I got home from the Albany RG on Monday, and went to bed really early (it was an exhaustingly good weekend), slept until noon Tuesday, and I’ve been working my fingers to the bone ever since. But now, I’ve been home long enough, so tomorrow at 8:30am, I fly out of JFK to DFW for the American Mensa Committee quarterly meeting (that’s Mensa’s board of directors, for my non-Mensa friends). I’ll be in Arlington (in meetings) Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but my flight back here leaves Sunday at 5pm. So, anyone in the Arlington area have something interesting to do Sunday morning to early afternoon? Last time I went to that meeting, I spent the Sunday in Dallas at the Sixth Floor Museum (the JFK assassination site), so that one’s done. What’s next?

#mensa

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that faithless electors can’t be punished. For more details, see this article.

To my mind, what this ruling says is that the Electoral College should operate the way it was designed to operate, and that state laws and regulations later adopted to punish faithless electors are wrong. In other words, the Electoral College is charged with electing the best President, rather than blindly following the vote of the people (actually, the Constitution doesn’t mention a popular vote).

I’m enough of a democrat to fret over the E.C. ignoring my vote, and yet I live in New York City, where my vote is completely meaningless anyway.

Actually, most of the discussion I’ve heard of the E.C. in recent years has been grumbling about the E.C. following its rules, and thus electing presidents who did not win the nation-wide popular vote. Those discussions usually come to the conclusion that either we need to make still more rules so the E.C. is not operating as it was designed, but rather carrying out some other plan; or that the E.C. should be disbanded. But if it did go back to the original plan, most of those grumbling the loudest would probably be satisfied. And I think this ruling heads in that direction. (I don’t think the Founders put much trust in the unadulterated will of the people, so they created the E.C. to temper that will with electors who could decide the people have voted for the wrong person.)

I just read the article “Car traffic in Manhattan moving at slowest pace in decades: report” in the New York Daily News, after hearing it reported on WINS radio. I admit to some confusion because the fifth paragraph reads “While traffic is moving slower, the report also shows that fewer vehicles are entering Manhattan’s central business district,” the eighth says “More cars in city may also have something to do with the slower speeds — DOT data shows that the number of cars registered across the five boroughs has increased by 8.8% since 2010.” A seeming contradiction.

But my main point is that DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg’s attempt to make us think that congestion pricing will solve the problems. The article tells us that “the average speed of vehicles in the borough below 60th St. was a paltry 7 mph last year,” which was “23% slower than cars moved throughout the area in 2010.” But it fails to tell us how many miles of travel-lanes we’ve lost during that time.

Mayor de Blasio, and Mayor Bloomberg before him, have urged a purposeful, relentless campaign to make driving more difficult. Under their direction, we’ve lost travel lanes to the “pedestrian malls” on what used to be Broadway. We’ve lost travel lanes to the new lane of parking in the middle of many streets, away from the curb. In Brooklyn, what used to be one of our main thoroughfares, Kings Highway, was cut from two lanes in each direction to one simply by painting the outer lanes red and labeling them “bus only”.

Yes, the number of vehicles may be up, but even if that number had decreased, travel speeds would be down because there is less roadway per car available. All, apparently, part of the campaign to make us think “congestion pricing” is necessary. But how necessary would it be if they hadn’t set out to cause increased congestion in the first place?

#congestionpricing #NYC #traffic

Publishers Pick has once again picked a Fantastic Books book for its weekly special. This week, it’s Shariann Lewitt’s Interface Masque that is available, for just a few days, at the low, low price of $2.99 for an electronic copy.

Interface Masque is a hard sf novel. In the ancient and future city of Venice, poised above the drifting tides of her canals, is House Sept-Fortune: a guild specializing in the making and breaking of data systems. Cecilie is a senior apprentice in Sept-Fortune, on the brink of her adult career. It is time for Cecilie’s last test, the one that will prove her mastery of her profession and end her apprenticeship. But she has not anticipated the nature of the test that will be required of her.

Frightened and furious, Cecilie plunges into a very secret, very private, very dangerous quest to discover the nature of her world, behind its disguises… and to discover as well who runs the world. The truth is elusive but she knows it’s out there, in the flow of the datastream and in the equally unfathomable eddies and currents of Venice’s masked intrigues. And all interfaces are masks that cover the underlying system… but masks are hidden faces.

No matter. Truth is something Cecilie desperately needs. And she will pursue it in the face of all peril and strangeness, breaking through from one set of appearances to another… and another… to find what lies beyond.

Click on over to Publishers Pick to pick up your copy. And while you’re there, also check out this week’s other specials, INCI by Mike Resnick and Tina Gower, and the comedy-sf anthology Unidentified Funny Objects #2.

In July, I attended San Diego Comic-Con for the first time, because I was part of a panel sponsored by American Mensa entitled “How Science Fiction Shapes Our Reality.” Most of the panel was recorded (up to the point when we started taking questions from the audience), and is now available for your viewing pleasure at this link.

For those who are interested, I mentioned the following publications and authors:

Nature Magazine
Fantastic Books
Release the Virgins edited by Michael A. Ventrella
Jar Jar Binks Must Die by Daniel M. Kimmel
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Gregory Benford
Geoffrey A. Landis
Catherine Asaro
“Deadline” by Cleve Cartmill (March 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction)
John W. Campbell, Jr.
“Beggars in Spain” by Nancy Kress (April 1991 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, later expanded into a novel)
Robert Heinlein

Yesterday, I spent six hours in the car with the nephew and the niece (aged 14 and 11; returning them to their parents). It was a very quiet ride (well, except for my music playing on the car radio, the nephew’s music playing in his earbuds, and the niece’s videos playing hers, and her occasional laughter). And I have to credit myself: my music was the last to turn on, they were plugged in before we’d pulled away from the curb. (I waited, in case they were interested in interacting with me while I drove.)

I mused on the situation, thinking back to the early days of cyberpunk, when we assumed people would jack in to the internet and completely tune out the real world. The kids weren’t on the internet (or maybe they were; I couldn’t see their screens, since I was driving), but I realized we have actually arrived in that future: jacked in, interacting with people whose bodies are distant (or simply spending time in their own heads, their own worlds, and not interacting at all), and having almost no connection with the people physically near them.

And then, today, I read an article on how school is different today than it was in the past. One of the screens of the click-bait article was that kids are much more comfortable texting, tweeting, instant messaging, whatever-social-media-ing with each other than talking, even when sitting right next to each other. (Although—counterpoint: the niece is in another room in the house with a friend right now. The only tech they’re using is a video gaming console they’re both playing, but they are definitely talking to each other in meatspace.)

No judgment; just an observation that we really have arrived in a science fictionally predicted future. Not precisely what we expected, but pretty darn close. Echoes of that Comic-Con panel I was on two weeks ago.

Fantastic Books is still hard at work on Across the Universe, How to Argue the Constitution…, and all the other projects we’ve announced over the past few months, but now there’s another. Fantastic Books has just contracted with James D. MacDonald, Tom Easton, and Judith K. Dial for the third volume in the “…for the Thrones” series. The editors will be reading submissions soon for Horror for the Throne: One-Sitting Reads. For all the details, check out MacDonald’s blog post at https://madhousemanor.com/2019/07/19/horror-for-the-throne .

I’ve been on the road nearly all of the month of July, so I’m late letting you know that this week (which ends tonight), Allen Steele’s novel, A King of Infinite Space, is one of the three specials available from Publishers Pick. Get there fast if you want to download a copy of the classic novel set in Allen’s Near Space future.

As Alec, the narrator, says, “This is the story of the last day of my life, and everything that happened after that.” Ranging from a Lollapalooza concert of 1995 to the asteroid belt of 2099, this is the tale of a young man who dies, is reborn, and crosses the solar system in search of his lost love… and grows to be a better man, despite himself.

Science Fiction Weekly called the book, “an intelligent, sophisticated suspense novel with many surprises.” Absolute Magnitude said “his bodacious adventures provide good wheels for a thoughtful book.” And the Denver Post said “Alec’s story is fast, breezy, funny, and compelling as we follow his journey from spoiled brat to downtrodden slave to hero.”

A King of Infinite Space is available this week (today) only at one-third its usual cover price.

Also available are On The Train by Harry Turtledove and Rachel Turtledove, and Alex Shvartsman’s collection The Golem of Deneb Seven and Other Stories.

Facebook has decided someone tried to log into my account, so they locked it, and I have to log in from a computer I’ve used before… but it’s in New York and I’m at San Diego Comic Con. So no pictures, no updates, no FB messages until Tuesday. Thanks for nothing, #Facebook

I’m going out of town for the next fortnight, and won’t have access to my email (with only my cell phone, text messages and phone calls will be the easiest way to reach me, though I may be on Facebook occasionally).

I’m leaving in (gasp!) less than seven hours for the airport, heading to San Diego for my first visit to San Diego Comic Con! I’ll be on a panel, “How Science Fiction Shapes Our Reality,” on Thursday at 12:30 in Room 24ABC. The panel is sponsored by American Mensa, and moderated by LaRae Bakerink, the Chair of American Mensa. My co-panelists will include Doug Ecks, Nevin Millan, Dr. John Putman, and Dr. Jenny Rankin. Hope to see lots of you there!

After the panel, I will NOT have a dealers’ table, so I’ll just be wandering around, gaping in awe at the overwhelmingness of it all (or so I surmise).

I’ll fly home Monday, and then turn right around for a family trip of a few days.

Returning from that on Thursday, I’ll take a quick nap, load the car, and then drive to Pittsburgh for Confluence (that’s July 26-28), a science fiction convention that’s just a bit smaller than Comic Con.

At Confluence, I’ll be at the Fantastic Books table in the dealers’ room (open Friday 5 to 8pm, Saturday 10am to 6pm, and Sunday 10am to 3pm). I’ll also be on three panels (all in the Commonwealth West room):

Saturday at 4pm: “Return to the Solar System: Recent SF Set In Our Solar System” with Geoffrey Landis, Bill Keith, and Ken Chiacchia

Saturday at 7pm: “Space on TV: Discovery, The Orville, The Expanse, and More” with Tim Liebe, Hanne Madeleine Gates Paine, and Brandon Ketchum

Sunday at 10am: “Business of Publishing” with Brea Ludwigson

Hope to see lots of you there.

After Confluence, I’ll drive back to New York, unload the car, and fall into a stupor. Well, except I’m probably going to the Bryant Park movie that Monday evening, July 29. And now, I really ought to take a nap, because I have to leave the house at 5:30 in the morning for a 7:30 flight!