We’re headed for Florida tomorrow with internet access unknown, so Happy New Year too in case I don’t make it back before then. Just when I thought it was safe to be a Virginian, Virgil Goode has to open his mouth. I love the name though, wish I could use it in a story. He has raised the all-important issue of what object one swears on. I mean, if he had to swear in, and he was locked in the one motel room the Gideons had missed, and there was no Bible, would a VHS of The Ten Commandments trump a copy of Paradise Lost? It’s a tough call, but I’m sure Virgil will give it some thought. Peace on Earth, good will toward all living creatures, even Virge. (Love that name!)

While listening to a frothy NPR interview this weekend, I heard the interviewer bubble: “Well, you know what they say, 40 is the new 30!” Well, I didn‘t know they said that, but that’s probably because both 30 and 40 are well back in my rear-view mirror. I’m not sure what it means. Does this mean you can now trust people who are 39? Does it mean you can now live at home sponging off Mom and Dad for an additional decade? I suppose I noticed because I’m at one of those dramatic highly significant crossroads in life that impending decades represent: I’m 59, and you know what comes next. Every cell in my body and brain will change, I’m sure, and I will be OLD. These transitions are all in the anticipation, the stress of their inevitable approach. I’ve probably never been older than when I was 29 for one endless year, my trustworthiness oozing out of me like sap. Decades are a big stressful deal, so I have a modest proposal. It’s all because we have a 10-based number system, which I dare to assert is because we have ten digits on our hands. What if we were to initiate a widespread genetic engineering program whereby future generation would be born with 12 or 14 digits? Hell, let’s make it 20. There would be a transistion period, of course. It would be a rough time to be a math teacher, but the results would be worth it. 40 could be the new 20. And most important, we wouldn’t have to go through these life changing transitions so often. We’d have twice as long to rest up between crises. The secondary benefits would be immense. Jazz piano, for example, would be utterly transformed. It would bring on a new digital age. It’s too late for me—I’m already OLD—but it could offer hope to future aging generations.

This morning I read something for Christmas at my neighborhood association as I have been for several years now. This excerpt from The Fourth World I read a couple of years ago. In the novel it is a story narrated by a virtual Zapata. Feliz Navidad.

“It is a parable I call Los Gamelos, The Twins:

“There were twin brothers long, long ago who were left a magnificent castle by their mother and father. The parents were old and sick and wanted to provide for their sons when they were gone, for they had always done everything for their children as loving parents will do. But when they died, the funeral had no sooner concluded and the brothers were alone, than the first brother seized the castle for himself and shut the second brother out into the wilderness that surrounded the castle walls. And in that moment, as if the gods blessed his iniquity, the first brother began to grow larger and larger, while his unfortunate brother grew smaller and smaller. Continue reading →

I’ve been busy lately, short stories mostly, but I’m also at work on the ending of a novel in progress set in the very near future. Like most such sf novels, it constantly flirts with being a thriller. But every good thriller’s got to end with the status quo. Nothing ever changes except the girl James Bond screws during the closing credits. Order is restored; the genie is back in the bottle. In science fiction, it seems to me, the resolution isn’t to put the plot genie back in the bottle, but to end in a changed world. That’s why I’m always drawn to sf tropes, which are all about change, though endings are trickier. The near future thriller is tempted to comfort, to rein in the future. The sf story has to end with greater uncertainty. Most annoying, I imagine, to the devoted thriller reader.

I just learned of another sort of ending, that my novel The Watch will be remaindered in June. It’s had a good run, coming out shortly after 9/11. Peter Kropotkin has been very, very good to me. Of the four novels Jen Brehl and I did together, this is probably our best, controversial ending and all.  The highest honor the book received in my mind was being chosen by Greenhill School to be read by their upper school.  My visit to the campus was one of the best times I’ve ever had as teacher and writer both.