David Drake Newsletter 45: June 6, 2008
Molding opinion like Play-Doh in his sweaty hands!
I'll close with a bit of history which I wouldn't mention had PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY not resurrected it. The April 7 issue had an article on Military SF which struck me as amazingly knowledgeable until I noticed that it was by Scott Connors, whereupon I was no longer amazed. (Scott knows his stuff.)
The article quotes Bruce Sterling, a journalist who at one time was also a significant SF writer, as saying (I think in 1983) that writers of Military SF have an "ideological solidarity, which gives them the sort of shock-troop discipline that Lenin instilled in the Bolsheviks." If you believe that Jerry Pournelle, Janet Morris, and I (to pick three writers whom I recall Mr Sterling named specifically) have _any_ ideological similarity, then there's a bridge in Brooklyn that I'd like to offer you a good deal on.
Twenty-five years ago I was more naive than I've become since, however, so I thought Mr Sterling had just made a mistake. I called him to say that I'd never met Jerry and I certainly wasn't a disciple of his. I thought that similar things were true of most of the other people Mr Sterling mentioned.
Mr Sterling replied, "I don't care about facts. People can get facts anywhere. What I'm doing is molding public opinion."
Molding opinion like Play-Doh in his sweaty hands!
