Archive for June, 2010

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Wright’s Writing Corner: the Most Important Tip Of All–The Payload Moment, part one

Posted June 9, 2010 By John C Wright

The lovely and talented Mrs. Wright reveals the paramount secret of writing. If you can get this one trick right, then you can be a professional writer, even if your mastery of the other aspects of writing is weak.

The last couple of weeks we talked about romantic zing—that moment of heightened awareness of the relationship that gives the reader a jolt, such as a first kiss. In many ways, Payload is plot-related zing—that moment when the storyline intensifies and is raised to a higher level.

Sometimes the Payload moment is caused by the revelation of unexpected turns of the plot. Other times, it happens because the ideas in the story are suddenly revealed to be on a deeper level than it had previously touched.

Most Payload moments are like zing, a tiny jolt like the kind you get when you touch a metal doorknob after walking on a carpet. John and I recently watched a movie where the payload moments were so powerful, they were like the thunderous retort of a full-strength lightning bolt. The movie was called The Five People You Meet In Heaven. I am going to use it below as an example, but PLEASE!!! If you think you might ever want to see this movie, skip this part of the article. The power of the story will be severely lessened if you already know what is coming.

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http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/124124.html

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Water can Wet You, and Fire can Burn

Posted June 9, 2010 By John C Wright

More on the same topic:

A learned reader asks that since technology reduces the risk of pregnancy, the influence of conception-morality on sex-morality is lessened, why do I conclude that  sex-morality  can nonetheless be completely deduced from conception-morality?

He asks for clarification, which I would be glad to provide, if I could. I fear my powers of description, in the limited space here, are unequal to the task. Let me at least offer a summation of the argument, which can be, as needed, drawn out in more rigorous detail at a time when time permits.

I hold that morality is a matter of duty, and that thought is a matter of logic.

Logically, sexual reproduction is a member of the category sexual reproduction. While a sterile woman, or a woman seeking temporary sterility via contraception, can have herself personally a different motive for engaging in the act of sexual reproduction than the final cause of sexual reproduction, I submit that the nature of the sexual reproductive act is such that it has an innate final cause independent of the personal motives of those engaging in it. The final cause of the sexual reproductive act is sexual reproduction. The result of sexual reproduction is the reproduction of the species, namely, the birth of a baby.

Once reason why this point is difficult to argue is that “sex is sex” seems to me to be a tautology. While the motive for the sexual act, namely, a desire for short term pleasure, and the reality of the sexual act, namely, the reproductive act, can be divided in speech, in reality this is merely two ways of describing one thing. The two ways are the motives of the individuals and the final cause of the act in and of itself.

Morally, I submit that it is both a matter of duty and of mere prudence when engaging in any act to make reasonable provision for the effects and side-effects of the act.

In the case of the sexual act, it is both a matter of duty and prudence not to encourage any emotion or passion which is inappropriate, inapt, rude, wrong, dishonorable, or false-to-facts to the reality.

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Sophomoronology

Posted June 4, 2010 By John C Wright

A NEW SCIENCE

I propose the study of a new science, to be called Sophomoronology. It will investigate the pathology of philosophy, that is, this new science will study the causes and reasons behind the death of philosophy.

I do not propose merely a psychological study of why some folks believe, or say they believe, so many ideas that are so manifestly lacking in reason, common sense, and logic. Psychology is not our province here. Our province here is to identify the incentives which make it advantageous for a person to adopt and defend a certain philosophy. It is a study of the economics behind the growth and failure of philosophical schools, or, to use an older and clearer term, it is a study of temptations.

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Desires Run Not Before Honor by Anthony Esolen

Posted June 3, 2010 By John C Wright

A kind reader brought this article to my attention. In a ruthless act of piracy, I decided to reprint the whole thing here, pretending I had written it. Unfortunately, I forgot to take the real author’s name off the work, and since there is not a single reference to a Space Princess, and not a single use of the word ‘neuroform’, no one would believe I wrote it.  I also don’t know my Shakespeare as well as I know my E.E. “Doc” Smith, so my piratical career has been scuttled before it sailed. Nonetheless, I reprint the whole piece here without further comment, not only because of the tangential relation to recent discussions in this space, but also because anyone who mentions the pagan poet Lucretius (that unheard-of combination of poet, prognasticator,  and metaphysician) deserves whatever additional laurels I can toss at his feet.

Desires Run Not Before Honor
May 19, 2010
Anthony Esolen
It used to be commonplace to say of Shakespeare that his vision of human affairs was so comprehensive as to make it impossible for us to ascribe to him any certain and stable view at all. A corollary to this assertion is that Shakespeare could not possibly have believed anything so definite as a creed; Christianity was a part of the ambience of his time, but his heart was at best only indifferently touched by it. A man so wise and generous as he would not let religious dogmas make life pinched and crabbed and dry.

There is an abundance of evidence to show that Shakespeare was a profoundly Christian playwright—and far more thoroughly concerned with the theology of grace, repentance, and redemption than any of his contemporaries. Here I should like to note one characteristic of his view of the world that seems to spring from his Christian faith—for it certainly does not spring from any recrudescence of paganism in the Renaissance, nor from the worldly laxity that sets in with the fading of western man’s assurance of Christian dogma and morals. For Shakespeare, chastity is as near to an absolute value as it is possible for a virtue to be.

It was not for his predecessors and contemporaries. Consider pagan literature. The Epicurean poet Lucretius, recommending against sexual liaisons that upset the passionlessness essential to wisdom, says that if a man does fall in love, he should pick up a street-strolling trollop to cure himself, hammering out one nail with another, so to speak. Many of Horace’s odes celebrate, in an urbane and half-detached way, the love of the poet for this or that woman, or boy; carpe diem, cries the poet, for time is short.

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People Versus George Lucas

Posted June 2, 2010 By John C Wright

My ponderous person appeared in a documentary and offered my ponderous opinion on George Lucas, Science Fiction, and whether or not the Jedi religion merited inclusion in the Orange-Catholic Bible of the Zen-sunni. Alexandre O Phillip, the film-maker, read my musings and ponderings that appeared in STAR WARS ON TRIAL from Benbella Books, and was amused enough by my essay that he asked me to appear on the silver screen. The book and the film have nothing to do with each other aside from the topic of the discussion, which is to put George Lucas on Trial for his Crimes Against My Childhood. Why Benbella Books and Exhibit A Pictures, and, one assumes, a healthy percentage of the readers and viewers thereof share a maddening, red-eyed, gut-twisting desire for brutal and draconian justice to be carried out on the person of George Lucas is a matter for speculation.

Below is the latest news from the film project.

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Wright’s Writing Corner — More Romantic Zing!

Posted June 2, 2010 By John C Wright

The beautiful and talented Mrs. Wright holds forth on the secret arts of glamor and enchantment by which we poets ensnare the applause of the unchary, otherwise known as story-telling.

In this week’s episode, we hear more about how to put across romantic tension in a work.

The mystery of our guild, known as ‘zing’ is discussed, as well as that less known mystery called ‘ack.’

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/122492.html

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Additional Questions on the Question of Chastity

Posted June 2, 2010 By John C Wright

Part of an ongoing conversation. Dr. Rolf Andreassen, with whom we have been discussing the morality (or otherwise) of monogamy, makes the following comment. My questions below refer to this and also to previous comments by the good doctor. I solicit answers not just from him, but from any reader who cares to comment.

As for sex, I haven’t said it’s relative at all; I have merely said that I wish to draw the line in a different place from Mr Wright’s lifelong monogamy. The actual rule may still be absolute. However, since I do not have full knowledge of the morality, I’m much more inclined to let consenting adults work out their own damnation than I am when children, who cannot meaningfully consent, are involved.

You define two categories of moral behavior. The first category is known moral absolutes, such as the rule against child abuse. The second category includes those things where your lack of full knowledge inclines you to defer to the opinion of the individual involved. You imply that the lack of informed consent on the part of the child is one significant consideration.

If I have not misunderstood your position, the rule against child abuse is an absolute in your philosophy, but the rule against unchastity is a matter of opinion where reasonable men can differ.

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Nice Way to Start a Week

Posted June 1, 2010 By John C Wright

Publishers Weekly grants all us Phoenixers a starred review of Clockwork Phoenix 3:

Clockwork Phoenix 3

Edited by Mike Allen, Norilana (www.norilana. com), $11.95 paper (316p) ISBN 978-1-60762062-4
Allen’s third volume of extraordinary short stories reaches new heights of rarity and wonder. Marie Brennan sets the bar high with “The Gospel of Nachash,” a fine reinterpretation of the Adam and Eve legend from a fresh perspective. Tori Truslow’s scholarly “Tomorrow Is Saint Valentine’s Day” tells the story of the Great Ice Train and its encounter with the merfolk on the Moon. Gemma Files’s “Hell Friend” and C.S.E. Cooney’s “Braiding the Ghosts” are sinister, spine-tingling ghost stories. Cat Rambo deals with realism and escapism in her futuristic “Surrogates,” where appearances and reality are mutable. Shweta Narayan’s “Eyes of Carven Emerald” eloquently rewrites the history of Alexander the Great to include mechanical entities. Without a wrong note, all the stories in this anthology admirably fulfill Allen’s promise of “beauty and strangeness.” (July)

My own humble contribution to the anthology is ‘Murder in Metachronopolis’, which is a tale of a hard-boiled private detective in the City at the End of Time trying not to take a case from the Masters of Eternity, the time-travelers, who once employed him as a Paradox Proctor, i.e., hired muscle.

For those of you who are interested, here is a passage from the opening, which happens to be section 16. (Sections 1 and 1a are somewhere in the middle of the story. The numbering is chronological, which does not follow the order of events).

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