To the extent that there has been any public discussion of Michael Williams, a 28-year-old Alabama congressional candidate who wants to fund NASA by taxing works of science fiction, two divergent views have emerged.
The first holds that Williams -- a supermarket bagger by day -- is a visionary, a man of innovation and wisdom who thinks years ahead of his time. The second view is less charitable: He's crazy as a loon. Tax science fiction? What is he thinking?
Williams' plan gained some attention this week when The Huntsville Times, his local newspaper, wrote a short profile on him, and the novelty of his ideas propelled the brief article into the chattering land of weblogs.
Unfortunately for Williams, the opinions expressed so far are running 3-to-1 in favor of crazy.
But he insists his idea is sensible. Living in Huntsville, home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Williams says he knows all too well how the whims of the federal government can adversely affect a small town: One year there are plans for a space station, the next year they're cancelled, the next year they're back on again.
"Because we're such a space area," he said, "anything that happens in space, we get to know it here. And every year there's always stories about the space station being cut, or other space projects being cut. Supposedly, President Bush has decided that they now are going to have three people up there instead of six up there."
(The Bush Administration's view is that some of the components needed to host six people would be too expensive; the space station is currently estimated to cost about $5 billion more than the initial estimate.)
Williams holds a masters degree in political science from the University of Alabama and he's familiar with the exigencies of the political process. "What you learn when you live in Huntsville is, nobody wants to fund space," he said. "Nobody's interested in doing it. The bills in Congress always fail."
Faced with this legislative dead-end, Williams decided to think innovatively and he had a moment of inspiration. "You live in San Francisco?" he said during an interview. "So you know about all the Star Trek conventions. I happened to see the movie about all those conventions, and it talks about how much money is spent on all the Star Trek stuff." (Williams is referring to Trekkies, the hilarious documentary about Star Trek fanatics.)
After watching the movie and looking up some legislative history, he realized that "taxing the science fiction, you're actually taxing the interest group of space. They're the ones who want to go into space and have space expanded and they're the ones who will actually feel good about spending the money on space."
Specifically, Williams said he would impose a 1 percent sales tax on science fiction books, comics, toys and other merchandise, and even on some space-related books that aren't fictional. All of the money would go to "fund space."
The idea is not as Twilight Zonish as it sounds, Williams said. "The U.S. government does have excise taxes on things like cigarettes or gas. The tax on gas to build highways was actually first proposed (in the 1960s) by Bob Jones, the former representative from the 5th district" -- the district in which Williams is running.
Williams is clearly well intentioned, and the several critics who commented conceded that. But for at least half a dozen reasons, people said, this plan is DOA.
First, said Patrick Nielsen Hayden, an editor at the science fiction house Tor Books, Williams' plan rests on the notion that it's relatively easy to categorize books as "science fiction."
That's wrongheaded. In an e-mail, Hayden wrote that "the professional (science fiction) world hasn't been able to come up with a satisfactory definition of what's 'science fiction' and what isn't (quick, is Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith science fiction? Is Gravity's Rainbow? How about Star Wars? Why or why not?)."
"This is like asking people who like murder mysteries to subsidize the jury system," Hayden added. "I look forward to the deliberations of the governmental body charged with determining what would be taxable under such a plan."
When this point was put to Williams, he was perplexed. "That's one thing I haven't thought about," he said.
After a pause, he added, "But probably the thing to decide it is when you go to your local Barnes and Noble, and you examine the books that are on the science fiction rack -- those are the ones that would be taxed."
So would he tax, say, Jurassic Park, a sci-fi novel that really has nothing to do with space?
"Well, no," he said. "Probably only the books having to do with the 'space genre.'"
But Hayden noted that many novels, including C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet, is set in space but is philosophical and theological and not really about such relatively pedestrian issues as space shuttles and telescopes. Indeed, the best, most affecting space-related science fiction -- think Planet of the Apes, for instance, or 2001: A Space Odyssey -- is often only nominally "about space."
Another concern was raised by science fiction writer Charlie Stross: Sci-fi isn't a huge business.
"There are about 400 (science fiction novels published in the (United States) per year, with an average print run of roughly 15,000 copies and a cover price of ... $6," Stross wrote in an e-mail. "If you taxed them at 1 percent you'd raise all of ... $0.3M. That's less than 1 percent of the cost of a Space Shuttle toilet re-fit ($50M)."
To raise something close to NASA's $15 billion annual budget at this 1 percent tax rate, the sci-fi market would have to be do $1.5 trillion in annual business. To raise just the $5 billion that the space station needs to sustain three more guys in space, annual sales of sci-fi would be around half a trillion per year.
Even counting all the toys and merchandise that would be taxed, there's no way sci-fi is big enough to be a windfall for NASA. As Stross points out, the "entire computer industry -- software and hardware both -- turns over $600 billion."
Williams conceded that he hadn't done any calculations on the matter. When he gets into office, he will have the General Services Administration do the math. But he said he was sure the amount the tax would raise would be substantial.
There are other ways to raise money for NASA, many of his critics noted. Cory Doctorow, a science fiction writer, e-mailed to say: "I betcha that if NASA was to start a tax-deductible fund for, say, financing a human exploration of Mars, that they'd get gargantuan quan from starry-eyed science-fiction people -- especially if there was a lottery that selected a sacrificial lamb from among the donors to be on the mission."
Williams is undeterred. He said people are always reflexively against a tax increase, so he isn't surprised that some people don't like his plan. But he said that he's a science fiction fan, too.
"I read the Star Wars books, the Star Trek books, and just about all the Robotech books," he said, adding he wouldn't mind being taxed, especially if it's for what he calls "the greater good."
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