low-paying jobs and keep decent wages from being paid to Americans, the predatory lenders and banks, the automobile industry that lobbies against decent mileage standards for cars, the health-care industry that bankrupts the forty million Americans without health insurance… and so it goes.

And more than a few politicians and public figures all have ways to punish these groups and institutions. Satisfying as thinking about punishing such institutions is, any such punitive solution won’t solve the problem, and it’s likely to hurt other individuals even more, often those who’ve already been injured.

No…I’m not being a corporate apologist… just a realist. The reason why corporations are corporations, why they incorporated in the first place, was to limit, if not to eliminate entirely, personal liability for its executives and employees — except in clear cases of direct criminal behavior.

So… if lenders market mortgages to low-income or high-risk borrowers whom they know are likely to default… or who end up paying far more than they might have with a 30 year mortgage… and then the lenders securitize those mortgages and sell them to investors, what can anyone do? The government will find it difficult, if not impossible legally, to regain the lost assets, and will spent millions in attempting anything. The borrowers will still lose their houses, and the investors will lose a great deal of the money they paid for the securities. The original homeowner or homebuilder might not lose money, but, then again, they might end up with a devalued property. Since a significant portion of mortgage lenders nationwide were involved to some degree, punishing them all would only make buying homes more difficult for everyone. Punish the “more guilty?” Where do you draw the line, legally and practically? How can you legally punish someone for bad judgment and for ethically reprehensible but legal lending practices?

If government changes the law to deal with abuses, as it has done many times in many areas, two things inevitably happen. The overall transaction costs go up, and seldom are any but the worse of the abuses curtailed, because the perpetrators go on to find another legal way to do the same thing.

The problem with corporate and institutional misbehavior is two-fold. First, corporate law effectively shields corporate decision-makers from being held liable for bad or questionably legal corporate decisions. Second, even if corporate misbehavior is wide-spread, the fall-out from negative actions will still fall disproportionately upon the innocent. In the case of Enron, for example, employees at all levels of Enron headquarters knew that the company was running a phony second trading room. They may not have known about the off-book financial manipulations, but scores if not hundreds, knew about the phony trading room, and few if any reported to authorities about that bit of fraud and deception. But, before the collapse, Enron had 5,600 employees, the vast majority of whom were innocent, and most of whom lost their jobs, their retirement, and their future. A handful of executives were found guilty, but that did nothing for the thousands who suffered.

Similar events unfolded with Global Crossings and WorldCom, although the unraveling of both those corporations had far more to do with bad management. Still, in the end, that bad management had disproportionately negative impacts on innocent employees, suppliers, and investors.

Is there a workable governmental solution? I honestly don’t know, but it’s clear that corporate law creates a real barrier to individual responsibility at the corporate executive level. It’s also clear that corporations continue to fire incompetent or unsuccessful CEOs and send them off with “golden parachutes” paid for by consumers, the shareholders, and, in some cases, even indirectly by government.

The same factors are at work in government, another institution. To get elected, politicians promise what the majority of people want, but they seldom, if ever, tell anyone how they’ll pay for it, except in generalities, usually targeting the “rich” and corporations. That doesn’t work, because the rich have better lawyers and accountants, and the corporations are legally structured to pass on all the taxes and costs to the consumer. Add to that the fact that government isn’t generally all that efficient, and we wind up paying more taxes for programs and services that usually don’t satisfy anyone… and then we blame the politicians — every one of them except “our” representative, who did what “we” wanted. After all, more than 90% of all incumbents get re-elected.

Of course, the most workable solution would be if we, as a culture, backed off the demand for more and more at the lowest possible price to ourselves… but then, we couldn’t blame the government and all those greedy corporations for doing whatever they legally can to meet our demands. And who’s to say that the corporate executives, and the higher education executives, and the health care executives, not to mention the politicians, just wouldn’t keep padding their expense accounts and payrolls?

Of course, a greater societal emphasis on individual ethics and responsibility over “fame and fortune” wouldn’t hurt, either. But… I confess a certain skepticism about seeing that happen anytime soon in the reality-TV culture we’ve developed.