Asimov's SF, June 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  There are limits, after all, to what can be achieved by official decree, as the mayor of that little town in Florida might have begun to suspect when Lucifer's lieutenants made off with the posts containing her proclamation. I give you the example of King Canute of England (and Denmark), one of the most sensible rulers in history, whose best-known deed, as often is the case with the deeds of sensible rulers, has been so distorted and muddled in the retelling that he is made to seem like a silly old fool instead of the wise monarch he really was.

  Canute, who ruled over England from 1015 to 1035, was a fierce, rough Viking, but he was also a pious man who had turned away from the old religion of Odin and Thor to abide by the teachings of Jesus, and—so says the twelfth-century chronicler Henry of Huntingdon—he became peeved by courtiers who were flattering him by ascribing godlike powers to him. So, Henry says, Canute had his throne set up by the edge of the sea (either in West Sussex or Southampton, or perhaps it was not the sea but the Thames, right in the middle of London; accounts differ) and commanded the oncoming tide to halt.

  Of course the tide didn't halt, and the king was forced to jump back from the shore to keep his royal feet and robes from getting soaked. Modern tellers of the tale want us to believe that this shows that Canute was just an arrogant dope, his head swollen with monarchical pride. But in fact Canute was smarter than that, and what he was demonstrating was humility, not hubris. For as he leaped back from the unheeding waves he said, according to the chronicler, “Let all men know by this how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” Then he hung his golden crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again.

  Today's kings, queens, prime ministers, and presidents, by and large, are just as aware as King Canute was that they don't have the power to roll back the tides, and a good thing that is, too, for we can just imagine what malicious fun Queen Elizabeth II and President Sarkozy would have rolling the English Channel back and forth from shore to shore if only they could. (On the other hand, California's Arnold Schwarzenegger would, I like to think, be able to protect us here against a tsunami of the sort that hit Asian coasts a few years ago.) But indeed such wonders can't be achieved. And I suspect that even if the Florida experiment had been allowed to run a little longer, it would have turned out equally difficult to run Satan out of town by mayoral proclamation.

  Copyright © 2010 Robert Silverberg

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Department: ON THE NET: THE PRICE OF FREE (Part Two)

  by James Patrick Kelly

  deflation

  In part one of this two-part column, we looked at the controversial book Free: The Future of A Radical Price [amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson/dp/1401322905] by Chris Anderson [thelongtail.com]. Anderson's thesis is that as certain industries become digital and migrate to the net, some, if not all, of their products tend toward a price of zero. This is in part because the web is the world's largest and most sophisticated copy machine. Reproducing information like movies, songs, and columns about the internet is what it does superlatively well. Before the net, there were two costs to making money from such information: the cost of creating it and the cost of producing and disseminating it. Now, thanks to our shiny digital distribution network, the marginal costs of production and dissemination seem to have shrunk to practically nothing. Anderson argues that the downward pressure on price is unstoppable. “Free is just a matter of when, not if,” he writes. But he believes that it is still possible to make money from free products, by redefining the markets, and he offers an extensive list of ways it is being accomplished at this very moment. “When one product or service becomes free, value migrates to the next higher layer,” he claims. “Go there.”

  But it is not only the marginal costs that have undergone radical deflation. As we discussed last time, people are volunteering their labor to create information on the net as well. They do this for many reasons, but chief among them is, I think, the thrill of being creative and useful and of sharing their enthusiasms with the world. Much of the free content on the web has been created by amateurs. Understand that they are often as gifted and insightful as professionals. Nevertheless, in the sense that they are not paid, they are amateurs.

  * * * *

  reaction

  Critics, and there have been many, have chided Anderson for his sunny take on the disruption caused by the radical deflation served up by the net. “Free is a successful business speech between two covers, pleasant, upbeat and full of anecdotes and bullet points,” says the New York Times [nytimes.com/2009/07/12/books/review/Postrel-t.html?r=1&pagewanted=all]. But Anderson does not follow his ideas to their logical conclusion. “After all, the last thing a business author wants to suggest is that we're entering a new age of amateurism. But there are hints throughout the book that the future of this radical price is to be found in the past, when satisfying work was what one did on the income provided by less satisfying toil, or by investments, patronage, or marriage.”

  Malcolm Gladwell [gladwell.com],author ofThe Tipping Point and Outliers, rips into Anderson's premises in a review in TheNew Yorker [newyorker. com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbobooksgladwell]. Anderson points to YouTube [youtube.com] as an example of how giving content away can be successful. Gladwell calls him out on this claim: the stupendous popularity of YouTube has meant that its bandwidth costs are also, well, stupendous. According to one estimate, YouTube will lose half a billion dollars in 2009. In a memorable line, Gladwell derides YouTube's alleged success, “If it were a bank, it would be eligible for TARP funds.”

  Cory Doctorow [craphound.com] reviewing in The Guardian [guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/28/cory-doctorow-free-chris-anderson] is more sympathetic than some but argues that observing the rise of free culture through the lens of markets distorts Anderson's view. “There's a pretty strong case to be made that ‘free’ has some inherent antipathy to capitalism. That is, information that can be freely reproduced at no marginal cost may not want, need, or benefit from markets as a way of organizing them.” The content created by the legions of netizens who volunteer their labor is not free in the sense that Anderson intends. “The material,” Doctorow writes, “is, instead, literally priceless. It represents a large and increasing segment of our public life that is conducted entirely for reasons outside the marketplace.”

  While many of the critics of Anderson's theses are spot on, it would be foolish to ignore this book. When he asserts that free is here to stay, I believe him. Those who object to the deflation of prices for content on the web, those who hope we can hold onto fifteen-dollar CDs and thirty-dollar hardcover books and newspapers you can line birdcages with, just don't get it. The biggest problem with Free, it seems to me, is its subtitle: The Future of a Radical Price. The book is not the map to the future that we all covet. Rather, it is a blurry snapshot of the current digital landscape. Net culture and technology are demonetizing entire industries, that's clear. The question is, how will we re-monetize their successor industries? While he offers suggestions, Anderson doesn't really have the answers.

  Because nobody does.

  * * * *

  reputation

  What is it worth to pop to the top of a Google search? How about to appear on the first page? The first three pages? If you were to opine that page rank is worthless in real dollars, then how do you account for all the search engine optimization services out there that will charge you $50, $80, or even $120 a month to boost it? Why did creativity software giant Adobe Systems [adobe. com] buy the web analytics company Omniture [omniture.com] last September for $1.8 billion?

  An important tool in Anderson's strategy for surviving in the net's zero price economy is converting credit in the attention and reputation economies into dollars. While there is a heated debate about the nature of these economies, there are some rough tools for assessing a website's status in them. Alas, the art of
web analytics [en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Webanalytics] is largely beyond me. It is no doubt too simple to say that the attention a site receives can be measured by how many people visit it and how long they stay, while the reputation of a site can be measured by how many other sites link to it. But these definitions are tempting, since they're easy to quantify. Those who track markets love numbers, even if they are misleading. And if you can convince an advertiser that your numbers mean that enough of her customers will read her message on your site, then you may be able to charge her for an ad.

  But the reputation economy can also pay off indirectly. Give away an abundance of content, attract an audience and build your “brand.” (My inner English major shudders whenever I use this word. Did FranzKafka [kafka.org] build his brand? Does Thomas Pynchon [thomaspynchon.com] ego surf [addictomatic.com] ?) Once you have established your rep, you can storm out into the world and sell yourself as an added value. We've all heard Stewart Brand's [web.me.com/stewartbrand] famous saying “Information wants to be free.” But did you know that it was part of a longer quote [web.me.com/stewartbrand/ SBhomepage/Infofreestory. html]?

  “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”

  The ninth of Anderson's Ten Rules of Free is “Free Makes Other Things More Valuable.” If you have given away an abundance of content and through that exposure have established a reputation, one kind of expensive information you have to offer is that which you can only impart in person. Thus the apostles of Free preach that rock bands can give their music away on the net and earn their livings at concerts.

  Well, maybe. But exactly how is this supposed to work for symphony orchestras? And how many midlist SF writers are besieged by lucrative offers to read their work in football stadiums or to give lecture series on the speculative short story at Harvard? We freelancers have a saying that goes to this point: “You can die of exposure.”

  By the way, if you'd like to invite a science fiction writer to stop by your neighborhood and say interesting stuff, check out SFWA's Speakers Bureau [sfwa. org/for-educators/speakers-bureau].

  * * * *

  exit

  Warning! I'm going to finish by talking about myself, as I do all too often, so feel free to skip ahead now to all the great stories in this issue.

  I have to admit that I have benefited from the reputation economy. Although I do not myself have a Master of Fine Arts, I earn a paycheck teaching at the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program [usm.maine.edu/stonecoast mfa]. I am pretty sure that I wasn't hired because I was giving content away on the net, but rather because of the scores of stories I have written, the majority of which have appeared in Asimov's.

  However, I do write this column and it does appear for free on the 'Mov's site. Why do I do it? As I said in the last installment, human behavior is over-determined, and my various reasons illustrate the rewards that are possible in the zero price economy. I did get paid for typing these words, although not handsomely so. The fact is, I could make more money doing other kinds of writing. So the financial incentive is secondary, at best. More important is that by writing this column I am earning credit in the reputation economy. When I attend SF conventions I am surprised (and a little chagrined) that, of those who recognize my name, a sizeable fraction have only a vague idea that I write stories. They know me primarily for this column. But have I been able to bank that credit? Not so far. Most important of all, though, is that I get a kick out of being your net columnist. This gig gives me a perfectly good excuse for wasting time exploring sites that interest me. It has helped me become a better writer. And I feel that I am doing good when I point out really deserving sites.

  Sure, getting paid and earning a reputation count. But as those Master Card [mastercard.com] ads say,

  Having fun while I write: priceless.

  Copyright © 2010 James Patrick Kelly

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Novelette: THE EMPEROR OF MARS

  by Allen M. Steele

  Allen M. Steele tells us that, like “The Jekyll Island Horror” (January 2010), his latest tale contains a smidgen of fact within the fiction. “The Planetary Society did, indeed, place a DVD library of science fiction aboard NASA's Phoenix lander, which landed on Mars last year (2008). Among the stories included was my first Asimov's short story, ‘Live from the Mars Hotel’ (Mid-December 1988). There's some other Asimov's stories on the disk as well—I recognize one by Greg Benford, and another by Stan Robinson*—and the list is available at the Planetary Society's website. Look for the appropriate page at www.planetary.org/programs/projects/messages/vomcontents.html. I'm as proud of the fact that I have a story on Mars as I am of any of the awards my work has won."

  Out here, there's a lot of ways to go crazy. Get cooped up in a passenger module not much larger than a trailer, and by the time you reach your destination you may have come to believe that the universe exists only within your own mind: it's called solipsism syndrome, and I've seen it happen a couple of times. Share that same module with five or six guys who don't get along very well, and after three months you'll be sleeping with a knife taped to your thigh. Pull double shifts during that time, with little chance to relax, and you'll probably suffer from depression; couple this with vitamin deficiency due to a lousy diet, and you're a candidate for chronic fatigue syndrome.

  Folks who've never left Earth often think that Titan Plague is the main reason people go mad in space. They're wrong. Titan Plague may rot your brain and turn you into a homicidal maniac, but instances of it are rare, and there's a dozen other ways to go bonzo that are much more subtle. I've seen guys adopt imaginary friends with whom they have long and meaningless conversations, compulsively clean their hardsuits regardless of whether or not they've recently worn them, or go for a routine spacewalk and have to be begged to come back into the airlock. Some people just aren't cut out for life away from Earth, but there's no way to predict who's going to lose their mind.

  When something like that happens, I have a set of standard procedures: ask the doctor to prescribe antidepressants, keep an eye on them to make sure they don't do anything that might put themselves or others at risk, relieve them of duty if I can, and see what I can do about getting them back home as soon as possible. Sometimes I don't have to do any of this. A guy goes crazy for a little while, and then he gradually works out whatever it was that got in his head; the next time I see him, he's in the commissary, eating Cheerios like nothing ever happened. Most of the time, though, a mental breakdown is a serious matter. I think I've shipped back about one out of every twenty people because of one issue or another.

  But one time, I saw someone go mad, and it was the best thing that could have happened to him. That was Jeff Halbert. Let me tell you about him . . .

  Back in ‘48, I was General Manager of Arsia Station, the first and largest of the Mars colonies. This was a year before the formation of the Pax Astra, about five years before the colonies declared independence. So the six major Martian settlements were still under control of one Earth-based corporation or another, with Arsia Station owned and operated by ConSpace. We had about a hundred people living there by then, the majority short-timers on short-term contracts; only a dozen or so, like myself, were permanent residents who'd left Earth for good.

  Jeff wasn't one of them. Like most people, he'd come to Mars to make a lot of money in a relatively short amount of time. Six months from Earth to Mars aboard a cycleship, two years on the planet, then six more months back to Earth aboard the next ship to make the crossing during the bi-annual launch window. In three years, a young buck like him could earn enough dough to buy a house, start a business, invest in the stock market, or maybe just loaf for a good long while. In previous times, they would've worked on off-sh
ore oil rigs, joined the merchant marine, or built powersats; by mid-century, this kind of high-risk, high-paying work was on Mars, and there was no shortage of guys willing and ready to do it.

  Jeff Halbert was what we called a “Mars monkey.” We had a lot of people like him at Arsia Station, and they took care of the dirty jobs that the scientists, engineers, and other specialists could not or would not handle themselves. One day they might be operating a bulldozer or a crane at a habitat construction site. The next day, they'd be unloading freight from a cargo lander that had just touched down. The day after that, they'd be cleaning out the air vents or repairing a solar array or unplugging a toilet. It wasn't romantic or particularly interesting work, but it was the sort of stuff that needed to be done in order to keep the base going, and because of that, kids like Jeff were invaluable.

  And Jeff was definitely a kid. In his early twenties, wiry and almost too tall to wear a hardsuit, he looked like he'd started shaving only the week before. Before he dropped out of school to get a job with ConSpace, I don't think he'd travelled more than a few hundred miles from the small town in New Hampshire where he'd grown up. I didn't know him well, but I knew his type: restless, looking for adventure, hoping to score a small pile of loot so that he could do something else with the rest of his life besides hang out in a pool hall. He probably hadn't even thought much about Mars before he spotted a ConSpace recruitment ad on some website; he had two years of college, though, and met all the fitness requirements, and that was enough to get him into the training program and, eventually, a berth aboard a cycleship.

  Before Jeff left Earth, he filled out and signed all the usual company paperwork. Among them was Form 36-B: Family Emergency Notification Consent. ConSpace required everyone to state whether or not they wanted to be informed of a major illness or death of a family member back home. This was something a lot of people didn't take into consideration before they went to Mars, but nonetheless it was an issue that had to be addressed. If you found out, for instance, that your father was about to die, there wasn't much you could do about it, because you'd be at least thirty-five million miles from home. The best you could do would be to send a brief message that someone might be able to read to him before he passed away; you wouldn't be able to attend the funeral, and it would be many months, even a year or two, before you could lay roses on his grave.