John C. Wright's Journal

A Christmas message from the beautiful and talented Mrs. Wright

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

You readers here are the best possible fans. You have no idea what a blessing you have been to this family. May God reward you in the most miraculous ways!

For my part, I will do the one thing I can do to serve you all, I will continue to encourage John to write!

May the new year bring us all many enchanting stories!

To which I say amen. Her encouragement is basically the fuel my soul runs on. So I have nothing to add, except a catwoman picture:

Happy Easter to one and all.

When you meet someone who says Easter eggs are a pagan holdover of a pagan symbol, you can remind him that during Lent the tradition was to give up eating meat and eggs, so that eating delicious, delicious eggs again after 40 became a matter for ceremony. Our grandfathers lived in a more ceremonial hence more fun society, one more suited to human psychology, and so having the kids eat eggs again became kind of a game, a hide-and-seek, and the eggs were decorated, because in those days people loved kids, and were not told having children was a disease that overburdened the earth, and did not abort them in the womb.

Of course, if he was raised in a modern school among modern thinkers, he will not know what Lent is, or know any history at all, and will despise his grandfathers.

Abortion, not ceremonies and games surrounding the celebration of the Resurrection, is the true pagan holdover.

On this day of life, let us remind ourselves that souls dead in sin can rise again, nations dead in corruption can be revived, and even the science fiction genre, dead in political correctness, can rise again.

• acricketchirps posted on March 31, 2016
  Or as we sing it: Haec nox est, de qua scriptum est: Et nox sicut dies illuminabitur: et nox illuminatio…
• Mrmandias posted on March 28, 2016
  Happy Easters that have been and are yet to be.
• Scholar-at-Arms posted on March 27, 2016
  Tom Simon of Bondwine also wrote on that coincidence: http://bondwine.com/2016/03/25/happy-new-year/

Gaze upon the AWESOME!
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• HMSLion posted on July 6, 2014
  Eeh. Waste of perfectly good gunpowder. Goex is going for $16ish a pound these days.
• TJIC posted on July 6, 2014
  My 150lb Hay Budden anvil is in really good shape, and I cringe at the idea of shooting it high…
• gettimothy posted on July 5, 2014
  awesome! thx.

Rejoice! He is Risen indeed. Why seek ye the living among the dead?

Joyous Easter to all. Let the victory celebrations shake the world!

• Legatuss posted on May 8, 2014
  A minor quibble. I don't think Jesus looked like that. I mean, look at the guy, with skin that light,…
• MotherWit posted on April 21, 2014
  He is risen indeed!
• jpw6150 posted on April 21, 2014
  Thank You John Yes, an honorable history of service and worship since the first days of Mary Baker Eddy. I…

NASA reports that a total lunar eclipse will be visible from the East Coast of North America, lasting from 2.00 in the morning to 3.00.

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2014.html

Meanwhile, the Good Book reports that

“And I will show wonders in the heavens, and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke.  The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of Jehovah.”  Joel 2:30 -31

“The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before that great and glorious Day of the Lord.” Acts 2:20

I have heard (but cannot find a confirming report) that there was such an eclipse during the Passion of Our Lord.

Holy Week is a fine time to repent, go to confession, and get clean. Fasting is good to tame lust and gluttony, almsgiving to tame greed and avarice, and prayer to tame pride.

If anyone tells you that Easter Eggs is a pagan survival to worship the great goddess ‘Oestre’ — this is a lie. The habit in the older times was to give up eggs for Lent, and the children would celebrate the end of the strictness of 40 days of Lenten fasting by eating eggs. ‘Oestre’ just means ‘Spring’ in the some Northern European languages. I am sure you can find a goddess named ‘Spring’ somewhere in some pagan mythology — even though I have never heard of her, outside arguments like this, despite my years of study in mythology and folklore — in the same way you can find gods named ‘Sky’ such as Uranus and goddesses named ‘Earth’ such as Erda. In any case, if Easter were a survival of Oestre-worship, why is the word for Easter in all the romance languages named for the Paschal Feast? (Italian=Pasqua; Spanish=Pascua; Pascques)

• Porphyry posted on April 20, 2014
  "They know how to interpret the signs of the sky, but not the signs of the times" I suppose this…
• Carbonel posted on April 19, 2014
  Really? I did not know that. I met Jagi because of that game, and I was never more happy at…
• John C Wright posted on April 15, 2014
  Still Play! Do I ever! My answer is here: http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/04/do-i-role-play-ask-rather-do-ever-i-stop-part-one-roling-and-writing/

I heard that Gene Wolfe was voted Grandmaster in this years Nebula. Congratulations! Long overdue!

This is from Locus Online News:

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America named Gene Wolfe the recipient of the 2012 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. Wolfe has written many novels and short stories, and has previously won two Nebulas, five World Fantasy Awards, and six Locus Awards, among others. Wolfe also won the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007.

The award, given for “lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy,” will be presented at the 48th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose, CA, May 16-19, 2013. Previous recipients of the award include such luminaries as Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Connie Willis, Anne McCaffrey, and Joe Haldeman.

• Paul Weimer posted on May 22, 2013
  No, you can't win a Nobel Prize for Literature posthumously.
• Dirigibletrance posted on May 22, 2013
  Never heard of her before, but now that I've looked up her works, this "Canopus in Argos" series looks very…
• Dirigibletrance posted on May 22, 2013
  Has a Nobel Prize ever been awarded posthumously? It irks me that Mr. Tolkien was never awarded one. He essentially…

This is the single most odd thing that has ever happened to me. I got this letter in my inbox just now:

Thought you might find this amusing. I had the good fortune of attending a talk by Marc Barnes, the Bad Catholic, held at a local restaurant. My friends and I got there early to get good seats (which we did), and I had brought a copy of Orphans of Chaos with me to kill time before the talk began. It was still sitting on my table when Marc began talking, and in the middle of his introduction he spotted it, leaned over to look at it more closely, and broke off on a tangent: “John C. Wright is a great author! You all should look him up, he recently converted to Catholicism and blogs apologetics. My teacher brought him in to talk at my scifi writing class and he was like this huuuuuge tall dude and he brought a sword with him! It was a cane sword and he swung it around and my teacher was looking like ‘Ohmygosh I’m gonna get fired for this o.O’. Can I see that book, no, wait, after the talk…”

For those of you who do not recognize the name, Marc Barnes (not to be confused with Marc C. DuQuesne) is the bad Catholic of BAD CATHOLIC, one of the wittiest and most well spoken young men who takes up the pen in defense of the faith. This precocious prodigy is but a tender eighteen summers of age, but he writes with the wisdom of Nestor.

He was in the same room with me, and I did not even know he lived on the same continent with me! I am flabbergasted that he did not walk up and offer to sign an autograph for me. He should know I am a fan.

I had a brush with fame and never knew it. I might have actually spoken to him and not known it!

• Rade Hagedorn posted on May 22, 2012
  Sigh...duology not trilogy. Curse you iPad!
• John C Wright posted on May 22, 2012
  Such visions and healings are commonplace, not odd. Why don't you use that same facility you have for looking into…
• Rolf Andreassen posted on May 22, 2012
  This is the single most odd thing that has ever happened to me. This from a man who claims to…

A joyous Easter to one and all. The Paschal sacrifice was made for all and offered to all, both those that believe and will receive of the feast, and those who do not. It is promised that the Angel of Destruction will pass by those who receive, and leave them untouched. Without this, there is no hope at all.

Here is a video I found by chance, with images from THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST set to music from SAINT JOHN’S PASSION. This is for those who might think the holiday is about chocolate and brightly colored eggs.
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