[BRIEF NOTE] CFTAG Report

Myself, pauldrye and robertprior were in attendance at this week's Counterfactual Threats Assessment Group meeting, held as always at the Yonge-Wellesley Starbucks starting at 1 o'clock on Sunday.

The discussion began with pauldrye's description of Simon Conway Morris' Life's Solution, a title that by all accounts sounds like a worthwhile if intensive read. Conway's thesis--that there is only a limited number of ways of accomplishing a particular evolutionary goal, and that this goal can be achieved in very similar ways by animals with wildly different origins--is one that, I observed, seems obvious in retrospect. Paul raised the example of eyes, which evolved separately in cephalopods and vertebrates, developing from significantly (skin in the former, nervous-system tissue in the latter), but which are composed of the same proteins. The main proviso to Conway's thesis is that he deals with lifeforms in a single evolutionary system, that of Earth. While he makes what is apparently a plausible case to the effect of the universality of his principles, until we come up against another biosphere of comparable complexity his thesis' verdict may have to be "not proven."

In another, somewhat more depressing, vein, discussion was given to the question of other consciousnesses on Earth. Clearly, homo sapiens sapiens has existed and continues to exist alongside other consciousnesses. Even now, dolphins (among other cetacean species, and including many great apes) can pass the mirror test, while Neandertals proved themselves entirely capable in their Mousterian cultural revolution of competing alongside their siblings in the Homo genus. (The interesting suggestion was raised of Neandertals with a relatively more advanced technological base, which appear to have been a cold-adapted species, managing to survive in the Arctic in the ecological niche of the Inuit and other northern peoples in another history.) The problem, though, is that these other conscious species keep getting slaughtered. Paul argued that one reason it has been so difficult to communicate meaningfully with elephants and sperm whales is that for the past few centuries the largest individuals of both species have been slaughtered, including the elders responsible for passing on culture. Absent these elders, traditional cultures might be non-existent; one might as well try to conduct interreligious dialogue of the greatest theological complexity with child survivors of the Holocaust.

On a less depressing and more amusing note, conspiracy theories--including Dan Brown's in The Da Vinci Code were also discussed at some length. It would be nice, you know, if people came up with conspiracy theories that actually reflected the facts closely. People need to take pride in their work, whatever it is. Our cephalodpod brethren--which, as Charlie Stross notes, now lock up more biomass in their bodies that homo sapiens sapiens does in ours--also constituted a subject of discussion.

As always, the next CFTAG meeting is scheduled for the same time, same place, in one week's time. All are welcome to attend.

UPDATE (5:52 PM) : nhw corrects me on the name of the author of Life's Solution, and I'm the person who made the explicit comparisons with human situations in pauldrye's argument on animal communication, with him raising it only as a possibility.

[BRIEF NOTE] Red States versus Blue States in Literature Marketing

Charlie Stross, in his entry last Monday, cites a Warren Ellis interview in which the British SF-comics author argues that American regionalism determines where different types of comics get read.

A few weeks ago, I threw out the playful notion that original comics don't actually sell in the Red states of America -- that the political borderlines there are also cultural borderlines. Just as there are isolated political Blue islands in Red America, there are also island comics stores, to be certain -- but that the audiences for progressive comics are largely contained in the coasts and those few Blue states in the north. The broader sweep of Jesusland is a dead zone, to massively generalise.

So after that I got an email from a publisher I know. Telling me that he and his staff had been discussing the same thing. They looked at their sales documentation. And, in fact, it looks to them that they do the vast majority of their business in the Blue states.

So they're talking about changing their PR campaigns. Focussing on Blue America and those handful of island stores. They figure that if Red America isn't listening, then fuck Red America. And if you're in Jesusland and you can't get their books anymore, then frankly you should have tried harder to make your store order you the stuff you wanted to read. (And, for God's sake, I've been telling you that for years, so this shouldn't come as a surprise.)

Stross goes on to note that this has implications for other genres of literature as well, including his own genre of science fiction.

I can make a couple of crude guesses: I suspect the market for mil-SF (staple product at Baen Books) is probably red state heavy. And I suspect the sort of literary work you expect from the likes of John Kessel or Michael Swanwick is more of an urban latte-swilling cafe culture blue state thing. But I must confess I've got no idea whether high fantasy is a localized sales phenomenon, or indeed whether the market for SF in general (excluding those narrow categories I mentioned) is geographically stratified.

Written SF doesn't necessarily follow the same market rules as other media. But if it's a geographically distributed market, I need to know it, and to know how it's distributed, as well. For example, if 80% of my sales can be found in one half of the country, then obviously that has implications for any marketing I do. Again: (while I don't go out of my way to deliberately offend peoples' sensibilities in what I write) if folks in some areas aren't reading my work, then I don't need to tailor my work to meet their cultural requirements. (I hasten to add that this isn't a political thing: if I'm writing for an audience of small town or rural readers, they may well need different degrees of emphasis and explanation in my work than an audience of city dwellers.)

Writing is a form of communication, after all. And my own ignorance about who I am communicating with is something I should be addressing.

While this targeted approach to literary composition definitely has its advantages in producing literary works (of whatever genre) that sell, I can't help but fear that something will be lost in writing for a captive audience. Where will crossover literary hits come from? How will different genres cross-fertilize each other? Must Neal Stephenson's recent success constitute an isolated incident? Or, is there a strategy that can be replicated and reliably deployed, and if so what is it?

Stross ends the post with a plea for further information. I can only do the same.