Re: Smoking. Was: Clarke Award Finalists 2001

James Nicoll wrote:

In article <GPf4Q.234265$VIE2.181216@fx33.iad>,
Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net> wrote:

Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> writes:

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On 6/16/25 22:45, Titus G wrote:

On 17/06/25 07:00, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
snip

but all that I can remember about them is: more smoking than in Doc Smith.
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I was surprised at characters spending more time smoking cigarettes than
sticking to the plot in some recent reads.
Meet the Tiger. Leslie Charteris.
The Ministry of Time. Kaliane Bradley.
Hardwired. Walter Jon Williams.
The worst was non SF, Vengeance by Benjamin Black.

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Books I read in the 1960s and thoughly enjoyed were recently
reopened and closed for the very same reason as I found the smoking
scenes too objectionable. And nearly every character just had to have
another cigarette to talk to friends or tell off the enemies.
I myself never seriously smoked tobacco at any time but most
was after i was 25 yoa.  The smoking did not offend me when i read
the books the first time. Now it disgusts me to read about it. The
result of anti-smoking propaganda or the thought of my former
room mate who had smoked since she was 14 yoa and died at
75 of brain cancer that had spread from a lung cancer.

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As a lifelong non-smoker, I recall having difficulty enjoying
a restaurant meal due to smokers at the next table, walking out
of a bar smelling like an ashtray, or trying to survive a six
hour flight in the last non-smoking row of an airplane.
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I'm happy that all three are no longer issues.

 At work, I explained to a horrified student that certain heavy
benches are spaced the way they are to make room for the ash-tray
stands that used to be at regular intervals in that hallway.
 

Ah, smoke.
I used  to take a night express bus from Toronto to Kitchener, but on one occasion missed the last such and had to take the milk run, which stopped at every post office in between the two cities and took an hour longer.
I was reading the SF collection, "Sometime, Never", and didn't mind.
What I did not realize is that apparently everyone in small-town Ontario then smoked, and when I looked up from my reading an hour into the trip, the air was very hazy indeed - a beautiful curl of smoke was drifting, caught in the reading light, just past my eyes.
It was not possible to open windows. I was used to smoke, and didn't suffer on the trip, but I had an hour's walk from the end of the bus route, and barely made it, coughing badly.  As I did  the next day also.
I used to joke that the Toronto chess club was so smoky that I couldn't see the other side of the board.  An exaggeration, but figures across the room were hazy.  This probably worked to my benefit, keeping me at the University working, as opposed to wasting even more days at the club.
And as a pub goer ... I can recall a young man who smoked some kind of cigarettes that produced vastly more smoke  than usual.  He could render a large room uninhabitable in ten minutes. But even without his presence the smoke was terrible.  We headed for a reputedly low-smoke pub once, opened the door, and smoke billowed out.
I recall the howls of protest when smoking was banned in Ontario pubs. Nobody would come!  The pubs would go bust! Government overreach! Nanny state!  Every pub  I used to go to is sill in business, of course. People who wanted a decent pint and pub food, but not a smoke bomb, actually existed and more than made up for the loss of smokers, if any.
ER admissions for several smoking-related diseases dropped sharply at the same time. The ban was a remarkably effective health measure and saved money, too.
I do not miss those days.  Or as my doctor said when he looked at my lung x-rays - "Are you *sure* you never smoked?".
But I don't object to smoking in books or movies.  I read historical novels involving worse.
I think MacLeod his having fun with the idea that, once medical science can deal with all smoking-related illnesses easily, smoking may make a comeback.  Which I found amusing in the novel.
William Hyde