Karma

After decades of trying, I finally won something in one of those chocolate wrapper contest today -- a whole, free, 80 gram chocolate bar. I was so astonished I nearly fell over. Given how these things tend to balance out, I'm going to be extra careful crossing the road for the next few days, in case the square-up is a bus's front fender with my name on it...

News!

As I posted on the News section of my main website, the first novel of my upcoming fantasy series has been sold to Hachette Livre Australia.

The series is planned for four books, and though the series itself remains unnamed, the first novel is called 'A Princess of Lenayin'. At the moment, the plan is for it to be released in Australia in June 2007. I'm hoping other countries will follow.

I recall telling a fellow science fiction writer that I was working on fantasy, and he gave me a look like I'd turned to the dark side. I don't want to get into a post about the relative merits of fantasy versus science fiction, save to say that whatever work has been published before, in either genre, has a very limited impact upon my decision of which I'd rather write. Or in other words, I don't follow trends, and my work is sometimes difficult to place within any simple genre boundaries. 'A Princess of Lenayin' is not a traditional fantasy in the sense that it has no magic, no wizards in pointy hats, no elves, no dragons, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with that. That kind of fantasy has its place, and I've read and enjoyed my share (although not an especially large share, I'll admit).

But I didn't want to write that kind of fantasy. The stuff I write, science fiction or fantasy, is heavily character based, and everything else comes from that focus on character. I'm interested in what makes humans human... which is in turn why politics interests me, not because political issues themselves are inherently interesting, but because ultimately, it's about people, and the choices they make. 'A Princess of Lenayin' is about culture, identity, wars of religion and ideology, and the clash of civilisations on the grand scale. I'm particularly pleased for it to be coming out in Australia with Hachette Livre, because I think they can reach a broader market than a specialised fantasy imprint might, and my plan was always more to write 'a good book', rather than 'a good fantasy book'. I've never liked labels much, and I see no reason why people who don't read much fantasy shouldn't like this one.

But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?

The Great Wall Around China

Following on from the last post...

There's a lot of debate from people saying that any attempt to 'contain' China is dangerous and counterproductive. In order to understand what the hell they're talking about, you have to ask what they mean by 'contain'.

Currently, there's a lot of criticism of US government policy to shore up military relations with Japan and India in particular, as well as strengthening various regional Asian relationships. The current US government's critics, predictably, accuse it of saber-rattling (do sabers rattle? Do cutlasses squeak?) Never mind that China has lined up missile batteries opposite Taiwan and periodically threatens to blow them all to hell if they don't vote for the right candidate in Taiwanese elections (oh if only China would have one of those...) once again all bad behavior of foreigners becomes America's fault, because that's more politically correct than blaming 1.3 billion Chinese for anything.

Firstly, I think the accusation of containment is silly, because it assumes that foreign policy is a zero-sum game. Maybe it was a hundred years ago, but in the era of globalisation, there's no longer any such thing. Military balance, or equilibrium, is not 'containment'. It's merely the warning of serious consequences for aggressive action. So far it's worked extremely well, and has in fact encouraged China to tone down its rhetoric significantly over Taiwan, for the simple reason that the Chinese leadership have been forced to realise that Taiwan plus America is a war they can't win. Yet.

There's plenty of South East Asian nations who are also quite pleased to be beneath America's security umbrella, where China is concerned. Some unlikely ones too, like Vietnam, who distrust China even more than China distrusts them. In fact, relations aren't real cozy all around the South China Sea, despite frequent plaudits for China's autocrats in the western media, lauding them for being so civiilised for not having killed anyone lately... a bit like patting Hannibal Lecter on the head and saying 'isn't Hannibal a good boy, he hasn't eaten ANYONE for weeks!'

So okay, that's overdoing it. But I liked the imagery.

The point is that much of the Chinese leadership's present pragmatism isn't praiseworthy enlightenment, it's simply that America called China's bluff, forcing the Chinese to realise that their emperor really didn't have any clothes... or in this case ,that their military really didn't have any guns, compared to America. That will change, and is changing, as the Chinese economy hits $2 trillion GDP, and heads for $4 trillion in about eight years... and then, if it can sustain that pace (doubtful, for an increasingly mature economy) for $8 trillion eight years after that. The American economy is currently about $11 trillion... and will keep growing, but at maybe %3, compared to China's %8. So it's not all that far off, that day when America ceases to be the world's biggest economy... unexpected eventualities not withstanding.

As I've said before, current China policy is predicated on the assumption that at some point, China will turn democratic, because autocratic systems just can't handle massive, modern economic systems. So it's a race, between the coming democracy, and China's military expansion, to see which one arrives first -- the democracy, or the point where China CAN win the war for Taiwan. The assumption being, of course, that a democratic China would not go to war over Taiwan...

So here's what I think is emerging -- a security relationship between America and Japan, and India. India's economy's still only about point seven of a trillion, but their military has in many ways better foundations than China's, and their technology is improving faster. Japan is casting off the old pacifism fast, and when you look at their region, it's not surprising. I'd guess they'll be a normal military power in less than a decade, and could even start doing some serious military R&D, and exporting weapons. Japan has about ten years to go until China overtakes them in GDP terms, but their technology edge will take way longer to catch.

It's not containment. Japan, America and India are all trading with China as fast as they can, and fuelling China's growth. That's a good thing. But it's also laying down limits. Okay, perhaps that IS a form of containment... but only in the sense that it's instructing an authoritarian power that any attempt to attack or strongarm one's democratic neighbors will cost them very dearly. And if certain western liberal types want to complain about that, well maybe they should move to China, and take up jobs managing China's many labour camps where the Chinese dissidents are kept, because their arguments don't rise much above that moral level.

SF and Politics

Am I the only SF author to find geo-politics so interesting? Maybe not... but then, I've always found SF and Fantasy both very weak on politics. And I don't know why that should be. If anyone was writing Science Fiction in the early 1900s, and projecting forward into likely events of the next century, undoubtedly the biggest single thing they'd have had to get right was the rise of the USA. Sure, they could have taken a pure SF-science approach, and written about the wondrous implications of widespread electricity generation, cars, aeroplanes, radio, telephones and computers... but if you miss the rise of America, you miss the human context within which all this cool technological stuff happens.

Despite currently studying much politics to go with my Bachelor of International Studies, I can find the everyday cut and thrust of politics as boring as the next person. Men or women in suits yelling at each other doesn't excite me all that much. But ultimately, politics is about people, and how people live. And so, believe it or not, is technology. I don't believe you can separate one from the other, when writing about possible futures... which is possibly why I've found much SF lacking in the political dimension. SF is frequently accused of lacking in the human dimension too, so I guess one goes with the other.

But like my early 1900s example -- if you were to jump ahead in time another hundred years, I'd reckon the biggest thing that'd hit you about how the world's changed (apocalyptic scenarios aside) is just how powerful China and India are. This is a very recurring theme of mine, but then, geo-political power is an inescapably important thing... as anyone imagining a world without American dominance today could appreciate. How different would the world have been without America's rise? On the one hand, we'd not have so much American popculture and fast food, which wouldn't be a big loss. On the other hand, western liberalism and democracy probably wouldn't have survived WW2.

So many new technologies were either invented in America, or driven by American political or economic developments. To have some idea of what will be developed in the future, you have to guess who'll be doing the developing, and why, and on what scale. I personally believe that the greatest challenge the USA will face in the mid-future is how to manage it's own relative decline in the world... a bit like arranging your last will and testament. Don't get me wrong, I see no reason a future America can't continue to raise living standards indefinitely (I'm a hopeless optimist like that) and the lives of ordinary Americans will keep getting better. It's just that there's other nations out there, of equal or vastly greater population, who will do even better, because technologies and global economic systems are systematically erasing each of the reasons why one group of people should be richer than another group (geography, cultural isolation, education, access to wealth and technology, etc).

But like arranging your last will and testament, you have to figure which people you want to leave in charge of all the goodies after you're no longer in a position to be calling all the shots -- in this case, merely declined, not dead... but if you leave all the goodies in the wrong hands, that could change fast. This is why democratisation and rule of law are so important to me. America is freedom's guarantor today, however little some people like its methods. America guarantees that democracy and free speech has more guns than the alternatives, and I quite like that situation, as far as it goes. But if China does not democratise as fast as some have hoped (myself included), then that could be a problem, and makes it imperative that India's development works in parallel. I just don't want a authoritarian nation to be the most powerful in the world. I really don't. It's not a racial thing at all, it's a political thing, I couldn't care less if the democrats are Asian, Hispanic, African or Arab, so long as they're real democrats and won't be sending jackboots to kick down my door anytime soon. Or anyone else's door.

So this is the complicated mess that is the future -- an interwoven maze of politics, racial identity and advancing technology, all feeding off and affecting each other's development. A lot of people, when looking into the future, just pick one element and extrapolate from that, without seeming to realise that the real trick is in working out how all the different elements interact. Which is why I'm not a distopian, and distrust those who proclaim 'the end is nigh', because when you examine what they say, you find they've usually just extrapolated from one development and ignored all the others. If Science Fiction has a failing in telling the future, it's this -- too much technology, not enough politics. But on the other hand, I'm sure it's possible to have it the other way around, too.

More Space Stuff

Via Hobbyspace

The last two items in particular are terrific. I don't say this lightly about any man, but Richard Branson, I love you.

Cassandra Kresnov at Pyr

Though I signed the contracts a little while back, I thought now might be as good a time as any to say that Breakaway and Killswitch, the sequels to Crossover, will be coming out in the USA with Pyr. Crossover is in Pyr's third season (September 2006), Breakaway will be in the fourth season, and Killswitch in the fifth. No firmer dates than that for now, more when I get told.

Now I'm hanging out to see what kind of cool stuff Stephan Martiniere does for the next two covers...

Female Fighter Pilots in Pakistan

Clearly there's some elements of the Pakistani military establishment that are determined to show to the world that Pakistan can be just as modern as any nation. Considering that women have only been allowed to fly fighters in America since 1994 (and are still not allowed, I believe, in a number of western nations) I guess being twelve years late isn't a bad effort.

Interesting to see the ramifications in India (if any) where women have been pilots since the early nineties, but haven't been allowed into fighters. I recall reading that when the Indian airforce first announced it had places for about twelve female pilots, they received some ridiculous number like 10,000 applications. Now back in the early nineties there weren't so many good jobs for educated young women, so they might not be getting that kind of stampede today... but still in India and Pakistan, there's a massive demand/supply mismatch where good jobs are concerned.

I think this could be why both nations only allow quotas of about 12 female inductees at a time, thus keeping the total number of women at maybe %5. Imagine if they removed the quotas, considered all applications seriously, and took the best without preference for male or female. They'd get swamped. I'd guess it's even possible that there could be more female applicants than male, given that there are so many obstacles to women's employment elsewhere, and the military is seen as basically fair. There's also the fact that, in nations where women are traditionally repressed, so called 'feminist professions' are held in much higher regard than in the west, where women's freedoms are taken so much more for granted. Certainly the pilots interviewed in another article all made the point of 'proving that women can do it' as a major motivator.

Imagine if someone challenged the air force's quota system in either India or Pakistan, and it were found illegal in the High Court. Imagine either nation suddenly finding that more than half of their new fighter pilots were female, and facing the prospect of a majority-female airforce in ten or fifteen years. Anyone know a good Pakistani lawyer?

I've long thought that if America wanted to do something to boost recruitment in the military, it should concentrate on getting more female pilots -- at present the numbers are miniscule, maybe %2 for the airforce and %5 for the navy. If intakes went to fifty percent, you'd nearly double the talent pool, thus increasing the final average talent level... that's basic mathematics. Which would in turn act as a massive advertisement for more women to enter any branch of the military (because female pilots are so high profile and easily advertisable -- especially if there were suddenly a lot of them, which would be a news story in itself) which would similarly boost talent pools in many areas. And even if combat-restrictions aren't lifted in other areas (a whole separate post) would certainly free up plenty of men from non-combat positions to move forward to the sharp end. It would be a cascade effect that would benefit all branches.

But then, maybe this did occur to someone recently...