Editorial – April 2026 : Arguments Are Neither Here Or There.

Hello everyone

When does any argument become political? There’s a quandary from the start. What is ‘political’? The goggle response doesn’t really make sense because if there’s a dividing line of choice, any subject can be influenced by it. Nothing ever becomes black and white in choices but shades of grey needing a balancing act of how much is right and how much is wrong which will sway the argument, so there must be more than one answer and under what conditions. Then it comes down to motivation as to who it benefits? Is it politically left or right or somewhere in between. From there, extremes are formed, especially if it’s a natter if choice.

Based on the world’s current crisis, decisions as to which side is right or wrong is getting seriously clouded so you can’t tell who’s doing the right thing and who’s doing bad. If you want a Science Fiction/fantasy allegory. The Emperor is ‘Star Wars’ couldn’t have been all bad if most of his empire just tolerated his regime and went about their lives. Eradication of planets just because they had rebels on them is, even back in the late 1970s, seems a bit heavy-handed and likely to cause more rebellions than stop them because who wants that deathstar entering your star system?

Empires are very impractical to run, more so on a galactic scale. It needs so many to be voluntarily within. It’s not like having identical shopping malls in different towns and cities and expecting the local populations not to have different tastes that will change things. If this happens with environments, it says little for the political orientation on different planets. Even democracies can have radical changes with each election. An empire would not be able to tolerate a democracy because it would quickly lose control. Well, unless each planet recruited stormtroopers to enforce the law.

Issac Asimov’s empire in his ‘Foundation’ books would have fallen a lot quicker with what we know today. Asimov’s expertise was in the sciences not political systems and even storylines was loosely based off the Roman Empire. His empire lasted for 1500 years which does tend to make it a good example as it expanded by invasion across the world and then crippled from within as a new religion called Christianity supplanted their multi-gods beliefs.

Asimov chose to explore his empire’s self-destruction by too much bureaucracy, translate that as too much red tape, and needed to be rebuilt. Hari Seldon’s knowledge of psychohistory was to use it to create shortcuts to shorten the decline and a future rise. Effectively, getting rid of the small print, even if that was not said. There was no need to be concerned with different political or religious systems simply because everything else was uniform, even if we would see it as simplistic with what we know today. What it couldn’t anticipate but should have is the rise of a dictator wanting to take advantage of the situation done by a mutant such as the Mule who could bend people’s minds to his will. The right minds, mostly in the military. Dictators, even if they have family successors, do not last forever. They are essentially mini-empires. Their replacement could be worse or better.

Rise and fall of such systems is just the nature of how they work because you’re dealing with people. Many are happy to just follow whoever is in charge as long as it doesn’t become too heavy-handed in their own lives, which is why tax to pay for facilities tends to become an issue. The number of people who have the potential for leadership and likely to sway other people to their way of thinking depends a lot on the strength of personality and whether they can get a platform to enthral a lot of people. Things become difficult if they don’t live up to the expectations and promises and how easy it is to replace them. The only real test is looking at what they have done on the up and how that would affect future choices. We have an example of that these days without me having to raise names. Any political system which remains inflexible when it comes to change is going to have problems eventually. We’re all entitled to make mistakes in our choices of leadership but it is the speed of changing that really counts if they are really bad.

Changing a country’s constitution is a lot harder than it looks. The usual argument is its lasted so long so far, so why shouldn’t it go on forever? It takes no account for changes in society. In UK law, some laws just get forgotten because they are no longer enforceable or applicable. A lot easier than revoking them. It also takes a lot of scrutiny with that in mind of any changes in constitution and so its fair to all sides without biasness. So even putting in various clauses can cause its own problems. When something goes wrong, like say the interpretation of the American gun laws which makes it impossible to get rid of them at such a scale then it has to be lived with no matter how many killing sprees go on. It would need a consensus of the majority to change things. It is also unlikely any president will change laws to curtail their own powers.

If you’re creating a country, let alone a world, especially in Science Fiction, you don’t have to go far from our current reality to see most examples to see how they survive and fail. None are wholly perfect or performed to the letter of their description. An enforced political regime will always have dissenters but if they have no real leadership let alone weapons, then they are always going to fail. Even if they are given them, they become beholden to others and just changing one set of leaders to some from another country or world. With so many examples in our world, you would have to question for any fiction genre as to how, if it was a game, can it compete? There has to be some elements of sickness if someone chooses a taste like that but who can anticipate someone’s taste?

All fiction can do is show the differences in consequences and even reality is beating that as to just who are the bad guys? So, should fiction go up to a new level based off our reality’s current choices and where it will lead? Therein lies the problem. Fiction is losing out because it can take up to two years to write and publish so reality will always win because it is more current. As such, it’s about time our Science Fiction genre started to rise again. It doesn’t have to be set in modern day, just show the consequences of our present time and where it could go.

Thank you, take care, good night and take a deep breath.

Geoff Willmetts

editor: www.SFCrowsnest.info

A Zen thought: You cannot shave with an Occam razor.

What Qualities Does A Geek Have: Not to panic but to sort things out.

Computer Reveal: Ever tried to get a circular image out of a picture in Paintshop Pro and got stuck trying to find the ‘final’ command?

  This should apply to any of the shape commands. Any capped word is addressing a particular command.

1. Ensure the overall picture of photograph is Straightened.
2. Select the Shape command – usually towards the bottom in the left hand Menu options and you get a command bar. Widen the bar if you can’t see all the commands.
3. On the picture, you should have a square with a circle in it. Each one should have an adjustment dot and a centre spot. Select the Edit command so the circle has a square around it so you have 8 points plus the centre to manipulate the shape.
4. You can’t see the picture under it but press the Eye command and its there.
5. Use the centre spot to get as close to the centre as you can.
6. Adjust the outer dots to get the circle you want. The ones on the circle will widen or close in both sides at the same time. The ones on the square only move up one side. You might have to play with that, especially if the original eclipse or circle wasn’t done properly.
7. The Shape Cutter is to the left of the Eye command. Press that and you have a separate picture of the circle/eclipse. The explanations on Google never say this. It might not be perfect and a background erase can be used to remove any excess until you improve.
8. Close the original picture and use Save As to save over the original file name or just generally save under a different name.

Computer Reveal: Probably the most annoying thing is adding a gadget to your computer and finding it not recognised. I can’t speak for all flatbed scanners, but the Epson Perfection V36 and the Epson Perfection V36II have different drivers and the latter won’t be recognised until the new set is downloaded. Ignore the notes supplied with the scanner but put the name through google and ‘add drivers’  and country from the manufacturer’s orientated to your country and you’ll be directed to the correct website and then follow instructions. With the drivers, the light comes on.

Computer Reveal: Yeah, I know. Very little in a while and three come at once. This one should certainly draw your attention if you’re using Windows 11. We have no control when an update is being downloaded but we can’t choose an install and it does it when you shut your computer down and then goes into a cycle that couldn’t be broken out of. To be fair, my laptop did close down but I didn’t fancy a long wait in the morning and then rebooted and it got stuck in a cycle of nearly getting to the end and then repeating itself of after entering your password, up pops the message ‘Driver Power State Failure (0x9F)’ and immediately reboots. I shut it down after its third time when it reach the end of the cycle and started again in the morning and it still kept doing it so changing the day and time doesn’t make any difference.

  As I have two computers, I used my back-up to see what was supposed to happen and check on what to do. Although I looked it up related to my manufacturer, I had to resort to this. Make a note to this option below because you might not have a second computer to check on.

1. Reboot the computer and press the F12 button until you see a stripe appear. You do not have to disconnect anything else connected to your computer.
2. There are a lot of BIOs options shown. The one you mouse or direction arrows down to is the ‘Support Assistant OS Recovery’ and press button it. This is an automatic system that will repair your computer. It doesn’t show entirely what it is doing and the piece that says it will take 3 minutes is lying as it can take a lot longer depending on what is wrong. This time it took a long time so go read a book or something.
3. Once completed, it will do a scan of the hard drive which will show a lot of numbers in its three stages but at least you can see it doing something. This might take half an hour but it is time well spent to make sure the hardware is OK.
4. In the next stage, it’ll go back to completing the original task which is the update. When it stuck around the 35% for so long, I did try a reboot but it went back to the 35% again and decided to let it go on. Just don’t reboot and be patient. The objective is to get Windows up working enough to sort out and the opening screen coming up is its own reward.

  Now Microsoft really does need to sort out this kind of problem. It shouldn’t be that difficult to put in an algorithm in to spot this continual loop and realise there is something wrong and either resolve it or break the cycle and go back to Windows so you have access to your software and complete the update later. It might not happen every time but, when it does, I’ll bet you’ll find a new vocabulary and trying to remember what to do so don’t be afraid to download this time.

  You almost didn’t get me. After I did all of the above, every time I got past my password into Windows 11, I kept getting the message ‘Driver Power State Failure (0x9F)’ and rebooting. I spent most of Friday trying to get into it, including soft reboot without any success. It’s amazing how the thought of having to fork out on a new computer gives more motivation to not be beat, especially as the Recovery Disk proved the hardware is OK. You did make your own Recovery Disk or USB version, didn’t you? In situations like this is when you need to check.

  Sleeping on it over night, the need to stop the reboot, I called up the Task Manager and W11 stayed put this time but, obviously, you don’twant to this every time. In the Control Panel, its device manager showed no red lights and the W11 update had taken effect.

  So I turned to the ‘Driver Power State Failure (0x9F)’ itself and how to get rid of it. Looking it up, this message only appears when some of the drivers are in conflict and so goes into sleep mode but doesn’t say which or how to beat it. Except it does, it’s a reboot. Up popped WindowTechies which said that Fortext would do it. The free scan downloed showed all the things that needed inclusive updating and sorting out and be prepared for a wait as it done it over an hour. Considering how much I was going to spend otherwise, I opted for the full version for both of my computers. It went through everything from BIOS firmware updates to W11 itself which it went through several times after each password and, finally, no more ‘Driver Power State Failure (0x9F)’. Although it didn’t say, don’t leave any other utilities there. I should point out that there might be other software utilities that do this but haven’t tried them out.

  Fortext takes about 10 minutes to appear when selected so be very patient and don’t keep pressing its button. Oddly, the software itself will show you everything it does which is a pity why even a loading screen doesn’t appear initially. It warns it will disconnect the Internet and, depending on how many corrections it is making to W11’s start-up will ask you to put in your password, go in and then come out again. This is the point where you shouldn’t stray from your computer. Once it thinks everything is resolved, it will allow W11 to completely appear and work and no pesky messages and reboots.

  Of course, we come to today as I type this. W11 loaded and promptly after the password, up popped ‘Driver Power State Failure (0x9F)’ and rebooting. However, it only happened the once. So I spent part of the morning running Fortext again and will have to see how it looks tomorrow. I tried it on the BUP computer which went a lot smoother.

The Reveal: We don’t use stars with our reviews because we think you people are intelligent enough to read reviews.

The Reveal: Eating sugary food does not turn people into a type two diabetic because, if that was the case, the world would be full of them. Generally, it’s the overweight because there’s not enough insulin to feed the extra mass.

Observation: There’s going to be a return of the pigeon post. That’ll be a coo.

Observation: I wouldn’t like to be Officer Down, he’s always getting shot.

Feeling Stressed: This is a stressful world.

Submissions:-

                        If you think having free books to review isn’t enough, how about reading them months ahead of everyone? I mean real months. Beats a time machine.

I did think that having a lot of text about submitting material to SFCrowsnest would attract those with a compulsion to read and understand things the geek way. The main problem with the Internet is that it tends to encourage less reading, so time to take a different approach. The original notes will be left on July2009 editorial although the links aren’t likely to work.

With your cover email, tell me something about yourself so I don’t work in a vacuum. The boss in the tower, also called Stephen Hunt, describes me as a ‘Dutch Uncle’ in that I’m good with advice and can explain when I see something that is wrong. Egos should be left at the door as I’m only interested in your talent and how to improve it.

Reviews:-

I always have a clarion call for new reviewers and if you have the yen to learn, you’ll quickly get the ropes if you’re never done it before but you must show me a sample, especially if you can follow my guidelines. We can usually get paper-based books in the UK but if you live abroad, then you might have to stick with ebooks. If you’ve picked a book we haven’t reviewed, then it stands a better chance of being used so use the SFC search engine to see first but I need to see how you would write for us.

The obvious qualification is a desire to read regularly and like to tell others about the book without giving away too many spoilers. The benefit is access to free books for the price of a review.

I want to give you the opportunity to get things right so look up the Review Guidelines link: https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/so-you-want-to-write-reviews-for-sfcrowsnest-what-you-need-to-know-by-geoff-willmetts/

Fiction:-

Although we can’t pay for submissions, what we do make up for is exposure. Only the Sci-Fi Channel gets more hits than us so it’s worthwhile getting us on your writer’s CV. Please avoid samplings from book’s you might be writing or have had in print elsewhere as I do check. New original work is best and whether I accept or reject, you will be told of any problems I see so you look your best and a grammar check that is equal to the pro-world. Even the boss finds me scarily accurate.

Flash or One-Page Fiction:-

Speaks for itself. The shortest fiction possible is also the toughest to write as no word must be wasted.

Link here for details: https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/one-page-stories-or-flash-fiction-submissions-instructions-by-gf-willmetts/

Short Stories:-

The definition of a short story is anything up to 30 pages and then it becomes a novella. Bear in mind you want other people to read it on-line, stay somewhere between 5-20 pages. At least digitally, you don’t have to go double-line as HTML will do that automatically but think about being concise. If you want to send an attachment with these, then ask first and send as a TXT file as it removes most tetchy virus codes.

Look up the Short Stories Link by linking here: https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/so-you-really-want-to-write-an-sf-story-an-update-by-gf-willmetts/

Finally:-

The worse problem I see any samples is poor grammar. Although I don’t want you to think I seek perfection, the less work I have to do, the easier it is to focus on other problems you might have. It will also serve you in good stead if you ever approach paper-based publishers because they will send back any bad grammar samples because it’s not worth their time.

Good grammar is the tool of any writer. Don’t just depend on what you remember doing at school. There are plenty of decent grammar books out there, so remind yourself of the rules. If you think there are far too many to remember, get the major ones right before moving to the next so it becomes second nature.

This link, www.sfcrowsnest.info/the-guide-to-better-grammar-from-the-harrowed-hand-of-gf-willmetts/ will show you the common problems.

To submit, use our email address by joining the spaces as shown here: letters @ SFcrowsnest.info and use the subject matter as to what you’re submitting.

If you have any pastimes that can be used to pass the time in captivity, let me know and we’ll see if it can be turned into an article.

Comments directly to reviews should still work as before.

Good luck

Geoff