Hitchhikers Guide to Retirement

I retired from NASA (as Deputy Chief, KSC Education Office) at the end of 1996. I've now been retired more years than I worked for any one employer (the longest two, NASA 13, Boeing 11). And in some ways these so-called 'Golden Years' are indeed the best of my life. But there are also drawbacks and disappointments aplenty.

A few of the drawbacks can be attributed to the rapid pace of change in today's world. (Ray Kurzweil, now chief developer of future programs at Google, is fond of pointing out that that not only is the world rapidly changing, the pace of change itself  has gotten faster.) Some of the disappointments, I like to think, derive from internal change, my personal maturation and growth. Books are a good example. 

During my last twenty-five or so working years I accumulated a lot of books. Most went on the shelves with the expectation of reading after retirement, when I would have more time. My demanding job, a second family with two young daughters, and a driving need to devote all the spare hours I could find to free-lance writing limited my reading.

After retirement, as planned, I started pulling some of those waiting books off the shelves. And, time after time, discovered I couldn't finish one. (I've become willing to abandon a book fairly quickly if it doesn't grab me early and hold my interest.) Far too often, a novel that had looked interesting twenty years ago no longer held any appeal. This was particularly true in science fiction. I'm not going to mention names, but book after book I had anticipated enjoying, I no longer wanted to read. These varied from big names in the field to bright-future newcomers, but they shared one common characteristic. I found them boring.

The world of audio visual (AV) entertainment and information has been among the fastest changing industries in a fast-changing world. We went from LP vinyl to tape to CD to DVD to streaming AV (with of course a lot of overlaps) in just a few decades. And, as you might expect from Kurzweil's observation, each major change happened with less time between than the one before. The amount of music, entertainment and education/information increased greatly along the way, with access to same gaining almost exponentially in so-called developing or undeveloped countries.

Today I have millions of songs instantly available from several streaming sources, a hundred-thousand movies offered by some of the same companies, and a million amateur but often quite good AV productions on YouTube and others; some free, others for relatively small monthly fees. I've pretty much stopped buying CDs and DVDs. Why should I, when I can reach any one I want from the streaming services to which I subscribe. The 'Cloud' is the new home entertainment center. And it's cheaper by far than buying and building your own library.

From the time my father gave me my quarter allowance on Saturday, and I hitch-hiked to the only movie theater in the county, nine miles away on U.S. 90, I've loved movies. I paid a dime to get in, which bought me a western, a cartoon short, and usually a newsreel. The fifteen remaining cents (coke or popcorn was never even under consideration) left me with a choice. Buy a science fiction magazine from one of the stands at the two drugstores and depend on hitching a ride to get home, or ride the Greyhound bus for fifteen cents. The magazine always won, if a new one was available. And I never once walked the nine miles home. Someone always stopped for a preteen boy with his thumb out.

I wrote in an earlier blog post that most of us don't appreciate how much our lives have improved, despite the fact the 'middle-class' hasn't gotten a raise in thirty years. Today I can buy more good books than I have time to read, watch more movies (on a 60-in HD screen) than my eyes and butt can last through, and enjoy TV series where each episode is better than the movies I saw as a kid. (Not to mention a plethora of often fascinating popular science and informative documentary programs.) This richness of second-hand experience is part of makes these 'golden years' highly worthwhile -- but also cuts into my reading time.

I don't know how it goes with you, but I can truthfully say that preteen boy with his thumb out never dreamed that one day he would live such a rich and rewarding life. Perspective is all.

Photo credit: PMGreen

Inside Blockhouse 26

Stephen Pinker, a Harvard professor and author of several popular science books (The Blank Slate being perhaps the best known) last year wrote a short but potent article discussing the ongoing clashes between science and popular culture, religion, and the humanities. Pinker offers a coherent, insightful and penetrating look at these conflicts. For those of you interested in the real sciences, this is well worth five minutes of your day.

Sad to say, the conflicts haven't diminished much since the article appeared. If anything, the anti-science movement in the USA has grown stronger. Far too many people seem to vote based on what they feel in their gut (a nasty place, full of bile, partially digested food, and waste products), rather than reasoned decisions, reached after careful deliberation in the organ where decisions should be made, the brain.

But speaking of real science, I've always believed that one of the more important functions of science fiction is to serve as an inspiration to actual working scientists; science fiction can look ahead, provide glimpses of what could be, not just what is. One of the better examples of this can be seen by anyone who tours the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. On the walls inside Blockhouse 26, which controlled the launch of the first successful American satellite, Explorer 1, you will see several plaques with quotes from famous science fiction writers. One, I recall, was from the works of Jules Verne; the others fade from memory.

If you're able to arrange such a tour (and the Air Force used to do them every weekend; best check now to see if they're still available), let me inform you that the pretty blinking status lights on the consoles have been restored for your viewing pleasure; we escorts turned them on and off as we entered and left the control room. If you can't make it, there's a quite decent YouTube video immediately available, though it shows only the control center, and not the exterior rooms in the blockhouse where the plaques hang.

Photo credit: LC-26_equipment by Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), (Jud McCranie) is licensed under CC 3.0 / Resized from original

Roger Elwood And Me (Part 2)

(...continued from Part 1)

I met Elwood a couple of times at Cons, and in person he was a perfectly congenial chap. Other writers have spoken of difficulties with Elwood, some regarding story content and a few of payment problems.  I encountered neither, though of course, as with all publishers, I had to accept on faith that the account statements were accurate.

When Harlequin authorized the new SF line I received a call from Elwood wanting a novel, and soon. I had one in work and agreed to send it to him, via my agent, when finished. I had started this, my fifth SF novel, as a work of some ambition. I wanted to explore, in fictional form, the consequences of having a very strong sex drive, one built into each individual and an important factor in any species chances of long-term survival. My approach was to contrast homo sapiens with an equally intelligent species that reproduced without sex, hence had no such drives or resultant passions (and/or pathologies and psychological problems traceable to the sex drive). Such a species obviously must have drives that provide reproduction and a desire for individual survival, or they wouldn't' have lasted long enough to become intelligent.

Of course the novel had to be structured as an adventure story, to keep readers interested enough to turn pages. But as a part-time free-lancer, writing at night and on weekends, it took me a long time to produce a novel. This one, as planned, would take at least a year. And Elwood wanted it like now. So I changed my approach, and wrote the novel as a straight adventure story. I preserved the sexless intelligent aliens, but did not explore any of the ancillary deeper questions.

The resultant novel was a perfectly decent SF adventure story. The one I had planned could, I believe, have been an outstanding SF novel. Hopefully, a work at least somewhat comparable as a trailblazer to Le Guins' The Left Hand Of Darkness, or Phil Farmer's The Lovers and Night Of Light. Now that novel will never be written, at least not by me. (And it makes me wonder how many other novels got 'dumbed down' to fulfill Elwood's needs. He wanted 60,000 words maximum; not that much room to explore complex themes without becoming didactic.)

Roger Elwood served only as acquisitions editor for the new line; Harlequin staffers did the actual editing. The Laser Books were designed to look alike, with great covers by Kelly Freas usually featuring an inset profile of a major character. (My novel The Horde, Laser Book 27, has a head view of me, somewhat glorified [Kelly was painting from memory], as the major human character.)

I ran into Ray Nelson, author of Laser Book 13, Blake's Progress, at a Con a few months after my novel appeared. Ray mentioned that his book, mine, and one other had earned good reviews. But I never saw these.

By the time the series ended (57 published, at a rate of three a month) the overall line had not fared well with the critics. Despite this, I was told later that Harlequin made a profit, but a much lower one than from their romances. So they killed Laser Books.

Several authors did more than one Laser novel, but I didn't. I had been too traumatized, by the worst experience in my life as a writer, to even consider it. When the editor in charge of the Laser line at Harlequin received my mss., he turned it over to his assistant to copy-edit. She started rewriting instead; and let's just say she knew nothing of science and little of fiction writing. Never before or since have I seen such butchery. About three-quarters through she realized she had gotten completely lost; starting new plotlines and then dropping them, cutting sections vitally needed for the main story, etc. So she stopped copy-editing at that point and just sent me the marked- up mss.

To say that I blew my top would be to understate my rage. I wrote a letter to the head editor at Harlequin that really should have been printed on asbestos. I demanded that my novel be restored to its original version, that the editors be reprimanded, etc. And it was! All her copy-edits were removed, and the novel printed just as I had written it.

Not long after this contretemps, I met the Laser editor and his assistant (a young woman so lovely it took will power not to drop chin and just gape) when they attended a writers' workshop in Tampa, where I was a guest lecturer. Despite my letter (or perhaps because of it), when meeting me in person she was very nice, as was the male editor. (Apologies, hope feelings not hurt, etc.) But next year at that same workshop they were missing, and their boss to whom I had complained came instead. He told me Harlequin had fired both. (I doubt the young lovely chose me alone for slaughter; other writers must have complained as well. But the boss editor said my letter had been the tipping point.) So I was instrumental, for the first and only time in my life, in getting an editor (plus lovely assistant) fired. She, I am sure, had no trouble finding another job.

I note that Harlequin is trying again, with their Carina Press imprint publishing both science fiction and fantasy as e-books. I wish them luck. Harlequin/Laser had at least one virtue, in addition to the great Kelly Freas covers. They paid promptly, and well.

Roger Elwood and Me (Part 1)

Phoenix rooster and hen by Anjwalker is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 / Resized from original

In the 1960s a character named Roger Elwood appeared on the SF scene. He had an uncanny ability to convince publishers, including several that until then had shown little interest in the genre, that they could make money publishing original anthologies. And during the next 20 years, Elwood became the dominant anthologist of his time. Then he moved into novels, persuading romance publisher Harlequin to publish a series of original paperback SF novels, all in the same basic format and with usually excellent covers by the late great Kelly Freas.

I don't remember how I first came to submit a story to Elwood; probably he called and asked me to contribute to some pre-sold anthology. But he liked my work, and during the seventies I sold him half-a-dozen stories, each time on request for an original, usually themed, anthology. Elwood paid advances at about the same rate as the better SF magazines, with the possibility of royalty payments if the books sold well (and I did get a few small royalty checks).

According to the reviews and fan critiques of the time, these anthologies varied greatly in quality. I always read all the stories in the ones in which I appeared, but no others; just didn't have the free time. I'm happy to say I thought all those I read were at least good, with some bordering on excellent.  For example:

My story "The Birdlover" appeared in SHOWCASE in 1973. The collection also featured stories by Robert Silverberg, Barry Malzberg, Joe Haldeman, Carol Emshwiller, Gene Wolfe, Joanna Russ, Ray Lafferty and Ben Bova, among others. Elwood had accepted "The Birdlover" with considerable trepidation. But he had asked for it, and so published it without attempting any sort of censorship.  (The story contains no strong language or explicit sex; the controversy stemmed from the basic theme, dominance of a hapless human by an intelligent avian species using sex as a control mechanism.) "The Birdlover" became my most noticed, talked-about (perhaps 'notorious' would serve here) story to that time.

Not that long after SHOWCASE saw print, I was a guest at a Con in Tennessee. At the first dinner Andy Offutt, serving as MC, introduced the 'notables' present. When he got to me Andy said, "And here's my . . . my friend from Florida, Joe Green!"  But I had noticed the hesitation, so as soon as I could I cornered Andy and asked him what he had omitted. Andy replied, "I was going to say, 'And here's my chicken-fuckin' friend from Florida!' But I lost my nerve at the last minute and couldn't say it."

Another of my stories featuring human/alien sex, "Encounter With A Carnivore", appeared in EPOCH in 1975, a massive anthology Elwood co-edited with Robert Silverberg.  I learned later in conversation with Bob Silverberg that he, not Elwood, had selected my story; had, in fact, chosen most if not all the contents. This one included stories by, among others, Lafferty, Malzberg, Wilhelm, R.R. Martin, LeGuin, Pohl, Niven, Aldiss, Simak, Benford and Russ, as well as a short novel by Vance. In my not too humble opinion, EPOCH remains one of the best original anthologies ever published.

The 'Elwood Period' also saw the demise of some fine original series, Silverberg's NEW DIMENSIONS and Damon Knight's ORBIT among them. Some fans and critics laid much of the blame on Elwood, for overselling the market and causing losses on his and other anthologies at many publishing houses.

Elwood also had some personality quirks and apparently sincere beliefs, including devout Christianity, that he let creep into his work. While I never had any problems with attempted censorship, other writers did, and reported same. When the serious attacks on Elwood began, accusing him of being a prude, a censor, a religious bigot, etc., he defended himself thusly: "Whaddaya mean I'm a prude and a bigot! I published Joe Green's 'The Birdlover!'"

(to be continued...)

Why It's Hard To Write SF Today

In late 2013 IBM published an article featuring some interesting forecasts on learning in the future, and other speculations.

If one or all of these come true, they will strongly affect each of us individually, and society as a whole. IBM also says the communications technology gap between developed and undeveloped countries will narrow, with many benefits and some drawbacks for western societies. The fact that cell phones and smart phones are becoming ubiquitous in countries normally thought of as still 'developing' serves as a prime example.

These highly likely upcoming changes make writing realistic and believable science fiction, particularly in the short forms, very difficult. If you ignore all these highly probable changes in stories set in the near future, you are being unfaithful to a basic premise of SF. If you pick winners and losers, and write your story incorporating the results of these choices, half your wordage will be needed to explain the changes and make them seem believable. The result may be good SF, but likely a dull story. And ten years later you'll learn you were wrong anyway.

Starting in the 1930's with Doc Smith, Robert Heinlein, Edmond Hamilton and others, far-future GIGANTIC! science fiction gained popularity. These writers, and those that followed them right up to the present, think nothing of expanding the Roman Empire to galactic dimensions, smashing stars if the local denizens irritate you, or traveling backward in time to see the "big bang" for yourself if your first-choice vacation plans for this year don't work out. These far-flung vistas captured and enthralled teen-age minds everywhere (including mine) for over half a century. And SF was the only place to find them.
Today I turn on my TV and go to the "Science Channel". It features several fine programs, but a favorite is "Through The Wormhole" with Morgan Freeman. In a resonant baritone this excellent speaker (and equally fine actor) conducts you through realms of speculation that would make John W. Campbell reach for the aspirin box, and A.E. van Vogt sit up and say "Why didn't I think of that!" With clear explanations and helpful graphics, this program unabashedly tackles such subjects as alternate dimensions, dark energy and dark matter, the birth and coming death of the whole damn universe, as well as more mundane and immediate subjects such the robots taking over tomorrow  (to discover as usual that they don't really need us any more), and the consequences of everyone living to a healthy 200 (I'm for that!).

I've been writing and selling SF for over half a century now (and am still writing and selling). I had already lost interest in writing the 'Big SF' story before weekly TV exceeded my most far-out speculations, while calling it 'science' and not fiction. And the future is rushing toward us so fast that speculation may become reality between acceptance and printing, and readers think the story shoulda' appeared in "Popular Mechanics" instead of "Analog" or "Asimov's".

Many former primarily SF writers have turned to writing fantasy. Think I'll go there myself (in fact, under one of my pseudonyms, I already have).

Science Fiction: Entering the Great Divide

Earth by NASA

As we plunge headlong into a new century, science fiction has entered a period of change so profound and extensive it seems fair to call it a paradigm shift – most writers taking a new approach to producing the literature, so long despised by the cultural elite, that has nevertheless grown into our largest entertainment genre. Today’s writers are leaving the spacelanes, the far voyages, the distant planets, to focus their jaundiced gaze and speculative minds on trends becoming apparent right here on Earth.

Modern science fiction (henceforth SF) got its start as adventure stories for boys, published in a half-dozen cheap magazines around the beginning of the 20th century. Before that came Wells, with serious and often profound novels; Verne, who tried to follow known scientific principles in his popular adventure stories; and earlier, Mary Shelley, with the novel many consider the first real SF, Frankenstein.

With a few exceptions, Verne’s novels were confined to the wonders of science on Earth. Wells also set most of his stories on the ground, though he did write the first important book featuring an alien invasion.

With the introduction of the first pure SF magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926, SF continued a steady expansion outward, to the moon, the planets, and finally, with Doc Smith’s “Lensmen” series and a few others, to the stars. When Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, van Vogt and many more introduced galactic civilizations in the 30’s and 40’s, the (fictional) pathway opened. By 1950 there were probably more stories set in space or on alien worlds than on Earth.

That no longer seems the case. But let me admit here that I didn’t take three months to do a careful statistical analysis of the current field to support this conclusion. Life is too short. My conviction springs from constant reading in the literature, plus checking out a lot of book reviews each month.

The real space exploration program, in which your humble correspondent spent 37 years (both military and civilian), has reached an interregnum, a long “quiet time.” The world finally has an International Space Station. With a little vision on the part of coming American administrations, new and perhaps highly beneficial discoveries await us. Communications satellites now blanket the inhabited globe, bringing to life one of SF's more accurate speculations, the Internet (and in the process creating a new global community, unplanned, unexpected, and certainly not prepared for). The Global Positioning System, designed and built to serve the American military, also provides the civilian population with the most powerful navigation system ever devised. Weather satellites have lifted forecasting to new levels of accuracy. Earth observers looking down from space greatly shorten the search for new natural resources.

And that’s where we’re going to be for a while. Barring some unexpected (and unlikely) breakthrough in propulsion technology, one that greatly reduces costs, the planned return to the Moon and on to Mars will be a slow and expensive slog. We're lucky that competition from Japan and China (replacing the U.S.S.R. as primary motivating forces) will probably keep the U.S. manned space flight program alive. But the current emphasis is on what space technology can do for the people, right here on Earth, who are paying for it. And that’s primarily unmanned spacecraft.

And SF, which some of us like to believe serves a second purpose as handmaiden to real science (the first purpose is entertainment, of course), is also coming back down to Earth.

The first novel (and we’re only going to cite novels here) to win a Nebula was Dune, by Frank Herbert, in 1965. Dune, plus the long series that followed, featured an imaginary planet with some very unEarth-like inhabitants. In 1966 Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes, returned briefly to Earth, but it was not a clear win; it tied with Samual R. Delany’s Babel 17. After that an occasional winner set the action on the home planet, but the large majority were outward bound -- other planets, other star systems, even other galaxies. But in 1984 William Gibson returned to Earth with Neuromancer, starting a trend toward looking ahead to a planet-bound future.

That trend became more positive in the last decade of the century. In 1991 Michael Swanwick’s Stations Of the Tide explored a distant watery world. But in 1992 Connie Willis went into Earth’s past and won for the time travel story Doomsday Book. In 1993 Kim Stanley Robinson transformed our most likely possibility and won for Red Mars. Greg Bear took on the big jobs by Moving Mars in 1994. Robert Sawyer ran his The Terminal Experiment, biological speculation, on Earth in 1995. In 1996 Nicola Griffith won with Slow River, a stream that flowed only on Earth. The Moon and the Sun, another time travel story (of sorts) also stayed on Earth, to win in 1997. Joe Haldeman roamed the solar system in 1998 with Forever Peace, but Octavia Butler returned to Earth (essentially) in the 1999 winner Parable of the Talents. Greg Bear ended the century in 2000 with Darwin’s Radio, biological SF that never leaves the home planet.

In the new century, the winner in 2001 was The Quantum Rose, by Catherine Asaro, set on a distant planet. But American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, came back to Earth with a winning fantasy (fantasy novels winning Nebulas and Hugos became another noticeable trend, and the large majority are Earth-bound); Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark won the prize on Earth in 2003; Bujold’s Paladin Of Souls searched for answers in a fantasy set on a far planet in 2004; Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman, stayed on Earth but featured some highly unearthly visitors to win in 2005; and Jack McDevitt’s Seeker, set a few thousand years ahead when space travel is common, won for 2006. Vernor Vinge remained on the home planet to win in 2007 with Rainbow’s End.

Nebula Awards are voted on only by active members of SFWA. But the more broad-based Hugo awards are following the same trend. Looking back only a decade in the last century, Lois McMaster Bujold won in 1991 for The Vor Game, in 1992 for Barrayar, and in 1995 for Mirror Dance (the only triple Hugo winners I can recall in a single series). All are interstellar adventures. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, won in a tie with Doomsday Book in 1993, and a follow-on in the same universe, A Deepness in the Sky, won in the year 2000. Kim Stanley Robinson took Hugos for Green Mars in 1994 and Blue Mars in 1997. Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace added the Hugo to his Nebula win in 1998. Out of the ten, only Doomsday Book, Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, 1996, and another Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog, 1999, place the action on Earth.

In 2001, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire continued the swing toward fantasy novels, with Neil Gaiman’s American Gods winning the Hugo, after already taking the Nebula, in 2002. Robert Sawyer’s Hominids kept us on Earth in 2003. Bujold’s fantasy Paladin Of Souls took the Hugo in 2004, as it had the Nebula. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a fantasy set on Earth by Susanna Clark, won in 2005. Robert Wilson’s Spin, which includes space travel, took the prize in 2006, and Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End stayed on Earth to win in 2007.

What I think this means is that SF writers are pulling back from the vastness and openness of interstellar space to return to Earth. The hot science for speculation and extrapolation is biology, not rocketry.

And that’s a paradigm shift.

This new emphasis is by no means a complete change, and probably never will be. You can still find lots of novels set in the starlanes, or on distant worlds. But it seems to me the trend is there, and it’s strong. Whether consciously or not, more and more serious writers are accepting the fact that, for now, we’re stuck in this solar system. They are turning their speculative attention to the effects of the accelerating pace of scientific discovery on our current lives and future prospects – where biology is key. They look ahead to what comes next on Earth, doing what SF does best: constructing scenarios that explore the social and political consequences of scientific breakthroughs, and how these will affect our world. And for some, worrying about a pace of discovery that seems to be spinning out of control (or at least out of their personal control).

The Audio/Visual media, as usual, are following the trail blazed by print. After Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey demonstrated that SF movies could in fact earn big bucks, the race was on. TV had always had its boys’ adventure SF series, but Star Trek in 1966 was aimed at adults. It only endured for three years, but paved the way for three more series that lasted about seven years each. A fifth show, Enterprise, became the first to fade after just a few seasons, indicating either the show was weak or its public had finally become surfeited. Star Trek became one of the most profitable franchises in TV history. The movies followed (though there was a long wait for the first one), and they too proved immensely popular. In both TV and movies, Earth was an important background element, but seldom a part of the main story.

The three original Star Wars movies carried this trend a step further, into interstellar empires and galaxies far, far way – losing any remaining distinction between SF and fantasy in the process. (The Star Wars movies, and a great deal of the Trek movies and TV series, can be called SF only by wrapping them in the famous Arthur C. Clarke saying (this is not an exact quote) that “Any technology sufficiently beyond the observer’s understanding will appear to be magic.”) * Earth was relegated to history, little more.

There have already been some good SF movies set right here on Earth (and not dealing with that counterpoint to human space travel, aliens coming to invade us). Charly, the movie version of Flowers for Algernon, comes immediately to mind, along with the several incarnations of Island of Dr. Moreau and the many unbelievable but great fun adventure movies made from Verne’s books. But with a new Star Trek movie now in the works (the eighth? ninth?) and the three Star Wars prequels finally out, it seems safe to say the emphasis has not yet strongly shifted back to Earth. Only the more nearly pure fantasies (the Harry Potter planned seven movies, The Lord of the Rings trilogy) are Earthbound.

(If this seems like selective choosing of titles to reinforce my thesis, I can only plead that there are so very many movies and TV shows, as there were books, that they can’t all be listed. Also, I’m saying we are now IN a paradigm shift – not yet out the other side.)

SF/Fantasy has become the dominant movie genre – something no SF writer predicted, of which I’m aware (just as no one predicted that a half-billion of us would watch that first step on the Moon’s surface “live” while sitting in our living rooms). Among the large number produced over the past two decades, quite a few set the action on Earth. Most dealt with future possibilities, as a good little SF movie should. Bladerunner and the Terminator series come to mind, though there are many more. But the big box office hits were, mostly, the ones set out yonder, among the stars.

All of this has to tie in with the noted general decline in reading for pleasure, throughout the print media; with the huge shift from books to A/V as the preferred at-home entertainment medium; and with the newest and fastest-growing demand on our scarce time, in all its seductive and widely pervasive glory, the Internet.

Put all these ingredients into a big pot and stir, and what emerges is a renewed interest in me me! ME! – what’s going to happen in my lifetime, on this world I live in, where my kids, if they’re lucky, will get to grow up.

And hey! if you disagree with this conclusion, there’s room enough on my planet -- where you will be for the foreseeable future – for both of us.