Hoyt on Loss of Wonder
Posted on 10 April 2012 | 12 responses
Sarah A Hoyt at According to Hoyt has an essay well worth reading: Bring Back That Wonder Feeling.
The author contemplates the slow decline of science fiction, debunks the common explanations “The age of wonder in SF is between 12 and 14” or “They’re living in a science fiction world ” as “bullsheep” and offers a more insightful theory as to its causes.
Loyal readers will see a similarity of theme between Mrs Hoyt and Mr Wolverton, whose essay on the limits of mainstream genre I lauded and recommended in a previous article.
Here is a quote from Hoyt:
VOTE NOW! It is the finals! Prospero is trailing badly!
Posted on 10 April 2012 | 2 responses
A message from the beautiful and talented Mrs Wright:
Hey Folks,
I have made it to Round Five of the Six Rounds of the Book Tournament. This means that I actually won the bracket I was in. I was the top book out of the 16 books.
I am now up against the top book of another bracket. This book got twice as many votes last time as I received. So my chances are slim. In the hope of doing my best, I would like to ask that, not only will those of you who are willing to support me go vote…but if you might be so kind as blog, repost on Facebook, or Tweet this link and ask friends and followers to vote, I would be most grateful!
Soothsayers, Revelations, Portents and other Celestial Signs
Posted on 9 April 2012 | 10 responses
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/japanese-quakes-epicenter-located-near-marian-apparition-site/
Niigata, Japan, Mar 12, 2011 / 07:17 am (CNA).- The epicenter of the earthquake that caused a deadly March 11 tsunami is located near the site of an apparition in which Mary warned about a worldwide disaster that could afflict humanity.
Japanese church officials have confirmed that the Diocese of Sendai, in the north of the country, was hit hardest by the 8.8 magnitude earthquake – the worst in Japanese history – and the resulting 23-foot waves.
Hundreds of people have already been confirmed dead in the city of Sendai, located less than 90 miles away from the apparition site of Our Lady of Akita in the town of Yuzawa.
The city of Akita, which experienced fire damage and flooding along with many parts of northern Japan, is a place of veneration for Catholics.
In 1973, the Virgin Mary was said to have predicted a number of future events – including natural disasters even more serious than Friday’s earthquake and tsunami – during three appearances to a Japanese religious sister, Sr. Agnes Sasagawa.
The purported appearances of the Virgin Mary in Japan were reviewed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1988. During his time as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prior to his election as Pope Benedict XVI, he let stand the local bishop’s judgment that the apparitions and the messages were acceptable for the faithful.
The Sheathed Paw of the Lion
Posted on 6 April 2012 | 46 responses
A short story for your mediation on this Good Friday.
———————————————–
I realize another century is supposed to pass before you wake from cold sleep, but, since it is my turn to be alive, I thought I should quickly summarized the events of the late Twenty Fifth Century for you, and for Rogers, Graham, Davis, Taylor, and Arthur.
I should mention that, while we were coldsleeping, psychology has apparently become an exact science, and the method of rendering human nervous systems to match their environment, both physical and political, has been precisely defined. As it turns out, the human nervous system reacts most clearly and strongly to pain signals, especially when combined with psychological disturbances such as shame and humiliation, and so the Harmonic Scientists and doctors of infliction take special care, when applying negative rewards, to use method that to us might look awkward or even cruel. But it is all based on a very carefully determined theory. It is called the Harmonic Science, since it allows all elements of society to operate together in peace and joy, especially those born to be burdened with concern for the public weal, and other positions of great responsibility.
Rogers had the watch before me. You remember those events. The National Aerospace Administration had long since lost the capacity to launch rockets into space, for obvious reasons, but the Forbidden City allowed us to retain receiving dishes, radiotelescopes, and the like, since these did not disturb the harmony of the World Kingdom.
Perhaps the Forbidden City regretted that decision when certain Search-for-Extraterrestrial-Intelligence signals were answered with a simple code spelling out the digits of pi in base two, of the square root of two in base forty, and then a simple grid drawing a recognizable diagram of the Pythagorean theorem.
At first the signals were thought to originate in Epsilon Carinae, one of the four stars making up the asterism called the False Cross, so named because of its reputation for being mistaken for the Southern Cross and leading to navigation errors.
At the command of the Son of Heaven, Peking turned the mile-wide orbital array known as the Thousand-Eyed Bodhisattva toward the signal source.
This was against the cautious advice of the Harmonic Scientists. As they predicted the lack of observation produced a disharmony. There were riots among the ruins of the major cities in North America — it was a holiday from the omniscience of the Akashic Internal Intelligence Service, so what else did one expect? — but the array caught clear pictures of what the press immediately dubbed the Big Dumb Object.
The rioters, and anyone unlucky enough to be netted in municipal purification sweeps, we executed by sawing. One of our still-loyal descendants in the waking world died that way. The Harmonic doctors hung her by the feet and sawed through her body from the crotch down. This method allowed the blood to drain into her brain during most of the slow process, to keep her alive longer. I never learned her name. She looked like a fourteen year old, but it is hard to tell, since the people are shorter these days, due to malnutrition.
The Object was in a hyperbolic path, more distant than the orbit of the planet Eris.
Mark Steyn on THE HUNGER GAMES
Posted on 5 April 2012 | 33 responses
Having written an essay-length review of the movie (not the book) THE HUNGER GAMES, I am chagrined to read Mark Steyn, columnist to the world, so adroitly articulate my inarticulate misgivings about it:
What were your thoughts on the Hunger Games trilogy?
MS: It seems to me there is something empty about the Hunger Games. In the end the stakes aren’t big enough for it to quite work. There’s nothing primal at stake in the Hunger Games, in part because I assume the author doesn’t subscribe to any particular transcendent meaning to life. I think there is a kind of absence of that in the book.
You can read the interview here: http://www.hillsdalecollegian.com/2012/03/qa-mark-steyn/
I would make the broader point that Christianity is inherently dramatic, with its unfashionable insistence on the dangers of hell and the promise of heaven, whereas paganism is inherently tragic, or, in the case of Buddhism, inherently dispassionate. Gnosticism, except for the one narrative of the plucky rebel overthrowing the evil oppressive Demiurge, inherently robs narratives of drama, by making everyone an unheroic victim or an unheroic villain, and by insisting that the actions of the drama are either not worth doing, or make no difference in the long run. (And political correctness is a modern materialist version of Gnosticism).
But something was missing from HUNGER GAMES, which in my review I groped toward by saying I did not see what philosophy Panem stood for, or what the point was. Mr Steyn, with more clarity than I possess, identified the missing element as a transcendent meaning.
I am not saying this as a Christian, but as a writer: had Katniss been the daughter of Artemis, hounded by an inescapable fate, fighting alongside Arjuna against Grendel or Hector, some of the grandeur and nobility of the doomed pagan would have been in her tale.
Corner of Saint and Peter
Posted on 5 April 2012 | 4 responses
Just a moment ago I found in my coat pocket a crumpled bit of paper, the stationary of the Hilton Hotel. For a writing workshop at a science fiction convention, the participants were called upon to write a beginning of a story within a short, set period, I think less than twenty minutes.
The tutor urged us to establish, within the first hundred words, a hook to lure the reader in, character and setting, the suggestion of a plot conflict or problem, and to raise the question which would prompt the curious reader to read on. As a professional writer, the tutor was canny enough to ask me to go last, since I had already mastered the technique the others were trying to learn.
More than one person has since that time urged me to finish the story. I give it here so that, should I ever lose the scrap of paper, the opening will not be lost.
—————————–
It was not that I minded being dead, it was the hours.
No one ever calls me up during the day, and most people decide to wait until after midnight for some reason. I am a morning person, so thse meetings in the still, dark house lost between midnight and dawn make me crabby.
This time, it was not some comfortable seance room or graveyard.
I came to the surface of mortal time on a street corner of some American city, late Twentieth or Early Twenty-First Century. You can tell from the size of the buildings that it is American, and from the fact that the road names are written on signs rather than walls. The main road was Saint Street. The small alley was Peter Way. Great. I was crossed by Saint and Peter. Twenty Third Century buildings are not lit up at night, of course.
I smelled her perfume before I saw her. I could not mistake that silhouette, slender, alluring, like a she-panther as she walked.
“Mike,” she said. “You look well, ah, considering.”
“Angie,” I grunted. My arms ached with the desire to hug her.
She sighed. “Mike, this time, you have to tell me if you were murdered. You have to! They will not let your will out of probate if there is an investigation. And I have bills to pay.”
I took a puff on an imaginary cigarette. I have a good imagination, so the cigarette was just like it was there, odor and texture and all. “I ain’t saying.”
She stamped her foot. “But I can see the wounds! You’re dripping!”
“It could have been an accident, sweetie. Lots of people shoot themselves cleaning their gun.”
“Have you been to the morgue to look at yourself? You took forty five slugs to the head, chest, abdomen, groin area, both legs, and one foot! You were killed with a high caliber machine-gun!”
“Lots of people shoot themselves cleaning their high caliber machine-gun.”
“You don’t own a machine gun, Mike!”
I took another long imaginary puff. It’s not like I have to worry about imaginary cancer, after all. “There is a lot you don’t know about me, baby.”
—————————–
That’s all I wrote. Being a professional, and uncontrollably longwinded, I went beyond the 100 word mark.
Please note the hook technique, which I stole from Robert Heinlein: the first sentence always contains a bit of self-deprecation where the main character establishes, perhaps in a humorous way, or at least an understated way, the main character problem. Let me use two examples from famous Heinlein novels:
“I always get the shakes before a jump.” (From STARSHIP TROOPERS) Is not a boast, but a confession of fear. While understated, it immediately creates sympathy with the character, and impresses upon the reader the seriousness of the situation. The reader is curious what a “jump” is, or what the situation is that causes the hero to get the shakes: in this case, the magnificently simple and impressive science fictional idea of an orbital-to-surface paratrooper drop.
“You see, I had this space suit.” (From HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL) Again, mildly self-deprecating, as if the character is confessing something embarrassing, and immediately provocative: the reader is prompted to wonder where the spacesuit came from.
Here I did the same thing as he, introducing a character who is dead and griping about the hours. The reader is informed in the first sentence that this world is far from the fields we know, but not too far. I give the setting merely in a declarative sentence: American city, Twentieth Century, while letting the reader wonder what happens between now and the Twenty Third that they no longer light their buildings at night. The conflict is an old stand-by: a murder to be solved. In this case, the oddity is that the murder victim seems to be covering up the clues. Why?
In both cases, the reader is curious enough to read the first paragraph. If you can keep the reader entertained and interested through the first paragraph to roughly the third page, your chances of losing his attention after that, barring a major mishap on your part, are small.
Whether or not this story will ever have a middle and an end, that I know as little as you. I admit I am a little curious myself.
Free Speech for Me, Not for Thee
Posted on 4 April 2012 | 14 responses
I received this note this day in my mail.
“Mr. Wright, I find myself and my compatriots in need of assistance.I am a member in Northern Kentucky University’s pro-life group, Northern Right to Life. Since our conception, every year when we put up our displays, which are obviously anti-abortion, they are vandalized and torn down.
The year we were founded, Professor Sally Jacobson took her class outside to tear down our Cemetery of Innocents (the one with the hundreds of white crosses representing the murdered children). She was let go, but the damage continues.
It has happened again this year.
Our “Onesie Display”, some clotheslines with baby clothes hung and every fourth garment marked with a red X in tape for the one out of four children murdered, has been torn down twice in as many days. The cops have been notified, and are taking measures to stop this. However, I am tired of it, and with the approval of my President have decided to start as much of a Publicity Firestorm as I can.
I have already been interviewed by the Campus Paper, though I am not sure if this will be used for article fodder. I would go to the local news, but this seems like something they would consider to small to mention.
This is where you may be able to help. If you could make some sort of mention of this on your blog, and if possible contact Marc Barnes of bad Catholic and any other bloggers sympathetic to the cause, all of us would be immensely grateful.
At your service, Mr. Nathaniel Thomas Hall
Since the display is only up until Easter, I thought I should simply post his letter and ask anyone interested in free speech and saving babies and all the things the PC-niks hate to gin up some publicity for this guy.
In Free Market Competition against Socialism, People Buy Socialism
Posted on 4 April 2012 | 127 responses
Just a short thought today, instead of my normal four and five page essays:
Let me ask whether there is an inherent and innate weakness of democracy: namely, that free enterprise encourages as if by natural selection, the creation of a large number of consumer-minded short-sighted and unthrifty individuals. It encourages selfishness. In times of rough going, among a Christian society, the Church and the nature of reality keep the innate selfishness endemic to capitalism in check. But when times are fat, and Christianity is despised as being too judgmental and harsh and unscientific, nothing keeps the selfishness in check.
The theory runs that selfishness naturally begets socialism, since the appeal of socialism is that another man not only pays for your living, he also pays for your altruism, so you get the lifestyle of a robber AND the self esteem of a philanthropist. Under socialism, the Ayn Rand-style looter-moochers bathes in the glowing self-esteem of self-righteousness, because he favors forcing other man then himself to do right by the poor and oppressed. It is, from a purely game theory point of view, a win-win situation. And all one need to do is sell one’s soul, that is, renounce integrity of character and logical coherence of thought (a renunciation which all modern philosophy, by no coincidence, stands ready and eager to aid one to do.)
My worry about democracy is as old as democracy. John Adams fretted that the wealth a system that prospers would create would corrupt the system itself.
Vote Prospero!
Posted on 4 April 2012 | 1 response
A message from the beautiful and talented Mrs Wright
Hey Folks,
I have made it to Round Five of the Six Rounds of the Book Tournament. This means that I actually won the bracket I was in. I was the top book out of the 16 books.
I am now up against the top book of another bracket. This book got twice as many votes last time as I received. So my chances are slim. In the hope of doing my best, I would like to ask that, not only will those of you who are willing to support me go vote…but if you might be so kind as blog, repost on Facebook, or Tweet this link and ask friends and followers to vote, I would be most grateful!
http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2012/04/04/6th-annual-book-tournament-round-6-championship/
Voting for championship opens April 4 !
Hypocrisy and Moral Inversion by Bruce Charlton
Posted on 3 April 2012 | 10 responses
These paragraphs are taken from a Blog called Bruce Charlton’s Miscellany – http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/ – published as a 2010 booklet called DECLINE OF THE WEST EXPLAINED. I strongly recommend any reader curious about the peculiar oddities and insanity afflicting Western society to read it. It is available online here.
I reprint here two of his pensées in hopes of stirring up some interest in this writer’s remarkable thoughts: one on Hypocrisy and one on Moral Inversion.
Catholics Talking About Sex Again!
Posted on 2 April 2012 | 33 responses
Marc Barnes, who at the tender age of eighteen has as much wit and wisdom as an octogenarian, writes an insightful article on the shibboleth that the rituals of Heaven are boring: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2012/03/christopher-hitchens-and-groaning-during-sex.html An excerpt:
If Heaven is merely an eternal choir, it may as well be a Hell. Any action infinitely repeated would be intolerable. I swear, if I get handed a harp and am told to “start playing, never stop,” I’m pulling a Paradise Lost, Book 6.
Thankfully, it’s a ridiculous understanding of Heaven. (I’m surprised Hitchens never stopped to realize that the only people agreeing with his interpretation were literalist Christians.) He should have paid less attention to bad theology and more attention to having sex.
A sex life is monotonous. It is repetitive. It is ritualistic. It is the carrying on of certain motions that lead to certain results, again and again, forever and ever, till death do you apart, or some other tragedy occurs. It is a routine (more and more so as the children grow up, I imagine. (I know a girl who at 20 just figured out what her parents daily nap-time was all about. (Sorry if I just scarred any one for the rest of their lives. (Please still read my blog.)))) But you’d be slapped — and rightly so — if assumed that all this monotony means that the act is boring.
Sexual union in its fullness – and unfortunately I can only go by literature here — is not a limited thing, but an experience of infinity. No couple views sex as a finalized experience (it’s this awesome and no more), but as an attempt at infinite joy. Thus everyone, atheist or otherwise, naturally gasps things like “more,” “God,” and other such infinities during the act. Ritual unveils the infinite.
Amateur Theology Hour: On Irenicism and Heresy
Posted on 31 March 2012 | 148 responses
After my conversion, and having no loyalty one way or the other for any particular communion, and, being an American, having a Constitutional right to join which ever I pleased without fear of legal retaliation, I was in the position of an orphan who, having just discovered that his parents are alive after all, rushes to their arms only to find them divorced, and commanding to chose whether he will live with father or mother. He is put in the position of a judge between them, despite not being trained to judge such disputes, nor being inclined by temperament to do so.
I discovered that you Christians, you foolish Christians, had shipwrecked and severed your Church, and the world is scandalized. The mocking atheist points at this as evidence that She is merely a human institution, no more sacred than the local Zoning Commission, and he says, “Those who preach love and altruism fight over homoousianism and homoiousianism, the difference of an iota! Religion breeds division rather than quells.”
Being a local and lawyerly thinker, I looked to the sources of dispute.
That the Protestants find the Real Presence to be scandalous was no concern to me: I did not see why, if almighty God can incarnate Himself as a Jewish Rabbi, He cannot incarnate Himself as a loaf of bread. Is one so much more dignified than the other?
The existence of icons and statutes likewise meant nothing to me. It was clear even to an outsider that these were objects of reverence but not worship, no more idolatrous than singing a hymn.
I had no enmity against St Mary. I was raised Lutheran, and to this day am not sure what the point of the contempt for St Mary is, or why the mother of the savior merits being ignored.
Whether or not man was justified by works of faith or by faith that produced works was of no moment to me, since I intended both to have faith and to do good works, as do all true Christians.
These were all non-issues, not worth writing a paragraph to discuss, much less write a book, much less fight a war.
So, to me, the only point in contention worthy of consideration was the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. My reasoning was as follows.
More Interview! More Dimmest Secrets!
Posted on 30 March 2012 | 8 responses
Here is part two of the interview with raygun revival:
http://www.raygunrevival.com/sffwrtcht-interview-author-john-c-wright-part-two/
An excerpt:
SFFWRTCHT: How do you deal with writer’s block?
JCW: By not believing that there is such a thing. Writer’s block is the muse trying to tell you that you have made a mistake and are lying down railroad track going the wrong way. The only thing to do is swallow your ego and rip up the track, go back to wherever the wrong turn was, and start again. If you cannot do that, then you will suffer writer’s block.
SFFWRTCHT: What future projects are you working on that we can look forward to?
JCW: [...] The paratime fantasy mentioned (tentatively titled SOMEWHITHER) above was born when I wanted to write something set in a Dan Brown-style background, or, rather, the opposite background, with clerical assassins from archaic and hidden orders of the Church as the good guys, and the Harvard trained symbologist as the mad scientist with a beautiful daughter.
I also wanted monkey-masked ninja-girl, a Haunted Museum, a voluptuous sea-witch, a talking falcon, the Holy Grail, primordial Ur-Language of Man, the Ring of the Nibelungs, monsters from the antipodes, sardonic Latin werewolves, haughty Hellenic blood-quaffers, high-energy physicists, evil astrologers from a parallel world where astrology actually works, nihilistic Babylonians, the Tree of Life, the Simurgh of Persia, a magic katana, an unkillable hero, the Deep of Uncreation, and a prayer-powered mecha made from the abandoned celestial armor of a forty-four story high archangel hidden in the depth of the Great River Euphrates.
So SOMEWHITHER is basically a gentle and meditative love story about the ineffable beauty of … oh, no, wait. It is an action-adventure story about a goofy teen with buck teeth and a puppy love crush on his busty girl boss who gets tossed down a rabbit hole into another dimension and finds himself in a fight scene about once every two or three chapters, with gratuitous blood gushing every which way. He has got to solve the mystery, save more worlds than one, and rescue the girl, and she cannot remember his name. It is one of those kind of stories. Grim and serious it is not.
Hunger Games
Posted on 30 March 2012 | 40 responses
The HUNGER GAMES is a mediocre movie which has been hyped to the point of hyperventilation. I am impressed with the marketing campaign, even to the point where the dictionary site I visit had a picture of the heroine from the film.
I saw it this week, and have not read the book on which it is based, and I acknowledge that this is merely the first third of the trilogy, but, even so, I was disappointed.
SPOILER WARNING! I give away several important plot twists, including the ending, so read no further if you mean to see this movie!
Applied Amateur Theology: Do Women Sin?
Posted on 30 March 2012 | 41 responses
A reader named Nate Winchester sent me this link to the following article (http://www.drurywriting.com/keith/Do.Women.sin.htm)
It’s happened to me three times now so I need to ask you about it. All three times were so similar it’s eerie.
In a spiritual formation class we work on how Christians can get victory over sin as a part of their spiritual growth. To start the unit I ask students to list the sins Christians face most today. They list four sins immediately:
- Internet Porn
- Pride
- Lust
- Anger
Then they pause…they run out of sins. These four got listed quickly each time. In fact I’ve come to call them the “foul four” sins. Then they run out of gas and just sit there thinking.
At the pause I usually ask, “OK, for each sin on our list let’s decide as a class if men or women are more inclined to this sin. In all three classes they have agreed that while women are sometimes tempted in these areas men are more inclined to these four sins.
So I say, “Only women participate now—decide among yourselves what four sins you’d add to the list to that you think women are more inclined toward. Silence. Furrowed brows. Thinking… [long pause]
Amateur Theology Hour: the Canon of Scripture
Posted on 30 March 2012 | 27 responses
One of the reasons why I became a Catholic rather than returning to my Protestant roots after my conversion is because of the paradox of Lutheranism.
With all do respect to my God-fearing brethren who follow Luther, there is a basic logical contradiction in his teaching I cannot in good conscience resolve, and that is this: if you teach Sola Scriptura, namely, the doctrine that the authority of the Bible, independent of tradition, is sufficient to define the doctrine of the faith, you cannot also edit the Bible, throwing away books and epistles not to your liking.
I trust the paradox is clear: if the Bible is the sole authority of doctrine, you cannot pick the doctrine first and edit the Bible to suit yourself, and then claim that it is the Bible’s authority rather than yours on which your rest your doctrines.
I am speaking of the Deuterocanonical books: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch (including the Epistle of Jeremy, a.k.a., Baruch 6), 1 and 2 Maccabees, along with longer versions of Esther and Daniel, which the Protestants list among the Apocrypha along with Shepherd of Hermas, Gnostic gospels and the like.
An honest Protestant friend of mine told me, and firmly believes, that the Deuterocanonical books were never part of the canon, merely that the Roman Catholics added them to the Bible at the Council of Trent. I am not sure what the Church’s motive was supposed to have been in my friend’s theory: in this version, Luther was making the conservative and traditional claim that the Deuterocanon was not part of the Canon, and Rome retaliated by making an unprecedented innovation injecting much extraneous matter in the to Canon.
If this theory were true, all the lists of the books of the Canon we inherit from the Church Fathers should follow, or at least resemble, the Protestant Canon. I would argue that they do not.
Allow me to quote Joe Heschmeyer of Shameless Popery as counsel for the defense. I cannot improve on his words or his case: Read more
Reviewer Praise for COUNT TO A TRILLION
Posted on 29 March 2012 | 13 responses
Review for COUNT TO A TRILLION
http://natewinchester.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/counting-to-a-trillion/
Here is a quote from the review:
Count to a Trillion is the latest fictional work from author John C Wright, and I eagerly picked it up after having thoroughly enjoyed the Chaos Children trilogy. True to form, John not only writes a book that’s hard to discuss without spoilers, but one that makes you curse the day he was born for having to wait for the next book to come out (seriously, cliffhangers in his hand should be considered a violation of the Geneva convention).
The story is in the grand tradition of space operas (or at least, what I’ve heard is their tradition as I’ve not read a lot of them) with epic ideas and mind boggling “what ifs”. The cornerstone “WI” of this story is “what if the Singularity came, and nothing changed”. Being a geeky techhead, I’ve heard more about the Singularity that I’ve ever cared to know, and I’ve often believed that everyone was just a little too hopeful about it (but then, I’m a cranky cynic).
The other “what if” is, “what if we lived in the galaxy of star trek or star wars – filled with myriad aliens, yet still could travel no faster than light?” How would wars and trade and even communication work when trying to accomplish any one of those would take centuries on the galactic scale. It’s almost like a throwback to the old legends of Marco Polo and other great travelers of old – except grander.
Wright’s Writing Corner: De Partibus Animalium
Posted on 29 March 2012 | No responses
The beautiful and talented Mrs Wright has returned to Wright’s Writing Corner and the series of articles about writing about the 102 Great Ideas. This one is about animals:
http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/244758.html
Excerpt:
Nowadays, the shelves of the children’s and young adult sections of the book store are filled with books on vampires and magic schools. It was not like that when I was young. There were very few books about magic. Mainly, if you liked enchantment, you were limited to fairy tales and books of myth.
But there were many, many, many books on animals.
Amateur Theology Hour: On the Perpetual Virginity of Mary
Posted on 29 March 2012 | 46 responses
There are basic arguments for and against the position that Mary retained her virginity in perpetuity. The words below are not mine, but are cribbed from various sources. I deal below briefly with the theology, with dogma, and with Biblical and emotional arguments for and against the position.
The first source you might recognize from the exceptional clarity of the logic.
The Theological Argument
I answer that, God so prepares and endows those, whom He chooses for some particular office, that they are rendered capable of fulfilling it, according to 2 Corinthians 3:6: “(Who) hath made us fit ministers of the New Testament.” Now the Blessed Virgin was chosen by God to be His Mother. Therefore there can be no doubt that God, by His grace, made her worthy of that office, according to the words spoken to her by the angel (Luke 1:30-31): “Thou hast found grace with God: behold thou shalt conceive,” etc. But she would not have been worthy to be the Mother of God, if she had ever sinned. First, because the honor of the parents reflects on the child, according to Proverbs 17:6: “The glory of children are their fathers”: and consequently, on the other hand, the Mother’s shame would have reflected on her Son. Secondly, because of the singular affinity between her and Christ, who took flesh from her: and it is written (2 Corinthians 6:15): “What concord hath Christ with Belial?” Thirdly, because of the singular manner in which the Son of God, who is the “Divine Wisdom” (1 Corinthians 1:24) dwelt in her, not only in her soul but in her womb. And it is written (Wisdom 1:4): “Wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins.”
The Angelic Doctor goes into more detail on the topic here: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4027.htm
Catholic and Orthodox Argument
The primary questions for the Catholic and Orthodox are:
(1) Did the Church ever teach authoritatively that Mary lost her virginity after the nativity of Our Lord? If so, was the reverse of this doctrine justified?
(2) Did the Church ever teach authoritatively perpetual virginity of Our Lady? — and, if so, is this an ancient (for if not, the charge that it is an innovation is not impossible) and anciently majority view (for perfect unanimity is never to be expected)?
(3) Did the Church leave this as a matter for each man to decide in his own conscience? — and if not, is it an abuse of the authority of the magisterium so to teach?
We are not asking whether Mary was Perpetually a Virgin or not, simply because absent her eyewitness, or Joseph’s, or relatives present at the birth of younger siblings, we have only the records. What does the record say? The record we have is the testament of the Church Fathers, since the written testament of scripture is not definitive on the point.
Raygun Revival Interview — All My Dimmest Secrets Revealed
Posted on 28 March 2012 | 8 responses
I am interviewed by Raygun Revival by author-editor Bryan Thomas Schmidt.
http://www.raygunrevival.com/sffwrtcht-interview-author-john-c-wright-part-one/
Bryan Thomas Schmidt(SFFWRTCHT): Where’d your interest in SFF come from?
John C. Wright: I was always a bookish child, reading such well known classics as Daniel Boone: Young Hunter and Tracker by Augusta Stevenson and Three Boys In A Helicopter by Nan Hayden Agle and Janet Wilson and The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall as well as obscure books like Alice In Wonderland by some guy whose name I don’t remember.
My father was in the Navy, and servicemen on cruise often collected paperbacks to read during bunk time. One of these men, a friend of my fathers, had accumulated a huge boxful of books he was reluctant to throw away, so he gave it to me. On the top of the box was a paperback showing a kid in a spacesuit the globe of the earth in the background, and faces hanging in space above that, a fat crook and a thin one, a child, an evil alien and a good one.
Mystified, I opened the first page: You see, I had this space suit. How it happened was this way: “Dad, I want to go to the Moon.” “Certainly,” he answered, and went back to his book…
And I was hooked for life.
Marc the Bad Catholic is Back
Posted on 28 March 2012 | 20 responses
… And he is in rare form and rarin’ to rumble.
Allow me to quote his potent end paragraphs:
Avatar: Racial Note for the Benefit of the Leftists
Posted on 28 March 2012 | 1 response
Korra, like Katara and Sokka is an Eskimo or Finn or Laplander with blue eyes, so whatever actress plays her in any live action movie made hereafter will have to show her Ancestry Passport (or Ahnenpaß or Ariernachweis) to prove she is not White, lest the film-makers be accused by the Political Officers of Thoughtcrime. I’m just saying.
Legend of Korra
Posted on 27 March 2012 | 2 responses
That noise you just heard, if you live in Virginia, was me squealing like a schoolgirl.
Nickelodeon released for a single day the first two episodes of its upcoming sequel to AVATAR: THE REAL ONE called AVATAR: LEGEND OF KORRA, which I was lucky enough to see.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is very hard to do a sequel, because the writing has to catch lighting in a bottle for a second time, with a new plot and new situation which is like, but not too like, the original, but not too different either, and with a character who is like but not too unlike the beloved characters of the first.
They’ve done it.
The same sense of humor, of drama, even of morally complex drama is present. There is no war, but the world is slightly out of balance, as one might expect after a steampunk-themed industrial revolution, and the monarchies of old have given way to a republic, with at least some of the advantages (and drawbacks) of a republic.
Korra from the first moment on screen is a charming and well realized character, enough like Aang to be his reincarnation, but with the spunk of Toph and the drive of Kitara.
The writing also nicely extrapolates the implications of what was established in the first series. I will not mention them, for I would not spoil your surprise come April.
Romance, Political Correctness and Power Hunger
Posted on 27 March 2012 | 143 responses
I was recently reading the following passage from THE CITY OF THE CHASCH by Jack Vance. In this scene, Adam Reith pursues an abducted space princess Ylin Ylan the Flower of Cath, who has been taken for sacrifice by the Priestesses of the Female Mystery:
The Seminary of the Female Mystery occupied an irregular flat area surrounded by crags and cliffs. A massive four-story edifice of stone was built in a ravine, to straddle a pair of crags. Elsewhere were sheds of timber and wattle, animal pens and hutches, outbuildings, cribs and racks. Directly below Adam Reith a platform projected from the hill, with a two-story building to the sides and the rear.
Gala events were in progress. Flames from dozens of flambeaux cast red, vermilion and orange light upon two hundred women who moved back and forth, half-dancing, half-lurching, in a state of entranced frenzy. They wore black pantaloons, black boots and were elsewhere naked, with even the hair shaved from their heads. Many were without breasts, displaying a pair of angry red scars: these women, the most active, marched and trooped, bodies glistening with sweat and oil. Others sat on benches slack and dull, resting, or exalted beyond mere frenzy. Below the platform, in a row of low cages, a dozen naked men stood crouched. These men produced the harsh chant Reith had heard from the hills.
When one faltered, jets of flame spurted up from the floor beneath him, and he once more screamed his loudest. The flames were controlled from a keyboard in the front; here sat a woman dressed completely in black, and it was she who orchestrated the demoniac uproar.
A singer collapsed. Jets of flame only caused him to twitch. He was dragged forth; a bag of transparent membrane was pulled over his head and tied at the neck; he was tossed into a rack at the side. Into the cage was thrust another singer: a strong young man, glaring in hatred. He refused to sing, and suffered the jets in furious silence. A priestess came forward, blew a waft of smoke into his face; presently he sang with the rest.
How they hated men! thought Reith. A troupe of entertainers appeared on the stage-tall emaciated clown-men with skins bleached white, eyebrows painted high and black. In horrified fascination Reith watched them cavort and caper and with earnest zest defile themselves, while the priestesses called out in delight.
When the clown-men retired a mime appeared: he wore a wig of long blonde hair, a mask with wide eyes and a smiling red mouth, to simulate a beautiful woman.
Reith thought, They hate not only men, but love and youth and beauty!
March Madness Continues at Bookspot Central!
Posted on 27 March 2012 | No responses
The beautiful and talented Mrs Wright has a message about her ongoing campaign:
Amazingly, I have made it to Round Four. If you would like to vote, here is the link:
http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2012/03/27/6th-annual-book-tournament-round-4-quarterfinals/
I am so grateful for everyone’s support. Bless you guys!