COUNT TO A JULIAN by John C Wilson — Wait. Who?
Posted on 13 October 2011
Someone tell Barnes & Noble that they have the wrong review posted on their site for my book:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/count-to-a-trillion-john-c-wright/1103614708
Let’s read:
Decades after the world has descended into anarchy, Menelaus Montrose dreams of making it better. He jumps at the chance to escape backward Texas, now an independent country, to participate in a daring expedition to recover antimatter from an alien relic in a nearby stellar system. Montrose’s misguided self-experimentation leaves him comatose for years; when he regains consciousness, he learns his surviving crewmates have used the antimatter to conquer and reshape Earth. They have also left the planet obligated to the alien hierarchy responsible for the antimatter’s creation.
Er… none of that is exactly accurate. It sounds like someone read the dustjacket rather than the book, and got little details wrong. Let us read on!
Wright (Orphans of Chaos) is at his best when he abandons his trite characters and cardboard terrestrial setting to contemplate the Stapledonian implications of a government able to function across the vast expanses of space and time, appealing to readers interested in glimpses of the unfathomable immensities of our universe.
Well, the trite characters and cardboard setting part is right (so maybe the reviewer DID read the book) but the Stapledonian vistas of vastness do not actually occur in this volume; they come up in later sequels. Let us read further!
From the Hugo-winning author of Spin, an exuberant adventure in a post-climate-change America!
In the reign of President Deklan Comstock, a reborn United States is struggling back to prosperity. Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, after the Fall of the Cities, after the Plague of Infertility, after the False Tribulation, after the days of the Pious Presidents, the sixty stars and thirteen stripes wave from the plains of Athabaska to the national capital in New York City. In Colorado Springs, the Dominion sees to the nation’s spiritual needs. In Labrador, the Army wages war on the Dutch. America, unified, is rising once again.
Huhn? My book has a fimulwinter caused by Imperial Japanese weather control warfare used to eliminate the germ warfare virus released into the ecosphere by Jihadists; and the world is suffering from an energy abundance, not a droughth. But let us read on!
ROBERT CHARLES WILSON was born in California and lives in Toronto. His novel Spin won the Hugo Award in 2006. He won the Philip K. Dick Award for his debut novel A Hidden Place; Canada’s Aurora Award for Darwinia; and the John W. Campbell Award for The Chronoliths.
I am not now, and rarely have been in the past, Robert Charles Wilson in any of his myriad forms or avatars or incarnations.
True, I trifled briefly with becoming Robert Charles Wilson at one time, but fans of Wilson wrote stiffly worded letters to the TIMES, and in response the Jeddak of New York, Muffy the Lesser Moff Tarkin, secretly ordered the psychosurgical process to be reversed. An experimental submarine called Proteus was miniaturized by the CMDF and introduced into my bloodstream by means of a hypodermic hidden in the tip of one of umbrella-weapons of the master criminal Oswald Cobblepot, and a miniature team of brain surgeons, using an experimental futuristic ray-energy device called a ‘laser’, removed all the stolen Robert Charles Wilson material from my nervous system before the transmogrification and soul-absorption was complete, much to my chagrin. Alas, his fame and talent slipped from my claws! I would have gotten away with it too, had it not been for those meddling kids!
Wait. Didn’t Barnes & Noble just go out of business?
NOTE TO THE HUMOR IMPAIRED: I am just kidding about when the review calls my settings cardboard and my characters trite. Clearly, the reviewer did not read the book! What an egregiousness error! My characters were cardboard and my settings were trite. He had that backward.
I am hoping the legions of sciffy-crazed Robert Charles Wilson fans, in the mistaken belief that he wrote Count to a Trillion will begin an “Preoccupy Wall Street” protest world-wide, or larger (we should include in the rocky inner planets) and force Publisher’s Weekly to retract this scurrilous and outrageous slander and publish a fawning flattering review, calling me an elegant stylist and a true visionary, or something else to trick the unwary into buying my hackwork.
I am sure the Wilson Horde will not be mollified until Publishers Weekly agrees to buy a copy of Julian Comstock IN HARDBACK! (which is the Wilson book here described.)
UPDATE! Showing just a part of the eerie mind-clouding powers I learned from the Ancient One in Tibet, I have arranged so that the inner-system-wide “Occupy Your Idle Time” protests against Publisher’s Weekly by the all-powerful Robert Charles Wilson Empire have encountered success!
Naturally, Publisher’s Weekly was too embarrassed to print a retraction in their own name, so they used the Library Journal instead:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/book/892102-421/sffantasy_reviews_october_15_2011.html.csp
Wright, John C. Count to a Trillion. Tor. Dec. 2011. c.368p. ISBN 9780765329271. $25.99. SF
Menelaus Montrose, a duelist (“hired gun”), joins a space expedition, eager to decipher a cryptic extraterrestrial artifact called the Monument. After an attempt to bolster his intelligence through forbidden experimentation goes wrong, Montrose awakens from an enforced sleep many years in the future; he finds that his genius, having lifted him to superhuman status, reveals to him the dark meanings of the Monument’s inscriptions. The author of the “Orphans of Chaos trilogy” (Orphans of Chaos; Fugitives of Chaos; Titans of Chaos ) launches a new sf adventure series featuring an unusual and eccentric hero and a world in which economic collapse has led to an ostensibly peaceful utopia. VERDICT An elegant stylist and a true visionary, Wright will delight hard sf fans with his exuberance, while his characters and plot keep the action fast and furious.
Wonderful ! I wonder if the Internet has any other reviews of a book not slated for release until December. Let us look:
John C Wright stunned with world with his immense talent, but where more stunned by his immense ego and more immense body odor. If he has time to write a trilogy, why doesn’t he have time to write his Mother? Everyone should rush right out and buy a book by Robert Charles Wilson in hardback. — Donna Wright
Hmph. That is from my mother’s home page. It is good that she reads my books. I know at least I have one reliable fan.
Ha ha!!! Very amusing, Mr. Wright. It is good when a writer can laugh at himself!
Sean M. Brooks
I would characterize the characterization not as characters of cardboard but as characters cut from broadcloth. There is something very much out of R.A.Lafferty in their antics. And something of A.E.VanVogt in the immensity of the stage on which they strut and fret. Just think: Two TFI authors* in one!
____________
(*) TFI = Two First Initials. Perhaps our host should present as J.C. Wright.
You wrong me, sir! As a Roman Catholic, like Tolkien, I have THREE initials — JCJ Wright. I took the saint’s name of Justin Martyr, patron of philosophers for the second middle name. (I wanted it to be JJC Wright, since I think that looks better, but I was told tradition barred the way). My Godfather asked me why I did not take John, the patron saint of writers, and I told him to his surprise that I think of myself as a philosopher primarily, and a writer secondarily. To be a writer, you need a publisher and audience and an immense goodwill from the audience. To be a philosopher, all you need is a brain and a universe. Most people have at least one.
William Olaf Stapledon could be said to be
more Philosophiction than Scientifiction too.
But even G. R. R. Martin is a lapsed Catholic…
“But even G. R. R. Martin is a lapsed Catholic…”
*sigh* Well THAT explains alot…
Need I say anything else?
Well if it’s any consolation John, all the other reviews I saw on B&N.com were good. Only the one mentioned your cardboard characters and trite settings. Not that I’m confirming that, jut repeating what they wrote! (I have not even had a chance to read it yet!) :0
As a writer, how do you deal with the critiques? I mean I would be hurt if someone called my stuff ‘cardboard’ or ‘trite’. Is it just a tolerance you build up, or you just don’t care?
“As a writer, how do you deal with the critiques? I mean I would be hurt if someone called my stuff ‘cardboard’ or ‘trite’. Is it just a tolerance you build up, or you just don’t care?”
The first impulse is of course to defend oneself, and to write either a persuasively logical or rhetorically witty reply in order to humiliate the malfeasor. I did that exactly one time when my first book came out, in response to criticisms that were so bizarre and seething with hate that I suspected neurosis. in a fashion I thought was measured and magisterial. Then I found out the neurotic was the friend of my editor’s wife. Before my next book came out, I had a heart attack and met Jesus, who scared the be-Jesus out of me, and put the fear of God in me. Suddenly, what reviewer write looked very different to my newly opened eyes: they are entertainers like I am, not judges nor jurors. Their fame and glory comes from being able to write up funny and furious attacks — they know no one listens to them. Only when a large crowd of critics all agree on a book being good does any rumor get started.
They are like Don Rickles. Insult comics. They are trying to be funny with the material they are given. There are a few who have a reputation for wisdom and good taste, and perhaps those few could be taken seriously. And if the criticism is serious, take it into account, and correct the mistake you are making. If there is no mistake to correct, or if it is a mistake you cannot (for whatever reason) find the time or power to correct, then let it not bother you.
In this case, I actually wrote up a list of my scenes, which I think are fascinating and which I am sure will thrill my readers, from the fortress of the world tyrant built into the crater wall overlooking the ruins of the nuked city of his long dead foes to the haunted and deserted beanstalk remaining from an happier age, I don’t think I am using any spot anyone has used before. The characters are complex, and I made sure each one had two or more conflicting reasons for doing everything he did.
But then I remembered the lesson of the critic I learned above. The book has to speak for itself or not at all.
I also remembered my own reading and buying patterns. The number of times I bought a book based on a review, or failed to buy one from an author I liked due to a bad review, hovers around the single digits, and my house is stuffed with books: I have more books just on my nightstand than every book I have every bought based on a review.
I also recall the face of Christ, who did not seem very pleased with the overwhelming egomaniacal hubris I had so carefully nursed and fed like a Lovecraft character feeding a half-extradimensional monster-brother chained in an attic of a rural hovel. A little humility can do no one any harm, whereas flattery is like wine. A man drunk on pride can take a small glass with dinner, perhaps.
Dear Mr. Wright,
Very interesting, especially how you met Our Lord and now stive to master charity and humility. As we all should.
But, I have been affected by book reviews. I have sometimes purchased books after reading reviews about them. I’ll list three examples: John Kennedy O’Toole’s A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, Catherine Edwards Sanders’ WICCA’S CHARMS, and Sarah Ruden’s PAUL AMONG THE PEOPLE. I first came across mention of these books in reviews printed by NATIONAL REVIEW. In naturally different ways and for different reasons, the reviewers all praised these books. Which obviously means I trusted their judgment since I purchased copies.
So, my opinion is that depending on the reviewer and the venue, some reviews are worthy of being trusted.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
Oh, I would also notice that I have bought nonfiction books based on reviews: I just bought RELIGION OF PEACE because it was sneered at in a review by John Derbyshire, who having lost God, has lost his wits, and now suffers from me-am-meat-robot-delusion syndrome (which is the technical medical name for the philosophy of materialism); and I do not know the name of the syndrome that makes one unable to tell the difference between Christianity/Civilization and Mohammedanism/Barbarism: but he gave himself a case of that one, too.
I also bought MAMMOTH BOOK OF SF because it was sneered at by various Mouths of Sauron and enemies of the West for not having the proper race-quota of SF authors in the table of contents, because, as we all know, no one enjoys a story on its merits, but only on the sex and skin color and national origin of its author. Out of hatred for the thought police of Mordor, I pried open my scroogemcduckian-tight wallet and bought the book. So I suppose I bought at least one fiction book based on a review as well.
Dear Mr. Wright,
That is interesting, sometimes being influenced to buy a book by HOSTILE reviews of it. Especially if the reviewer was a politically correct Mouth of Sauron or one of the more irrational varieties of atheist. I can see how, if a Mouth of Sauron bashed a book you would start thinking it’s actually a GOOD book.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
Dear Mr. Wright,
Thought of another point. The correct, technical name for people unable or unwilling to tell the difference between Christianity/Civilization and Mohammedanism/Barbarism is APPEASER. Or, APPEASNIK.
Sean M. Brooks
XD
Interesting! I used to love writing when I was younger, but the fear of criticism kind of drove me away from ever trying to get anything published, so I more or less stopped writing. So I will take what you said to heart, thank you!
“I’m convinced fear is at the root of most bad writing.” ~ Stephen King
Then Stephen King must be a very fearful man!
Jokes aside, I must dispense with my old fears. After all, according to someone who I can’t remember, “Fear denies Faith”
Actually I think that’s what the Space Marines would say in the “Dawn of War” PC game, lol
Hey I may not be able to quote Shakespeare, but I sure can quote video games!
It’s cardboard … or “Card overboard”
Hi, SFAN,
Do you mean Orson Scott Card? (Smiles)
Sean M. Brooks
Indeed
Hi, SFAN,
Ha! Some writers, unfortuntely for them, have names it’s easy to make jokes about. When done in a friendly way, no harm is done!
I have a translation of St. Augustine’s CONFESSIONS by a Fr. PINE-COFFIN. I’m sure that poor guy had to put up with his share of puns and jokes about his rather unfortunate name!
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
…Or Mr. Right… ;D
Even card-carrying Card fans may agree that Ender sounds
like an ironic name for such a long series… On the other
hand,maybe that’s why he’s getting into writing manga…
Well actually, John has a son named Justin…as in Just Wright! His teachers will have fun with that I’m sure
Is his name “Justin” or “Justinian” like the old Byzantine Emperor?
And Manweofthevalar sounds like a good name for a band
I forgot about the umlaut,it can’t be more metal XD
lol, so it does!
And why not, after all there is Amon Amarth (Mount Doom)
Manwë-of-the-Valar is King
and Master of the Wind
“The Gods made Heavy Metal,
and they saw that it was good!”
“The Gods made Heavy Metal,
and they saw that it was good!”
So they did!
So let it be written, so let it be done!
So it is written
… It shall be!
Ride like the wind.
Fight proud, my son.
You’re the Defender
God has sent.” =D
Reveremt greetings, Lord Manwe!
Alas, I’m sure Mr. Wright’s son Justin will get more grief about being “Just Wright” from his friends, not his teachers.
“Justin” and “Justinian” are both correct. Btw, “Justin” was the name of both Justinian’s predecessor and successor as Emperor. That is, Justin I, Justinian I, and Justin II.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
Hello again Sean Michael, long time no ‘see’!
“Alas, I’m sure Mr. Wright’s son Justin will get more grief about being “Just Wright” from his friends, not his teachers.”
Yes, probably, but I hope not
And I did not mean his teachers would give him grief, but rather they might joke with him about it.
And about Justin/Justinian, it seems you are correct sir! In my defense when I hear Justinian, or even Justin, the first person that comes to my mind is Justinian the Great, this guy here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justinian_I
So I usually end up forgetting that there are several Justins
Reveren salaams, Lord Manwe! (Smiles)
Well, by “grief” I did mean Mr. Wright’s son Justin might have to put up with jokes about being “Just Wright.” I trust they will only be friendly jokes!
I read a lot of Roman history, both translations of chronicles like the RES GESTAE of Ammianus, and the writings of Procopius and modern historians such as JB Bury’s classic HISTORY OF THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE FROM THE DEATH OF THEODOSIUS I TO THE DEATH OF JUSTINIAN I. So it’s no surprise I was familiar with the family of Justinian I. That Emperor was a great marred, alas, with equally great faults.
If interested, look up SM Stirling and David Drake’s “The General” series. Those books are set far in the future after the flowering and then fall of a Terran Federation on the planet Bellevue. The series centers around an AI combat computer advising a soldier named Raj Whitehall as he struggles to prevent the final collapse of civilization on that planet. Alternately assisted and threatened/hindered by his sovereign Barholm Clerett. Stirling modeled Whitehall on Belisarius and Barholm Clerett on Justinian.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
Thank you for the info Sean Michael
I may just check “HISTORY OF THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE FROM THE DEATH OF THEODOSIUS I TO THE DEATH OF JUSTINIAN I” out, I do enjoy Roman history!
He is after the Emperor who reformed the laws of Rome, and after Lord Juss of Demonland from ER Edison’s THE WORM OUROBOROS
While I have never read “The Worm Ouroborus”, naming your son after a Roman Emperor, very cool! Unless of course someone named their kid Nero, or Caligula…but that is another story. When I have kids I plan on naming one of them Constantine!
I knew I wasn’t the only one thinking WORM OUROBOROS!
I didn’t think of it, but I read and enjoyed the book too
Juss’s full name is Justinian. His nickname is Juss after Lord Juss from Worm Ouroboros…John and I did not realize when we picked that nickname that, even in the world of fandom, only five other people have currently read that book.
Juss only appears as Just Wright on the coverfly of John’s novels.
Personally, I think Juss Wright (like a Southerner saying Jus’ Wright) is worse than Just Wright, but he is definitely a Juss, when he is not the Elf King.
I see, thank you Mrs. Wright, BTW, your ‘Daughter of Prospero’ trilogy is great!
FWIW I think Justinian is a great name, it sounds both ancient and noble.
“John and I did not realize when we picked that nickname that, even in the world of fandom, only five other people have currently read that book.”
lol
Well make that soon to be six, I have “Ouroborus” on my to read list.
Holy moly. I tried like a dog to find that translation in the 90′s – no luck. I see it is a kindle release now, alas I have the nook (although I am thinking of getting the kindle too to cover all bases). And, yes, when his translation was recommended in a history of philosophy class I was taking, it got big laughs.
Thanks for the find. If I can recommend something (sort of in trade) try out Wilhelm Windleband’s A History of Philosophy. I promise, it is unique among such texts, but ultra, ultra condensed. Not a beginner’s book by any stretch, but you don’t seem to be.