Hello! It’s been a minute. Sorry about that. I’m still here.
A great deal of effort has been spent on trying to figure out what makes an ideal society. I don’t have an answer for you. I try to represent a world that exists, one that you can recognize and believe in, more or less, even though it might have a funky vibe. I want it to reflect ours in some significant way. I want it to be imperfect and non-ideal, because striving is story. And story is the breath of life.
And yet I ask “What is an ideal society?” and “Do we really want one?” I have to say there are some seriously non-ideal options out there, and if we’re not actually experiencing a slow-moving coup, or a medium-paced coup, it often feels that way. Like gaining reception on an old analog TV, the snow seems to be becoming… less.
I say “funky vibe” because a recent beta reader of I’m Your Goat described it as having a funky vibe. It’s for sure darkly atmospheric. He enjoyed it, thank goodness. I’m still waiting to hear back from a representative at Tor Publishing about my other novel, not so funky, which he requested a year ago at the Atlanta Writers Conference. He passed on I’m Your Goat, sadly, said that it wasn’t plot-centered enough for genre fiction, but he said I was welcome pitch future projects to him directly. This is a good result. I’m not giving up on I’m Your Goat, either. Thank you to everyone who has been supportive.
And if you have any publisher recommendations, I’m all ears. This story has cyberpunk aspects and dystopian aspects – not wholly either – it’s strong at the line level while leaning florid, slow at times but kicks in with gusto, philosophical, otherworldly, and… it’s sexy. There are competing ideals among the various groups in the story, and the people within those groups.
Enough of that. You might be wondering why I haven’t posted in a while. Well, revising my previous projects has been pretty consuming, no lie, and the querying and pitching process too. My mother had to move into a nursing home, which was a difficult transition for everyone, especially since government assistance was needed. She’s a retired schoolteacher, had a full career, but her retirement and social security weren’t enough to keep her alive and well in a nursing home. That’s where Medicaid came in, and it’s not an easy or quick process to become approved – for a time, it was my high-stakes part-time job. And then there was the heartache of the move itself. Then pile on top of that a culture of petty sadism – the first nursing home had quite a few of those types, some very bad apples. As soon as Mom gave the go-ahead, we got her the hell out of there. I’m happy to report that the staff where she is now could not be more kind. A totally different vibe.
Anyway, you get the picture. You can’t control the world, only how you respond to it.
When I left off in September, I was writing about the future of AI. Since my last post, opinions have begun to sway wildly, almost frenetically, between deep concern about the dangers of advanced AI and the absolute technological dud AI might turn out to be. I’m a professional tax preparer, and ChatGPT has announced that my seasonal day job’s days are numbered, which I’d been wondering about myself. There are obvious signs now. Even if AI as billed turns out to be a dud, it probably won’t be that much of a dud. But all this hype seems conspicuously extreme, don’t you think? Same with crypto currency. It suggests fear, so much fear. Wired Magazine (March/April 2025) says these tech bros are steeped in investments in AI (at whatever level) and crypto currency. A data farm is a data farm to them, I suppose. But they want people to buy in. The “buy in” effect is fascinating in fiction, a fun, positive result of technique that can be really rewarding for readers, but that same reward mechanism becomes tragic in the real world. When people buy into the hype over something they instinctively know is suspect, that suspension of disbelief may feel delightful and defiant in the moment, but it comes at a terrible price. Harmless for fiction – but extremely harmful in politics and for world order. I’m having déjà vu as I tell you this. I may have said the same thing years ago in another post. The tech bros will leave crypto; they’ll bail on the poor souls who come in late, leave them stranded, feeling alone and foolish as crypto does what pyramid schemes always do, which is collapse. Look at the “gold fever” going on and all the hype there. If lots of people jump in, yes, the value of gold goes up, but it also might not be so obvious when the big stakeholders of the crypto crowd start selling their crypto for good. The situation will be noisy. Check out what’s happening with stablecoins backed by gold and see if I’m right – think “off ramp.” But I mean that: look. I’m not a trader or an economist. The tech bros are almost certainly the ones prompting legislators and POTUS to talk about moving federal payments to fiat-backed stablecoin (great for moving money across borders), no doubt boosting “investment” in all forms of digital currency in the meantime. Lots of noise. The pattern seems to be working for them. You, however, may want to arrange your federal tax withholdings so that you owe a little at the end of the year instead of receiving a refund. Unless you want your refund paid to you in stablecoin. Follow the noise. That’s my two cents.
I don’t even want to get into the tech bros aspiring to be corporate oligarchs who own the world. That’s an aspect of the future I envisioned in I’m Your Goat – part of a long cyberpunk tradition. The story takes place after multiple wars. People who live in a dystopian society rarely see it as one. They carry on with their lives if they can.
What is an ideal society? And do we really want one?
If an ideal society is one where people aren’t forced to live in the shallows, then the answer is yes.
I’ve wondered lately whether part of the sad situation that seems to be unfolding all around us has to do with the fact that we (though said of a character in a short story I’m trying to find a home for) have been living “with the constant strain of uncertainty, of poor health mixed with too much security and comfort.”
I’ll run with the assumption that our future will be both more and less alarming and unfamiliar than we may be expecting, or believe. People need to be a little uncomfortable, if you ask me, as in “Idle hands make mischief.” I agree with the pundits who say too much reliance on AI will only make our current situation worse. Along with a further drop in IQ and critical thinking skills, people with too much time on their hands tend to go looking for monsters, or at least the monstrous. They may become it if they don’t find it.
The noise of what’s going on out in the world has this terrible sense of urgency. It’s overwhelming. You feel it, right? It’s not easy to know which startling event is real chaos worthy of our attention and which is hyped chaos, worthy of condemnation for wasting our time. Our energy is being squandered. Keep your eye on the ball? Which ball? It’s embarrassing what our country is going through. I don’t really want to be political. I want to be sensible. I want to speak to the larger picture. I want to write my stories. But my brain now insists that there’s a looming question here, a big empty hole where the answer to What is driving all this insanity? should go. I don’t want to lose my way of life. Do we care whether our society is “ideal” under such circumstances? Can we calm down and get back to thinking and dreaming and making new discoveries, and trying to help those in need while allowing the capable among us to get on with their valuable work? For that precious self-esteem that allows humanity to glow and work miracles – small miracles like the bright smile of a child who feels nurtured and loved – and large, like rocket ships to Mars and beyond, and the exploration of the tiniest sparks of life down at the subatomic level in the darkness of primordial soup?
