Phlogiston #4

Contents Editorial Page 1 Odds and Sods Department Page 4 The Bearded Triffid - A Column On Science Fiction Topics Page 6 Better Living Through Chemistry Page 9 Bards, Fantasy and the Dark Ages Page 10 Heroics - as it is spoken. Page 13 The Lay(ing) of Kaiwyn and Genefar Page 16 Letters Page 19 The Convention is Over by Graham P. Collins Page 21 Art Credits Dan McCarthy - Cover and Page 15 Skuffi Kidd - Page 8 Graham Ferner - Page 22 Michael Hamilton - Pages 3 and 20 All Rights Reserved. Copyright on Material Reverts to Authors on Publication. Limited Copies of Issues One, Two and Three are Available for One dollar a copy from the Editorial Address. All Enquires, subscriptions and contributions should be sent to: Alex Heatley (Editor). P.O Box 11-708 Manners Street Wellington. Subscriptions are available at the rate of $4:00 for four issues. Overseas Subscriptions by arrangement. Phlogiston is published every three months. Next publication date is 1st May 1985. Deadline for Contributions 1st April 1985. Readers are invited to submit material for publication, however, no promise is made of publication. Any published material entitles the contributor to a free copy of the issue in which it appears. Editorial On the Downfall of the Capitalistic Society and the Arrogance of the Middle Class Intellectual "May you live in interesting times" is an old Chinese curse suggesting that what makes the great backdrop of society interesting to historians may not be pleasant to those living it. I cannot think of a time since 1901 that the human race or, for the purposes of this essay, Western civilisation has not experienced "interesting times". Since the 1950's one of the fashionable subjects discussed by intellectuals has been the problem of over-population. Isaac Asimov for example expressed the opinion that if something wasn't done to slow the birth rate modern society would crumble by about the year 2000. It seemed that the only thing to do was encourage the use of contraceptives and prohibit couples from having more than two children. In true fashion the Western world ignored such doom-criers and the years ticked by. By the start of the eighties it was apparent that the world population was not increasing as fast as had been predicted. In the Western World economic and social factors had changed to the extent that people were having fewer children. The world population was still increasing but at a slower rate. One of the unfortunate consequences of this was that in at least one country a government found itself in the position of trying to justify the building of power stations to supply electricity to met population growth that hadn't occurred! The purpose of this example is to illustrate the errors of prediction. Many writers and public figures have tried to predict the future and no matter what is predicted something different comes to pass. The problem is that modern society is so complex that picking out a trend, such as increasing population, and examining it in isolation means that other trends with contributing factors tend to be ignored. For example: the welfare state seems to produce a society composed of mainly middle income families, middle income families have fewer children than high or low income families, hence a contributing factor to a decreased birth rate that no one seems to have predicted. Yet most of the predictors picked out that easy access to oral contraceptives would change social patterns and lead to a lessened birth rate. These days two of the fashionable topics seem to be the "How many TV's can you sell before everyone has one" argument and the "Increased unemployment due to automation of jobs" prediction. The first argument merely states that in a capitalistic society there comes a point where the demand for a particular product levels off and may even go into a decline. If a company is geared to produce 10,000 TV sets a week and the demand levels off at 100 TV sets a week then the company has a minor problem on its hands. People have been predicting since the 70's that the introduction of industrial robots and the computerisation of jobs will lead to a reduction in available jobs. In a society where anyone who doesn't have a job is considered less than human (it seems mostly by those who have had jobs for ten or more years). This is going to (so these predictors say) place an amazing strain on society leading to riots, civil unrest (more riots) and eventually a breakdown of society. 1 Both these combine into the downfall of Capitalistic Society argument. Which tends to follow these lines : If a company discovers that the demand for the product line it is producing is falling it can do several things: Go out of business, cut prices to try and squeeze other competitors out of of the market or develop another product line (for example video recorders). In the first instance unemployment results, the second produces reduced profit margins which encourages company directors to look around for means of cutting costs (to keep profits high and shareholders happy) and as labour is a large cost of producing many goods automation seems to be a good solution. Of course this produces unemployment but this isn't the company's problem. The third alternative doesn't throw people out of work and can actually employ more people for research and development (often abbreviated to R&D) but it has a more serious effect. As product lines proliferate the average income has to rise to be able to afford the extra goods. For example at the moment the craze is for video recorders which cost (In NZ) about $2000 but only those who can afford a TV set will want a video recorder and even then they might not have the income to afford one. Add to this unemployment caused by automation and the number of people able to afford products such as video recorders starts to decrease. Demand for the product levels off and the company is back to the problem of keeping profits up while trying to compete in a market where every other company has the same problem. Again the attractive solution is to automate and cut labour costs but this produces more unemployed who can't afford the products that the company makes leading to more unemployment as the company either lays off more people or goes bankrupt. It can be seen that this vicious circle tends to have an exponential effect, starting off small and slow and increasing in size and speed at a faster and faster rate. All this leads to the "Downfall of Capitalistic Society" according to some intellectuals I've talked to (other factors complicate the problem such as the need by governments to throw money at pyramid projects in order to keep the economy turning over - for example massive spending on defence). I'm not sure whether such a thing is likely to occur as it depends on a real reduction of the number of jobs for the cycle to take place and it is not clear whether current unemployment is large enough to trigger the cycle. This is where "The Arrogance of the Middle Class Intellectual" appears. It seems that such people (and I must include myself in this) have a tendency to believe that such changes are not going to affect them. Such changes only affect the "Working" class who seem to be represented as unable to adjust to changes in society. Such intellectuals sit around discussing the effects of massive unemployment and tsk tsking about the poor Working class who are going to be unable to adjust to increased leisure time, being on the benefit and so on. Secure in the knowledge that such things are not going to affect them as "they can always find another job". It is arrogance of the highest sort to sit around and stereotype a section of society and treat it in patronising terms. It is denial of humanity to treat living breathing people as an amorphous, stereotyped, collective blob. And it is this behaviour I wish to denounce. It makes me wonder how sincere people are when they can state that they support anti-racism and feminism and yet trot out such arrogant comments. 2 It may well be that in the next fifty years society is going to change in such a way that capitalism withers away and becomes something quite different to today's society. But I am confident that all of humanity is going to have to adjust to changing conditions and all of humanity are going to share in the process of changing society to better suit the individual. 3 Odds and Sods Department. Firstly I would like to announce a price rise. From this issue on the price of an issue is one dollar and the subscription is four dollars for four issues. The issue price is increasing due to public opinion - many people have suggested that I might as well increase the price to $1 and stated that they felt the Zine was easily worth that much, If they change their minds I shall be unhappy. The subscription increase is because I worked out one day that after deducting the cost of postage and envelopes I only had 27 cents per issue to pay for printing costs. This is just not worthwhile so rather than abolish subscriptions I've decided to increase the subscription rate by a whole 25 cents an issue (Wow!!).

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