Today my third novel, CodeSpell, is coming out from Penguin's Ace division. It's a great day for me. It's also a very hard one. In mid-March my grandmother, Phyllis Neese, died. She had a huge role in raising me and in my becoming a science fiction and fantasy author. She was my grandmother, she was my friend, and she was one of my biggest fans. Not having her here today to see the book hurts. She was born in 1924 and she was a grand old lady on many levels.

Recently I wrote a letter to Senator Kohl critical of his decision to vote for the condemnation of an ad in a newspaper--MoveOn's BetrayUs ad.  His response agreed with my (nonexistent) condemnation of the ad. Since what I actually wrote about was my concern that he had caved in to right-wing talking points in making the vote critical of the ad, and that this was a waste of senatorial time I have to conclude that someone isn't listening to his constituents.

Howdy all,

I'm a relatively long time member of the community (user id 22776), and occasional diarist and commentator. I'm also a science fiction and fantasy writer and my second novel, Cybermancy, is out today from Penguin's Ace division. It's the sequel to WebMage, though it's intended to stand on its own.

Like any book, it has a story behind the story. In this case the decision not to quit. Which is, I think, quite relevant to today's political situation.

Crossposted from wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com with edits.

Free Science Fiction.

As has been mentioned elsewhere in the blogosphere, there is some gentle* debate among the professional community of fantasy and science fiction writers about the utility and advisibility of allowing some of one's work to appear online for free.

This has parallels to the blogger/mainstream media kerfuffle that made me think it might be of interest to folks here in the political part of the blogosphere. The threat that electronic media poses to the old style content models and to writers and publishers who can't learn to adapt in the fiction world is almost a perfect mirror for what's going on here on the political side.

We need to drive the following message home, and we need to do it quickly, while the election is fresh in everyone's mind.

This diary also available in Green.

Howdy all,

I'm a relatively long time member of the community (user id 22776), and occasional diarist and commentator. I'm also a science fiction and fantasy writer with a first novel out today from Penguin's Ace division, and I thought that was worth a diary. So, read on if you're interested. The book, WebMage is a contemporary fantasy/cyberpunk hybrid available pretty much everywhere, and it's been getting some pretty great reviews:

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly. called it an "original and outstanding debut..." and said "McCullough handles his plot with unfailing invention, orchestrating a mixture of humor, philosophy and programming insights that give new meaning to terms as commonplace as "spell checker" and esoteric as "programming in hex." And even, "this is the kind of title that could inspire an army of rabid fans..."

The "blame game" meme is a nasty one that has to be countered strongly and effectively. This LTE shows one possible counter-meme. I have also tried as much as possible to start working on Kid Oakland's "flip the rock" idea of making "conservative" a toxic term.

LTE begins:

To most Americans accountability to the people is the very essence of democracy. Apparently that's not true for the current crop of Republican apologists and "conservative" leaders, who are calling this fundamental responsibility of government a "blame game." These Republican elite claim that we must focus solely on the disaster recovery efforts in New Orleans, ignoring for the moment any hint of criticism or investigation into who bears responsibility for the pathetic initial Federal response.

I live in small town Wisconsin in a fairly purple part of the state. The county went for Gore by 5 votes and Kerry by 1,200. Democratic Congressional Rep. Republican state rep and state senator. The paper, The Dunn County News, is a twice weekly deal with small circulation. I contribute regularly and normally land the primo letters spot next to the editorial cartoon. I also normally get a lot of right wing counter letters. But in July I wrote three letters and got zero Republican response and numerous supporting letters. The short version seems to be a lot of heartland anger at Bush, Rove, Frist, and company, especially about Plame.

Letters on the flip:

Guess who's back?

From the BBC: Taleban Radio

Today I burned my 2004 election dreams.

I'm not sure whether this is worthy of a diary or not, but I figured if anyone else in the world would get any benefit from this it's the people here.

More after the jump.

There has been much discussion of reframing issues and of making sure that Bush and the Republicans get all the blame for every bad thing that happens for the next four years, and especially for the next two years until the 06 midterms.

One way to help that along is to create some sort of powerful and simple mechanism for dumping nastiness on the Republicans.

I'd like to suggest a political version of good cop, bad cop. In the ideal version of this, Kerry (for reasons which will become obvious) and some extremely pugnacious Democratic congressional attack dog would appear in a daily or weekly national television broadcast. That's not going to happen, but there are a number of scenarios short of that which might be effective. I'll go into those below the example that follows.

Attack Dem to the audience: "Bush's Republican allies in congress are trying to raise taxes on your healthcare."

Kerry (looking sad and ministerial): "Really?"

Continued below the fold

Many have been saying we need soundbite sized principles that will appeal to those voters who don't pay much attention.

Here are a few:

Fair taxes.
Equal protection under the law.
True freedom of religion.
Separation of church and State.
The right to privacy.
Clean air and water.
Protection of ecosystems.
Respect for the rights of nations and the rule of law.
Restraint on the coercive powers of government.
Fiscal responsibility.
The voice of the people not the corporations.
The value of community.

Suggestions for more?

So, it's over. Bush returns to the White House. They own the House, the Senate, and very shortly the Supreme Court.

Not a whole we can do about any of that today. What we can do is start planning the counterattack. The own the government, they get all the responsibility. Is there a single person on this site who thinks that a Republican dominated federal government with Bush at it's head is going to meet with anything but international, economic, and environmetal disaster? I didn't think so. That means we have to make sure that every bad thing that happen in America in the next four year get's tattooed on Bush's forehead.