David J. Williams

(A friend/fellow scribe wrote me yesterday asking about my rationale for using present tense in MIRRORED HEAVENS, as well as whether I had any advice on problems one might encounter in so doing. Some may be interested in my reply.)

hiya—To be honest, I was so green when I started out that I didn’t realize present tense was an unorthodox choice (I’m sure if I’d ever been part of a critique group they would have beaten it out of me, which is one more reason I’m glad I never was)….but I liked it because it was a tone that was at once both urgent and dream-like.  You might check out Peter Watts’ STARFISH, which I was pretty heavily influenced by; his underwater scenes (which constitute most of the novel) are all present tense.  That said, it took me several years to really get my style to work the way I want it (I started writing in fall of 2000, and didn’t really find the “voice” until more than four years later).

As to problems, hmm.  Coming off as pretentious/ponderous is definitely one (though maybe I have that one naturally : ).  Another is the tendency to use the word “now” all the fricking time; as you can see by looking at the first book, this is not a problem I’ve necessarily shaken.  (I often use the phrase “and now” almost as a ritual phrase, which my editor keeps trying to rein me back on—but I was deliberately trying to get the style to be more arresting/bracing than your average book). Choppy sentence structure is also something to watch out for. I certainly would disagree with [SuperFamousAuthor] that present tense is by definition problematic/flawed (it’s funny how some senior/veteran writers seem to be given to ex cathedra statements about what constitutes good/bad writing—I take this to mean that they’ve finally lost the battle with their ego, which I suppose is THE occupational hazard of writing).

There’s also the philosophical aspect of all this, which given my interest in history I found compelling.  Writing in present tense felt to me somehow fairer to both the reader and the characters; I suspect this is why:

Try writing what you have written in the past tense in the present tense and you will see what I mean….What we have to do is to give back to the past we are writing about its own present tense. We give back to the past its own possibilities, its own ambiguities, its own incapacity to see the consequences of its action. It is only then that we represent what actually happened.

http://www.nla.gov.au/events/history/papers/Greg_Dening.html

hope that helps . . .

djw

If you think it’s been a vicious campaign so far, you ain’t seen nothing yet. As Al Giordano points out, the McCain campaign’s decision to go all-out to win Pennsylvania (where they’re now facing a double-digit deficit) only makes sense if they’re going to play the race card like it’s never been played before, bombarding western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and the “non-communist” portions of Virginia with the only message that seems to have worked so far: fear of Obama as as a socialist n—– amidst an appeal to “real Americans.” And the Reverend Wright will almost certainly be front and center in this effort, damning the United States on every TV across the Appalachians.

Desperate?  Of course.  If it works, it would be as epic a comeback as it is ugly.  But there’s a disquieting logic to the electoral math, because most of the scenarios in which McCain wins Pennsylvania also involve McCain winning the election.  (Keep in mind that Obama’s leads in Ohio and Florida are precarious at best.)  Besides, a disputed election (or one contaminated by vote fraud) will draw a lot of angry people to the street; take a look at this video of McCain-Palin acolytes screaming and jeering at early (mostly Democratic) voters in North Carolina, and tell me they’re not willing to do whatever it takes to keep their country safe from those who would take it from them.  Anyone who thinks the right is whipping its supporters into a hate-frenzy just to get their votes is missing something pretty fundamental.

Obama-as-monkey; Powell as racist because he’s endorsed a fellow black man; (white) small towns as the only “real” America; the economy collapsing because Fannie Mae lent too much money to minority householders; Obama dolls found hanging in effigy; and all the while all too many McCain supporters keep on denying that their campaign’s feeding on racism (while some, to their credit, speak out against it).

But you have to turn the clock back a long way to put it all in perspective.  People say the Civil War was a tragedy, but the real tragedy was the failure of Reconstruction.  The Union should have kept its boot on the South until it cracked, and the KKK should have been throttled with its own umbilical cord.  Consider:  in the early 1870s, a majority of the Mississippi and South Carolina state legislatures were black, and the former state was sending black Senators to Congress.  For a tantalizing moment, a new political/social order seemed to be in reach.  A hundred and thirty years later, we’re still living with the consequences of our failure to attain it.

As anticipated, the presidential race has clearly tightened across the last few days, though Obama still enjoys a marked advantage of about seven points or so in national polling averages. But the constant GOP attacks of socialist/terrorist are clearly taking their toll (I hear Obama might even be black, but keep that one to yourself), and the Senator from Illinois is undoubtedly wishing the election were five rather than fifteen days away.

Still, seven points is a lot, and the electoral math would make it extremely difficult for Obama to lose, were this a normal election.  But of course, it isn’t.  Vote fraud and vote suppression will knock X% points off Obama’s lead on Election Day, and the damage is likely to be concentrated in key battleground states. Rolling Stone just published a great article about the ongoing GOP campaign to suppress the vote through (among other tactics) obstructing voter registration drives, “computer errors” and requiring ID in as many states as possible.  As I’ve written previously, it’s inevitable at this point that a lot of folks are going to be turned away from the polls on Election Day, thanks to their having being struck from their states’ rosters.

And anyone who manages to make it inside the voting booth may find themselves screwed anyway. Early voters in West Virginia have already encountered voting machines that refused to let them vote for the Democratic candidate—but the real issue is what happens behind the scenes to a vote once it’s already “cast.”  Electronic voting machines are now in their sixth year of stealing our democracy out from under us (it began with the “upset” defeat of Georgia Senator Max Cleland in 2002), and the Democrats so far have done little but politely acquiese in their own demise.  November 4th might be the day that turns the tide—but if it doesn’t, there’s more than a passing chance that future historians will record 1996 as the last presidential election the Democratic Party ever won.

Two announcements in the wake of Capclave…first, huge congrats to Tom Doyle, whose short story “Wizard of Macatawa” won the Washington Science Fiction Association’s Small Press Award last night, beating out heavyweights such as Elizabeth Bear, among others. “Wizard” appeared last year in Paradox; Tom’s website has an audio of the story as well.

Second, Craig Gidney’s short story collection, Sea, Swallow Me, has been (very favorably) reviewed by Electric Velocipede’s John Klima on Tor.com’s sparkling new website; Klima writes of the stories’ “lyrical mysticism” and provides some links to some of the tales as well.  He’s right:  they’re well worth checking out.

I’ll be in Rockville this weekend at Capclave 2008; my schedule’s as follows:

Saturday, October 18th: Space Warfare (panel), 10 a.m.

Sunday, October 19th: Why Did We Give Up On Space? (panel), 10 a.m.; reading from THE MIRRORED HEAVENS at 11:30 a.m.

I’m not exactly a morning person, so expect to see me no further than a foot from a cup of coffee during all of this.  At any rate, it should be a nice break from revising the second novel while I obsessively check my election RSS feeds. : )

In the end, the debate wasn’t even close. David Gergen said on CNN that McCain looked like he “had an anger management problem”; that was part of a broader policing-the-emotions issue. Hours of world-class debate prep failed to make inroads on McCain’s fundamental body language issue, nor was it able to wipe the frustration from his voice. And meanwhile Obama remained almost preternaturally calm: in its desperation, the right is now starting to use that as a weapon as well, the same way it tried to turn the “celebrity” issue on its head. Isn’t this guy human? Does he ever break a sweat?

Not in debates, apparently. Nor if there’s a camera within line-of-sight. But this race isn’t over yet.  Yesterday’s polls showed that McCain seemed to have arrested the slide in his numbers, if only temporarily; this debate may send them to new lows, but I suspect that what the next few days will actually show is that Obama has peaked too early—and his supporters may have peaked psychologically as well, given the overconfidence that their candidate is now chastening them on.  They would be advised to listen to him, as this race could easily tighten across the last two and a half weeks; keep in mind that the media wants a horserace, and would vastly prefer a “McCain as comeback kid who’s clawing his way back” narrative to one of Obama cruising to a massive, easy victory.

It’s also worth noting that there’s still a lot of time on the clock for an October Surprise, especially one that involves foreign policy. Bin Laden may yet make an appearance, if only on video.  But also, Bush/Cheney have more than a few cards to play as well, and both men are acutely conscious that their unprecedented attempt to expand presidential power beyond the limits of the Constitution will come under intense (and possible legal) scrutiny should Obama win. (I doubt that Obama himself wants to take this step, but an awful lot of shit is going to come out even if the top players burn/destroy all their files.)  So it’s no surprise that the administration has been anxious to catch Bin Laden in the waning days of the election.  And anyone who thinks this is just a matter of Bush’s legacy is #$# kidding themselves.

Viewed as an exercise in game theory, John McCain’s situation going into tonight’s debate is a fascinating one. He’s trailing badly in the polls, and it looks like his deficit is growing. Even North Dakota looks ready to abandon him (and if THAT’S not interpreted by Jesusland’s fanatics as a sure sign of the end-times, I don’t know what would be). And the economy aka “the issues” have apparently totally stacked the deck against negative attacks, as all of McCain’s have fallen short, both in and out of the debates.

Nonetheless, McCain is almost certain to attack:  he’s said as much, promising to “kick [Obama’s] you know what” and assuring his supporters he’ll raise the Ayers issue.  Obama has been egging him on, of course, giving an interview earlier in the week where he essentially dared McCain to confront him with Ayers face-to-face.  And we all know that McCain is helpless to resist any mano-a-mano challenge (something that I’m sure many foreign leaders will use to play him like a fiddle should he actually become president).

So Obama will get what he wants:  McCain will come out swinging tonight, and Obama will be ready for him.  Or will he?  In truth McCain has no choice but to gamble:  he’s like a boxer that has to have a knockout.  Winning on points isn’t enough, and he has to hope that either Obama will stumble in defense or prove too emotive in a counterattack. He faces heavy odds; his only chance, really, is some kind of surprise.  We’ll find out what that is soon enough.

We sure are headed for some shit on Election Day. “Chaos at the polls” is how CNN puts it after studying the latest reports on insufficient poll workers, malfunctioning electronic machines, lack of enough paper ballots, etc. And it doesn’t look like we’re going to do anything about it either: we could airlift whole teams of monitors and logistics assistance into a third world election next weekend if we wanted, but closer at home a strange paralysis seems to grip us.

All the stranger since an awful lot of battleground state voters are going to be showing up to the polls only to find that they’ve been stricken from the rosters.  It’s within this context that we need to examine the ACORN controversy, in which thousands of false voter registrations have been submitted to local election boards (many with names like “Bugs Bunny” or “Mickey Mouse”).  Fox News et. al. are working 24.7 to convince their viewers that this is all part of the Democrats’ plan to steal the election:  “is it a coincidence that Obama is ahead in the same battleground states rife with voter fraud allegations?”  This is one of the big GOP talking points right now; keep in mind that the same fuckwits whom you see on TV at Palin’s rallies frothing at the mouth about traitors and death are also being assured that Osama, sorry I meant Obama is hell bent on stealing what isn’t his (not that there’s a racial subtext here or anything).

But when you compare it to an issue like the basic integrity of a Diebold machine, ACORN is actually a pretty minor matter in the scheme of things.  The media said that what they were doing could have been the “first step” toward voter fraud.  So what the hell was the next one?  Bugs fucking Bunny shows up and tries to vote? I’d pay to see that one. No, ACORN’s missteps are either the result of lots of local stoners/slackers trying to make a couple bucks, or they involved at least some GOP sabotage—I can’t rule out the latter, given how quickly/deftly the right-wing media has exploited the issue and constructed a false narrative of evil Democratic voter fraud.

And that brings us to the major issue here.  Because the overall pattern is unmistakable.  A key technique used by Karl Rove and his acolytes is to do something, and then—when the opposition calls you on it—accuse the opposition of doing the same damn thing (look how this has worked across the last few days with the crossing-the-line-rhetoric issue).  And it’s impossible to study the evidence of the last two elections with an open mind (particularly the 2004 one) and not conclude that the inner core of the Rovian strategy centered on contaminating the voting process.  This was, I suspect, the secret heart of the attempt to create a permanent Republican majority (an attempt that may yet succeed), and it’s almost certainly the reason why Bush rather than Kerry is president right now (personally, I think Kerry would have made a crap prez, but that’s not the point—and the fact that I have to even point that out is a problem).

Yet now we’re headed for a real train-wreck, because election-rigging is something that only works when the vote is close, and right now it’s anything but.  Even the most supine of medias would wake up if it were confronted with a double-digit discrepancy between polls and votes.  But fucking with the vote is like campaigning:  once you start it, you can’t turn it off. An Obama landslide may yet overwhelm all the schemes.  But on November 4th, we’ll have a chance to see how deep the rot goes.

John McCain turned on his most vitriolic supporters yesterday, correcting a woman who thought Obama was an Arab terrorist, and telling the crowds they don’t have to be scared in the event of a Democratic victory. He deserves full credit for this, though of course it was his campaign who gave these ignorant fuckwits the idea in the first place, and they’re going to keep giving those ignorant fuckwits the same ideas for the next three weeks (and the four years beyond that too).

Still, one can’t help but wonder how McCain would be doing in the polls if he had never called up the forces of darkness to begin with.  Probably even worse than he is now, but still it’s fun to think about:  what if McCain had run the kind of campaign I suspect he wanted to run?  You think he likes any of this shit?  You think he enjoys pandering to the racist morons who were totally convinced eight years ago that he’d fathered a black child?   You think he relishes saying that Joel Osteen’s book is the best thing he’s ever read?  McCain’s essential tragedy is that the math of the Republican Party as it’s now configured forces its candidates to pander to a voter base that (let’s face it) probably would be a lot happier in a theocracy than a republic.

And that’s why his “stand of honor” yesterday ultimately means little.  Even as the Senator cringes in the face of the venom he’s presiding over, his paid operatives keep on pumping out the Jesusland bullshit, portraying Obama as a man whose first move as president will either be to blow up the White House or paint the whole thing black.  These are the same people who McCain once promised would burn in a “special place in hell” for smearing him so badly back in 2000.  He may end up in one of his own for joining forces with them.  Looking at his anguished face in yesterday’s rally, he may be there already.