Politician by Piers Anthony
But for weeks I dreamed of being a pirate lass, living in a ship in the Belt, earning my livelihood in some nefarious manner. It was romantic nonsense but fun at the time. Remember, I was fifteen. It ended about the time I remembered the way pirate women married: by getting brutally raped, if they did not manage to kill their suitors. Roulette had killed two before being overcome by my father in one of the legendary encounters of the Belt. No, I did not care to marry that way! But still I wondered, Where had Roulette been that year? The next few years would see me age at an extraordinary rate, for there were deep shocks coming, but then I had romantic notions. My father never commented, either to confirm or deny; he could be quite aggravating that way.
Meanwhile, Jupiter was perforce embarked on the period of the Tyrancy, as it was popularly known. It was probably the most significant decade in the history of the planet and had no parallels to the politics of prior ages. The Hispanic refugee had finally achieved ultimate power, and he used it. Oh, did he use it! We have seen the signals of his increasing cynicism about politics and the use of power, in such episodes as the Pardon; we should not have been surprised or dismayed by its fruition. He set out to cure every ailment of the society—simultaneously. Such an attempt could have been made only by an absolute dictator or a total fool— or the Tyrant of Space.
But to me he was just my father, with the virtues and frailties of the office, and I loved him dearly. That made my own course as difficult in its way as his. But I must let him speak for himself, in the following manuscript.
Hopie Megan Hubris
May 28, 2671
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I made my first notes for Politician on SapTimber 9, 1983, the day I started second draft typing of the 8th Xanth novel Crewel Lye. Thereafter I continued moving rapidly on Lye, and making further notes on Politician, and the third Incarnations novel With A Tangled Skein, and on the 9th Xanth novel Golem in the Gears. I was also reading two books, answering letters, playing Ping Pong with my daughters, exercising, and teaching Daughter #1 Penny to drive. I am a workaholic, but I have always tried to prevent that from interfering with my family life. This about workaholics: they don’t just work hard, they play hard; everything is done in fast cadence. The only anathema is doing nothing. This continued until OctOgre 23, when Lye was finished and boxed for shipment to the literary agent and publisher.
Then at the end of the month the Daughters and I went to our first fan convention, Necronomicon in Tampa. That may have been a mistake; I found I could take or leave a convention, but both girls became instant con addicts, and attended many more than I did.
On NoRemember 3 I started writing the first draft of Politician, and it moved along at about 2,000 words a day, my pace slowed by the need to keep up on letters, saw and split wood for our stove, and set posts for our horse fence. Mundane things are forever getting in the way of my writing. On Jamboree 20 I finished the first draft, and moved on to With a Tangled Skein, as usual writing two novels in pencil by the stove during cold weather. I went through all three drafts of Skein, spent three days catching up on mail, and then returned to Politician on Apull 14, 1984, for the second and submission drafts. I wrapped it up by the end of Mayhem.
Politician has the distinction of being the last novel I wrote in pencil, before moving to the computer for all drafts. My primary reason for using pencil and clipboard was so that I could take care of my hyperactive baby daughter Penny; I couldn’t remain at the typewriter. But when I poked my head out of my focus on my writing for a moment, I realized that seventeen years had passed, my wife was long-since home full time, Penny was a senior in high school, soon enough to be on her way to college, and so it seemed safe to return to full-time desk writing. There are those who think my writing deteriorated when I computerized; I disagree, but if this novel is better than the next, Executive, and Crewel Lye better than Golem In The Gears, and With a Tangled Skein better than Wielding a Red Sword, then the case can be made. My conclusion is that the computer merely changed the way the material moved from my brain to the paper; the essence was similar. But the computer did facilitate changes in text the moment I thought of them, and it did save time, because I no longer needed to write or type three complete drafts. I typed the first draft, then edited it, and there was no submission draft, just a printing-out. So I saved about 40% of my writing time, and that was glorious. At any rate, I lost some time during this novel as we shopped for computers and finally found a system that could accommodate my Dvorak keyboard, so the matter is worth noting here. An age was passing, as my microcosm echoed the global macrocosm of computerization.
For this novel I drew on my limited grass-roots political experience, which had been mainly as an active member of Common Cause. One might think that a person wakes one day, stretches, and says “I believe I’ll run for State Senator,” and then does it. That is seldom the case. There is a massive fragmented substratum of community involvement that builds toward political action in some cases. People have to get known, connections have to be made, issues have to be fought, and the ways of campaign financing have to be understood. Leaders emerge from the grass roots, and a few of them do make it into office, but it’s no smooth course. As a general rule, a person has to be pretty cynical privately, and persuasive publicly, to get far, and integrity is not necessarily an asset. The general public is sort of stupid about politics, and constantly votes for the candidate who promises the most to the most factions, though it is not possible to satisfy them all. The candidate who tries to explain the issues fairly is apt to lose, because it isn’t what the public wants to hear. Sure it would be nice to lower taxes, or eliminate them entirely—but then how can the public services, like law enforcement, road maintenance, or quality control of life-necessary products be accomplished? So the votes go to the one who deceptively simplifies such matters, and who then reneges once winning the office. Corruption is virtually inherent in politics.
There are many parallels to local (Earth) politics of the 1960’s to 1980’s that may be dismayingly obvious to educated readers and dismayingly obscure to others. I’ll mention a few here. The states and cities of the united States of Jupiter are adapted from existing ones, such as Sunshine for Florida, Golden for California, and Empire for New York. States like Lonestar and cities like Nyork, Langels, Cisco, Ortland and Attle should be obvious, but perhaps less so for ones like Firebird in Canyon = Phoenix, Arizona, or Delphi in Keystone = Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, or Phis in Volunteer = Memphis, Tennessee. Then there’s Scow on northern Saturn = Moscow in Russia. One that may baffle most readers is Ybor, the city next to Pete. That’s actually Tampa, next to St. Petersburg Florida, the key being the Hispanic cigar section known as Ybor City. The subdivision of Pineleaf is yet more obscure: at the time I wrote the novel, we lived on Pineleaf Lane, which we had named. Folk protest that pines have needles, not leaves; actually pines do have leaves, which happen to be in the shape of needles.
The politicians are perhaps more devious. Kenson is a cross between Kennedy and Johnson, serving their 8 year term, and Tocsin is Nixon, the poisonous personality with no ethical restrictions. The Premiere of Ganymede is the ruler of Cuba, but not Fidel Castro, as his family is quite different. Khukov of USR is faintly suggestive of Khreshchev of USSR. Thorley is vaguely patterned on William Buckley, the conservative’s conservative columnist, but again is quite different in his personal life. He is also to my mind an extreme rarity: an honest conservative. Of course conservatives think that honest liberals are the rare ones. But who is Megan? She is special. She derives from Helen Gahagan Douglas, the lovely (in appearance and nature) representative Nixon defeated in an utterly scurrilous campaign that showed his nature at the outset. She really was said by liberals to be the ten most beautiful women, and her loss to politics was a shame. I ordered her autobiography, A Full Life, but it was never delivered, so I could not craft Megan with any accuracy. Only after I had finished the novel did I find the book remaindered, and see how wrong the characterization wa
Political events, also, are often adapted from real ones. It is a coincidence of timing that in the late 1990’s, fifteen years after I was writing the novel, impeachment came again to the fore. But the tactics of smearing one’s opponent by fair means or foul are hardly new. One thing many readers may not realize is that there is indeed such a thing as a Constitutional Convention, and it can be invoked by a two thirds majority of the states, and it would indeed have the power to revoke the entire existing government. It represents the ultimate power of the people, and it’s dangerous as hell, for the very reason shown in the novel: once it exists, it can do whatever it chooses, and nothing but armed rebellion or invasion would be able to stop it. Beware of those who push for a Constitutional Convention to Balance the Budget; they may have much more on their minds, once they have uncorked the genie in the bottle. So this novel represents a review of politics, from the grass roots through the overthrow of the government itself. It is political fiction, just as the prior two novels in the series are refugee fiction and military fiction, but it is firmly rooted in real things. Politics may seem boring, but it can be excruciatingly relevant to the welfare of every person—particularly when it becomes corrupt.
Some may have noted that some aspects of our present society are not covered in the novel. That is because they did not exist at the time this novel parallels. For example, the Internet was not a global force in the 1960’s-80’s. The Soviet Union had not dissolved. The passage of time has a way of doing that, vitiating relevance. No matter; from this point on, the series heads into territory uncharted in real history: the takeover of America by an all-powerful Tyrant.
This Author’s Note was written in June, 1999.
POLITICIAN
Volume 3: Bio of a Space Tyrant
Copyright © 1985 by Piers Anthony
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Piers Anthony, Politician