Superluminary, Episode 16, THE GREAT EYE OF ZETA HERCULIS, is posted on Patreon:
Episode 16 The Great Eye of Zeta Herculis
In this exciting episode, the dead star system of Zeta Herculis is examined by the castaways, and one of the interstellar-strength neutron star weapons that long ago obliterated all biological life in the galaxy is found. The great weapon stirs to life when examined, and turns on them.
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In my youth, with a few rare exceptions, there was a clear demarcation between science fiction and the muggle world of the literary establishment. The difference was startling:
The science fiction stories were constructed according to sound and true principles of story telling. Establishment works were pretentious. artsy, experimental, elliptical, unreadable.
The science fiction story held recognizable characters, often larger than life, doing recognizable things. The establishment stories were about smaller than life characters, dipsomaniacs and coprophagics, doing meaningless actions in a meaningless universe.
Science fiction stories were oriented toward the future, to far horizons, to great adventures, and were set in worlds were no man has gone before. Establishment stories were set in back yard or some foul place, a waste dump, concentration camp or abattoir, requiring no imagination to describe or envision.
Science fiction stories were about something. Establishment stories were about nothing.
The science fiction stories were imaginative, the readership was imaginative, and no idea was too dangerous to contemplate. Science fiction readers were bold.
Establishment stories were parochial, never looked outside their narrow range of approved, conformist, herd-animal views, regarded all challenges to those views not merely as uncouth and unreasonable, but as heresy.
Their ideas were so fragile that the contrary opinion could not even be discussed.Establishment muggles were cowards.
My whole life, I dreamed of being a science fiction writer. I wanted to be in the same circles as the imaginative and bold, where the trembling, mole-eyed muggles dared not go.
Of all the things I could have foreseen in my youth, the last was what did happen:
I joined SFWA just as it was dying, and was nominated for Nebula, and then Hugo Awards, just as these awards died. In all three cases, the once-great institution died of the same cause. Each contracted the Thought Police disease, which is always fatal to the mind.
And, lo and behold, now the science fiction world conform to all the Establishment canons.
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An announcement from my publisher, which I am very pleased to pass along:
We are very pleased and proud to announce the beginning of a brand new YA fantasy series from John C. Wright that we anticipate may one day be worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as classic fantasy series such as The Dark is Rising and The Chronicles of Prydain. The book is the first in a new duodecilogy called Moth & Cobweb, and the first book in the series is THE GREEN KNIGHT’S SQUIRE: SWAN KNIGHT’S SON.
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Let us cut to the chase.
Think back to the day when you first discovered that you were a meat robot without free will, without freedom, and without dignity. Did the discovery fill you with awe, rapture, wonder and gratitude?
For, if not, the discovery is false. Truth is majestic and majesty provokes awe; truth is sublimely beautiful and beauty provokes rapture; truth is startling, because it shatters the lies we tell ourselves, and the bright surprise leaves us blinking in wonder; truth is a gift to be prized above all price, and gifts provoke gratitude.
If the discovery of material did none of these things, either your reactions are miscalibrated and do not reflect reality, or your discovery was not a discovery at all, merely a falsehoods you have yet to test with due rigor.
So? What was your reaction?
This is a reprint of my review, which I posted to Amazon.com, of Ted Chiang’s STORY OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS. It was written a few years ago, back when I was an atheist:
(WARNING! I am a science-fiction writer in economic competition with Mr. Chiang. All my gripes must be taken with a grain of salt.)
Eight well-crafted stories with engaging and interesting ideas are marred by weak endings. Each story ends with tepid pessimism.
A letter from an ally
Dear Mr. Wright;
You are surely aware of this year’s Hugo results at the time of this writing. Though small compared to the outrage committed against Dr. Pournelle, the Worldcon clique chose to insult the readers who nominated me for the Campbell by publicly contradicting their judgment that I am worthy of consideration for the award.
As you may also be aware, my book SOULDANCER has been nominated for Best Horror Novel at the inaugural Dragon Awards. I do not take insults against my person from ageing pedophile apologists to heart. However, the cretins have made the grave error of mocking the readers who are my patrons and lords.
To avenge my sovereign readers’ honor upon the CHORFs, I intend to rise from last place in the Hugos to win the Dragon, and dedicate the victory to my slighted fans. Pursuant to this design, I am offering the Kindle version of SOULDANCER for free, ending this Saturday. I would greatly appreciate it if you would be willing to help spread word of this promotion.
here’s the Amazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/Souldancer-Soul-Cycle-Book-2-ebook/dp/B01BM1SX3Q/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Brian Niemeier
Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm by John C. Wright is a finalist for a Dragon Award. These will be presented on Sunday, September 4th , at 2:30 pm in Centennial 1 of the Hyatt Regency at the Dragon Con 30 in Atlanta, Ga.
A message from DragonCon that might be of interest to my readers, both of you, and to my fan. The three of you have accomplished great things!
I am totally kidding. I know I have way more fans than that. The other three guys who read my books brings it up to an immense half a dozen!
But let us ignore the other five for a moment. You, the one person who reads my words, you are the one for whom my books and tales are meant. Just because other people also read the book, does not mean it is not meant for you, personally, to please and entertain you. The reward of your good favor, even if I never meet you or hear from you, is the only true reward. Public awards are merely an outward sign of an inward reality.
I have added one of my short stories under the Free Fic button in my header: ‘The Far End of History: A Tale from the Last Days of the Seventh Mental Structure’ It was originally published in New Space Opera II, ed. Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, Eos (2009).
I thought it would serve as a useful introduction to my work. I had already seen it posted (with no permission from me, and no payment) elsewhere on the Internet, so it seemed a reasonable candidate to post here.
http://www.scifiwright.com/free-fic/
I read this announcement at the Monster Hunter Nation website, and wanted to pass it along. Vote for SOMEWHITHER, or I will George RR Martinize your favorite characters!
The voting for the Dragon Awards closes at the end of the month. Please spread the word and tell your friends. The Dragons are open to all fans, don’t cost anything, and they want as many fans as possible participating.
I would love for the first annual Dragon to have more fans voting in it than the Hugos.Once you register herehttp://application.dragoncon.org/dc_fan_awards_signup.php they will email you your ballot. They send these out in batches, so make sure you give yourself time. If you registered, but not gotten your voting email yet, it might be stuck in your spam folder. It is from dcawards at dragoncon.
Writing is a great profession! All you have to do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until your eyes bleed, and write a story — compared to lumberjack, ditch-digger, farmhand, truckdriver, mafia hitman, or any honest labor requiring skill and effort, being a bard is the bomb!
The muse does all the hard parts, and you work for bosses, the readers, who by definition can never be wrong.
How many jobs are there were the worker loves his boss? I love my readers.
They take money that could be used for finer and nobler things, beer or poker, first-person-shooter games or renting DEADPOOL, and give it to you instead.
Wow. What a racket. Read the remainder of this entry »
Superluminary, Episode 15, BLIND JUMP, is posted on Patreon:
In this exciting episode, in order to escape the sudden and berserk attack of the undead monstrosities of Alpha Centauri, Aeneas Tell and his two stowaways are forced to engage the warpcore without any navigational calculus, to re-emerge into timespace at a random point. They are more thoroughly lost than any other human beings have ever been.
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It is a pleasure to be alive during the last days of Social Justice Fandom. These creatures, by and large, are old, sickly and obese, and playing little more than a delaying game against time, hoping that the friendly press will keep the buying public in ignorance, deceived by hoopla, one year more, one month, one day, one hour.
However, anyone can read ‘Cat Pictures Please’ by Naomi Kritzer and compare it with ‘The Star’ by Arthur C. Clarke, with ‘Or All the Seas with Oysters’ by Avram Davidson, ‘Flowers for Algernon’ by Daniel Keyes, ‘The Dragon Masters’ by Jack Vance, ‘No Truce with Kings’ by Poul Anderson.
Likewise, anyone can read Alfred Bester’s THE DEMOLISHED MAN or Robert Heinlein’s HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL, or Roger Zelazny’s LORD OF LIGHT and compare it to what is winning these days. If you notice the modern works have a certain political and philosophical bent, and all the same message, this is not a coincidence.
Anyone, that is, who has the sense to read what he is reading. Some lack the talent. They can only see before them what their fevered imaginations present, and make judgments before inspecting evidence, not after, so as to be unbiased by facts.
Once such is Damien Walter of the Guardian, who holds forth his opinion about the Hugo Awards: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/aug/20/hugo-awards-reading-the-sad-puppies-pets
A comment by Jeffro Johnson that bears repeating and pondering:
the elevation of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein to the status of “the big three” is basically a repudiation of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Post-Christian sff is also post-romance. If you look at what actually fired the imaginations of sff game designers in the seventies, I think you can really see how irrelevant the “serious” and “respectable” sff really was.
A case in point for that would be in Traveller, which also came up last night. Who defined the future for Marc Miller? It wasn’t Asimov’s Foundation. It wasn’t Herbert’s Dune. It was H. Beam Piper, E. C. Tubb, Poul Anderson, and Jerry Pournelle. Tubb wrote in the tradition of Burroughs and Brackett and provided the independent worlds, the blades, the passage types, and the drugs. Meanwhile, Anderson and Pournelle laid the groundwork for Miller’s 3rd Imperium. Christianity was a first class element of its literary antecedent.
That was at the height of the New Wave.
Bringing this back around to the Puppies in general and to Castalia House in particular: the only person I’ve read that really has the same kind of punch as Edgar Rice Burroughs would be Larry Corriea. The only person I’ve read that is really doing anything remotely like Lord Dunsany is John C. Wright. Indeed, Wright writes as if the pulp era never stopped.
I see a lot of “Puppy” rhetoric that acts as if turning back the clock to Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov is what we ought to be shooting for. But that’s not what’s actually going on here. Successful authors are actually regressing much harder than that!
The sort of people that would have endorsed this “Big Three” framework? That would be Joanna Russ.
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The results are now in! This is what is being held up as the best science fiction of the year. Sic Transit Gloria Hugo.
The Fifth Season N. K. Jemisin | Best Novel |
Cat Pictures Please Naomi Kritzer | Best Short Story |
Folding Beijing Hao Jingfang | Best Novelette |
Binti Nnedi Okorafor | Best Novella |
Uncanny Magazine Lynne M. Thomas, Michi Trota, Steven Schapansky, … | Best Semiprozine |
The Sandman: Overture Deluxe Edition Neil Gaiman, J. H. Williams III | Best Graphic Story |
Mike Glyer | Best Fan Writer |
Jessica Jones Melissa Rosenberg, Scott Reynolds, Michael Rymer, … | Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form |
Abigail Larson | Best Professional Artist |
The Martian Ridley Scott, Drew Goddard | Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form |
File 770 Mike Glyer | Best Fanzine |
Steve Stiles | Best Fan Artist |
Ellen Datlow | Best Editor, Short Form |
Sheila E. Gilbert | Best Editor, Long Form |
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I see Dr. Andreassen has once again deigned to haunt my website. Sad experience has taught me that he has indeed, like the villains at the end of THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, been reduced to the meat robot he says all men are. If you prove a point in debate with him, his brain mechanism conveniently erases it from his hard drive, so that the next time he speaks, he has been reset to the factory default, and one must raise the same point again.
Hence, I have no intention of responding to anything Dr. Andreassen says. It took me three years to realize that any words spent on him are wasted.
If any reader understands his argument, and wants to reword it, and pose it to me as a question, I will answer it. Otherwise I will not.
I will not take my time to respond to someone who refers to the statement that chess notation contains all the essential elements of a chessgame as ‘an outrageous lie.’
This is akin to saying that the statement that Newton’s Third Law of Gravity contains all the essential elements of solving two body problems is ‘an outrageous lie’ on the grounds that you don’t speak Latin and cannot grasp Newton’s PRINCIPIA.
However, for those not versed in the technical language of philosophy, the best way to explain the paradox of how mind and body can both exist, and be interrelated, without mind being made of body stuff or bodies being made of mind stuff, is by an analogy. In deference to the ghost of the human being Dr. Andreassen once was before the macrobes turned him into a meat robot, allow me to use Shakespeare, once again, in the analogy.
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