John C. Wright's Journal

World-Famous fantasy authoress L.Jagi Lamplighter (author of PROSPERO LOST) and obscure midlist author John C. Wright (author of SPICE GIRLS OF DUNE VERSUS THE FREE AMAZONS OF GOR, and other questionable books) will be making a personal appearance.

Where? The Manassas Barnes and Nobles on Sudley Road.

When? Saturday, February 20th between 5 and 7 pm.

No, really, Where? Westgate Plaza, 8117 Sudley Road, Manassas, VA [phone: (703) 393-0910]

NOTE FOR THE HUMOR IMPAIRED: I did not actually write SPICE GIRLS OF DUNE VERSUS THE FREE AMAZONS OF GOR. I think that was Susan Wright.

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One of my fellow writers reports that he calls a good writing session one where he ends up with more words than he started with. Any positive sum is a good day. "I have a tendency to open up my word processor, stare at the last few paragraphs in disgust, delete them, and close the file."

Perhaps your problem is a lack of self-esteem, what we writers call "Writer’s Ego". I found an easy means to combat low self-esteem. It is my habit to sing to myself in the mirror.

Fortunately, in our current all-surveillance society, the cameras in the bathroom at the Science Fiction Writers of America Guild Hall in Penury, New Jersey, allowed me to tape record one of my self-boosterism sessions. This was a few years ago, before I grew a beard and put on 300 pounds, and I just so happened to look exactly like the actor Robert Morse.

ROLL TAPE! Read the remainder of this entry »

Reading many of the comments in two recent posts on the topic of matrimony, I was disappointed and surprised to see the number of comments which called into question the definition of marriage; yet not a single post I saw made reference either to a dictionary (to discover the common meaning), or to a law dictionary (to discover the legal definition). Perhaps there was a post there that I missed.

If you don’t know what a word means, you don’t make it up, you look it up.

If you want to invent a new word, or use an old word in a specific way for the sake of argument, then you use the phrase, "Let us for the sake of argument take the word x to mean y" or something to that effect. That phrase tells unwary readers you are not using the real word, but merely making an invention of your own, in order to pursue clarity, or, if your motives are less than pure, to achieve a rhetorical advantage over your opposition.

Not a single post I saw introduced a new and more precise definition of marriage for the sake of argument. Perhaps there was a post there that I missed.

I am not sure how to explain this oddity.

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Argh! Disregard last post. I have to throw away twenty pages or so and rethink the scene.

The question is whether I should have my posthuman from Texas named Menelaus "Meany" Montrose sliding down the cable of the space elevator from geosynchronous orbit when his wedding night with the mysterious but alluring post-posthuman Space Princess also known as Star Maiden Rania is interrupt by a subterranean paramilitary attack be shot by a sniper using a surface-to-orbit directed energy weapon at the behest of Vardanov, biomodified giant and the treacherous master of assassins, or should Ximen "Blackie" Del Azarchel, supergenius (who, at this point in the story has also survived the dangerous brain-augmentation sequence to give himself an I.Q. of 500 or 600) also known as the Master of the World, merely invite Meany Montrose to the base of the elevator (where the attack is about to take place)to duel him with their rocket-pistols, according to the 23rd Century Spanish tradition, but before Montrose ignites the explosives hidden in the carbon nanotube fibers of the tower base–or should I have the being known as the Iron Ghost, the computer imprint of Blackie Del Azarchel’s warped super-brain, once insane and cured by Montrose (who thinks the machine is still his friend)betray the flesh and blood version of Blackie, or be working with him, in order secretly to launch (or prevent the secret launch) of the superstarship Hermetic to the Diamond Star at V886 Centauri, the dwarf star whose entire core is a multi-trillion caret diamond of degenerate matter, which is the key to destroying the corrupt world-empire of the Hermeticist crew, survivors from a previous century–or on the other hand would the Iron Ghost be collaborating with the gas-giant sized vehicle approaching from the star Ain (Epsilon Tauri)in the Hyades Cluster, sent by the inhuman machine-civilization that swarm through the Hyades stars, and, with their vast, slow, remorseless calculations, will arrive in 60000 A.D.– or would the machine ghost be planning to force-evolve a replacement race for mankind designed to oppose the Hyades?

I have to assume the machine intelligence is smart enough to deduce an inkling of the Space Princess’s real plan, which is not to go to V886 Centauri but to the distant globular cluster at M3, but does that mean it is not smart enough to deduce the presence of the Van Neumann machine Menelaus unwisely set into motion dissembling the nickle-iron core of the planet Earth, replacing the entire mass of Earth’s core with a sophont-matter self-aware machine known as Pellucid? And what about the asteroid of Antimatter the Hermeticists brought back with them from the depths of space, a countreterrene body too dangerous to orbit anywhere within the inner system, but whose coordinate locations are now lost to them? And is the Princess really in love with Menelaus, or does she only love his superintelligent but insane alternate version living inside his nervous system, the biosoftware entity known as Mr. Hyde (who was created based on the half-un-decoded mathematical hieroglyphs of the million-year-old alien object called The Monument)?

When should I have the power-armor-wearing Knights Hospitaller (also known as the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem) awake from their cryonic slumber beneath Mount Kyffhäuser in Thuringia?

It it is to sigh. People who write whodunnits and technothrillers and bodice rippers and magical-realism pirate stories and stories about samurai vampires battling ninja werewolves simply don’t have to think through questions like this.

Fortunately, Gary Gygax has a table in the back of one of his Dungeon Master’s guides where you can construct characters, story arcs, plot twists and thematic elements just from random die rolls, and this is what all professional writers use to resolve conundrums in their writing styles. Here is a sample:

On 2D10:
1-2 Catastrophic failure! Spend last two episodes having Shinji Ikari the EVA pilot worry about his relationship with his Dad. Use experimental writing style (Roll on James Joyce sub-chart).
2-5 Failure! Instead of resolving plot, make tub-thumping speech on a political or religious topic of your choice (roll d2: 1 go to Heinlein subtable, write on sexual deviance or militarism; 2 go to Pullman subtable, denounce religion). If you don’t feel like writing a screed, just have Captain Kirk die by falling off a bridge.
6-9 Fansave Error! Have the space princess turn out to be the sister of the space farmboy and the daughter of the Dark Lord. Expect fans to explain why she was kissing him in previous scene: you need explain nothing. Erase any robot memories, or set the scene in a parallel universe created by Romulan time-travelers. Fans will clean it up for you.
10-18 Workmanlike Ending! The Gray Lensman blows it up. Does not matter what it is, a space station, a small world, the planet Eeich, the Ploor Solar System, the entire Chloro Galaxy, the previous version of the universe. It blows up. Roll 1d10 on subchart for weapon used: 1-2 Death Star, 3-4 Red Matter, 5-6 Dirigible Planet, 7-8 Negasphere or Antimatter, 9 Sun-Beam, 10 Faster-than-light planet from Nth Space.
19 Unexpected Ending! Dark Lord turns out to be your hero’s long lost Father and he severs a limb! Roll on hit location chart for limb lost. (Note, hit location ‘head’ does not count. You cannot have your hero walking around with no head (unless this is Futurama or Sleepy Hollow). If you roll “cuts off head” hit location, have your hero realize that he killed his father and married his mother, and put out his own eyes.)
20 Almost Totally Satisfying Ending! Starving wretch bites your hero’s finger off, clutching the Ring of Power but slips while dancing the jig of joy and falls into a volcano! (For SF, substitute Neutron Star for Volcano).

15,896 words this week. Not Bad. I will post a snippet later.

Regarding my last post, more than one reader asked what logical argument, if any, could be made for exclusivity in marriage, or on what possible grounds anything other than the consent of the parties could be contemplated as relevant. The question was further posed on what non-religious grounds such an argument could be made.

By no coincidence, I happen to have such an argument all written out and ready to hand.

It is basically a legal argument from a Stoic viewpoint, since it approaches the case not from a viewpoint of hedonism, but a viewpoint of duty. The limit here is that from its beginnings cannot persuade anyone who does not believe that people have rights or duties or who do not believe that right and wrong exist. Of course, since, from that basis (the chic nihilism of Nietzsche and his epigones) neither hedonism nor any other moral philosophy can be erected, this would make criticism from that basis moot.

Any objections to the epistemology or ontology raised must be dealt with separately. As ever, your humble author welcomes questions and civil comments.

Part I Preliminary Remarks
Part II The Questions — Is Marriage a Contract?
Part III The Argument
Part IV Third Parties to the Marriage
Part V On Matrimony and Fornication
Part VI Conclusion

The basic argument is that since humans are altricial, and childrearing requires permanence, ergo prudence requires matrimony rather than a libertarian contract for the exchange of sexual pleasures in order to achieve its natural ends; and furthermore that the passions of men must be moderated by law and custom to conform to this basic and non-negotiable reality. 

A reader brought to my attention this post over at First Things

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2010/02/04/marriage-minus-monogamy-redux/

Which comments on this article at the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29sfmetro.html?scp=1&sq=Homosexuality%20%20%20Monogamy&st=cse

My comments: I think this is a weak argument, perhaps the weakest, against gay marriage. The argument basically supposes that the gays (or, rather, the Leftwingers who flatter themselves by posing as champions for the gays) don’t really want marriage, they just want the social dignity that marriage confers, not the responsibility.

This argument is hard to make for three reasons: 

First, why should I believe a stranger over an eyewitness? If a gay man tells me he wants to marry his gay lover, what credence can I place on some stranger who testifies to the opposite?

This is such an obvious stumbling block for arguments not just on this topic but on any topic where we are asked to interpret evidence differently than those who have actually seen the evidence, or believe something (usually something condescending) about the state of mind of someone whose state of mind is known only to himself, I wish it had a concise Latin name. (Argumentum Ad Youdontknowwhatthehellyourtalkingabouticum is an awkward phrase.)

Second, the argument also supposes that if society grants to the gays the legal recognition of their (let us not mince words) abomination as if it were holy matrimony, that the gays will somehow abuse marriage to bring disrespect to the institution. Without defending my own opinion on the matter, let me just drop the hint that the institution has already been brought into severe and notorious disrespect by the heterosexuals, and this was done by no-fault divorce laws, and by casual sex, and by casual adultery, and by social acceptance of practices condemned by the Church since days beyond memory, and, until recently, by all denominations. If we want to talk about abominations, I would point out that, no matter what the drawbacks of homosexuality, the homosexuals are not the ones in this society piling up little corpses and dismembered tiny limbs and skulls punctured with scissors behind abortion mills. Aborticide is a heterosexual phenomenon. 

In fairness, however, the argument that the institution is ruined and shabby and therefore can be thrown to the homosexuals as scraps to dogs is no less an insult to them as to the institution: let us disregard that argument as unworthy to discuss, heed or refute.  

Third, no one would argue that if everyone in the neighborhood but me and my bride were fornicating like bigamous weasels, a prudent magistrate would forbid legal recognition of marriage to me and my bride. How is my right to get married barred, or even influenced, by the misuse others make of their rights? If I lived in a neighborhood of slanderers, would a prudent lawmaker take away from me the right to freedom of the speech? Or would he merely punish slander?

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I have been asked in condescending words what part of the natural law proposed by the Libertarians I do not understand. The Libertarians are natural-law theorists who have an elegantly simple axiom of legal principle: whoever initiates force is in the wrong. Force is to be used only in retaliation and only against the aggressor, and then only in proportionate retaliation. It is as elegant and simple an answer as a Hobbesian saying that the only passion in the human breast is the desire to avoid violent death at the hands of others.

So what part of the axiom of non-aggression do I not understand?

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I heard on the radio this morning that the Administration (apparently with the consent of the consensus of opinion in the United States) has published the guideline the military will use when deciding when to kill without trial any American citizens found overseas aiding and abetting the enemy, or bearing arms against their sovereign homeland. I have no objection here: it is as we did against Germans and Japanese American citizens who crosses the seas and swore allegiance to National-Socialist Germany or Imperial Japan.

But at the same time, three Navy SEALS, the best and brightest of what is admittedly the best and brightest military forces of all history are on trial in Iraq for giving a terrorist a fat lip. The terrorist was dangling the corpses of captured, tortured, and killed subcontractors from a bridge by their heels, and inviting the press to come watch the crows eat their flesh. Meanwhile KSM is getting a civilian trial in New York, less than a mile from where the World Trade Center has not been, and continues not to be, rebuilt, and Abdulmuttalab the crotchbomber has been Mirandized and lawyered-up.  

So foreign enemy irregular combatants are granted the rights of American citizens, and American citizens are granted the rights of foreign enemy irregular combatants.

Taken by itself, it would seem to be not evidence of anything aside from either an erroneous political theory, or a psychological malfunction that cannot distinguish friend from foe, legal from illegal, American from Anti-American.

But then there was also this I saw today:

New Zealand Student Auctions Virginity Online to Pay for College

Wednesday, February 03, 20

Read the whole thing here. I am not making this up. This is not a parody. Or, not a fictional parody.

My Libertarian and Liberal friends will rush to assure me that the financial transaction, provided that no fraud was used, and no rights violated, is entirely in keeping with the way perfectly rational creatures like Houyhnhnms should organize their affairs. My feminist friends, if I had any would no doubt rush to assure me that this is either (1) an example of ruthless exploitation of an innocent victim female-person by the Evil Empire of the Phallus or (2) an example of a self-empowering self-actualizing liberation of a liberated female-person from the Evil Empire of the Phallus (3) both at once. I admit I am making these answers up. No libertarian, liberal, or feminist has actually said such a thing to me, so this is actually a parody.

And there is this I saw yesterday: a piece by a Hollywood screenwriter listening in shock while an exec tells him to put more filth and smut into children’s programming, despite the bad ratings it might produce. The piece starts: 

A USA Today story informs us “Viewers are about to see full-frontal male nudity, heterosexual, homosexual and group sex, and graphic scenes rarely — if ever — seen on mainstream TV.”

Read the whole thing here. I am not making this up. I only write science fiction about worlds that do not exist, but could. I am not that imaginative.

My theory until yesterday was that the nation was going mad, much as Europe had already gone mad. (What? Do youthink nations and tribes and peoples cannot go insane? History would seem to offer contrary evidence.)

It seemed like madness because of the lucid little unbreakable circle of the mind that their logic goes in, disconnected from reality, and connected to luminous, simple, but false ideas, like a psychosis or a split personality, and accompanied by the same neurotic tricks that mentally unstable people use to justify their fantasy-worlds, such as denial, projection, distraction, sublimation, changing the subject, attacking any questioner, ad hominem, ad hominem, and ad hominem.

Also, the word-fetishes used to defend the indefensible had that glassy-eyed repetitive meaninglessness the real crazy people have, of autistic children who sit and rock and do the same one thing, over and over and over. Like this:  "It’s Bush’s Fault." (But the current administration follows the same policy) "It’s Bush’s Fault." (But he is no longer president) "It’s Bush’s Fault."

Or like this: "You’re a Racist!" (But I merely said I oppose high taxes.) "You’re a Racist!" (But I merely said we should judge men on the content of their character, not the color of their skin) "You’re a Racist!" Picture the mentally defective child rocking back and forth, back and forth.

But, no. Mere insanity is a natural, almost a normal phenomenon. This is something else.

My new theory is not that the world is insane, but that it is possessed.

This theory fits the facts better. Look at modern art: do you think merely human insanity could have produced not years, but decades of insolently ghastly ugliness and vulgarity and called it art, and gotten away with it?

Possessed by what? I would call it the demons worshiped of old under the names Mars and Venus, by which I mean (1) a fascination and obsession with violence (especially illegitimate violence, i.e. legal power used unlawfully), loving bloodlust while hating it, secretly glorying in it while outwardly condemning it; and (2) an boring obsession with sex, both making sex banal as a mercantile product, and as desperately and pointlessly sought as a blubbery glutton throwing himself headlong on food that he stuffs into his dripping mouth with both fists — but a food made of sugar, paper mache, and plastic, which neither satisfies nor fills, no matter how nice it smells.

When a girl in New Zealand does the moral and mental equivalent of twisting her head around like an owl and spewing pea soup across her floating bed, I’d say it is more than mere madness.

Why? You ask. What’s the big deal about sound and smell, and maybe taste or feel?

Makes the experience feel more real.

Imagine you had someone in a virtual reality suit, and you wanted to convince them [sic] into believing your program was the real world—not necessarily to delude them, but to entertain them. No matter how realistic your visuals, if they heard and smelled their living room while seeing your waterfalls and grand vistas, they would never been entirely swept away.

Read more here.

Here is a quote (from, of all things, a movie review) which I pass along without further comment. Those of you kind enough to have read some of the topics being discussed in this space in recent days will perceive the application:

1473 words today, and good words too, not just words written at random like James Joyce. In this scene my hero and heroine are ascending a car up an Arthur C. Clarke style space elevator. Dear readers, do you like seeing little random snippets like this? Or should I hold back and wait till the hold thing is written, and (God willing) sold?

Rania was speaking softly. "The Tower is a living thing. It breathes, pumping air up to the station; its heart pumps hydraulics and coolants; it sweats, after a fashion, to distribute heat across its skin; it has nerves to carry energy and sensations of stress and wind-sheer from one part of its structure to another; and it moves, shifting weight, flexing, maintaining balance. I have always felt its sorrow, rooted to this spot of rock, its upper head in space."

"It is just standing there?"

"Standing, no. It sways like a dancer: these inhabited sections at the bottom, the malls and parking warehouses are an anchor point."

Montrose looked up. “I saw a flare.” 

“It is a correction burn. There is a tourist aerodrome at the spot twelve miles up where the compressive structure turns into a carbon nanotube tether proper. The cable swells from a one-centimeter diameter at the top of the anchor tower, to almost a hundred meters wide at the geostationary point, and an airport for suborbital launches was built attached to the widest diameter. One push, and gravity and aerobraking do the rest. The vehicles can glide all the way to Florida. They are modular, and can be shipped back in storage boxes, and cabled back up the side. To counter balance, on the opposite side of the diameter, there was also a club called The Burning Shield, exclusively for reentry-suit parachutists."

His thoughts were dark as he craned his head back, looking up and up. "Right tall, your place. Anyone ever use it for suicide?"

"Always. It was called the Hotel of Sorrow. The fees are reasonable, considering that the jumpers have no more need of worldly wealth. Del Azarchel suppressed the trade."

Menelaus shivered. "Why did he have to do anything? You’d think the city fathers of Quito would object to corpses splashing all over their nice old buildings yonder."

"The cable is bent to the west whenever a payload rides up, due to the differences in angular momentum of the spider car versus the various sections of cable—the horizontal increment of speed increases with altitude. The Hotel of Sorrow is not overhead, but hangs above the Pacific Ocean. The suicide suits were equipped with a radio, so that a recording could be made of the screams of those who had changed their mind and were pleading for some sort of rescue—impossible, of course—and this was played back to discourage prospective jumpers. It takes an abnormally long time to fall."

“Why Del Azarchel?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did he stop it? Aren’t the Hermeticists planning to eliminate the whole human race to make way for the Nexts?”

“I heard that his father-confessor commanded him to do it, as penance. The owners hissed with anger, and almost broke from the Concordat, deeming it inadmissible to make laws on religious grounds. You see, they were Australians, who hold as matter of principle that a man owns his own life, and may dispose of it as he sees fit, and therefore accepting a fee to provide an entertaining format of self-murder is not murder. Also, there were lucrative royalty payments from selling the visuals—“

"I am not sure I am ever going to like these people, this day and age. Pestilential savages, for all their fine toys."

"Ah. So says a man who shot people for a living, back in the good old days." Her eyes twinkled with mirth.

Locus released its 2009 Recommended Reading List.

I was pleased to see my name appearing twice on this list! One entry for ISLANDIA by Austin Tappan Wright; and one for "Terror in the Fourth Dimension" by Farnsworth Wright. Congratulations to me!

Just kidding. They actually gave a tip of the hat to "The Far End of History" (The New Space Opera 2); and to "Twilight of the Gods" (Federations)

I was also pleased to see these anthologies recommended (no doubt despite rather than because of, if you take my meaning):

• The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos)
• Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance, George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Subterranean Press) 
• Federations, John Joseph Adams, ed. (Prime Books)

I was pleased to see a number of short stories from Clockwork Phoenix 2 get the nod of recognition, because editor Mike Allen merits respect for his work. 

Also, honors due Peter S. Beagle, Gene Wolfe, and other members of the literary menagerie not named after canines are deserved, so I applaud and second the judgment of Locus.

I was sobered to see Kage Baker listed in several categories, only because this fine author has departed for the hither shore of that river all mortals one day must cross, so nothing more will be born of this pen for us. Rest in peace. 

Keep all this in mind, my fellow members of the Ancient and Honorable Guild of Science Fiction Writers of America and Seekers of Truth and Pennance, when offering candidates or votes for Nebulae.

ALSO REMEMBER those of you who, like me, are fans of John Scalzi’s blog, please heed his pleas. Amazon.com recently nulled the buy buttons on all his books, and all mine, and all those of my publishing house that has to sell books to pay my wage to fee my children. This was done in the spirit of robust brinksmanship-style capitalism, which I believe shouldbe answered in kind. Don’t boycott Amazon, says he, but support the authors whose sales took a hit. Here are the words (and links) of Mr. Scalzi on the topic.

In a recent discussion in this space was examined the various possible sources for the authority and legitimacy that separates lawful princes and republics (whom we should rightly obey) from unlawful and illegitimate princes and republics, rightly called tyrannies and totalitarianisms (whom we should take up arms against, and rightly die a hero’s death defying, or a martyr’s disobeying).

The conversation, as expected, foundered on the rocks at low intellectual tide, since the contrary parties could not agree that there was a difference between legitimate and illegitimate uses of power and authority, much less begin to discuss the origins of legitimate authority.

The answer I suggested examining was that authority had several origins, including God, Nature, Consent, Custom, Patriotism and Love, but that authority can be lost when it becomes irredeemably destructive of the safety and liberty of the citizens and subjects it is meant to protect. Once authority is lost, it is merely the power of the Powers That Be; and one may either yield to a power or oppose it as pragmatic prudence suggests, with no further moral qualms. To escape the domination of a pirate is not treason, and may be a duty; and a tyrant is merely a pirate with a crown. The conversation never reached that examination, however. Perhaps another time would better serve.

During this discussion there surfaced this quote from Joeseph Sobran’s essay: The Reluctant Anarchist.

“But what would you replace the state with?" The question reveals an inability to imagine human society without the state.

This insulting condescension is what I expect from the Left (whose pride in their intellectual accomplishments are inversely proportional to the reality thereof) so I am unhappily surprised to see it hovering near the upper peak of the Nolan Test.

Inability to imagine? Oh, to the contrary, Mr. Sobran, I say that your average science fiction reader, or law student, can imagine it, and perhaps in more detail with a more highly trained imagination than your average anarchist or otherworldy political theorist.

(If “theorist” is the correct word for someone whose hypothesis make no reference to common law, facts, evidence, history, or reality. Unfortunately, “Hypothesist” is not a word, and I am too coy to coin it.)

But rather than continue that sterile and senile discussion, let me instead introduce a more lighthearted question: which fictional Utopia would you rather raise a family in? What are the drawbacks of the fictional utopia as presented in the book or story from which they come (if the author admitted of any)? What would the real drawbacks be if the author’s fictional world had to abide by the real rules of the real world?

Let me give a few personal verdicts, and I welcome you, dear reader, to give me yours. Please note that I am trying to remember books (some of which I read a LO-OO-ONG time ago) so if I have forgotten or taken something out of context, I welcome the reminder or the correction.

Corwin of Amber has offered, as a reward for services rendered, to walk you to one of several possible worlds in several possible universes.

Let us look at the obvious choices first:

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9000 words so far just today. Not bad.

My favorite passage:

“… One day science will fix things, so this part of us, this vicious part, will be caged up. The Beast. Maybe we can make a child without the gene for evil, maybe we can make a thinking machine without the subroutine for hate. Maybe.”

“We have the genes and routines now,” she said. “The cure for hate is forgiveness. The cure for sorrow is thankfulness. Even a child can learn these two: no grand scheme of human eugenics to produce the transhuman is needed.”

He gave her a long look. “I wonder if the scientists who made you left out all the flaws of this old, sad, all-too-human race. You should be the mother of new people.”

“Oh my! Such a responsibility. And when should we get started on that project?”

She smiled then, and the towerlight was as bright as moonlight, so he could see her smiling, a dim gold shadow in the night, and so he kissed her.