The Invisible Counterpoint

What happens once the self-publishing revolution really gets going, when all of those previously rejected manuscripts hit the marketplace, en masse, in print and e-book form, swelling the ranks of 99-cent Kindle and iBook offerings by the millions? Is the public prepared to meet the slush pile? You've either experienced slush or you haven't, and the difference is not trivial. People who have never had the job of reading through the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts sent to anyone even remotely connected with publishing typically have no inkling of two awful facts: 1) just how much slush is out there, and 2) how really, really, really, really terrible the vast majority of it is. Civilians who kvetch about the bad writing of Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer or any other hugely popular but critically disdained novelist can talk as much trash as they want about the supposedly low standards of traditional publishing. They haven't seen the vast majority of what didn't get publis...

No, not a fantasy, James. The most advanced psychoclass would be all about peace, of course. However, they would have within their ranks the most creative (least stultified, least rigid--most free) thinkers on earth, who could ably attend to such necessities as insuring they are not vulnerable to their "barbarian" brethren's perpetual need to war and sacrifice (their own). (They' be like Apple -- fun, happy, with technology that outpaces all competition.) I know it's easy to imagine those who are most loving as a bunch of wayward nymphs and pixies. But what they'd really be would be those who, when forced into combat (for them it would really be last resort -- if they sensed their "enemies" [lower psychoclasses] were in the mood for war, they'd be the type to figure out a way to address their opponent's need with the least amount of bloodshed as possible), they would be most ably constituted to resist sacrificing th...