Archive for September, 2010

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What Ever Happened To Scary Vampires?

Posted September 29, 2010 By John C Wright

The fine fellows over at SfSignal are having a conversation about what ever happened to scary vampires, and when and how they devolved into sexy vampires.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2010/09/draft-i-miss-scary-vampires/index.html

Let me share my own humble contribution to the conversation with my readers here, and solicit your comments.

My own personal theory is that romance in stories is more dramatic when the heroine is attracted to a man who is more powerful and more scary than she is. Those of you who do not think Lord Darcy is intimidating to Elizabeth Bennet must have read a difference version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE than did I*. Glance at the lurid covers of lurid romance novels in the supermarket, and you may notice a pattern: not only is the woman swooning in the arms of the male lead, the male is usually a figure of untamed masculine power, pirate or a Red Indian or a hot-blooded duel-fighting bravo with his shirt ripped open.

With no offense meant to any feminists in the audience, part of the appeal of romance is the appeal of a powerful, dangerous, and forbidden man — a manly man. Normally there is a tension between the needs of feminism (women do not want to be domineered) and the needs of romance (woman want a domineering man).

Urban fantasies and Buffy wannabes reconcile this tension by having a strong female protagonist, usually a vampire-slayer with a werewolf boyfriend, be attracted to a forbidden man of the enemy camp, namely, a vampire. Ordinary men (think of Riley from BUFFY) are simply not manly enough to compete with, and certainly not manly enough to impress, a monster-hunting chick with superhuman strength or mad kung fu skillz.

If the guy is a vampire, the romantic lead can be as masculine and as old-fashioned as need be, as well as being as dangerous and (most importantly) someone society FORBIDS her to love, without necessarily offending any modern feminist ideas. Very few men these days are persons women are forbidden to love: old barriers of race and religion and class do not have much story-telling power in them. The vampire-as-hunk stories can both appeal to the modern girl by having a strong female lead, and appeal to the old fashioned romance by having the man be a forbidden apple.

As mentioned by other answer above, this idea of vampires as dangerous male seducers dates back to Lord Byron (who, I believe modern science now proves, was a Nosferatu); but I suggest that there has a general distaste for dangerous and manly men in literature — the macho figure is often a figure of fun rather than admiration — which leaves a void for supernatural macho figures like vampires to fill.

As for the vampiress, from siren to vili to succubus to mermaid, all dangerous blood-drinking females of the darker parts of elfland have always been portrayed as sensual and irresitable. I cannot bring to mind even a single she-vampire from any story who was an ugly old hag. So that is nothing new.

Now, whether you find this trend disquieting and unhealthy is a separate question. Myself, I think there is something distinctly morbid about it. My seven-year-old son cannot walk through the aisles of bookstores these days because so many images of horror and skeletal rottedness leer from the blood-dripping cover art to every side of him. Perhaps he is over sensitive; or perhaps we have all been desensitized.

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* FOOTNOTE ADDED LATER: ‘Lord’ Darcy is a character in Randall Garrett rather than Jane Austin, whose lead is Mister Darcy, so obviously I did read a different version.

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Wright’s Writing Corner:Good vs. Bad – Part Two: Saving Deadly Dull Do-Right.

Posted September 29, 2010 By John C Wright

This week’s blog post is on keeping good characters from putting your readers to sleep. My old editor, Ken Rossignol, untiring crusader who restored by faith in what an honest newspaper can do, is mentioned:

Have you ever wondered why being a Goody Two-Shoes* is bad? I have. I mean being good is good, right? So, why shouldn’t we want to be good? What is implied in the term Goody Two-Shoes that makes even me cringe when someone applies it to me—and I do not drink or smoke.

I think the song lyrics capture the gist of it. The implication is that a goody-goody does not do anything. No drinking. No smoking. No loud parties. No wild lifestyle. No life.

The thought here is: if you are not being bad, your life is boring.

What about Deadly Dull Do-Right? The White Knight, the Hero With A Thousand Smiles. Picture him smiling in his white hat and his white suit. He does not just sit around. He does things. He rushes to right injustice. He saves the girl. He is never tempted, never ruffled, never late.

But he is…dull. From his perfect smile, to his upright posture, to his pristine clothing, he is dull. Just thinking of him makes us either yawn or squirm.

So, good people either stay home and do nothing, or they rush off seeking adventure and bore us to death.

Isn’t good…good?

You bet it is! But to be interesting in drama, a character cannot be conflict free. Staying home or getting everything right without even mussing one’s coat lacks conflict.

Contrast that with, oh say, my husband’s old boss who fought drunk driving and corruption with his tiny local newspaper. It started out as a fishing mag, but after his brother was killed by a drunk and he himself was injured in a separate accident, he decided to do something. He lost friends, even his godfather, because he would not compromise on his policy of printing the picture of those arrested for drunk driving. He had to wear a flak jacket because he had received death threats. But drunk driving went down in his county, and four years later the local county commissioners got voted out of office.

Not a dull day in that guy’s life!

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/172589.html

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Review!

Posted September 28, 2010 By John C Wright

Not me reviewing a book, my book being reviewed. THE GOLDEN AGE is being discussed over at Helm’s Deep:

http://helmz-deep.blogspot.com/2010/09/golden-age-part-1.html

http://helmz-deep.blogspot.com/2010/09/golden-age-part-2.html

The reviewer seem not displeased with it, which vindicates my effort.

Thinks of it as a never-ending, cosmic war. The enemy is any of those boring rainy afternoons when there is nothing on the telly suffered by folk the writer is never to meet, and if the writer’s humble book beguiles the afternoon, or provokes a laugh or starts a conversation or merely offers a refreshing diversion, then entropy has been defeated for a time, and the muse of space opera (Urania, perhaps?) can flourish her laurels in victory.

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Constitutions Like Dust

Posted September 27, 2010 By John C Wright

I was reading a review of Isaac Asimov’s STARS LIKE DUST, his second published novel. The reviewer had this tidbit as the central paragraph of the review:

The main flaw with the book is the inclusion of the silly search for a mysterious document from Earth’s past which will utterly revolutionize the Galaxy. The document, in the end, turns out to be the Constitution of the United States. This subplot was added to the book at the insistence of Horace Gold, who was scheduled to serialize the novel in Galaxy. Asimov wanted to remove it from the hardcover publication, but his editor at Doubleday, Walter Bradbury, objected. As a result, Asimov lost all real interest in what was probably not one of his better stories to begin with. He finished it mostly to get it out of the way, and his disinterest shows. (As he points out, the idea that the Constitution should be amenable to governing large portions of the Galaxy seems ridiculous—particularly after the 2000 Presidential election and its exercise in the vagaries of the Electoral College.)

Speaking as a lawyer, patriot, and a Constitutional scholar, let me just answer that parenthetical comment once I clean the coffee from my Danny Kaye spit-take off my computer monitor.

But let me first, as a gentleman should, compliment the reviewer on the love and care he brought to the task of putting together a site to honor Isaac Asimov, one of the Big Three Luminaries of the science fiction field. Every Asimov novel and short story is reviewed there, and the love and admiration of a fan of Asimov is a pleasure to see. I salute his knowledge of Asimov even while I criticize his knowledge of the Constitution. I hope any harsh words I have for this fellow’s lack of legal perspicuity are ameliorated by the fondness I have for a fellow fan of Asimov. Any reviewer who can make you want to go back and reread an old favorite has done his work.

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St. James Matatmoros, Defend Us in Battle

Posted September 24, 2010 By John C Wright

One of my readers asked, quite reasonably, in what way, if the current Jihad is winning symbolic and psychological victories, any victory has been won?

The same day, I hear this news from Great Britain:

Six people have been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial [sic] hatred after videos emerged on the internet apparently showing copies of the Koran being burned.

Officers detained two men on September 15 and four more yesterday and all six were bailed pending further inquiries, Northumbria Police said. ‘’The arrests followed the burning of what are believed to have been two Korans in Gateshead on September 11,’’ the spokesman said.”The incident was recorded and a video placed on the internet.’’ In a video still accessible on YouTube, six young men in hooded tops or wearing scarves over their faces can be seen pouring petrol on a book and setting it alight, before burning another. On the video, which appeared to have been filmed behind a pub, they cheer as the first book bursts into flames.

Northumbria Police said the men were not arrested for watching or distributing the video, but on suspicion of burning the Koran.

As far as I know, the above is not a misprint: Her Majesty’s government apparently believes that Mohammedanism is a race (White, Black, Red, Yellow, Muslim) rather than a heresy. Cat Stephens and Cassius Clay are apparently members of the same race.

On the selfsame day, I happened to come across this this from Afghanistan:

“LOS ANGELES — Sonia Nassery Cole knew that shooting a movie on location in Afghanistan could get her killed. The most vivid reminder came a few weeks before filming, she said, when militants [sic] located her leading actress and cut off both of her feet.”

Clearly sending the bobbies to arrest six people, or cutting the feet off an actress, are events that have no particular military significance. But the absence of any parallel stories from Bible-burners being arrested for “racist” thoughtcrimes, or the maiming of actresses by ferocious Tibetan Buddhists leads me to believe the attempt to increase the respect granted Mohammedanism by increasing the fear of both legal and illegal retaliation when dhimmi are found making films disrespectful of the Religion of Peace is meant to, and does, have a chilling effect on the exercise of freedom of speech.

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Poetry Corner — The Poet of the Law

Posted September 23, 2010 By John C Wright

This poem, entitled only ‘To Edmund Clerihew Bentley‘, appears in the front matter of G.K. Chesteron’s THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, his droll and nightmarish fantasy of philosophical policework, and the poem is by his hand. Certain of the lines have a biting pertinence to the affairs of our day–I am thinking particularly of disnatured science, decayed art, laughterless lust, plumed cowardice, shamelessness honored.

A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;
The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;
Round us in antic order their crippled vices came —
Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.
They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:
Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.
Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus;
When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us.
Children we were — our forts of sand were even as weak as we,
High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.
Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd,
When all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard.

Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled;
Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world.
I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings
Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things;
And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass,
Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass;
Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain —
Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain.
Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey,
Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day.
But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms.
God and the good Republic come riding back in arms:
We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved —
Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.

This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells,
And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells —
Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,
Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.
The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand —
Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?
The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain,
And day had broken on the streets e’er it broke upon the brain.
Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;
Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old.
We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.

G. K. C.

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Wright’s Writing Corner — Good versus Evil

Posted September 22, 2010 By John C Wright

This week, the lovely and talented Mrs. Wright writes about the portrayal of good and evil in stories:

“I want to go to Hell when I die. Heaven is so boring.’

Very few sentences annoy me more than the one above. I have actually heard real people say this. The first time was in high school, but I have since heard adults express the same idea.

What would make a person prefer pain and suffering to peace and perfection? (Of course, these folks are not picturing pain and suffering. They are picturing sinners having a good time sinning together.) Having contemplated this at length, I have come to the conclusion it is due to a lack of imagination. They cannot picture a nice place that is interesting, so they would prefer to be tortured and suffer for eternity.

Geesh!

In the defense of the future moaners in the pit of flames, it is difficult to describe a place without pain and sorrow and make it sound interesting. Descriptions of Heaven usually go something like this: “And then we walked through the door. Beyond, everything was beautiful and nice. It was idyllic and grand and wonderful and joyous. And perfect. Oh, the joy! Did I mention perfect? Even nicer than that. For the rest of eternity, we were all as happy as clams.” Not really something that engages the imagination.

But not being able to describe it so that it sounds interesting is not the same as it not being interesting.

http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2010/09/22/wrights-writing-corner-good-vs-evil-%e2%80%93-part-one/#more-1497

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St. James Matamoros, Have Mercy Upon Us

Posted September 21, 2010 By John C Wright

Family Security Matters reports:

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore says he has raised over $50,000 for the construction of a mosque and Muslim community center near Ground Zero.

Moore made an appeal to his supporters on the ninth anniversary of 9/11 for donations to the construction project, pledging to match contributions up to $10,000.

Less than 48 hours later, five times that amount had poured into the contribution coffers as hundreds of people from around the country heeded Moore’s call.

hat tip to http://bigpeace.com/stzu/2010/09/20/michael-moore-the-new-face-of-jihad/

My comment:What is this war about? It is a Jihad. This war is the first in history that is entirely a psychological and propaganda war with little or no military component to it. The losses of Coalition troopers in Iraq so far have not equally one hour of losses storming Normandy Beach: painful as they are to the families and loved ones, from a historical point of view, they are utterly insignificant.

Only propaganda victories are significant. The enemy does not seek land or gain. They seek hegemony in the Middle East, culminating in the destruction of Israel, and an increase in their power and influence in the West, culminating in an unwillingness or even an inability of Western powers to halt the spread of Sharia law. To achieve this, they must make us afraid, and must make us seem weak and vapid. Our goal is the opposite: to so terrify the practitioners of Jihad that they are ashamed to practice their evil and bloodthirsty religion in public, much less to spread it. Our goal is to halt and to reverse the spread of Sharia law, by any means, peaceful or violent.

Those who practice a non-violent or non-Sharia version of Islam make no more difference to the outcome of the war than the peaceloving Germans who supported Hitler or the freedom loving Chinese who supported Mao: to be precise, no difference at all. We need not seek their approval nor avoid offending them. We may safely disregard any mention of them at all until and unless they make a difference, and they purge the Jihadist from their midst and actively hound them to shame and to death.

On a military level, we have taken no damage: the loss of trains in London or Madrid or a skyscraper in Manhattan does not decrease our war fighting capability in any way.

On the spiritual and psychological level, as far as the Left is concerned, the war is already concluded. Psychologically, the Left regard fighting this war as absurd, impossible, unimaginable and unjust — fighting is simply unimaginable to them, or if they imagine it, they picture our side as the purveyors of genocide. Liberals do not thing logically; they think in vivid pictures and simplistic black and white images and short, uncomplicated slogans,. In this case, the word “war” produces in their minds the image  of the sullen and smoking chimneys above Auschwitz, dark with human ash.

The Left never meant to fight on behalf of Western civilization in any case; most know so little about it that they cannot imagine it being threatened; or they are ashamed of it; or they are too high minded to fight for any cause, no matter how noble; or too stupid to see any threat, no matter how plain.

Those of you aligned with the political and cultural Left who have some reservations about the eventual predominance of Sharia law, those of you loyal to Western ideals, you have been betrayed by your leaders and mentors.

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St. James Matamoros, Pray for Us

Posted September 17, 2010 By John C Wright

Two articles from National Review Online:

Five Men of ‘Arabic Origin’ Arrested in Plot to Kill the Pope

[ Via: Fox News ]  

Developing: Five men were arrested Friday by British police over a potential threat to Pope Benedict XVI on the second day of his four-day visit to the U.K.

Police confirmed the arrests in a statement Friday, which revealed the men were detained by Scotland Yard detectives about 5.45am local time “on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.”

The statement continued: “The men are aged 26, 27, 36, 40, and 50, and were arrested … at [a] business premises in central London.”

The men — reported to be of Arabic origin by Sky News — were taken to a central London police station to be interviewed by detectives from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) Counter Terrorism Command.

[The NR0 editor comments] . . . And we’re debating a real-estate deal gone bad at Ground Zero.

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The Parable of the Picture

Posted September 17, 2010 By John C Wright

Part of an ongoing, perhaps never ending, conversation:

I believe the heart of his argument is that if everything is not ultimately ‘mechanical’ then the non-mechanical (be it spiritual or mental) must at some point interface with the mechanical world and therefore alter the course of the mechanical world. Whereby purely Newtonian mechanics would have led said atom/electron/whateveron to go ‘left’ all of a sudden it goes ‘right’ instead because of the interface of the mechanical and non-mechanical. This would seem to add energy (among other things) into the mechanical universe and therefore violate our current understanding of physics.

If you (Mr Wright) could explain your understanding of this interface then it might solve the challenge in understanding.

My understanding is that there is no interface.

Imagine physics describing the tiny dots of silver nitrate or the pixels of which a picture of a snowy mountain in the moonlight is composed.

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Wright’s Writing Corner: Website Joy

Posted September 16, 2010 By John C Wright

Latest and greatest Wright’s Writing Corner, this time on how to write a web site.

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/168900.html

I remember the first time I saw a URL (is it an URL or a URL) on a motion picture poster. I laughed out loud. “What a good idea!” I thought, “Instead of cramming a million bits of info onto a poster, they can just put a website and put their info there.”

How right I was. Soon everyone had websites. Stores have websites. Plumbers have websites. Signs on the side of the road just display a URL, (though how anyone is supposed to copy them down…or to copy down a phone number…while they are driving by is a mystery to me.) Even books began to have websites.

Fast forward somewhere around a decade, and websites are no longer clever marketing tools. They are now part of life—an important part of life, if you believe my editor, who wrote me a few months ago to inform me that a presence on the web now really mattered in the bookselling business and that I should produce one lickity-split.

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Parable of the Chessmen

Posted September 16, 2010 By John C Wright

Part of an ongoing conversation:

“The true laws of physics, in your meaning, contain, as it were, “escape clauses” so that an electron moving according to someone’s will instead of according to Newton is still obeying the laws of physics. Is this a reasonable summary?”

No, it is not a reasonable summary; indeed, it is the opposite of what I said.

I wrote (see above) that the dichotomy you proposed was a false one — the choice is not between a brain-electron moving “according to” (meaning 2) someone’s will OR moving “according to” (meaning 1) the laws of Newton.

(Note the differences here between a proscriptive and a descriptive use of the phrase “according to”. If I shake my head to signify a negative, that is according to my will and according to the convention that a head-shake means ‘no’. That is proscriptive, in accord with a final cause. If Jack Ketch chops my head with an ax, the fall of my head into the basket is “according to” Newton’s laws of gravity. That is descriptive, in accord to a mechanical cause.)

It is not an ‘either-or’ question.

The motion of the brain electron, if you are asking how it moves, is answered in terms of mechanics (meaning 1); if you are asking why or for what purpose it moves, is answered in terms of final cause (meaning 2).

Obviously the motion is the same in both cases.

The question is not a choice of either-or. It is both-and. Every motion in the universe BOTH has a mechanical cause AND has a final cause.

Let me use a parable.

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Hoggy, Hoggy Hogwarts

Posted September 15, 2010 By John C Wright

“Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,
Teach us something please,
Whether we be old and bald
Or young with scabby knees,
Our heads could do with filling
With some interesting stuff,
For now they’re bare and full of air,
Dead flies and bits of fluff,
So teach us things worth knowing,
Bring back what we’ve forgot,
just do your best, we’ll do the rest,
And learn until our brains all rot.”

At this point, if I had to decide whether to send my sons to Hogwarts as opposed to Roke, I would have to ask, first, which allows for the better education in the mystical arts? Second, who has the better School Song?

Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk’s flight
on the empty sky.’

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Cannot stop Debating Determinists stop I Have No Free Will stop Send Help stop Make me Stop

Posted September 15, 2010 By John C Wright

Before I bow out of this conversation and dismiss it as futile, please allow me, most patient readers, one last attempt. Part of an ongoing conversation that has been going on since the time of Lucretius, if not longer.

A determinist writes in an says that indeterminism violates the laws of physics.

Let us see if we can break this down:

“When Shakespeare decides to write “sea” instead of “host”, he has a reason for doing that. You state that no account of his brain can tell me what that reason is; very well, let it be so. I don’t care about his reason for purposes of this discussion.”

So far, so good.

“But in addition, there is a physical movement of his fingers holding the pen, so that it moves to trace out s-e-a and not h-o-s-t. That physical movement has a series of mechanical causes: The pen is obeying physics; it moves according to the forces acting on it.”

Agreed, although with the reservation that the pen is ‘obeying’ physics only in the strict sense of the term. Shakespeare is the one writing the word, not the pen. We are deliberately ignoring everything about the event except for the physics. We can limit our investigation to the study of the immediate causes if you like, and ignore the real and remote causes: but this is like putting an ax on trial for ax murder rather than the ax murderer.

But, as you say, let it be so.

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Predictive Brainology

Posted September 14, 2010 By John C Wright

Part of an ongoing conversation. A reader (or perhaps a clockwork collection of inanimate brain atoms) writes in to ask:

“Can one, by knowledge of mechanical causes, say beforehand which way Shakespeare’s pen will go, as it traces words on paper?”

Are we assuming that thoughts are atoms and that the conclusions and deductions and imaginations and speculations of a thought as it thinks are the same as the motions of an atom as it is moved by the impulse of external forces?

With this assumption, you ask whether thoughts can be “predicted” in the same fashion that atoms can be predicted. I submit that the question is based on a confusion of semantics. It is a meaningless and unanswerable question, like a zen koan. Might as well ask how many hours and minutes a pitcher can pour into a cup.

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