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This past Saturday I was one of four writers who sat on a Science-Fiction panel at The Yale Bookstore to discuss how the genre sees the future.  More to the point the event was called “Literary Futures,” and one of the main themes was addressing the concerns of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Censorship is a lifelong concern of mine.  In history, both the East and West, religious and secularist, have been responsible for censorship on grotesque sales.  In the West it was religious fundamentalists who obliterated the Great Library of Alexandria because of it’s “pagan” work, and which I explored in my novel Remembering Hypatia.  In the East it was Ch’in Shi Huangdi who burned books of philosophical variety which disagreed with his preferred Legalist system.  Even today, conservatives destroy books they feel are “godless” while liberals scorch away books that are “politically incorrect.”

But today (and this is a point I made at Yale) we are becoming a digital world.  Without hard-copies, censorship can now occur in an insidious and invisible way.  Put it this way:  Yesterday’s burnings required at least 451 degrees; tomorrow’s censorship will be done not with torches, but with a search-and-replace command.

Let’s call it the Digital Razor. It slices, slashes, and murders without shedding any blood.  Movies are altered (E.T., Manhunter, Star Wars, to mention just a few) and by doing so, history itself is mutated just a little.  The sleight-of-hands behind the curtain…

It was a great discussion. The New Haven audience was terrific, and I had the chance to meet with fellow panelist Esther M. Friesner, a Nebula-award-winning writer (and editor of the anthology Chicks in Chainmail which I admit I’ve never read despite so tantalizing a title!)  She has a wonderfully sharp sense of humor, and we spoke for long after the event was over.

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Later that afternoon, my girlfriend and I went strawberry picking — kind of funny, that an hour after I was talking about the far future I’m suddenly indulging in one of the oldest activities of our hunter-gatherer origins.  I wonder if digital strawberries will tell our brains they are as good as the real thing.

Finally, this day ended with a thunderstorm.  Years ago, I wrote a poem about how storms had inspired our dreams of Heaven and Hell, science, religion, and philosophy.  Ancient people would have no idea what was going on in the sky.  Rain falls as manna from heaven.  The superheated sonic booms in the clouds are the voice of God.

Watching this Week: The Mothman Prophecies, Gattaca, and Double Indemnity.

Reading this Week: The Templars and the Assassins by James Wasserman

Random Fact:

The deepest mankind has drilled toward the center of the Earth is 40,230 feet (roughly 7 miles) deep. No signs yet of an inner ocean… or James Mason and Pat Boone running from dinosaurs.

Quote of the Day:

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.– Edward R. Murrow

Welcome to my blog of life as a writer.  I’m sitting in my home office, surrounded by my bookshelves and artifacts from travel.  It’s actually a pretty messy place.

And yet… it’s a disorder I understand.  I know where everything is in this maze of fiction, history, science, mythology, and anthology.  I reserve one shelf for my published works, while the rest of the room is a kind of incubator for works-in-progress.  I guess it’s my own Lascaux cavern.

The challenge of being a writer today is that, if you seek tangible success, you have to go to war against an industry motivated solely by profit and not literature.  Oh, I think you can certainly have both!  But I’ve had my share of rejections from editors who spend two-thirds of a letter joyfully raving about the work they’ve read only to add, in a pipsqueak closing line, that “we have a poor track record of promoting untested, untried authors, and so with great reluctance, I’m forced to pass.”

So the art of writing today is being part poet and part strategist, part meditation and part tactical commander.  It’s Emerson’s transparent eyeball outfitted with a laser-sight.  It’s Henry David Thoreau returning from Walden Pond with a battered notebook in one pocket and a battering ram in both hands. There are two ways of looking at writing: you can do it quietly, on the backs of envelopes like Emily Dickinson and not care about connecting to the world beyond your four walls.  Or you can actively campaign in public arenas with the publishing world’s equivalent of Roman Emperors watching from above.

I’ve just been informed of two small achievements. My poem “A Library Died” just won 7th Place in the Writer’s Digest International Poetry Contest.  I wrote it about my great-grandfather, Frank Cipriano, who passed away at the age of 96 and could still remember the streets and sites of his native Naples.  At family gatherings, he could sit off by himself and take mental tours of the Italy he knew.  I felt a kinship with that, wanting to escape to other worlds while the clucking cacophony of a very large, very Italian family gathering whirled like a maelstrom around us.

Another piece of good news: My Travel piece “Mountain of Ghosts” won Honorable Mention in the Best Travel Writing Competition.  You can see the list here.  It is a recounting of my hike up Mount Fuji throughout the course of night to reach the peak for the scarlet hatching of sunrise.  My friend Alice snapped a pic of that experience which I’ve  posted on the About the Author Page here.  Japan is a coin of wild opposites, finding a way to effortlessly blend its futuristic hyperindustrialized urban centers with the pristine loveliness of Kyoto and Nikko — mystical spots wreathed in dew and time.  Japan doesn’t exist in the present.  You’re either in yesterday or tomorrow when you’re there.

Impossible not to write about.

The Connecticut Muse once asked me to comment on writing.  “You know you’re a writer,” I said, “If the poetry book on your kitchen table was a pile of napkins last week.”

Watching this Week: The Maltese Falcon, White Oleander, and Metropolis (both the silent film and the anime  variety)

Reading this Week: The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

Random Fact:

Gunpowder was invented by accident by Chinese alchemists 1,100 years ago. They were trying to make an elixir of eternal life.

Quote of the Day: “We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.” Titus Livius