Filed in Musings
Archive for January, 2011
Protected: Science Fiction and Wonder and Humbug
Posted January 31, 2011 By John C WrightNurturing Islamic Science Fiction
Posted January 28, 2011 By John C WrightThis is from an article entitled HOW ISLAM NURTURED SCIENCE FICTION, which actually says nothing much about how Islam nurtured science fiction, and makes no mention of Julesbrahim al-Verne or Herbdul Jibril al-Wells or even Jalalibad W. al-Campbell, Jr., and how their devotion to the faith of the Prophet drove the growth of modern speculative fiction.
No, the article is actually meant to encourages (presumably Mohammedan) science fiction writers to write within the Islamic world view. This encouragement takes the form of drawing very strained analogies between Koranic verses and Sciffy tropes. Here are the core paragraphs:
Science fiction has been described as a literature of ideas. Knowledge and reflection are the source springs of ideas. As far as I know, no other religion in the world puts more emphasis on seeking knowledge, pondering and reflecting than Islam does.
[…]
The very first Sura (Chapter) of the Qur’an Al-Fateha states: (All praise is God’s, the Lord of the worlds). The plural “worlds” should be noted. Obviously, ours is not the only world with intelligent life. There are other worlds out there – extraterrestrial life, ripe for the imaginations of science fiction writers.
61 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Defining the Indefinable, Defending the Indefensible
Posted January 27, 2011 By John C WrightIn reference to this essay here (http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/01/gnosticism-in-action/), a reader asks:
“This may be an odd point to ask this, but how are you defining ‘leftist’? For example, are you describing a garden variety member of the Democratic party or something else?”
This is not odd at all. A call for a definition is always in order, since most disagreement is based on improperly defined terms.
Alas, I am not defining the word Leftist. I cannot. They have spent so much of their time and effort to avoid, elude, evade, and weasel out of defining themselves, that no mere mortal has any ability to find a label that can fit on them.
I do not think the movement, for which I have no satisfactory name, can be defined.
Read the remainder of this entry »
- I'd call Communism a "religion," and in the perjorative rather than laudatory sense of the term.
- Rade Hagedorn said: Did you know GEORGE WASHINGTON, THOMAS JEFFERSON, JAMES MADISON, JAMES MONROE, ANDREW JACKSON, Martin Van Buren, William…
- after the civil rights movement large portions of the Southern Democrats switched to being Republicans. This is false in a…
Filed in Musings
Social Insecurity
Posted January 25, 2011 By John C WrightSocial Security is self-abolishing. It is was economists call a Ponzi Scheme or Pyramid Scheme, or demolitions guys call a ticking time bomb.
What is a Ponzi Scheme? Ponzi was a confidence trickster who realized he could pay off investors their principal and interest by attracting a second group of investors and using the money loaned from them to pay the first group; and then a third group of investors would pay the second group; and a fourth group would pay the third; and the scheme could work indefinitely without any good or service of any value ever being produced or sold, PROVIDED each group of investors is larger than the group before them, and provided there is no upper limit to the number of groups. You borrow one dollar from one guy promising to pay him back two: you borrow two dollars from two men promising to pay them back four; and four dollars from four guys promising them to pay back eight; in only a few iterations, you are borrowing from the entire population of the earth.
The problem with a Ponzi Scheme is that it cannot last forever.
Read the remainder of this entry »
Filed in Reasonings
Gnosticism in Action
Posted January 21, 2011 By John C WrightMore than one reader scoffed at the analogy I drew between Gnosticism and the dominant philosophy of the Modern Age, which is an incoherent admixture of socialism, moral relativism, nihilism, materialism and (paradoxically) New Age spiritualism.
Here I offer only one additional piece of evidence that the analogy is sound. This is from an article in the Guardian, by Stephen Kinser, a former New York Times bureau chief. I trust that no one dispute that the UK Guardian and the New York Times are respectable representatives of the dominant philosophy of the age.
Founded by idealists who wanted to make the world a better place, [the human rights movement] has in recent years become the vanguard of a new form of imperialism.
Filed in Reasonings
Praise for Clockwork Phoenix 3
Posted January 21, 2011 By John C WrightStrange Horizons offers a flattering review of CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3, and I urge everyone to rush right out and buy 14 copies of the book for the Feast Day of St. Agnes to give to friends, relatives, mendicants and cellmates.
Somewhat to my embarrassed surprise, a story by yours truly was singled out for fulsome praise, which is odd, since, when I have my minions consult the master-list, I do not have any of the relatives or loved ones of this particular reviewer in the torture-crypt buried beneath my laboratory-fortress in Antarctica and maintained by the loyal acolytes of the Unspeakable Abomination of Ka’uu. Neither has my beautiful but evil daughter used her Tibetan mind-powers on anyone recently. Nor is this reviewer someone I have replaced with a soulless robot-duplicate created for me by Rotwang, the Inventor.
The only other possible options are (1) the Astro-Nazis from their nearby hidden vril-powered spaceship base are still annoyed with me for freeing Godzilla from the glacier, thereby destroying the only remaining corridor leading along the Earth’s axis to the hollow interior of the planet, and, continuing their petty conspiracies against me, are using this review to lull me into a false sense of security (I often have little quarrels like this with my Astro-Nazi neighbors. Anarctica is rather crowded these days, what with forgotten Nazi spaceship bases, Shoggoths, and the Thing From Another World, the Savage Land, that annoying Arthur Gordon Pym fellow, and so on) or (2) The reviewer, Hannah Strom-Martin actually liked the story.
I think option (2) the less likely, but read and judge for yourself.
* * *
John C. Wright’s “Murder in Metachronopolis,” for my money the collection’s crowning achievement, also starts with a basic scenario: a gumshoe is offered a commission. But Jake Frontino, the titular “Meta” in this noir/SF mash-up, is no ordinary detective—he’s a detective in a world where time travelers have seized control and the murder he’s investigating is his own. The irritating nature of this conundrum is not lost on Jake, or on Wright, who is smart enough to employ satire as a literary weapon against the expected time travel clichés. As Jake explains it to a pesky Time Lord:
“I don’t take cases from Time Masters, see? All you guys are the same. The murderer turns out to be yourself, or you when you were younger. Or me. Or an alternate version of me or you who turns out to be his own father fighting himself because for no reason except that that’s the way it was when the whole thing started. Which it never did, on account of there’s no beginning and no reason for any of it. Oh brother, you time travelers make me sick.” (p. 226)
Sing it, child. Wright’s own tale avoids these pitfalls by understanding the time travel narrative perhaps better than any author who has yet attempted it. Just as time travel can produce several stories out of the same event, Wright crafts several narratives out of his premise: the one he initially gives us, in which events and possible events are told out of order through a series of thirty “chapters,” a second narrative with a completely different tone that is revealed by reading the chapters sequentially, and an implied Choose Your Own Adventure option, which results in an infinitely entertaining mish-mash. Nice trick, that. But Wright isn’t done. His grasp of character—and of the moral dilemmas inherent in playing around with time—are no less keen. The world-weary Jake is an appealing narrator, guiding us through the chrome-plated wilderness as seemingly familiar territory blows up in our faces. How did Wright manage to use the requisite “Do we go back and kill Hitler?” question as both a joke and the moral center of Jake’s tale? You’re going to want to go back to the beginning and figure it out. There are infinite realities in time travel—let’s hope one of them contains an award for Mr. Wright.
* * *
The full review is here.
Filed in Crowing
Gnosticism, or The Return of Simon the Magician
Posted January 19, 2011 By John C WrightIt may strike some as a paradox that a science fiction writer, who pens space operas about optimistic futures filled with shining technological marvels, should at the same time voice such discontent with the modern day, and yearn for days of yore. How can a man so delighted with the miracles of aerospatial engineering and biotechnology, television and motor cars and flush toilets, have his heart at home in the Middle Ages?
My answer is that the miracles of modern technology were not created ex nihilo by Thomas Edison, but were the outgrowth of medieval developments in logic and natural philosophy, the institutions of the university. The Middle Ages had as vibrant an intellectual life as that of Ancient Athens. In any case, it is not the technology of the Modern Age I find disquieting about it, it is the theology.
No doubt that answer strikes the modern ear as odd. Surely we have no theology any longer? Surely we have developed and advanced to the point where we can ignore every problem raised and answered by that science?
No. Every era and every man has some sort of theological and philosophical and metaphysical stance that informs his world view. Those who do not have an articulate stance have an inarticulate one. Those who do not ponder the issues merely accept uncritically, even unconsciously, the popular conceptions or misconceptions.
What I dislike about the Modern Age is that the modern theological stance of the postchristian world is a prechristian heresy called Gnosticism.
So it is not the modern things about the modern age I like. Those modern things, the science and logic, come from the Middle Ages when Christianity was in flower, from Albertus Magnus and William of Occam and Roger Bacon and from Saint Thomas Aquinas. The ancient things, this oldest and creepiest of heresies, the teachings of Simon the Magician, come from the dead, pagan mystery cult called Gnosticism. So it is not the modern things about the modern age I dislike; it is the long-dead things from the darkness before Christianity.
Since there are authors and stories I greatly admire who are openly Gnostic, such as AEGYPT by John Crowley and VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS by David Lindsay, as well as work greatly admired who are tacitly Gnostic, such as DARK CITY directed by Alex Proyas, or THE SHADOW MEN by A.E. van Vogt, and personal friends of long standing acquaintance who are, or toy with being, Gnostics, it behooves me to voice the source of my discontent with this heresy. I attempt no rigorous logical debunking: what follows is nothing more than list of the problems Gnosticism raises which I think insurmountable.
Read the remainder of this entry »
Filed in Musings, Reasonings
Eugenics and Other Evils
Posted January 15, 2011 By John C WrightA reader with the aspiring name Ascendant (who makes the effort to imply, but not very convincingly, he is a baptized Christian) writes in to praise the theory and practice of Eugenics, which he avers can be reconciled with Christianity.
Because the intimate way one must address a brother in Christ differs from the more distant and courteous way one must address a heathen, who know not their left hand from their right, I will write two replies, one if Ascendant is a Christian, and one if he is not.
Here is the my first answer, my reply if he is a Christian:
“One can be humble before God whilst realizing fully their superior biological endowment … a good breeder does not let his stock develop inferior traits.”
As one Christian brother to another, I assume the “superior biological endowment” refers to the size of his schlong, which is no doubt of an impressive and virile dimension.
I will pass without comment the insolent contradiction involved between a profession of Christian humility and the description of one’s fellow man made in the image of God, the wretched, poor and weak of the world, as livestock.
Read the remainder of this entry »
Filed in Reasonings
On the Consolation of Philosophy
Posted January 12, 2011 By John C WrightThis is something of a confession on how I wasted a good deal of my life. It was brought to mind by a reader with the ursine name of Bear. He writes:
When my wife was pregnant with our third and presumably last child, the ob/gyn, with whom we had no problems previously, became cagey. Due to my wife’s age (she is in her forties) he recommended amniocentesis. When she refused, he wished to do a blood screening. She refused again, because she believed he would push her for an abortion should the child turn out to have some perceived defect. He then ran the tests on some of her regular blood samples anyway. Our son was healthy, so nothing more came of it. Even so, I still had others recommending to me that I push my wife to terminate the pregnancy, for reasons of overpopulation, risks, the fact that I am a poor man, and so on. I would be irresponsible, I was told, to have the child. Kill it, was their message. They never sai: You are poor, let another take your child and raise it as their own. Only: Kill it.
As I read the quotations you cited, I felt ill, thinking of what they would have had me do to my child. I thought of your son, and I could only imagine the emotions this would stir within you.
Let me say something about those emotions, and perhaps my tale will serve as a warning to others.
Read the remainder of this entry »
Filed in Reasonings
Eugenicists and Progressives
Posted January 11, 2011 By John C WrightA reader in this space expressed surprise that I would list “eugenics” along with contraception, abortion, euthanasia as a part of the same vague cloud of generally Progressive social movements that include liberal politics and secular humanism.
One must confess that who is a member of which group is a matter of judgment, or even speculation. The metes and bounds are not sharply defined. Nonetheless, I suggest that there are enough famous voices on the secular side of the issue, and sufficiently authoritative voices on the clerical side, to make the matter somewhat unambiguous.
Below are quotes from Malthus, Darwin, Margaret Sanger, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Konrad Lorentz, Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw.
Read the remainder of this entry »
- So if a mechanical process is neither just nor unjust, and it necessitates eternal oblivion, on what grounds is eternal…
- Is whatever the laws of nature say to do always just, or perhaps nature is merely a matter of fact,…
Filed in Reasonings
John C. Wright’s Patented One Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fiction
Posted January 10, 2011 By John C WrightHere is the John C. Wright patented one-session lesson in the mechanics of how to write fiction.
A word of explanation:
I wrote the following to a friend of mine who is a nonfiction writer of some fame and accomplishment, who was toying with the idea of writing fiction. We batted around some ideas and I have been encouraging (read: pestering) him to take up the project seriously.
He wrote back and said that while putting the logical format to a work of nonfiction was clear enough, he was not big on this artistic and poetical stuff. I took it upon myself to show him the logic behind the stuff that dreams are made of.
So here is what I wrote to provoke him to write, and I share it with any and all comers who wish alike to be writers.
For my part, I am eager to share my trade secrets. I do not fear competition. Unlike every other field, my value as a writer goes up, not down, the more competition I have: because more science friction writers means more science fiction readers, a larger field, and more money in the field.
So I think everyone should try their hand at writing. I cannot read my own work for pleasure, after all. Read the remainder of this entry »
- Fascinating, Mr. Wright, as always. I wrote a brief essay on modern cryonics theory, inspired by your work. Would you…
Victory
Posted January 9, 2011 By John C WrightEgypt’s Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as “human shields”
Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.
From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.
“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.
Read the remainder of this entry »
Filed in Musings
Christianity is now officially Mean-spirited and Violent
Posted January 9, 2011 By John C WrightHere is a copy of the Manhattan Declaration, which is a statement of principles asking the American people to return to the traditional view of Marriage and God and the Sanctity of Life. It is about as offensive or controversial as being in favor of motherhood, the Star-Spangled Banner, babies, or apple pie.
However, we live in a day and age, which I call the Kingdom of Mouth-Foaming Christophobia, but which the Holy Father (with much more dignity than yours truly can muster) calls the Culture of Death, where to be in favor of babies is thought to be against the equality of women, and to be in favor of marriage is held, as a matter of law, to be an act of discrimination if not a bigotry akin to race hatred.
Here is a copy of a release from the Manhattan Declaration, explaining that Apple products will not carry an iPhone app allowing people to read and sign it.
Read the remainder of this entry »
Filed in Musings
Protected: METROPOLIS — or Yesterday’s Long Lost Tomorrow
Posted January 7, 2011 By John C Wright Filed in Fancies
Moebius Transformations — And a Darwinian Snark
Posted January 7, 2011 By John C WrightFound this elegant visual explanation of projection while asking the Internet to correct my spelling for Moebius.
Looking at this, I am glad I do not live in one of those non-Euclidean universes governed by Cthulhu (you know the ones, where parallel lines diverge, and no plane figures are congruent with any others of differing sizes).
Read the remainder of this entry »
Filed in Other
