John C. Wright's Journal

Mike Allen, the editor of CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3 is putting out a call to any reviewers and bloggers who would like to read an advanced readers copy of CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3 and review it. 

http://time-shark.livejournal.com/369394.html

John Scalzi weighs in on a question that frequently causes scientifictioneers to pause and ponder. Which fictional world would you like to live in?

http://www.filmcritic.com/features/2010/03/best-science-fiction-worlds/

I asked a very similar question recently, but I am not as funny as Mr. Scalzi, so my take was more sober, analytical, and, uh, dull. I also asked a slightly different question: which fictional Utopia would you prefer to raise a family in? My not-so-subtle point was that most fictional Utopias are as about as inhabitable as Mars or Venus, that is, we could not live there without pantropy. I repeat it below, because frankly I don’t want a post about politics, a topic that in this week has grown dreary to discuss except as autopsy, to be my last post on Friday.

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I am not sure if this violates my Lenten oath to avoid writing articles on politics during Lent, which, unfortunately, happens to coincide with the day, 22 March 2010, future historians will regard as the modern parallel to the publication of the Reforms of Diocletian. (Diocletian’s Reforms permanently placed the economy of the empire on a statist footing, in effect nationalized agriculture, introduced the crack along which the Empire would split, dropped the pretense that the Imperator was a magistrate ruling citizens rather than an overlord commanding subjects, and so started the long, slow, and inevitable decline and fall.)

However, the following is concerned mostly about history, civilization, and philosophy, so perhaps it can be allowed. It is a rejoinder to a reader who proposed that the political Left in American are supporters of Anglo-American Law and Greco-Roman Philosophy, and that their opposition to Judeo-Christian ethics does not necessitate they cease to be supporters. The comment is so outrageous that neither innocent ignorance nor malignant dishonesty can explain it.

What is the specter that haunts the modern age? It goes by many names, all of them misleading, and takes many forms, and therefore resists classification. Let us define it by use of apophatic statements. Let us say what it is not.

Western civilization is based on two pillars: Judeo-Christian faith and Greco-Roman philosophy. The English speaking civilization is based on a third pillar, the Anglo-American law. The modern English civilization is based on a fourth pillar, the science of economics as understood by Smith and Ricardo, Say and Bastiat, Hume, Malthus and Mill.

In the current age, the Western civilization for good or ill has overshadowed and dominated the other literate civilizations of the planet, such that China is ruled by a political-economic philosophy developed in England by a German Jew, and such that India retains the forms and institutions of Anglo-American law, such as trial by jury, independent judiciary, a parliament, a prime minister, and so on.

There are four centers of opposition, one eroding each of these supports of civilization.

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Glen Yeffeth asked me to contribute an essay to his SmartPop book STAR WARS ON TRIAL. I wrote a brief for the prosecution called MAY THE MIDI-CHLORIANS BE WITH YOU; The absence of religion and ethics in Star Wars.

Alexandre O. Philippe then made a documentary on the same theme. He buttonholed me at the Montreal World-Con, and caught my unlovely face on camera, while I spoke on the topic both Ex Tempore and Ad Nauseam.

Mr. Philippe gives this report of the opening:

After four packed and critically acclaimed screenings at SXSW last week (see below), we’re delighted to announce that THE PEOPLE vs. GEORGE LUCAS will be introduced to Canadian audiences at the 2010 Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival in May.

Hot Docs is North America’s largest and most important documentary festival, conference and market. Each year, the Festival presents a selection of approximately 150 cutting-edge documentaries; and the World Showcase program is the Festival’s immensely popular survey of the year’s finest non-fiction films from around the world.

Scheduled Screenings:

• Saturday, May 1 @ 9:15pm at Bloor Cinema
• Monday, May 3 @ 4:00pm at Innis Town Hall
• Tuesday, May 4 @ 11:45pm at Bloor Cinema

Buy Tickets & Festival Passes (http://www.hotdocs.ca/festival/online_box_office/ )

Also, check out the latest blog entry for our experiences at SXSW: SXSW recap ( http://www.peoplevsgeorge.com/blog/?p=303 )

My lovely and talented wife has a guest blogger taking her podium today. The essay this week is by  , a regular poster whose words of wit and wisdom often grace these pages. (His blog name is rather neat: Kokoro (Japanese for heart) Gnosis.)

Read the essay here: arhyalon.livejournal.com/114571.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRQ3UcO5P8k
For your viewing pleasure, a cartoon from 1950, distributed by (ironically) General Motors, based on a book of the same name by F.A. Hayek.

The message may seem simplistic, because the conclusion is simple: centralized planning of the economy leads to serfdom.

To see the arguments laid before out that support this conclusion, one would have to read that book. You can then read Keynes’ GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST AND MONEY, and see, by way of contrast, what utter rubbish, gobbledegook and doublethink it is. But Keynes flatters the power-hungry elite, and so they see to it that his ideas are kept alive, and Hayek does not, so his work is unknown or ill regarded, except in those few circles of academics or economists uninfluenced by a half century of relentless propaganda for statism.

To read a rigorous debunking of Keynes, please read CAPITALISM by George Reisman.

It just happened again! I just got a letter from an editor who said “I was pondering what to do with this story for quite a while. It’s a message story, i.e., a story that exists primarily to give a message rather than for the sake of the story itself; I don’t normally publish message stories, but I like this one after you graciously wrote it at my request, I wanted to find a suitable place for it.”

The story is an ultra-short one, exactly 1000 words long, about a girl trying to get herself abducted by UFO aliens. I cannot describe it without giving away the surprise ending: but I managed to cram into that short space three different story ideas that had been floating around in my imagination hopper, and do it in an almost Gene-Wolfean way. Darn proud of that story, and darn happy to make the sale, I must say.

But to my knowledge, it is not a message story. The only message in the story is “If this story amuses you, O gracious Reader, then Pay Me! PAY ME!”

I cannot even tell what message the editor thinks is in the story.

I confess my pride is a little deflated when an editor says my story is not a story told for its own sake. I want you to imagine my doggy ears drooping, my tail and head hanging, and a little whine escaping my teeth. But if I have to swallow my pride to make the sale, so be it. Beside, my pride is a swollen and disgusting thing, and needs a little deflating.

And after all, he bought the story. Fifty bucks for three hours work. That is good money, and I cannot complain. It is not like honest labor, digging ditches or making shoes. I am getting paid for doing make-believe.

But there is something weird going on when things I write that don’t mention Christianity at all, not even to make fun of it, are regarded as Christian allegory. It is getting so bad that I cannot even write a simple story about a girl trying to get herself abducted by UFO aliens without it being read allegorically.

On second thought, no. There is nothing weird going on. The supernatural world has laws just as the natural world does. I was warned this would happen when I signed up. I was told.

If I were a bimetallist or a Ghibelline, no one would think everything I wrote was an apologetic for bimetallism or Holy Roman Imperialism. But Christianity is something different from and greater than mere economic or political theory: it is something unworldly and otherworldly, larger than life, and you cannot be marked with the chrism unremarkably. The winged powers and crowned principalities of Hell recoil in fear and loathing at the unseen torch of double flame that burns above the believer’s head, and they cannot tolerate that light.

Even normal humans, (or “muggles” as we Catholics call them) if they do not recoil, cannot help but notice that light. If it does not affect everything you do, O Christian, you are doing something wrong. If the world does not look at you sidelong, puzzled or disapproving, you are doing something wrong.

On the third hand, if the editor here thought the message in the story was on some other topic, and not a Christian message, the mere fact that I would leap to that conclusion first tells you something.

Someone asked me about the next novel I planned to write.

Given that my critics see pro-Christian propaganda in my anti-Christian propaganda that I wrote back when I was an antichristian, I have decided, out of deference to them, to avoid all mention of religion with absolute strictness!

These eagle-eyed interpreters of all things literary cannot be mistaken in their winkling out of the psychological roots of my writings, since they are able to detect motives lurking in my brain unknown even to me. Therefore I will defer to their judgment, and remove from my next book any scintilla of anything that is or might be redolent of a religious theme. There will be no firemen saving people from flames, for example, since that might be a Christian metaphor for something. None of the scenes will take place in St. Louis or on the St. Lawrence river. The college of Notre Dame will not be mentioned, and the Gregorian Calendar is right out. Also, no witches or warlocks, since these are figures from Christian folk lore.   When people are angry, I will not describe them as “cross.” I will also have to make sure all my female characters are buxom lesbian vampire slayers, so that no one will think I am trying to promote Christian stereotypes of women as maidens, wives, widows, nuns, saints, harlots, or what have you. (In case you are wondering, yes, I meant both types: buxom lesbian women who slay vampires, and slayers who only slay buxom lesbian vampires, leaving both the flat-chested vampiresses, the heteronormal vampiresses, and the male vampires to someone else.)

With that in mind, let me describe my current project!
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I promised myself (without success) that during Lent I would write fewer political screeds, and stick to topics less controversial but no less interesting for all that, such as science fiction. I am sure my father confessor, the Jesuit Father de Casuistry, will forgive me if I break my Lenten vow one more time, merely to comment on the passing away of the American Republic.

The experiment in government by the people was fascinating and brave while it lasted, I admit, and will inspire commonwealths of the future for as long as the grandeur and tragedy of the fall of the Roman Republic, or the fall of the corrupt democracy at Athens, inspired all Christendom for centuries. In the same way that barbaric kings among the Franks and Germans and Russians called themselves Emperor and Kaiser and Czar in imitation of the glory of Caesar, so, too, for many years to come, leaders in North America will call themselves President, Congressmen, Justices of the Supreme Court, and so on. They will continue to revere the US Constitution and do their works in its name, in much the same way the Imperators of Constantinople, who were military dictators of a totalitarian Christian Theocracy, still held up the standards before the troopers bearing the letters SPQR, and did their works in the name of the Senate and People of Rome.

The Internal Revenue Service is now in charge, and will be collecting the fines from anyone who does not buy health care insurance. The student loan programs of all lenders has been nationalized. The faceless and inert bureaucrats of 127 new bureaus, offices and divisions of the government will be the ones denying you health care, asking you to produce records, and sending you letters explaining that you claim is being reviewed. Everyone pays into the system, and a few people get the health care they need. If you are among those few, you may see nothing wrong with the system. The newspapers will never report anything wrong with it.

You children will never know a republic in which economic freedom and prosperity existed. Since this loss is a loss of opportunity rather than a loss of a concrete good or service, the general misery and squalor can be blamed on the free market, such as on the abuses of the health insurance industry.

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The fine fellows over at SFSignal are asking what books you have stopped reading and why?

Here is the full question as asked:
In light of my abortive attempt at reading The Gone Away World I started thinking back at other books that I gave up on before finishing. I can’t remember any book in the recent past, other than what sparked this post, that I quit on. For the most, if I read a book I’m not keen on, I can still find some way to plow through until the end.
The only other book that springs to mind is Dhalgren by Delaney. That one I started and stopped several times before I managed to force myself to finish it, and I didn’t like it one bit. I should have left it alone but it’s a classic so I there you go.
But what about you? What books have you stopped reading and why?
My answer:

Interesting question. In my youth, back when my tastes were broad and my reading time expansive, it was a point of pride with me never to put down a book until I had finished it. Consequently, the time when I put a book down unfinished stick in my mind.

The first was TITUS GROAN by Mervyn Peake. I picked it up because it was a member of the otherwise splendid and wonderful Ballentine Adult Fantasy imprint edited by Lin Carter. If you recall, or if you can ask your father or grandfathers about those far-off days, there simply were no other fantasy novels available, aside from Tolkien, Ursula K. Leguin’s EARTHSEA, the Narnia of CS Lewis, and Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. The flood of Tolkien clones was still in the time of Things to Come.

But in reading everything under the Lin Carter imprint, one was from time to time victimized by a divergence in taste between oneself and Mr. Carter. Even my eclectic reading breadth was not eclectic enough to make it past the first 100 pages or so. The disgusting characters, their pointless actions, the lack of anything noble, otherworldly, fine or even of mundane decency and attractiveness galled my young mind. There was no magic in either sense of the word in TITUS GROAN. After page after dreary page of reading about vermin, villains, malcontents and madness — I think I was at the scene when the Lord of the Manor is eaten by owls — I realized I would have more fun doing algebra homework.

Blame my youth, if you will, but to this day I cannot imagine why anyone considers this book a fantasy, except for the mere overlarge size of the house in which the toadlike grotesques slump and commit arson or murder.

In recent years, on the other hand, I have become quite hard to please, and even books of great fame and decidedly well-crafted construction such as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series will fail to hold by attention against competing claims of work, playing with my children, writing books of my own, reading history or philosophy or theology, playing City of Heroes (where, of course, I put all my own hero characters as heroes!) and other clamoring time-absorption unknown to younger and emptier lives.

In the case of Mr. Jordan, the fault my mine rather than his. I had just finish a scene that I thought was both fascinating from a reader’s point of view, and brilliant from a craftsman’s point of view. The main character had been sent on a spirit vision walk back through time, and had seen the remnants of the previous high-tech civilization, as it collapsed into barbarism, slowly forgetting the meaning of their ceremonies and laws: but the reader of course recognizes the remnants of everything we’ve taken for granted, from sacred trees to spear-wielding nomads, now in their original context. Brilliant! I wish I had written something half so clever. Nonetheless, and unfortunately, I then realized there was not a single character whom I cared whether he lived or died. I did not care about the gleeman’s checkered past, or the gambling kid’s new found magic spear, or the smith’s apprentice, and I certainly did not care about the non-hero kid who was slowly going insane. Why? The characters did not seem any more flat or one-dimensional than those from the pens of other writers, even in books I adored. I just did not feel the sympathy one was supposed to feel after five or six fat volumes are walking the long path of adventure with these guys.

One drawback of having gray hairs in your beard, is that most of the authors you know and adored in youth, and whose any book, any at all, you would buy as quick as you can say "AMAZON ONE-CLICK!" have passed away. And some of those still alive turn out to be outspoken partisans of freakish political cults, practitioners of witchcraft, spies for the Kremlin, members of the Supreme Anarchist Council and agents of the Si Fan: and they won’t shut up about how much they hate Tolkien and love Mervyn Peake. I don’t begrudge them their chance to be outspoken (they are frankly less so than am I) but neither can I take the guileless pleasure in their work I did in days of golden innocence.

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Those faithful Catholics eating fish today the Lenten Friday will be pleased to know that today is the feast of St. Joseph, the most chaste spouse of Mary, the Mother of God. Since it is a solemnity, we are allowed to eat meat. In this way the unexpected joy of celebration breaks into our routine forty days of ashes and sackcloth. I think I will have pork wrapped in bacon served on ham for dinner.

Lisa “I’m going to become a vegetarian”
Homer “Does that mean you’re not going to eat any pork?”
Lisa “Yes”
Homer “Bacon?”
Lisa “Yes, Dad”
Homer “Ham?”
Lisa “Dad! all those meats come from the same animal.”
Homer “Ri-i-i-i-ight Lisa, some wonderful, magical animal!”

In that spirit, and to all you fathers out there, happy Feast of St. Joseph.

You may not recognize the writing style, nor ever heard of this resolution, but you have read another resolution this author wrote.

Sounds like a crazed and radical "Tenther." Obviously someone who lived so long before 1968, back in the Stone Ages, has nothing to teach the modern, attention-deficit-disordered MTV generation of illiterates.

But what Document is this? But who is he?

The document is the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. Read it, and remember what caliber of men, what alloy of statesman, once governed our nation.

1. Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

2. Resolved, That the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, and no other crimes, whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, not prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” therefore the act of Congress, passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, and intituled “An Act in addition to the act intituled An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States,” as also the act passed by them on the — day of June, 1798, intituled “An Act to punish frauds committed on the bank of the United States,” (and all their other acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution,) are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory.

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From Steve Jackson Games website….

Many years ago (back when we all were still playing D & D), I ran a game where I pitted two groups against each other.
Several members of Group One came up with the idea of luring Group Two into a trap. You remember the Hand of Vecna and the Eye of Vecna that were artifacts in the old D&D world where if you cut off your hand (or your eye) and replaced it with the Hand of Vecna (or the Eye) you’d get new awesome powers? Well, Group One thought up The Head of Vecna.

Group One spread rumors all over the countryside (even paying Bards to spread the word about this artifact rumored to exist nearby). They even went so far as to get a real head and place it under some weak traps to help with the illusion. Unfortunately, they forgot to let ALL the members of their group in on the secret plan (I suspect it was because they didn’t want the Druid to get caught and tell the enemy about this trap of theirs, or maybe because they didn’t want him messing with things).

The Druid in group One heard about this new artifact and went off in search of it himself (I believe to help prove himself to the party members…) Well, after much trial and tribulation, he found it; deactivated (or set off) all the traps; and took his "prize" off into the woods for examination. He discovered that it did not radiate magic (a well known trait of artifacts) and smiled gleefully.

I wasn’t really worried since he was alone and I knew that there was no way he could CUT HIS OWN HEAD OFF.

Alas, I was mistaken.

The Druid promptly summoned some carnivorous apes and instructed them to use his own scimitar and cut his head off (and of course quickly replacing it with the Head of Vecna…)

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It’s Done! What may, if I can make the sale, turn out to be the first volume of a trilogy is finished. One last read-through, little bit of polish on the rough spots, and I will print it out and mail it to my editor. The work is 121000 words, about 430 manuscript pages, and I sat through 963 revisions, first version dates May 2005. That is not 900 complete drafts, merely 900 writing sessions. Still, it’s done!

As a free sample of the work, here is a snippet from near the beginning. Menelaus Montrose is discussion the finer points of theology with his brother Leonidas. The scene is a sick-room in a monastery, not far from the ruins of Houston, Texas. The time is late autumn of AD 2233.

"Little brother," said Menelaus.

A low chuckle answered him. "Not no more. I’m older than you, now."

"You froze me?"

"The bone-grower messed up, started your ribs and stuff getting all crinkly. Had to bring in a Jap to redo your skeleton, and that cost. Specialist from Osaka."

"How long was I out?"

"Year and a half."

"Why so long?" Menelaus asked.

"We had to keep you stiff until Nelson could raise the money."

"Nelson? He even got a job?"

"In Newer Orleans. Some scratch he got gambling, some he got diving for treasure in the sunk part of the city. Some he got from some Anglo pumpkin with dollar signs in his eyes, just for drawing a map and making sweet talk."

"Damn stupid of him, going into hot water."

"He says its clean these days, the water."

"If there’s no fish, its not clean. Don’t care what the Geiger counter says. Fish know." Menelaus shook his head. "Hope he’s planning to be a monk. No women’ll marry a man with nuked-up stones."

"Maybe Nelson wore a lead jockstrap. Read the remainder of this entry »