The Queen of the Tyrant Lizards
This story will appear for Epiphany in the upcoming anthology from Castalia House, THE BOOK OF FEASTS AND SEASONS.
* * *
There was no time. That is the first thing to remember. I did not know what was about to happen. That is the second thing to remember.
Imagine a time line. Select a zero point. To one side is an infinity of tomorrow, starting with positive one. To the other is an infinity of yesterday, starting with negative one. But between the positive and the negative infinities, what is there? Less than nothing, less than half of nothing, a pinprick, a dot, a point, less time than it takes to decide to murder them all.
I look into the first moment of negative one: one second ago.
Imagine a frozen moment. The glass of the chapel doors is breaking. Men in tall white hoods carrying shotguns, pistols, hunting rifles are firing. The guests are screaming, falling to the floor. And you, my love, have thrown your tall, strong body over mine, selflessly, lovingly, without a moment to think, without a moment to decide. I am feeling your body shuddering, not with passion as you embrace me, as I yield to your embrace, as we are falling; you shudder with the impact of bullets and buckshot throwing your blood, your living blood, your warmth, in sprays like Rorschach blots across the dark expanse of the expensive tuxedo I picked out, the dark expanse of your warm skin, and across the white satin of my wedding dress, the dress my many mothers sewed.
I cannot see you as you die. You are in the way.
But I see the flower girl, the preacher’s daughter, with her little pink pillow falling, her little face that will never grow any older, never see her own wedding day. She is falling, and the gold ring not on your finger is flying in the air, catching the beam of sunlight from the broken stained glass window, the one showing Christ turning water into blood-red wine.
My ring is on my finger, a perfect unmarred circle of gold. A ring is like eternity, like the eternal, infinite return of the cosmos from Big Bang to the Eschaton, from Creation to Big Crunch. It is supposed to be as eternal as a vow of love. It is shaped like a zero.
Imagine a zero moment. For all the seconds of the weeks and months before zero, the negative of time, I can see when we met on the bus, when we spoke, when I asked you why you sat in the back, when you smiled, when you touched my hand to help me down the steps at our bus stop in Atlanta and the driver scowled at you, a look of hatred. During all those seconds, my happiness was complete.
During all that time, during my exile from time, I did not know what was about to happen.
Next comes the zero moment itself: You have placed the white gold wedding band on my pale white finger, but I have not yet done the same to you. I have said the words, the two little words no bride can take back if she says them.
I do.
But the preacher it took us so long to find, to find someone willing to marry us, he has not turned and asked you yet.
So I am an uncertain bride. The probability wave has not collapsed. I am in the zero between fiancée and wife.
You are an uncertain bridegroom. I thought it was cute that you were nervous. Had I only known the reason for your fear! Why did I select this time for my exile?
Right next door to the chapel is the hall where the State Democrat Party is having its meeting. There is a big smiling poster of Bull Connor, their national committee chair, hanging over the front door. He is the commissioner for safety. The men in white hoods had come out of the meeting hall with their hunting rifles tucked under their arms. These are not elephant guns, but smaller caliber weapons, not something that could penetrate the hide of a rhino or a charging elephant. That is the third thing to remember. It was the reason why I do what I will do, here in the zero moment, here in eternity. Part of the reason.
All seconds after the zero is nothing but horror and pain and loss. The change is that sudden. Heaven is hell.
I look farther back, when first we met.
I ask ‘May I sit here?’ And you say ‘Please.’ That is also the last thing you ever say in life, to the man raising a gun. Please.
I remember you saying, ‘Why would a time traveler take a bus?’ And I tried to explain about how hard it was to get a license when your birth is a probability cloud stretched between many timelines, how hard it is to operate machines that neither speak nor listen to commands. “But you know how to drive your Time Machine, right? You have a Time Machine?”
“If you are thinking of a thing with a saddle and the sweep of years flashing by like a film in fast motion, or a blue box like a telephone booth, no, nothing like that.”
I tried to explain about the zero point, the place a scientist would call the probability wave of the universe before the Big Bang, the moment when all matter and energy, but also all mind and thought, all time and space, were gathered into one knot, smaller than the diameter of the nucleus of an atom. It contains all probability and no actuality. More than one possible universe can issue forth from the moment before time begins, and in one of them, time travel is possible. Life is possible.
What is life? Ah, my poor, poor beloved, my poor innocent three-dimensional perfect man, my prince, my everything, you who are trapped in one wormlike line of cause and effect, always going forward at one second per second, with no turn offs, no take backs, no way to undo a decision, no way to undo saying I do.
I know what life is. I can never explain it to you.
Life is the intersectional membrane where eternity touches the continuum. That is why matter only can ever operate by cause and effect, like a row of dominoes toppling, whereas living things, every stop along the chain of evolution, reaching back to the first single celled amoeba, can perform the act of anticipation. And what is anticipation? It is to act outside normal cause and effect, react to things before they happen — All life, even the humble one-celled organism, can see far enough into the future to move away from what endangers it and toward what feeds it.
Amoebas never murder other amoebas. Amoebas never kill themselves. They are too simple. But they, even they, have a touch of eternity to them.
I could explain the science behind it, talk about the nested interaction of probability waves, how time at the submicroscopic level is symmetrical forward and backward: but pretend instead that you live in a world of magic.
Life is a miracle.
Life remembers that moment before time began, that zero point before this universe started and after the previous version of this universe collapsed inward on itself, a cosmos crushed into a pinpoint.
And what of my life? The life of time travel? I am the one who had the memory of that moment thrust upon her. Why me? Why am I the one worm who grew butterfly wings and soared into the eleven dimensions? That answer is complex, and does not concern us now.
My cosmos is crushed into a pinpoint as I see my love die. I am his wife; here is the ring on my finger; but he is not my husband. His ring is in midair, impaled on a sunbeam from a shattered image of the Virgin Mary saying that all the wine is gone. All gone.
I look in the past direction, and I remember our talk on that long bus ride. You are well read, and wanted to make something of yourself. You were studying paleontology. You said the ancient beasts were monsters of legend, but real.
The talk turned to mythology. I remember you saying, ‘But why would the moon goddess love Endymion? All he can do is sleep.’
‘Yes, but it is eternal sleep, so he never dies,’ I say.
You shake your head and smile that handsome smile. ‘But he never knows her. He is never awake.’
I whisper then that if she knows he lives, it is enough.
Why did I select this time for my exile? It was not a hard question: earlier eras did not have the conveniences of modern life, no cool air at the push of a button when it was hot, no electric lights when it was dark, no aspirin for pain, and no anesthesia for childbirth.
Why no farther in the future you might ask, when everyone is driving flying cars and rockets to cities on the moon? My love, I will not crush your hopes, but that future does not ever come.
Instead, the farther you go away from the zero point between Postwar America and Pre-Jihad America, what you find is more riots, more dirt, more diseases without cures, atomics used as fashion statement to advertise religious or political points of view, and no one able to travel or buy without paperwork and identity chips. So many cameras, and so many computers tracking your every move. A woman with no birth certificate cannot travel freely, and I won’t wear a veil while walking through the bad section of town.
The laws against discrimination close all chapels and synagogues. No one tips his hat to a lady. No one holds the door for me. And the music, the pornography, the swearing, the crudeness, the loutishness, all of it gets worse and worse.
Why did the men of this generation throw everything away? This is the highest point of civilization out of all history. I know. I’ve looked.
But even here, there is hatred and violence and death. You would think they would love this nation and this era so much they would never raise their bloodstained hands against each other. But sometimes hate overwhelms love.
Look farther back into the negative direction, the past. There I am in the Fortress of Limbo with my mothers. She is me, an older version, the me that gives birth to me. She is the other time travelers. I am the only time traveler there is; they are all me. One is dressed in a snappy Nazi uniform of the women’s auxiliary, a cigarette in a silver holder in her shining black leather glove. The next is dressed in the floral skirts and wide brimmed straw hat of a Southern Belle, and girls waiting on her are mulatto, half-negresses, and they are both her slaves and her half sisters. Another version of me is dressed in the colors of Lady Baltimore, and she looks disdainfully at the slaves, since, in her timeline, the British Empire abolished the institution after the Southern Colonies attempted a second rebellion no more successful than the first.
One problem with being a time traveler is sometimes you do not get along with yourselves.
The Fortress is round and lucent as a pearl, and hangs in space among a belt of asteroids in a version as remote as we can possibly reach, the one where Earth never formed. In the center is a smaller pearl, this one made of thinking crystal, and it shows a fourth dimensional representation of the eleven dimensional map of time.
Everyone of me, at some point, is given The Talk. Mine came when I was young. I had only made one or two short hops, once to step on a butterfly in the dinosaur age so that Reagan would win an election and win the Cold War. The other was to drop a kitchen magnet on a dirt road in the backwoods for a little boy to find. Playing with the idly found magnet would lead to a lifelong passion for science, and the boy would later grow up to be the greatest inventor of all time, and this leads to the defeat of Sorainya of Gyronch, a version of me I did not like at all. Maybe that is what brings me to the Fortress of Limbo for The Talk.
After being told the usual gross stuff about birds and bees and incest, about giving birth to myself and marrying my own son, Lazarus, the topic of destroying worlds comes up.
One of my mothers, Sorainya of Roma, points to a fork in time. “Here is the decision point,” says she, grey haired, severe, dressed in the robes of the Vestal Order. “In this branch you create a paradox that destroys one of the six hundred and sixty six timelines. In the other…”
I say, “And if I foreswear time travel utterly? Agree never to use it for any purpose whatsoever? I am weary of being a puppet pulling on my own strings, of always knowing what comes next, what I will do next.”
She says, “That creates a Schrödinger’s Cat cloud, a zero point of uncertainty, from which our foretelling sees two possible results: you will behold a man murdered before your eyes, and be tempted, but will resist, and will let him die. After a long monolinear life, the danger point will pass, and you will be raised again to be one of us, a sister among sisters. The other is that you will turn time back to slay his slayers, and set in motion paradoxes beyond what we can smother.”
Her eyes narrow dangerously, and I recall that they feed fighting slaves to the gladiatorial circus in her world, and hang traitors on crosses to die in the sun.
“If you select the second option, if you use your power, you earn the ultimate penalty. We will retroactively eliminate you from the moment of your conception.”
The Nazi version of me, Sorainya of the Reich, adds coolly, “This conversation will never have taken place, and there will be no guilt on the conscience of the Sisterhood, because we will have forgotten as well. We have no record of ever imposing this penalty on any of us before. How could we?”
A version of me from the timeline where the Agrarian Revolution never took root is dressed like a cavegirl in the tanned skins of the Red Elk. Now she speaks. What her world lacks in tools and machines, it more than makes up for in wisdom: “Either hate overcomes love, or love overcomes hate. That is the only decision to be made.”
I say, “What do I care if some monolinear worm lives or dies?” We call normal people worms because they can never break out of their own personal time, never move faster than the inchwormish one second per second. And from the viewpoint of the timelessness, you sort of look like that.
The cavegirl says, “Never mock the power of love. It is stronger than us, stronger than eternity.”
I pull my gaze back to now, right now. The decision is easy. Decisions are hard only when half your mind argues with the other. When your whole heart and will and strength is devoted, you are not even aware of having had decided, of saying the words you can never take back.
Hatred or love?
If I do this thing, I knew I would be killed for it. But from the point of view of eternity, from the zero point, look to the other side, one second in the future, and see what I do.
I know what life is. You think each organism is separate, but there is only one line of cause and effect, mother and child, one chain of interconnected clouds of probability, reaching from your dying body back to the primordial amoeba.
Never mind. Call it magic.
By magic I reach back through time. No, I cannot bring you back to life, not here, not now. I cannot step backward five minutes and rush you out the back door, because my own body, the chains of cause and effect I have already established, are in the way. If I had more time to prepare, perhaps I could have done something — but there is no time. That is the first thing to remember.
At the zero point, there is no time. So all points in time are equidistant to me, the same way all the parts of my gold ring touch my finger equally.
The life in your cells has already ebbed too far. Besides, if I were to reach back and force your cells to remember their old shape of some apeman who was your ancestor, the Klansmen in their hoods would just shoot you. But you have older and older ancestors, cousins from parallel branches. Some have more life in them then others, and they are easier to reach. There is a chain of ever small ratlike beings, none of which will do. Then, I see your ancestor from late Cretaceous. His skull is five feet long, and his bite is the most powerful of any creature that ever lived.
One second into the future, the positive direction, of the zero point, I can see the result of my instantaneous decision.
Yes, I will be eliminated by my cold eyed mothers for this act, and die so completely that I never will have had lived, and no one, not even you, will remember me.
Had I chosen otherwise, I would have been safe under your toppled body, and the men escaped, hooting and laughing, their hood removed, members in good standing of the Good Old Boys, staunch pillars of the community, to go to the honkey tonk bar and drink beers with the Sheriff and the mayor and the judge. I would live beyond the moonshot, beyond the administration of Johnson, yes, that Johnson, who promised to addict your people to welfare, and break your pride, you uppity darkie, you. “I’ll have those Negroes voting Democratic for the next 200 years…”
The hypocrisy and hate of men like this would gather in my throat as I grew older, one second at a time, like worm, and then when one of your people is finally elected, these men and their sons, these men who shot you, they hurl such filth, so many slanders. And in my old age, on my deathbed, one of the mothers would appear, and say the dangerous decision time was past, that there was no more paradoxes in my future. I could have my youth and life restored to me. Everything would be mine. But not you. Never you. Time and eternity would not allow it.
So, yes, I do hate them, the men in hoods, the anonymous men, the cowards. When you rear up, I cannot restore your brains or memories, but I can reach back and pull the old shapes of ancestral cells back into the now point, the zero point, the moment. And, yes, I can even pull in the excess mass from the uncertainty cloud. Heisenberg is nice that way.
Up you rear, merely an animal now, as savage as the love that beats in my breast for you. The roar is one that had not been heard on earth for countless eons, but somehow the cells in the blood of your victims recall, and their glands react, and they lose control of their bladders. How I laugh! The gunfire hurts you, stings you, but cannot kill you, not in the first volley. And there is no second volley.
A ricochet strikes me through the brain, and so I die in instant painlessness before I see what happens next. It is a mercy.
If they had not fired on you, hurt you, made noise with their firearms, perhaps you would merely have eaten the choir. But they hurt you, my love, and your cobra eyes, red as rubies, catch them in your gaze. In your first step, you trample the leader and break his bones, and he cries and whimpers while you descend upon his followers.
Paleontologists would never figure out what those absurdly small fore-claws are for, will they? Too small to catch prey. They contain poison, so that a scratch will slow your fleeing prey, make their legs turn numb and cold. Paleontologist would never have guessed how the king of the tyrant lizards likes to play with his prey like a cat, how you catch them and let them go, and they scream and scream and scream.
Such showers and streams of blood! The chunks of weeping red meat drip from your scarlet teeth. Did they think they were fearsome in their hoods? Let them know fear now, and for the rest of their few moments of life.
Paleontologists are perhaps too kind to guess that you enjoyed to take your prey by the legs, snapping off limbs one by one, so that the lungs, the mouth, the head of the victim is left weeping and shrieking last of all, to disconcert the other members of the prey herd.
For the king of the tyrant lizard fed his bulk by eating whole herds of prey animals. And that is all the worms who slew you, my love, to me are now. Prey.
Yes, I am sorry about the innocent people killed in the chapel when your hunger is not sated, and you breaking through the walls of the chapel, and wrestling open the bus to find the warm and crunchy women and children inside. How bravely you faced the National Guard, and, later, the Army!
Small price to pay.
I should laugh. It is so like a B-movie science fiction film of this day and age. But I don’t.
But I am comforted in knowing that when my sisters and mothers erase me, everything I did will be unmade, including all these deaths.
When I am eliminated retroactively, my love, everything after we met on the bus will be erased and rewritten. You will love a long and happy and normal life, and yet never meet the girl you think of as some odd fan of H.G. Wells or Jack Williamson pulling your leg. The girl you thought was from Northern India; the one who did not know how to use a payphone.
That first conversation and that first touch of the hand is to be wiped out, sponged away from the stone monument of time. Now, I never was. You will never know me, and never, ever hear these words, which are the last imaginary letter I write to you.
But here, in the one moment, the moment of uncertainty the moment of eternity when all time is gathered into my eye as if in the eye of a goddess, I do not choose vengeance.
That is not why I did it.
This is what I would say, if there was time. But here in eternity, in the infinitesimal point between Eschaton and Big Bang, timespace does not exist, and so there is no time. I have eternity or I have love.
I have made my choice.
Did you think, even for a moment, that I was so consumed with hate that I would die to avenge you? No. I die for you. You will never know me, and I will never exist.
I die that you might live.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
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Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 2:57 pm |
This is absolutely glorious.
Thank you.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 3:09 pm |
The only mistake that really stood out at me: But here, in the one moment, the moment of uncertainty the moment of eternity when all time is gathered into my eye as if in the eye of a goddess, I do not chose vengeance.
Should be “I do not choose vengeance”.
(I’ll probably reread it. Several times. I’ll comment if I find any more.)
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 3:06 pm |
I was torn between bittersweet yearning and unbecoming laughter throughout. Certainly a standout in the dinosaur revenge genre, and I would hope to see it in the list of next year’s Hugo nominations.
Levity aside, I commend your ability to inject solemnity and verisimilitude into a story that lacked both. Reading your work consistently leaves me with an aspirational affect.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 3:24 pm |
“Move away from what *endangers* it”
“diseases without cures, **atomic?(were you thinking of some other word here?)** used as *a* fashion statement to advertise religious or political points of view”
“So many cameras, and *so* many computers tracking your every move”
“*and I* won’t wear a veil while walking through the bad section of town”
“not even you, will remember *me. had* I chosen otherwise,”
“You will *live* a long and happy normal life”
Definitely a much better version of that prose poem.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 3:50 pm |
Thank you for the compliment, but, honestly, it was low bar to clear.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 4:12 pm |
I hope this is included in “Tales of Feasts and Seasons”.
That was glorious, and in all seriousness it highlights the insipid drudgery that was the original dinosaur story. Why write that dreck when you can write THIS? And it won AWARDS?
Sad.
But if it took that to make this, I’ll make the deal again.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 5:19 pm |
I’ll ask the publisher to include it. We’ll see what he says.
Thursday, November 6th 2014 at 9:21 am |
Hey! Nice! It made it! Will the anthology be out this year?
Thursday, November 6th 2014 at 9:45 am |
In time for Christmas, which is a festival we Christians celebrate to glorify Our Lord, and which, by odd coincidence, falls on the same day as Xmas, a festival the non-Christians use as an excuse for gift-shopping and decorating their houses with lights.
Wednesday, November 12th 2014 at 9:02 am |
Just as a point of fact, the abbreviation Xmas did not come from non-Christians, but from monks who used the first letter of Christ in the greek (Xpistos) to abbreviate our Lord’s title. While some may today appropriate it to ‘cross out Christ’, that, in fact, is not its true origin.
Wednesday, November 12th 2014 at 9:24 am |
I do not know anyone who is not aware of the origin of the abbreviation Xmas, but thank you for the helpful reminder.
You might also remind people that Halloween is a Christian holiday, the Eve of All Saint’s Day, that the Christmas tree dates back to 1850’s Germany (hardly a pagan nation at that time) and that the Nativity is not a pagan celebration of the goddess Isis.
There is a lot of historical revisionism that goes on among the heathens of Political Correctness, but the answer is not to have the Evangelicals engage in historical revisionism of their own.
Wednesday, November 12th 2014 at 10:06 am |
Also note that Samhein has no connection to Halloween, as the Irish, like all the early church and indeed the Orthodox to this day, celebrated All Saints’ in April, and when the shift to November started (in Germany), the Irish were, in fact, late adopters.
Wednesday, November 12th 2014 at 11:42 am |
My apologies for reading ignorance into your association of Xmas with the secularization of Christmas. I should have known better. ;)
Keep up the good work!
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 4:14 pm |
Favorite line:
Yes, I am sorry about the innocent people killed in the chapel when your hunger is not sated, and you breaking through the walls of the chapel, and wrestling open the bus to find the warm and crunchy women and children inside. How bravely you faced the National Guard, and, later, the Army!
“and, later, the Army!” is what really makes it.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 4:46 pm |
Excellent. You nailed the voice.
And the irony is sweet. Yours is not a tale of vengeance, but of love, and yet the superiority of your tale (in imaginative scope, quality of writing, and facility with the tropes of science fiction and time travel) overwhelms that other tale, which was a tale of revenge but without any science fiction elements to it, and so enacts a complete revenge against the worlview that would choose that other tale for a science fiction award.
One possible grammar error: “That is why matter only can ever operate by cause and effect, like a row of dominos toppling, whereas living things …” I believe this is a sentence fragment because although you go on to talk of the amoebe, no verb ever completes the subject “living things.”
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 4:57 pm |
Another wonderful holiday story. It seems familiar somehow. Oh wait, The Valley of Gwangi. Great movie. Seriously, thanks again for another gem.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 5:19 pm |
No, you are being absurd! This is based on the masterpiece of Dinocinema, TAMMY AND THE T-REX starring Denise Richards (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4pJL1eAh00 jump to 34.00 or thereabouts).
(hat tip to Nate Winchester).
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 6:51 pm |
Well, it is a shame that Paul Walker is no longer with us. I am sad that we will never see a sequel. That was the most surreal movie I have ever seen and I have watched all of MST3K.
I will look for this and inflict it upon my MST3K partner my wife. It’s the least I can do for 33 years of bliss, seven children and four grandchildren.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 4:59 pm |
If you are going to do dinosaur revenge fantasies, then THIS is how you do it…
Can we nominate this for a Hugo or Nebula? The precedent has been set, after all…
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 5:43 pm |
I can nominate nothing for the Nebula, since I quit SFWA. You or anyone willing to buy a membership may nominate what you like for a Hugo.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 8:45 pm |
It’s been published.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 5:46 pm |
Sic semper tyrannosaurus.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 8:03 pm |
Excellent pun!
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 4:45 am |
Benigne dicis.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 6:54 pm |
Most very excellent! That is how it should be done.
I particularly enjoyed the Heinlein references.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 8:02 pm |
I also liked the Heinlein references. Heinlein, only better. 666 alternate timelines, and whats0her-face’s nipples aren’t in any of them.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 10:26 pm |
Dejah Thoris Burroughs, believe it or not.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 10:44 pm |
Is that what D.T. stands for?!
(Well, I always knew what parts of her stood for, I guess.)
Man, I almost wish I’d got farther in the book. No, wait, I don’t. It’s no doubt my own failing, but I can’t say I was ever quite able to get into Heinlein when he thought he was being funny.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 1:08 am |
You didn’t miss much. It started well, if you are the mood for a late Heinlein (I very rarely am nowadays), lost its way in the middle, and ended with two hundred-odd pages of the most self-indulgent crap the great man ever penned, which is saying something. If you made as far as Deetee’s signalling system you had already read the best bits.
Sigh. What a waste.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 7:25 pm |
I wouldn’t call it a waste, just an experiment that was only a partial success. The multiple-first-person storytelling worked OK, the plot rather fell apart halfway through.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 8:58 pm |
I found that the plot fell apart halfway through with both of the Heinlein stories I read- Number of the Beast and Stranger in a Strange Land. Even in Stranger he begins telling one story, gets bored, drops it and goes off telling another story with more sex in it. Since I was young at the time and those two were all I had to go on of his writing, I just came to the conclusion the guy was overrated and stopped buying his books. Foolish, perhaps, but I was a kid with limited amounts of money and reading time. Two books was all I was willing to give him.
By the way, did you take your nom de plume from Admiral “Something’s wrong with our bloody ships today” Beattie’s flagship?
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 10:43 pm |
Heinlein has his Future History stories, that are rock solid hard SF; then he has his juveniles, which are good, and at times great; and then he has his seniles, which are self indulgent rubbish after he was too big to edit.
Sad, because STRANGER was Heinlein’s big attempt to break into the mainstream with something that would now we praised as new and edgy, and only because his solid story telling instincts and his mastery of well paced dialog could carry through was is basically one long insult to the civilization and the culture that enabled him the freedom, wealth, and leisure to make a living telling rocketship yarns to kids. Of what he wrote after STRANGER, I think only GLORY ROAD worth reading, and that only if you make allowances for his sexual libertarianism and scoffing at normal norms.
NUMBER OF THE BEAST was his taking a huge swan dive into self indulgence, writing a fan fic about his own fiction. It was as if he had given up on the Final Frontier.
Saturday, November 1st 2014 at 2:48 pm |
When I was a boy, my father gave me “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel” and “The Rolling Stones.” When I was a teen, he gave me “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” and “Starship Troopers.” When I asked about the “famous” “Stranger in a Strange Land,” he said – paraphrased, “I have never finished any of his later stuff. I usually couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters without the bile rising in my throat.”
After I left home, I tried to read “Stranger” and was so disgusted by how far he’d fallen from grace that I nearly threw it away (I couldn’t, of course, because it was a borrowed book).
Still, though: Those early books of his are among my favorites to this day.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 6:10 pm |
I did, in fact. An honest tribute to men who took fast ships in harm’s way.
Tuesday, November 4th 2014 at 8:13 am |
They were brave men. There is a story I heard about the Lion itself. During the engagement of the opening stage of the Battle of Jutland, the Lion was taking repeated hits. Fire was raging below decks and the ship was in grave danger. An officer- whose name I sadly forget- was lying on a gurney, his legs blown off, refused to be evacuated until he gave and saw executed the order to flood the forward magazines. He died from his wounds shortly after. His order most likely saved the Lion from meeting the same fate as the Queen Mary, the Invincible and the Indefatigable. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 9:26 pm |
I agree. I said it started well, and there were some ideas worth exploring. The waste was to have good material, then devote it to self-gratification.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 7:20 pm |
I sense a Metachronopolis tie in…
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 10:29 pm |
The difference between actual satire/commentary that opens the doors of perception and a smear based on identity that pretends to. The difference between prose that interweaves and that which sits on the surface.
The difference between principle and identity. The difference between writing workshop conformity elevated by bigoted politics and eccentricity demoted by politics.
SF is built from the ground up to shatter identity and in its higher expressions show all success and failure to be that of humans, not men or women, gays or straights, whites or non-whites. That is the true reason old-school SF writers defaulted the identity of their characters to a generic nothing, the better to highlight principle. In truth the characters could’ve been (and often were) anybody, including aliens.
The radical gender feminism that has gutted core SFF operates in exactly the opposite fashion. There is no principle, only identity. There is no such thing as an intellectual or philosophical space that can be shared but only one hardened like rock into skin and sex. There are no intellectually perceptual shifts but rather the idea identity itself provides that. Unsurprisingly, that is also the view of white supremacists; that race and gender convey stupidity or innovation, surprise or boredom, crime or order.
In old-school SF, the person behind the hood could be and was anyone. In new-school SF that person is fixed and static going back to the dawn of time and projected into the far future.
The smear that old SFF purposefully excluded non-whites and women denies demography and the concept of boys’ adventure fiction and instead puts in its place a supremacist racist ideology the genre never expressed. Swirky’s story is not an exposé but a continuation of that smear and therefore a closing of the doors of perception, not an unlocking of them.
Old SFF never would’ve made the mistake of seeing a KKK where none existed and being blind to one that did.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 1:12 am |
Mr. Burton,
I do not say that you are wrong, but you are becoming a bit of a bore on this subject, regardless of what the original subject is. Might I ask you to put a sock in it for a while?
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 1:14 am |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pehsws6QYEo
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 1:49 am |
Mr. Brew, until the blog’s owner tells me otherwise, I’ll write what I please. Until that time you can go chase yourself.
As for me shoe-horning in inappropriate comments, Mr. Wright’s piece was a direct shot across the bows of the gender feminists sinking SFF core literature.
The fact you seem to be unaware of that explains why you don’t comment about these issues and I do.
Also, I see no reason to act as if the enemy is different just to feed into your notions of boredom. What other cults are there in SFF attacking me for waking up in the morning, publicly colluding to not read white male novels, racially insulting me and appropriating a thing they didn’t create and can’t maintain while forcing me out? Freemasons?
This is THE single biggest issue in SFF today and a fight for the soul of this country where men are being denied due process at universities, being fired for nothing, being advanced for bigotry, and generally institutionalizing madness and bigotry. Either join in or sit down, but don’t tell me what to write. I get enough of that from the PC.
What’s the issue? Do you want me to write about lard sandwiches just so you don’t take a sleepy-time nap? Or is there a shortage of binary code?
The truth is if the cowards agreeing by private email but otherwise sitting on the fence made this an issue, wrote about it as obsessively as the PC do and booted these freaks out, 90% of bigotry in SFF would disappear overnight and fun and art would return. That’s important to me.
And you’re bored. Tough. My uncles interrupted their lives to go fight Nazis and didn’t have the luxury to go fight cocktail waitresses out of boredom. Can’t I do as much and stay the course when there’s no risk to myself?
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 11:01 am |
Mr Burton’s comments are welcome here. I believe he overemphasizes one aspect of the evil that is Leftism to the exclusion of others, but I do not believe he speaks inaccurately. what he says needs to be said.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 11:52 am |
Well, that’s cuz I write about this stuff in SFF mostly, where the favorite ideology is stark. Out in the larger world it’s true it’s more of a mish-mash of weekend Marxists, straight up race-pimps, people obsessed with relativism, immigration activists, corrupt unions, welfare patients, activist Muslims, anti-Zionists, Commie historians, apologists for crime – the whole nine yards.
It’s a very large victim-tent with those unions and politicians too and they’re like vampires who take turns sucking each other’s necks. But it’s also true gender feminism is considered more centrist to the Dem Party than ever before, but it’s still just part of the pie-chart compared to the suffocation of SFF.
None of it’s good news for this country.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 9:35 pm |
I do not intend to quarrel over this, for we are in agreement. I made a request, not because I am bored, but because you are being a bore. Do you see the difference?
Yes, thanks, I know what the story was about, so I apologise for writing “regardless of what the original subject is”. That was inappropriate in the context of this post.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 10:13 pm |
Nice. People don’t tell me I’m a bore and to stick a sock in it in person but this is the net, so just eff off with your Orwellian insults as actually being “request”s. I know people who’ve been knocked unconscious making “request”s like that.
Saturday, November 1st 2014 at 3:47 am |
I am happy to take my lumps where they are deserved, but not where they are not. “Might I ask you…” is a request, and phrased courteously at that. There is nothing Orwellian about it, and nothing insulting. The “put a sock in it” idiom was a poor choice of words. I regret using it, and apologise for giving offence. Perhaps it has more offensive connotations where you come from than where I do.
That is twice I have offered you an apology now. I hope that you might receive this one without cursing.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 10:28 pm |
If somebody’s writing is boring you, there is a magical thing you can do to avoid the boredom. It is a mystical art called “not reading”. To master it you must watch at least six hours of reality TV a day. No books. But if it will help you to avoid reading things you do not want to read, it may be worth it.
Thanks to this method I am now able to actually turn the page or, since it’s the net, scroll down when somebody writes something that I do not find interesting. I think it’s something you might want to look into.
Saturday, November 1st 2014 at 3:49 am |
Thank you for the wise counsel, O Cynic. The course of discipline you recommend, though, is more then I am prepared to submit myself to.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 10:48 pm |
I understand the difference: Fail Burton writes notes on this blog only about one topic. For those not interested in the topic, or those not interested every time it comes up, the repetition is too much for them.
But since the Antisocial Antijustice Craven-Quislings whom we in mockery call Social Justice Warrior also never stop and never shut up, I cannot fault him his singlemindedness. I wish other people would help carry the burden for him, and warn of the grotesque Antichurch of Antichrist he has correctly identified: the ‘Intersectionists’ are opposed to not just one thing nor most things in Western civilization, but to everything, all things, every aspect of civilized life.
Saturday, November 1st 2014 at 12:36 pm |
This deserves to be its own post, so I am moving it.
Thursday, October 30th 2014 at 10:48 pm |
I really like this story…I didn’t hate “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” but didn’t find it that remarkable, and found the characterization inconsistent and unlikely (why was the paleontologist at the redneck gin and billiards bar, why does that bar exist, why did they think of him as simultaneously effeminate, homosexual, of Middle-Eastern and Hispanic origin, and a transsexual), but overall I thought it played to the emotions and the revenge fantasy followed by the regret over it was powerful in a momentary “huh, isn’t that interesting” kind of way.
Your response is the better story. I wonder how readers unfamiliar with the social and political context of science fiction currently would respond if they read both stories. I could almost see them being in an anthology someday side by side. Unfortunately, I suspect your story won’t receive the same attention as “If You Were a Dinosaur.”
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 11:04 am |
I did not hate If You Were a Dinosaur either, for the same reason I do not think Zsa-Zsa Gabor or Kim Kardashian is a bad actress or a good one. They are figures famous for being famous. Likewise, here: The story is famous for being famous, not because it is good. It is certainly not the best short story of the year!
For something so short, it manages to be bland and silly and forgettable, but I think the sting in the ending (when you find out you are hearing the dazed thoughts and daydreams of a woman whose husband is in a coma) is actually moderately moving.
But it is not science fiction, and is not a story, and does not have any thought or depth to it. My version was meant to correct specifically for those errors.
However, I am being unfair, since mine is five times the length of the original, so I had the leisure to add little asides and deeper points.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 12:06 pm |
Well, I’m not sure if that counts as “being unfair”. If she wanted more detail or backstory nobody was stopping her from having it.
The “story”, such as it was, is dumb, but yeah, I actually did feel a bit of a sting from the ending.
Non-story stories can be excellent. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is great.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 12:54 pm |
No, you mistake my meaning. It is unfair to compare a long story to a short story and use a yardstick which favors detail and back-story. It is like complaining a Haiku is not like a sonnet.
I am a big fan of ‘Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ — I once used it for a setting in my ‘Stormtroopers of Eden’ roleplaying game. (The men of Eden were ranging through the multiverse, destroying false utopias, like Omelas.)
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 3:23 pm |
Eh. My problem with “Omelas” is that actually, walking away doesn’t make any difference.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 3:44 pm |
That was why I ran a D&D game in that background. How hard would it be to rescue a child from a mop closet?
I may be reading the wrong message into it, but perhaps Ursula LeGuin was trying to make the point that those who walk away cannot solve the moral quandary of sacrificing the happiness of a child in order to receive the benefits of life in a hedonistic utopia. Myself, I do not see what the quandary is: save the child, and the utopia can go to the devil. If someone wants to take his place in the broomcloset for the benefit of Omelas, fine.
But then again, I am not one of those who believes that the end justify the means.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 4:19 pm |
Indeed. Whether she meant it or not, yours was a valid interpretation. Authorial intent, you know…
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 1:22 am |
If I recall correctly, the story said that the child was so damaged by neglect that the “rescue” wouldn’t really accomplish anything as the child would not be meaningfully happier anywhere else. . . . Of course, this may be merely a rationalization for inaction.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 9:29 am |
Tell that same argument to a Leftist regarding a dog or cat, namely, that the lack of intelligence of the beast means that they can be kept in a cage or close confinement in unsanitary conditions, on the grounds that their happiness is meaningless. But do not tell this to the parent of a retarded child or an autistic child, unless you are willing to take a shiv to the liver.
It is an argument so stupid that only a Leftist who long ago told sanity farewell would heed it. Indeed, just last week I heard an audio clip of a leftwing lunatic (but I repeat myself) weeping gormlessly in public over the fact that restaurant patrons eat chicken dinners. She wept for her pet chicken. I kid you not.
Kidnapping, false imprisonment, child abuse and neglect are not crimes because they decrees the ‘meaningfulness’ of the child’s life, but instead because the child is made in the image and likeness of God, and ergo his life is as sacred as the Host. This is a subtlety the self-worshiping narcissists of the postchristian neopagans would not recognize.
Myself, I notice that the utopia of Omelas also has free recreational drug use, not to mention temple prostitution. I would have been happier had the story ended with the Grey Lensman descending with his Delamiters blazing to blast the zwilniks into screaming atoms.
No, I suspect the author thinks the argument is valid, but is included only to increase the pathos the reader is to feel for the abused little boy in the closet.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 11:22 am |
I had never previously devoted much thought to the practical mechanics of Omelas because I just took the whole story as a critique of the Christian doctrines about Hell. Am I the only one who thought that?
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 1:46 pm |
I do not see the parallel. In Omelas, the happiness of the utopia depends on and rests on the misery of the idiot child locked in the broomcloset. In the New Jerusalem, the saints enter and the sinners are cast into the outer darkness, but the saints do not need the sinners to be happy.
I thought it was a general condemnation of the ends justifying the means. If Ursula K LeGuin was then as much of a far leftwinger as her later writings seem to imply, it might have been a condemnation of capitalism, on the Marxist theory that the rich in order to be rich must make the poor more poor. In her introduction to her short story about an anarchist after a successful revolution, the writer herself claims that those who walk away from Omelas become anarchists, in which case, we perhaps should read Omelas as a political parable, not a religious one.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 10:18 pm |
Notice I didn’t say it was a morally or philosophically coherent critique, just a critique. I read it as the question how can a truly good God or good person be happy when even one person is suffering so horribly? Maybe this just says more about me that that is how I interpreted it.
And you’re right, that is a particularly cheap excuse, and I’m ashamed that I never questioned it further. The child would almost certainly never have a normal adult life, he had passed the time for certain things, but his life could be improved.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 2:05 pm |
I think it’s because she’s pro-choice and didn’t think they had the right to interfere with anyone else’s choice to live off the child’s misery.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 10:22 pm |
Considering the nature of abortion and the Left’s devotion to it (and I mean devotion in the religious sense), that actually not a bad theory.
Friday, November 7th 2014 at 11:31 pm |
She procured an illegal abortion when she was in college, and despite her grave comments on the Poor and how they are neglected in SF, she also thinks that it was not merely her right, it was positively the Right Thing To Do because otherwise, she might — horrors! — have been a single mother on welfare.
Friday, November 7th 2014 at 10:31 pm |
Related to what Mary said above, this is essentially similar to a common Leftist pro-abortion argument; that any unwanted child will end up being so damaged by neglect that they would be better off dead. Why, they might even end up like one of those homeless people or something.
Of course, they can’t possibly know the child’s future, even a child who already has been abused, since children from similar terrible circumstances have many different outcomes. It is a way to bind their conscience with lies, so they do not have to entertain the thought that they or those they love might have done something unconscionable.
Mind, the ones that actually do believe it, THOSE are the ones to watch out for.
Friday, November 7th 2014 at 11:36 pm |
Yes. Point out that abused children are in reality more wanted and planned than non-abused ones and it fries their brains
Friday, February 20th 2015 at 1:10 am |
She could have given up her child for adoption. Ir’s a hellish mindset that thinks better dead than anyone else’s daughter to raise . But I digress.
Bujold is right: there are 3 Stories: the one the author wrote, the one that exists in its own right, and the one in the reader’s mind.
I had always loved Omelas because I read it as a bittersweet comdemnatiom of those who passed by on the other side. Seduce by the gay banners and clean streets of Omelas those who walked away were the worst of the worst. Unlike the poor fools who think the end justifies the means, these knew better–and walked away.
Darn. I’m sorry to learn otherwise. The principle of not walking away from Omelasmhs been a constant in my livpfe. Poor Ms LeGuin.
Sunday, November 2nd 2014 at 10:40 pm |
I hated that story because the author presents it as science fiction when it is the opposite of science fiction. She presents a fantastic scenario, informs us that we are now in the world where anything is possible, and then reminds as that we are actually in her world of fear and disgust of the unknown. Science fiction takes us away from our world, to a better or a worse. If You Were A Dinosaur forces us back into it.
And so of course I love this story for taking me away from my world to one that might be plausible with our science, and then at last to a world where a sacrifice really does make anything possible.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 7:11 am |
The Lost World meets Kill Bill. Seriously, I can so see the Quentin Tarantino film version of this.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 6:12 pm |
It’s not quite my dream tale of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure meets The Man Who Was Thursday, but it is nonetheless quite cool.
Excellent job, Mr. Wright!
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 11:50 am |
One possible spelling error: “inchworm on second per second” should be “inchworm one second per second” (perhaps with a colon or comma after inchworm?)
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 4:50 pm |
All corrections are gratefully welcomed.
Friday, October 31st 2014 at 12:27 pm |
This is great. This might be the best fix fic of all time.
I humbly suggest you submit this to wherever “If You Were a Dinosaur” was published. Then we should all ame a ruckus when the time comes to get it a Nebula.
Saturday, November 1st 2014 at 10:35 am |
[…] and if you read nothing else this November, go read this John C. Wright gift to his fans. And then tip him or something, because in a just world this story would win ALL the […]
Sunday, November 2nd 2014 at 12:59 pm |
Hoyt is right. In a just world, this would have all the awards. I really hope this gets formally published someplace. I kind of wish it were in City Beyond Time, though it doesn’t look like it quite fits into that universe, but it certainly has many similarities.
Sunday, November 2nd 2014 at 4:01 pm |
Does anyone else smell the start of Sad Puppies II: The Whimpering?
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 9:59 pm |
It is published.
By making it public on the blog, he published it.
Saturday, November 1st 2014 at 1:24 pm |
Beautifully done. The turn at the end was exquisite.
Saturday, November 1st 2014 at 2:40 pm |
Thank you.
Saturday, November 1st 2014 at 9:32 pm |
Thanks, John! I liked it.
I think you should revisit the Time Goddesses. They were interesting.
Sunday, November 2nd 2014 at 3:28 pm |
My only objection is that no one is drinking gin. I mean, seriously, you can’t have a dinosaur-lover-revenge story without someone drinking gin.
Other than that, excellent.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 2:44 pm |
Goodreads is starting its annual awards. You can vote for things like Judge of Ages or The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel in this round.
https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-books-2014
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 4:45 pm |
Mr. Wright —
This is [blankety-blank] fantastic! It is not merely an adequate response to “If You Were a Dinosaur,” it is a zillion-jillion times better! Although, as you say, it is a low bar to clear. Still. This work stands on its own. I had, in fact, completely forgotten the content of the original, and I was still greatly entertained, even much moved, by your story. The fact that it is a response to IYWADML just adds another shade of awesomeness.
I may disagree with your politics in two or three areas, sir, but by [blankety-blank], you can [blanking] write. You, sir, are a true artist. When I first read IYWADML, I thought, “For what purpose could this insipid [blank] have possibly been written?” Now I know: It was allowed to come into existence so that you would be inspired to write this response. The Author of the Universe works in mysterious ways, and He does love a plot twist.
Sorry about my language. I’m excited. I’ll try to calm down.
This is downright beautiful.
If I can suggest adding one comma? In the following passage:
Life is the intersectional membrane where eternity touches the continuum. That is why matter only can ever operate by cause and effect, like a row of dominos toppling, whereas living things, every stop along the chain of evolution reaching back to the first single celled amoeba can anticipate.
… I would suggest adding a comma after “amoeba” and before “can anticipate.” This passage threw me upon my first reading, because I thought “amoeba” was the subject of “can anticipate” and I couldn’t figure out the intended meaning. I thought you were saying, reverse Yoda/German fashion, “The first single-celled amoeba can anticipate every stop along the chain of evolution reaching back to …” and maybe some text was missing.
Eventually I understood that “living things” is the proper subject of “can anticipate,” but a comma after “amoeba” to complete the setting off of the interrupting clause “every stop along the chain of evolution reaching back to the first single celled amoeba” would have clarified that for me.
I hope that made sense. I’m not sure I’m using the words “subject” and “clause” correctly.
I had two other suggestions, but here I overstep my bounds, as these are not mere proofreader-suggested adjustments, but touch upon the writing itself. You may well ignore them; I just hope I won’t make you mad by suggesting them. They are a bit presumptuous:
1) I loved all of the political jabs, including the reminder of the Democrats’ historical record on race. (Oops, that should be “Bull Connor” rather than “Conner.”) The politically correct lefties of the type who wrote IYWADMY and who gave it an award deserve to be so discomfited. However, once you established that, I thought the “Democrats in their hoods” was maybe a jab too far, verging upon the gratuitous. Maybe “the self-righteous men in their hoods” would be more subtle? And “self-righteous” is still a fine synonym for “Democrat,” in many cases.
2) Some nitpicker might point out that the Tyrannosaurus rex preceded man’s lineage, but it is not a human ancestor. There is no direct lineage from dinosaur to primate. They are parallel branches, whose most recent common ancestor must go all the way back to some egg-laying amniote that far predated both the dinosaurs and true mammals. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_mammals)
Now, this nit did not hinder my enjoyment of the story. I was able to overlook it because of the greatness of the Art. Still, it leaves you vulnerable to charges from envious Lesser Ones that there is an error in the science of your science fiction. They may use this as an excuse to deny you a award, or publication, that this story deserves. (I suspect they may still find an excuse, out of spite, but let’s not make it easy for them.)
Maybe modify:
“Then, I see your ancestor from late Cretaceous.”
To:
“Then, I see another of your predecessors from the late Cretaceous — not a direct ancestor, but a very, very distant cousin from another branch of the amniote line, and that is good enough for my purposes.”
That bit of fudging should serve to insulate you from the nitpickers among your envious lessers.
Or you may ignore my own presumptious nitpicking, and that’s fine with me. You are the Artist.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 5:11 pm |
Thank you for your kind words. All spelling and grammar corrections gratefully accepted. Writing advice, however, I have less need of.
I debated leaving out the reference to democrats, but kept it in for two purposes: first, the anger of the main character at the contrast between her husband’s murderers and the claims made later by their heirs needs an emphasis, and it is not their self righteousness to which she objects, but their hypocrisy as Democrats; second, the original story, less than a thousand words long, the writer there found the time to put across the Southern gin-soaked bigots as the Lefty Platonic ideal of Republicans, so I felt the need to answer in kind.
The nitpick may safely be ignored, the narrator does not, in fact, make a claim that the dead bridegroom is a direct linear descendant from a T Rex. I assume most readers of Science Fiction know the basics of the evolution tree, and will assume, even if it is not explicit, that the time traveler is bringing in an organism from an different line of descent.
Monday, November 3rd 2014 at 5:29 pm |
1) Fair enough.
2) I understand “ancestor” to mean “predecessor from which another is a direct linear descendant” — but I read a lot of zoology and paleontology, in which the precision of this meaning is a very big deal, so maybe I am being too literal-minded here.
Anyway, my main point is that it’s a truly beautiful story — a rose sprouted from the manure of that which provoked it.
Tuesday, November 4th 2014 at 12:15 am |
No, on second thought, I think I like your suggestions after all. Why confuse a reader whom a nitpick might jar out of the story?
I have made a change along the lines you said. Thanks for the advice.
Tuesday, November 4th 2014 at 1:16 am |
You’ve honored me by even considering it.
Tuesday, November 4th 2014 at 12:36 pm |
It’s almost like you’re mocking some crappy Hugo story or something, John. ;)
Tuesday, November 4th 2014 at 2:28 pm |
One correction. there is a double can “can can perform the act of anticipation”
THIS WAS AWESOME. You are the man! (Oops) (Ha) You know this is a fatal blow. (Of course you do)
The guilt and shame of the false award can be denied if there is no obvious direct comparison. Who would have thought someone else would have written ANOTHER dinosaur revenge story to compare. And my Gosh what a dinosaur revenge story! Perfectly done and so obviously better in EVERY SINGLE WAY the false winner can never preen in public. You took something ridiculous and elevated it in every way. You win the award that matters most, respect from your fellow humans. PS I would pay money for that if it were printed in a collection.
Tuesday, November 4th 2014 at 4:47 pm |
You flatter me, but thank you. I shall certainly speak to my publisher about reprinting this in an upcoming anthology.
Tuesday, November 4th 2014 at 8:28 pm |
Just a minor proofreading note. When the protagonist is discussing her life with her other selves, one of them says “you will be raised against to be one of us”. I am fairly sure that should be “again”.
Tuesday, November 4th 2014 at 10:55 pm |
All corrections welcome. I just sent the manuscript to my editor, so I will have to remember and make that correction again, it seems.
Wednesday, November 5th 2014 at 1:59 am |
Err, sorry I didn’t mention that earlier. I noticed it when I first read this a few days ago.
Wednesday, November 5th 2014 at 10:03 am |
All corrections are welcome, my dear reader, but not mandatory.
Wednesday, November 12th 2014 at 12:10 pm |
Based on the title, I initially assumed this was related to Hillary Clinton. I like what it actually ended up being even better.
Monday, November 17th 2014 at 11:03 am |
John, please don’t hate me for posting this here.
But I’m getting ready to buy your book “One Bright Star to Guide Them”.
I know that it’s not in paperback format and I’m fine with that (this is the first non-paper book I’ve bought).
Can I buy it somewhere where it will just print off to a PDF?
I feel foolish asking these questions. I really want to read the book but I am not savvy to understanding all of these little devices you need know to read a book.
Thank you.
Monday, November 17th 2014 at 11:37 am |
My dear Mr Lambert, You don’t actually expect me to hate a customer who is doing
me the undeserved honor of attempting to read my book?
On the other hand, you might hate me for not understanding how these modern
electronic brains work.
I will have to pass your question on to my publisher, Castalia house.
I believe that this page
http://www.castaliahouse.com/downloads/one-bright-star-to-guide-them/ has the
information you need, but I am frankly not sure.
Sunday, January 4th 2015 at 1:06 pm |
[…] personally recommend John C. Wright’s “Queen of the Tyrant Lizards” for best short story, Vox Day’s “What is Pink SF/F?” for best related work, and […]
Wednesday, February 4th 2015 at 12:55 am |
Having read both stories, this one is infinitely superior. (Yes, I so choose to abuse the language thus.)
I have nominated it for a Hugo. Because ponying up $40 gives me the privilege of nominating eminently worthy works that have gone unjustly overlooked.
Wednesday, February 18th 2015 at 11:35 am |
[…] Queen of the Tyrant Lizards, by John C Wright […]
Monday, April 20th 2015 at 7:01 am |
[…] that will tell you straight up that they preferred “If You Were a Dinosaur My Love” to “The Queen of the Tyrant Lizards”. That’s fine. To each his own and all […]
Monday, April 20th 2015 at 11:25 pm |
[…] And, had I written it, I would have taken a different approach: but her muse is hers and mine is mine, and the realm of the imagination, being infinite, grants generous room to all. […]