Archive for July, 2011

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Drake Equations and ‘It Ain’t Gunna Happen’ Science Fiction

Posted July 28, 2011 By John C Wright

A reader whom I will, for the sake of anonymity, refer to merely as ‘Curmudgeon’ (albeit his real name is Homer Snodgrass of 12 Manitowish Avenue, Mammoth Falls, Wisconsin, 54545, and his social security number is 1205-119-8577, and the PIN number of his bank card is 4560) holds the opinion that too many modern persons of the youthful persuasion (he refers to them as “kids!” or “punks!”) are devoted to science fictional ideas as a thinly disguised substitute for spiritual longings.

‘Curmudgeon’ reads and promotes what he calls the ‘It Ain’t Gunna Happen’ School of science fiction. This school is remarkably similar to the Mundane Movement of Really Boring Self-Righteous Left-Leaning Science Fiction, being mostly a list of things that ain’t gunna happen.

Here is a summary of his manifesto:

(1) There will be no colonization of space, either O’Neil or otherwise, for the same reason no one lives in a submarine at the bottom of a trench in the Arctic sea;
(2) we are never meeting any intelligent extraterrestrial life;
(3) or if we do, they will be incomprehensible, so much so that even the question of whether they are truly ‘intelligent’ or not will be debatable;
(4) there will be no faster than light travel – It is not just a good idea, it’s the Law;
(5) medicine may shift where the top of the bell curve falls, but human beings are not going to live much past 80 or 90;
(6) psionics is just magic wearing a lab coat;
(7) time travel is less possible and less realistic than fairy unicorn sparkly magic;
(8) The Soviets and the Red Chinese and Cubans all promised and vowed to bring about modern, scientifically-run secular humanist utopias very much along the lines of Gene Roddenberry’s ideas. (So… how is that workin’ out for ya’? What is the murder count now for the Utopians? Upwards of 110,000,000? Let’s give the idea one more try!)

Now, for some reason, my friend Curmudgeon thinks I am of his school of science fiction. I am not.

In fact, I am a founding member of the Space Princess school of science fiction writing, which, to date, includes me and a writer named Edward Willet: Albeit we two have retroactively included every big name Willet and I can think of into our movement against their will and over their strong objections, if they ever had any female royalty from outerspace in any story.

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Belloc and the Oecuphobes

Posted July 26, 2011 By John C Wright

I was looking up books by Hilaire Belloc on the web, and by chance came across this Wikipedia entry. This paragraph is from a section subtitled ‘On Islam’. The quote is from Mr. Belloc, and the italicized lines are from the anonymous editor.

Belloc’s 1937 book The Crusades: the World’s Debate made no pretence at being impartial. He wrote,

Our fathers all but re-established the spiritual mastery of Europe over the East; all but recovered the patrimony of Rome… Western warriors, two thousand miles and more from home, have struck root and might feel they have permanently grasped the vital belt of the Orient. All seaboard Syria was theirs and nearly the whole of that “bridge”, a narrow band pressed in between the desert and the sea, the all-important central link joining the Moslem East to the Moslem West … Should the link be broken for good by Christian mastery of Syria, all Islam was cut in two and would bleed to death of the wound.

In his [Belloc’s] view, had the Crusaders captured Damascus, the Islamic World would have been cut in two and “bled to death of the wound”—which, in Belloc’s explicitly stated view, would have been a highly desirable and positive outcome.

My comment: please note the fine craftsmanship with which the anonymous editor manages to maintain the pretense of objectivity while conveying a condescending sneer to Mr. Belloc.

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Wright’s Writing Corner: the Dreaded Blank Page

Posted July 22, 2011 By John C Wright

Yes, some days writing is like this.

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/199884.html

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How Would You Write a Superman Story?

Posted July 21, 2011 By John C Wright

A reader who, unlike nearly everyone on the Internet, uses his real name (or has adopted the cunning disguise of calling himself after ancient prophets and modern firearms) named Nate Winchester, writes and asks:

Do comic book writers have something against marriage?

This is not in reference to the divorce that took place between Spiderman and Mary Jane at the behest of the demon Mephisto or Plotcontrivo or whatever his name is. As all we geekroids of comicbookland know, Superman is being relaunched with a new line of comics taking place in his bachelor days, back when Clark Kent was still in love with Lois and she would not give him the time of day.

The story is here: http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/2011-07-18-superman-a-bachelor-in-comics-relaunch_n.htm?

I realize that to you, if you are a pol-geek interested in the ongoing autopsy which forms the core of modern politics, the concerns of fanboys about Superman’s love life may seem trivial. Let me just remind you that pol-geeks are talking about nothing but the debate over the debt ceiling, and have been for some weeks. This story will be dead as a doornail by the end of August, or after the next election, or after the collapse of the republic, whichever comes first, whereas Superman stories will continue to be told and retold as long as their are children able to tie a blanket or red bathroom towel around their necks and throw themselves down the front stairs. So there.

On to the question:

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Magneto, Nietzsche and the Slans

Posted July 20, 2011 By John C Wright

Reader Nate Winchester wrote in to ask my opinion of the latest X Man movie, FIRST CLASS.

The short answer is that I loved it. I am easy to please when it comes to movies. And this is the first time I have ever liked the Banshee or Havoc, who otherwise I always thought were rather second-rate style X-Men.

I am even easier to please if the movie is a  1960’s period piece and the villain is straight out of James Bond films, complete with escape-submarines nestled under yachts when the subs are so high class they have well appointed dining rooms and wine cellars.

I have a friend who simply loathes X-Men, because the idea of superhumans evolved to the next stage of Darwinian evolution is a Nazi idea, which divides the world into übermenschen and untermenschen, superhumans and subhumans (with us poor mortals as subhumans). I have another friend who adores the X-Men because they remind her not just of the Jews suffering persecution under the Nazis, but of the blacks struggling for Civil Rights in the Western Democracies, or any minority seeking the acceptance of a hostile public.

My opinion? I think the power of any story that reaches a mythical stature — and I will politely but firmly hold the field against anyone who claims that comics books do not reach that stature more-so than mainstream novels — the power of myth is that it is like a lamp that illuminates and is reflected back from many of the things in our surrounding mental environment, not just one.

I think my two friends who say opposite things are both right.

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Women in the Back of the Bus

Posted July 19, 2011 By John C Wright

Ladies, the Progressive Element is not your friend. I would like to submit Exhibit A in my case of the Unfriendliness of the Progressives toward the fair sex.

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/4259/28/

The columnist Steyn reprints a picture of schoolchildren seated in three rows in a cafeteria, bowing with their heads toward Mecca. He explains the composition of the rows:
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I enter the coveted corner of the Writer’s Hypercube!

Posted July 19, 2011 By John C Wright

The unparalleled and never-imitated Mike Flynn reports that my humble yarn, THE GOLDEN AGE, has been rated as a 011 on the Story Cube.

http://m-francis.livejournal.com/206677.html?view=1226581#t1226581

For those of you not familiar with the Story Cube, it is a mathematical schema used, first, to depict the four basic dimensions of the art of the novel, and, second, the method used by Meg Murray to tesseract through the spacefolds to the evil planet Kamazotz to rescue her father from the darkened world of The Thing.

The theory that Guild Navigators use a similar method of folding space to translate starships to and from planet Dune is, unfortunately, apocryphal. That only appears in the movie. In the original text, the Navigators used prognostication to foretell and avoid the location of micrometeorites and asteroids and other navigation hazards, since a vessel traveling faster than light cannot see incoming objects.

 

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Armor on Mars

Posted July 15, 2011 By John C Wright

Part of an ongoing conversation and love-fest of all things Barsoomian.

Sean M. Brooks writes a question that often returns to puzzle readers of scientifiction and scientific romances. Why is it, that, the conditions that obtain on Barsoom…

Why aren’t these warriors wearing ARMOR and carrying at least bucklers when they fight practically all the time using only swords? … Wearing armor would give these warriors some protection from the blows of their enemies. I can easily imagine how John Carter, coming from a heavier gravity world like Earth, would find armor on Barsoom especially easy to wear. So, why don’t they? Are metals like iron and copper too rare and costly for most warriors? Even if that was the case, I would think at least jeddaks (emperors) could afford armor for themselves and a few picked soldiers.

Many scholars of Barsoomania have pondered this question with philosophical diligence.
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John Carter, Warlord of Mars

Posted July 14, 2011 By John C Wright

Once of the coincidences that one would not believe in fiction has just happened to me: I assume I am the last person to know that Disney is making PRINCESS OF MARS into a movie. Since I have just been rereading this novel (with immense pleasure–it is much better than I remember it) to my young son, and wondering why it was never made into a movie before, when many of Burrough’s other works, Tarzan and Pellucidar and so on, had been, it therefore came as an immense pleasure and surprise that we have a film coming.

Clip below the cut

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A Salute to Steam-Powered Cuteness

Posted July 14, 2011 By John C Wright

The fine fellows over at SfSignal recently were asking in one of their Q&A articles, ‘Why has Steampunk persisted for so long?”

Had only they asked me! Had they asked me, they probably would have received a farrago of nonsense in reply, so better that they didn’t.

But had they asked me and had I attempted a sober reply, I would have said this:

Victorian women were feminine, perhaps the most deliberately feminine females of history, and dressed and carried themselves to look the part. Steampunk lasts in part because the Steampunkettes dress in pseudo-Victorian costume, and it looks very cute and very female. It is refreshing change from the dull unisex monotony of modernity.

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Breach the Hull review

Posted July 14, 2011 By John C Wright

I am mentioned favorably in a review of BREACH THE HULL by Douglas Cobb at the Boomtron website:

I saw two stories by John C. Wright. I hadn’t read anything previously by him, but his name was familiar, and after thinking about it for a while, I figured out why:  he’s the husband of L. Jagi Lamplighter (I had the pleasure of both reviewing her novel, Prospero In Hell, and interviewing her; click here to read the interview).

I am amused and pleased to note that the time has come that I have always foreseen and foretold, when I would be known, as Percy Bysse Shelly is known, not for my own writing but because I am married to my more famous wife, Mary the authoress of FRANKENSTEIN.

I cannot tell you how strange it is to read a review of her book that mentions the Three Shadows Ones. There are three characters I originally made up when I was in High School for a Doctor Strange comic (what today would be called a fanfic.) I liked the name, and used them again, somewhat changed, as evil Selkie or shapetakers of Chaos in my Nine Princes in Amber role playing game. Jagi played in that game, and also liked the name, and borrowed them to be the enemies of the Magician Prospero in her book. So there it is — villains I made up four decades ago now appearing in print. Life is odd.

The two short stories of mine mentioned are Peter Power Armor, and Forgotten Causes: My tentative venture into the shallow end of the deep pool known as Military SF.

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Invisible Beams of Unicorn Love

Posted July 12, 2011 By John C Wright

The prestigious Publisher’s Weekly vouchsafed one of their coveted starred review’s to the novel of my beautiful and talented wife, PROSPERO REGAINED.

http://reviews.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7653-1931-9

Lamplighter wraps up her Prospero’s Daughter trilogy (after 2010’s Prospero in Hell) with a satisfyingly epic combination of mythology, theology, and Shakespeare. Prospero’s children, estranged and scattered throughout the circles of Hell, must overcome centuries of distrust and neglect to rescue their father before he’s executed. Unfortunately, someone in the family may be a traitor, and Miranda’s lost much of her power. As the Family Prospero journey through the underworld, all of their age-old secrets, mysteries, resentments, and failings are finally brought to light. Lamplighter keenly examines the complex, intertwined natures of redemption, forgiveness, and faith as represented by the intricate bonds of love and family, externalizing them through memorable representations of Heaven, Hell, and Faerie. This is intricate, intellectual fantasy at its best–with bonus “invisible beams of unicorn love.” (Sept.)

My comment: I am particularly gratified, since I am the one who made up those invisible beams of unicorn love that my wife describes to poetically in her work.

 

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Farewell, Liberty

Posted July 12, 2011 By John C Wright

To arms, citizens.

INDIANAPOLIS | Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said.

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Pulp Cover Fiction

Posted July 12, 2011 By John C Wright

The Internet is a strange place. I was looking at youtube videos of pulp magazine covers, and little mini-essays on The Shadow, when I came across youtube where someone had put together a slideshow of magazine covers from the 1950’s. I recognized the first one, because I had used it in a humor piece I had written in 2008, where I (tongue in cheek) tried to define the genre of science fiction by seeing what elements appeared on the covers of pulp magazines.

“Well,” thought I, “Small world. That guy who made the slideshow found the same magazine as I!”

Then the slideshow displayed the second one, which, by coincidence, was the second cover I had used; and then the third — by the time the Old West covers I had used rolled around, I caught on.

Someone had been as impressed as I at the covers I had collected and made a sideshow out of them. I am flattered and little embarrassed, because I do not remember the name or URL of the history-of-magazines site where I found the prints.

Anyway, those of you who want to see the nice covers without all the inane jesting and nonsense the I wrote around and around them, here is the slideshow.

And if you DO want to see the nice covers with all the inane jesting and nonsense, here is the humor piece.

http://johncwright.livejournal.com/171782.html

 

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Love Letter to a Princess of Mars, Postcript

Posted July 11, 2011 By John C Wright

So Number Three Son and I have read to chapter XI of Princess of Mars, when we came across these words. John Carter is trying to explain his origins to Dejah Thoris.

She addresses him thus:

“I heard your challenge to the creature you call Tars Tarkas, and I think I understand your position among these people, but what I cannot fathom is your statement that you are not of Barsoom.”

“In the name of my first ancestor, then,” she continued, “where may you be from? You are like unto my people, and yet so unlike. You speak my language, and yet I heard you tell Tars Tarkas that you had but learned it recently. All Barsoomians speak the same tongue from the ice-clad south to the ice-clad north, though their written languages differ. Only in the valley Dor, where the river Iss empties into the lost sea of Korus, is there supposed to be a different language spoken, and, except in the legends of our ancestors, there is no record of a Barsoomian returning up the river Iss, from the shores of Korus in the valley of Dor. Do not tell me that you have thus returned! They would kill you horribly anywhere upon the surface of Barsoom if that were true; tell me it is not!”

Her eyes were filled with a strange, weird light; her voice was pleading, and her little hands, reached up upon my breast, were pressed against me as though to wring a denial from my very heart.

“I do not know your customs, Dejah Thoris, but in my own Virginia a gentleman does not lie to save himself; I am not of Dor; I have never seen the mysterious Iss; the lost sea of Korus is still lost, so far as I am concerned. Do you believe me?”

My son and I, both gentlemen of Virginia, immediately rose to our feet, sang the anthem of the commonwealth, and made the salute, and shouted Sic Semper Tyrannis.
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