| Saturday, October
13, 2007 We're sort of under the weather at Chaos
Manor. All minor stuff. I'm reading about Renaissance naval warfare, and
also reading some space operas. Space opera is a reliable way to make money
without too much work, and done well can be good escapist literature. C. S.
Forrester, AKA Cecil Lewis Troughton Smith
did rather well with sea opera, and Hornblower stories are read to this
day...
I have several decisions to make. First, do I want to do
space opera on the grand scale, with Interstellar empires and faster than
light travel? If so, what model? I have two such universes, the world of the
First Empire following the CoDominium, and the corporate-dominated world of
Starswarm. Of course I could just create a new one; the Empire was put
together from the Langston Field and the Alderson Drive, and any
interstellar world view I do will probably use those devices (although
possibly not under those names); given those, it's possible to create an
interstellar civilization. Like most I'd draw on history, probably the days
leading to the Thirty Years War.
Another alternative is a solar system based space opera
system, in which there is no faster than light drive. I have two such story
series, the High Justice/Exiles to Glory series (those books will be bound
together into a single volume available next spring from Baen); and the
universe of Higher Education. Charlie Sheffield and I were contemplating a
new book in that series, and it's all my fault that it never got done before
he died. It's a pretty rich background for stories. Or, again, I could just
do a new one, although it would look a lot like the High Justice worlds if I
did; that grew out of an end to the Cold War without a hot war, and total
disillusionment with the US government as it edged toward a corrupt kleptocracy grasping power and expanding its bureaucracies including the
security bureaucracy.
So that's what I have been doing lately.
============
The electronic piracy discussion continues.
See Mail.
=============
"I put in a put play and made a quick $1700!" Ross
Jardine has taught thousands to make money in the stock market. It's a
beautiful thing, and this grocery clerk is now able to quit his day job,
support himself, and own two houses by using this stock trading program.
I hear this radio advertisement and I think, where have I
been all my life, working, pounding out words, when I could be putting in a
put play and making a quick $1700 any time. I mean, I could live pretty well
on $1700 an hour. Just sitting back and letting a computer program do all
the work! Sounds wonderful.
Now I do have this question: if you are not allowed to
sell snake oil as a cure for cancer -- even if what you sell actually
contains oil from snakes -- what is the status of these radio advertisements
for stock market software? "I can make money even in a down market. It's a
beautiful thing!"
Of course there are questions of freedom here. If people
are free to sell the software, and those who buy it and lose their money are
then free to go to the emergency room of the local hospital, thus raising my
taxes to keep the hospital open -- is there something to discuss here?
I am all for freedom, but with freedom comes consequences.
The freedom to spend all your money on lottery tickets is, apparently, not
the freedom to lose your house as a result: foreclosures are bad, and the
government should step in. Freedom to buy a $600,000 house with a
total income of $30,000 a year is apparently not the freedom to lose that
house when you can't make the payments.
And so forth.
But it hardly matters. We are headed down a path of no
return, to a Nanny State that leads to a world dominated by bureaucracy.
I have in mind a novel, set in such a future. So perhaps
that does answer my question of what to do next, because I can see a world
fifty years from now in which the only freedom is out in the Asteroid Belt.
Space opera.
============
.
Saturday TOP
Current Mail
|
