Thinking About Conservatives and Omelas

This fanfic about Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is great. One of the comments asks the author to do "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" next.

This got me thinking, not so much about fiction that responds to the original Le Guin story (there are endless stories that respond to the Le Guin story) as the conservative response to that story.

About ten years ago, during the Puppy Wars, conservative SF writers and readers got very upset about the Le Guin story. Partly this is due by their inability to understand the story, I think, which is not meant to be read literally -- that is, Le Guin does not want you to suspend your disbelief and think there is an actual Utopian city which depends on keep an actual child locked up in misery in an actual basement broom closet, and then decide what you should do about that. It's a metaphor, a way of thinking. 

(What's the story mean then? Well, like any good metaphor, it is over-determined. It means many things: that we can't image a Utopian space; that stories can't be about Utopia because we have been taught by our culture that happiness is boring; that every single healthy child in our current world is predicated on the suffering of children in other places; that our happiness depends on the suffering and the exploitation of other living beings; and that most of us learn to live with that.) 

In the story, most people in Omelas come to accept the necessity of keeping a single child in misery. Their beautiful city and their beautiful lives and their beautiful happy children depend on it, and it is not, after all, such a high price to pay -- one suffering child, who isn't even their child. 

A few people, though, walk away from the Utopia, refusing to accept that price. Le Guin admits (this is the line that saves the story) that she doesn't know where they are going:

The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. 

Conservatives are not furious about what the metaphor in the story implies. 

No, they're furious that the adolescent kids in the story walk away from the city.

The most common response I saw from the Puppies was that if they were in Omelas they would take their guns and slaughter everyone in their path, mounting a rescue of that child. That's what they would do in Omelas. No child suffering on their watch!

(Yes, these are the same Conservatives that approve of child labor which gives them cheap teeshirts and are fine with the situation in Gaza and love the idea of stealing children from immigrants and minorities so that good white Christian parents can raise those children in the Lord and accept homeless children and impoverished children as the price of a capitalist society and are just fine with factory farming and global climate destruction which is wiping out untold species and causing the suffering of millions, and do I need to go on?)

As I saw once on a Buddhist blog, "Everyone wants to save the world but no one wants to help Mom do the dishes." 

Which is to say, if you want to rescue that child, no one is stopping you. But you're going to have to walk away from Omelas. You're going to have to, somehow, find a new way to structure the world. Like Le Guin, I don't know how you do that. 

I know you won't do it by shooting people, though.

ETA: Here's a response I hadn't seen before!

Goodbye 2025

May you be the worst year of our future lives.

As I predicted back in January, this year was not terrible for me personally. It's amazing how difference having enough money makes. We own like 26% of a house, we have a reliable car, we can buy whatever we want to eat and if our shoes wear out we can buy new shoes and if we're sick or injured or need new glasses, we can just see a doctor or even go to the hospital without facing financial ruin.

On the other hand: Dr Skull's health has been bad (though he's doing much better now and seems to be heading for total wellness).

On the other hand: Thanks to trans people being the new favorite scapegoat of MAGA and the GOP, my kid and his husband are losing rights one after the next. They have an escape plan, if necessary, but they really want to stay here in Fayetteville if they can. Our governor and our senators and our federal government are doing their best to make that impossible. 

(Side note: I can't believe people are still buying the "ooo those immigrants are destroying the country / ooo those trans people are destroying the country" con-job, but from what I have seen on "conservative" blogs and sites, they either actually are, or are pretending to be, buying it.)

On the other hand: Trump's circus of a government seems bent on destroying any progress the country made toward fixing global climate change.

On the other hand: GOP state governments seem determined to destroy the American education system. Ignorant people make good conservatives, after all.

On the other hand: GOP state governments and the federal government alike are stripping as many rights as they can from American citizens, including the right of due process and the right to control our own bodies, with more scheduled to be removed soon if they hold power.

On the other hand: Trump's circus of a government and the rest of the GOP are grifting every nickel they can to bribe billionaires and give tax breaks to the 1% and leave the rest of the country sick and poor and desperate. And the cost of living continues to increase.

Right now we seem on track to take back the government in 2026. May things get better after that. Please.  

Still Cold

It was nineteen degrees here when I took the dog to the dog park at dawn. There were ducks on the duck pond and the dog, despite the literally freezing temperature leapt into the pond after them. (They flapped away honking in a very satisfactory manner.)

Brrr!

Yesterday the temperature dropped from 72 degrees at 10:00 a.m. to 29 degrees at six p.m. This morning when I took the dog for his walk it was 16 degrees.

Brr!

It's so cold the dog doesn't even want to sit on the back deck and guard the yard, which is his usual occupation at this time of day.

White Men Are Being Excluded from Publishing O No

This is suddenly a new talking point on the MAGA Right:

 

The premise is that all of a sudden white men cannot get publishing contracts. All the books being published are by trans people, or brown people, or gay people or, you know, girls.

Is this true? (Spoiler: No.)

(It's interesting, also, that they don't count gay men as men. Or brown men as men. Only cisgendered white guys are actual men in this view of the world.)

The author of this opinion piece tries hard to make it seem true by setting her terms very carefully: white men who were born after 1984 (Why 1984? You got me). Her "evidence" is other opinion pieces which make exactly the same argument. She also notes that people's lists of favorite books have fewer white men on them than previously.

(Since I follow several threads about books on Reddit, where very nearly no one except white men ever gets recommended, I suspect she is setting her terms carefully here as well.)

Does she give evidence? Does she look at who is actually being published, who is actually being reviewed, who is actually winning awards? Don't be silly. She feels like white men can't get published, and her feelings are what count.

A. R. Moxon takes a deeper look here. As she notes at one point, the only actual primary source cited in any of these opinion pieces notes that while women are published more now than men, white men are publishing more ever, and clearly more than they did in the past.

Having to share space in the publishing world is, for the reactionary MAGA and for (some) white men apparently, the exact same thing as being discriminated against.

Since we're going to talk about feelings and anecdote instead of evidence, I'll retell a story I have told here before. When I was in graduate school, where white men were all we read and all we ever heard about, I did deliberately start reading more women writers. My (right-wing) brother came to visit, glanced at my bookshelves, and said, "I see you just read women now."

I was pretty sure that wasn't true, so I insisted we do a count. No shock, given the reading requirements of my classes, I had about twice as many male writers on my shelf as women. My brother saw a couple of titles by women, and he felt that meant I was only reading women.

Another anecdote: I was in an actual bookstore yesterday, the local Barnes & Noble, looking at the new publications. There were indeed a lot by women and brown people and brown women and LGBTQ people. There were also a lot by white men. I picked up one, which had an interesting title. The author's photo showed a serious young white man looking serious. The book was about some other young white man's feelings. I read the first page and was so bored I could not go on.

There were also tons of book by other white men there, including a new one by John Irving, who I was sure had to be dead by now, and about six by James Patterson (surely he is dead by now?) and some by white guys I feel must be dead by now. But our MAGA opinion holders are insisting we only count men born since 1984, so I guess those guys don't count.

Anyway. White conservatives sure like to pretend they're being discriminated against. It's pretty hilarious.

Chinese TakeOut for Christmas Dinner

We fulfill the obligation:

 

Christmas Day

It's very un-Christmasy weather here -- highs in the high 70s all week, with equally high humidity. When I walk the dog at dawn though, it is very pleasant, except for the damp. Today he chased two squirrels up a tree and then refused to leave the tree, circling it endlessly, sure they were about to come down again.

We're having a traditional Jewish Christmas day, with take-out Chinese. There's supposed to be a movie afterwards, but honestly nothing is playing here that we could stand to watch. Maybe we'll take the dog to the dog park instead.

Happy holidays to all y'all, however you celebrate!

My Reviews are Up at Asimov's

They'll be available for a few weeks, so read'em while they're hot.

Featured in this column:

Mary Soon Lee, The Sign of the Dragon

Emily Yu-Xuan Quin, Aunt Tigress

Chuck Tingle, Lucky Day

Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

Charlie Jane Anders, Lessons in Magic and Disaster

Beth Revis, Last Chance to Save the World

Inspired by a Reddit Thread

This was a person asking how often people get headaches, and I was surprised to see that some people get them never or maybe once a year. 

I can't remember a time when I did not have a headache. I used to get brutal migraines once or twice a week; now I usually just have low-grade headaches non-stop (like on the pain scale, they're around two), with every week or so a brutal headache (seven to eight on the pain scale). Migraines are only once or twice a year now.

Is this not normal? Do any of you never have headaches?

What the fuck is that like?

Convincing a Vending Machine it's a Communist

 This is great:

Doctor or Miss?

When I was teaching, I expected my students to call me Dr. Jennings because the alternative was usually "Miss," as in, "Miss, when's the essay due again?"

I do not insist that other people call me Dr. Jennings, although Dr. Skull does. I do put "Doctor" as the choice on those internet forms, because honestly it's the only gender neutral form of address listed, though if "Comrade" was available I'd go for that.

Anyway, I did earn that doctorate, and I do prefer that to "Miss" or "Mrs." or even "Ms." However, I don't correct people who call me "Ms Jennings," or (worse) "Mrs. Jennings." 

Why do I bring this up?

Because the Right is having yet another tantrum over Jill Biden being called Dr. Biden. How dare anyone address her as anything other than Mrs. Biden, I guess? I don't know. It's not misogyny, they insist. It's because she's not a "real" doctor, by which they seem to mean medical doctor. (Notably, none of them seem to have doctorates.)

It's got nothing to do with her being a woman, they insist. Or Joe Biden's wife. NOTHING AT ALL. It's just the principle they care about.

God.

One Year in Our House

We've been living in our own house (which we own like 24% of now) for an entire year. Here's what I like best so farm, in no particular order:

(1) Oddly, I like not having to call the landlord when something breaks. It is true this means I must call someone when something breaks, and also pay for it, but somehow this is less stressful. I probably have PTSD from that asshole landlord we had two moves ago. Also, I like that since we own the house we could put in a walk-in shower and a screened porch and a gas stove. Love my gas stove.

(2) I like where we live. The greenspace behind the house, the dog park only a few blocks away, the Harps and the Walmart two minutes away -- it's a good place.

(3) I love the city, of course. Living in Fayetteville is the best.

(4) Love the public library.

(5) Love living near my kid and his husband. It's close enough that we can have dinner together whenever, and go to the grocery store together, and watch out for each others pets as needed. Very nice.

(6) Almost nothing I need is more than 10 minutes away. This is also very nice. The exception is a few things that are in Rogers (the next town north) which is 20 to 30 minutes away by interstate, depending on the traffic.

(7) I don't love the traffic, but honestly it's not that bad. Just more congested than Fort Smith, but on the other hand, in Fort Smith, we were living in Fort Smith.

(8) The weather so far has been okay. A few really hot days in the summer, one or two really cold days this winter, but okay otherwise.

(9) I *love* being retired. It helps that we have enough money -- everything is better with enough money, who knew? -- but I also like having all this leisure. I can sleep as late as I want (which turns out to be about 7:00 a.m.), I can read books all day if I want to, I can write all day if I want to. Because we have enough money, I can order out for food if I don't feel like cooking. Conversely, I can cook if I want to. For example, tonight I'm making a chicken pie.

(10) We're close enough to Crystal Bridges and to Devil's Den that we can go whenever. Though, to be fair, so far that turns out to be not at all. Maybe soon!

Shamus is 9.5 Months Old

He has moved up to his Big Boy collar, which he celebrated by chewing his old collar to shreds.

He does this Border Collie thing where he crouches and stares at me intently. Reddit (r/bordercollie) says this means he wants me to play with him, which makes sense, since he mainly does it when he wants me to go outside and throw the ball for him. Which, yeah, is all the time.

He does sleep sometimes now however.

We have convinced him (mostly) not to chase the cats.

The dog park is his favorite.

First Night of Hanukkah

The first night of Hanukkah went very well. We had deli, chocolate pie, and latkes. I managed to get out and buy the dog a toy for his present, so he's happy.

I made the latkes, as usual. 

We had a moment of silence for the dead in Australia. 

Advice for Writers

 I love this list.

My favorites: 

You do not need to write like your favorite author. You need to write like you, caffeinated and slightly unstable.

You can write the climax before you finish Act 1. You can rewrite Chapter 1 thirty times and then delete it anyway. You’re not behind, you’re in hell with the rest of us.