RALPH WILLIAMS
Business as Usual, During Alterations
Throughout most of recorded history mankind has lived within an economy of scarcity. Only in the last half-century have technological developments made an economy of abundance possible, at least in the West and Japan. The costs involved in this process were high, not only in terms of human exploitation but also in more subtle ways. For example, the explosion of available consumer goods has produced considerable confusion, part of the "future shock" phenomenon of being surrounded by so much diversity that it is difficult to enjoy any of it.
Because technological change has been so rapid, entire industries have been created and wiped out almost overnight. The resourcefulness often shown by the businessman to these
developments has been little short of amazing-the transition from a literally "horse-powered" transportation system to the automobile and from the blacksmith to the mechanic are but
examples.
"Business as Usual, During Alterations" presents members of the business community facing the greatest crisis in the history of economic relationships. Competition is supposed to be the essence of the Free Enterprise System (at least on paper)-but it was never supposed to be like this.
George shook his head slowly. "You're wrong, John. Not back to where we were. This morning, we had an economy of scarcity. Tonight, we have an economy of abundance. This morning, we had a money economy—it was a money economy, even if credit was important. Tonight, it's a credit economy, one hundred per cent. This morning, you and the lieutenant were selling standardization. Tonight, it's diversity.
"The whole framework of our society is flipped upside down.'" He frowned uncertainly.
"And yet, you're right too, it doesn't seem make much difference, it is still the same old rat race. I don't understand it."
-- BUSINESS AS USUAL, DURING ALTERATIONS by Ralph Williams (Astounding Science Fiction, 1958)
I bought a box of SF pulps when I was in my late teens from one of my father's friends, who kept them in the garage. English editions of Astounding Science Fiction, for the most part. Stories written by authors whose names I barely recognised, despite being a science fiction reader from about as soon as I could read.
I paid more than I could afford for them.
I suspect that one story paid for all of them, though.
It's a thought experiment. I'd forgotten the opening of the story (aliens decide to Mess With Us) but remembered what happened after that.
We're in a department store. And someone drops off two matter duplicators. They have pans. You put something in pan one, press a button, its exact duplicate appears in pan two.
We spend a day in the department store as they sell everything they have as cheaply as possible, duplicating things with the matter duplicator, making what they can on each sale, and using cheques and credit cards, not cash (you can now perfectly duplicate cash – which obviously is no longer legal tender). Towards the end they stop and take stock of the new world waiting for them and realise that all the rules have changed, but craftsmen and engineers are more necessary than ever.
That companies won't be manufacturing millions of identical things, but they'll need to make hundreds, perhaps thousands, of slightly different things, that their stores will be showrooms for things, that stockrooms will be history. That there will now be fundamental changes including, in 1950s-style retailing, in a phrase that turned up well after 1958, a long tail.
Being Astounding Science Fiction, the story contains the moral of 95% of Astounding Science Fiction stories, which could perhaps be reduced to: people are smart. We'll cope.
When my friends who were musicians first started complaining sadly about people stealing their music on Napster, back in the 1990s, I told them about the story of the duplicator machines. (I could not remember the name of the story or the author. It was not until I agreed to write this introduction I asked a friend, via email, and found myself, a google later, re-reading it for the first time in decades.) //
I remembered what Charles Dickens did, a hundred and fifty years before, when copyright laws meant that his copyrights were worth nothing in the US: he was widely read, but he was not making any money from it. So he took the piracy as advertising, and toured the US in theatres, reading from his books. He made money, and he saw America. //
Fortunately, Cory Doctorow has written this book. It's filled with wisdom and with thought experiments and with things that will mess with your mind. Cory once came up with an analogy while we argued that explained the world that we were heading into in terms of mammals versus dandelions to me, and I've never seen anything quite the same way since.
Mammals, he said, and I paraphrase here and do not put it as well as Cory did, invest a great deal of time and energy in their young, in the pregnancy, in raising them. Dandelions just let their seeds go to the wind, and do not mourn the seeds that do not make it. Until now, creating intellectual content for payment has been a mammalian idea. Now it's time for creators to accept that we are becoming dandelions.
The world is not ending. Not if, as Astounding Science Fiction used to suggest, humans are bright enough to think our way out the problems we think ourselves into.
I suspect that the next generation to come along will puzzle over our agonies, much as I puzzled over the death of the Victorian Music Halls as a child, and much as I felt sorry for the performers who had only needed thirteen minutes of material in their whole life, and who did their thirteen minutes in town after town until the day that television came along and killed it all.
In the meanwhile, it's business as usual, during alterations.
-Neil Gaiman
I was driving with my brother, the preacher, and my nephew, the preacher’s son, on I-65 just north of Bowling Green when we got a flat. It was Sunday night and we had been to visit Mother at the Home. We were in my car. The flat caused what you might call knowing groans since, as the old-fashioned one in my family (so they tell me), I fix my own tires, and my brother is always telling me to get radials and quit buying old tires.
But if you know how to mount and fix tires yourself, you can pick them up for almost nothing.
ANDERSON GENTRY
Science Fiction, Alternative History, Action and Adventure
Ward Clark grew up in the hills and trout streams of northeast Iowa’s wooded uplands, gaining a keen interest in wildlife, camping, hunting, fishing and the outdoors. Gentry served in the U.S. Army in the last years of the Cold War, including service in the Persian Gulf War. //
Ward Clark's vision of the future combines a high-tech, planet-hopping world presented in a gritty, real style that has led some to call him the “Tom Clancy of Sci-Fi.” His fast-paced, hard-hitting style combines a unique blend of outdoor savvy, real-world military experience and realistic character development to the sci-fi genre.
Alert and Alarmed
7 hours ago edited
Martians land on the White House Lawn. They say they have been studying our broadcasts and speak our language. They ask for a televised interview with our world leaders. The Pope takes his turn saying "Honored guests, the most important question I have is: Do you know Jesus?
Martians: Yes we know Jesus, the Son of God. He comes to see us every year.
Pope (visibly shaken): What? Every year? Well we have been waiting two thousand years for His Second Coming.
Martians: Maybe He didn't like your chocolates.
Pope (even more rattled and hardly able to speak): Chocolates? What do chocolates have to do with anything?
Martians: When He came to see us, we gave Him a giant box of our best chocolates. What did you do when He came to see you?
AWARD-WINNING AND BEST-SELLING AUTHORS CONTRIBUTE NEW STORIES: All-new fiction from Dragon Award winner and New York Times best-selling author David Weber, Dragon Award nominee D.J. Butler, best seller Jody Lynn Nye, indie best sellers Chris Kennedy and Mark Wandrey, and more. Also featuring an introduction by multi-award-winning and New York Times best-selling author Larry Correia.
It is 2185 CE. Humans now live throughout the Solar System, but their most ambitious adventure is about to begin. The starship Victoria will carry over 10,000 colonists to a new world outside the solar system. The larger-than-life exploits of those colonists will become legendary. The colonists will build a new civilization, and the actions of a few individuals will become famous—and infamous—forever marking their new colony with the Founder Effect.
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