Archive for August, 2011

Life is Short, Manuscripts are Long

Posted August 31, 2011 By John C Wright

I have to cut over one hundred and fifty pages from my latest and greatest manuscript, THE HERMETIC MILLENNIUMS which is Part Two of my forthcoming COUNT TO THE ESCHATON quartet, which is a love story about a man who destroys the universe. Ugh. So far I have eliminated five nuclear wars circa 2400-2450, and a scene where a man is talking to himself (he is speaking with a computer emulation of his own mind ramped up to IQ 450 or so), and I have eliminated a mom from a eugenic Spartan military world empire circa AD 6000, who is thawed by unwise archeologists circa AD 10100. I just cut out the entire downfall of the electro-telepathic Locust subspecies circa AD 9500, after the Sixth Space Age. And I still have 25 pages to cut.

I want to keep the scene where the evil priest Father Reyes the Red Hermeticist, is on the dark side of the Moon, in the Sea of Cunning (real place, I did not make that up), hearing the confession of the posthuman Spanish grandee Ximen “Blackie’ del Azarchel, when that archvillain’s conscience is bothering him, and the evil priest tells him the genocide of mankind to clear the evolutionary underbrush for postmankind is perfectly in keeping with Catholic social teaching: the supermen must be evolved into existence before the alien machine intelligences arrive from the Hyades in  AD 11000.

Meanwhile I have also been stuck in one scene in my yet-unfinished paratime-travel yarn, SOMEWHITHER, where my hero (the unwitting son of an agent of the inter-dimensional Roman Catholic conspiracy founded when the Templars used the Ark of the Covenant discovered in the Temple of Solomon to rip open a dimensional portal to escape persecution by Philip the Fair of France)  has found a parallel timeline where the tower of Babel was successfully completed, and it is both a ‘beanstalk’ space elevator, and an astronomical tower in a dimension where astrology actually works and accurately predicts the future to any degree required. So of course the Astrologers, possessing nigh-omniscience, are thoroughly evil tyrants. He is in the middle of being rescued by a child from yet another parallel, a history where there was a John the Baptist but Jesus has not arrived as yet — the kid is immune to the predictions of astrology, on the grounds that the baptism of John is sufficient to wash away her earthly nativity and make her ‘twice born’ hence invisible to their prognostication.

The parallel timeline where the Deluge never happened, so giants or Niphilim still walk the earth and Gregorim still occupy the skies; or where Moses never freed the Hebrews, so that the Egyptians, never sufferied plagues nor loss of power, so that their system of Pharaochian magic actually works, and the mummies of ancient kings command the powers of the desert and the Nile, the Red Land and the Black ; or where Jesus Christ was never betrayed and never crucified, so that, unfortunately, the vampires of Transylvania had no crucifixes that repel them — all these timelines have come on stage.  But I have not found a way to introduce the prayer-powered Mecha of Mecca, a forty-story-tall suit of armor  abandoned by Michael the Archangel when he took a vow of peace, refitted by Heron of Alexandria with an articulated steam-powered robotic framework of gears and pistons to allow it to operate as an invulnerable walking fortress, with a platoon of archers camped in the helmet, using the eyeslits as arrowslits. (What? You thought all alternate history books had to assume secular history were the only events that ever happened? Come on.)

So if I can work out this plot, it’ll be great. Otherwise, it will suck like a shop-vacc on overload. And, by treating Biblical events as literal, I get to run the risk of unintentionally publishing blasphemy and scandal, and offending both infidels and fidels (if that is a word). Yeah, me.

In the midst of all this, I am informed by my Jesuit Confessor and Master of Counter-espionage, Father de Casuist, that mail arrived for me from another member of my ‘cell’ in Roman Catholic Illuminati conspiracy, the albino monk assassin from Opus Dei known as Mark Shea. Using my secret decoder rosary, I soon decrypt the message. Let me see. Today is Wednesday, and the Second Glorious Mystery is the Miracle of the Ascension, and it is the Feast of Saint Aidin of Lindisfarne, whose name starts with A …. hmmm…. so if A=1 and B=2 …. got it.

Bad news for Mssrs. Flynn and C. Wright Turns out, they can’t possibly exist!

http://www.graspingforthewind.com/2011/08/21/science-fiction-and-religion-a-marriage-not-made-in-heaven-nor-even-the-laboratory/

You see, a guy on the internet is an atheist, and can name four science fiction stories by atheist authors which are critical of religion. Therefore, “Working from a religious viewpoint, there is no room for science fiction.” QED. There’s just not enough room, you see? It’s so crowded down there in your religious viewpoint! We have to free up some space. I got a sweet deal on this new coffee table that I want to put in, but there’s just no room for it! Religion or Science Fiction Authorship has to go.

I hope Michael Flynn, John C. Wright, Tim Powers, C.S. Lewis, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, R. A. Lafferty, Connie Willis and Clifford Simak get the memo and either start writing something other than science fiction or immediately drop their respective religions.

And those are just some Christian ones off the top of my head. Turns out, people from other religions are also tragically unaware that they are unable to write science fiction. Aldous Huxley was a convert to Hinduism. Ursula K. Leguin is famously Taoist. And Hellboy, while technically not an author, does simultaneously fight demons (so he is clearly religious) and technologically reanimated severed floating Nazi heads who control an army of cyborg gorillas (clearly science fiction). Even comic book characters aren’t safe!

We need to get the word out now, or a huge swath of the fiction-writing community may soon wink out of existence.

I confess I have not clicked through the link to read the argument as to why science fiction and religion are incompatible. I don’t have time.

I have time to write this nonsense here, of course, but other nonsense will have to wait. And I have time to post a picture of Aishwarya Rai after the cut. Priorities!

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Impuritanism

Posted August 30, 2011 By John C Wright

I came across this tidbit of news:

http://www.gamebandits.com/news/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-same-sex-marriage-allowed-in-game-13557/
[…] With The Elder Scrolls 5 – Skyrim, this forward march to awarding recognition for same sex marriage has now reached the video game world.

While same sex relationships is not new in RPG video games, this year’s Dragon Age 2 featured a same sex relationship between former Grey Warden Anders and Karl. However, The Elder Scrolls 5 – Skyrim will actually allow same sex marriage not just same sex relationships. The news broke through Bethesda community/ PR point man, Pete Hines through his Twitter feed.[…]

 

At the same time I read this from Mark Shea:

Stacy Trasancos mentioned that she’d like to be able to take her little girl someplace without subjecting her to gays making out in public.

Huge mistake. The brownshirts have flooded her comboxes to scream about her urgent need to approve of homosexuality or face the consequences.

I suppose it is important for the propaganda of so self-evidently a false-to-facts proposition that perversion is non-perverse and sex is non-sex to be wedged into every crack of society. Even your games must conform. Even your blogs. Even your thoughts. Christ is bigotry; Ganymede is the new Christ.

The old Puritans did not want anyone, anywhere, to be outside the reach of their command, for fear anyone would have abnormal or unchaste sexual passions.

The new Puritans do not want anyone, anywhere, to be outside of the reach of their command for fear anyone would have the normal and chaste sexual passions, or, worse, a healthy dislike of the abnormal, perverse and unhealthy, or to teach their children likewise. Let us call them the Impuritans.

Since I was the butt of one of these craven Two-Minute-Hate intimidation sessions not long ago, I would urge any reader of mine of good will to go to the defense of Miss Trasancos.

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From the pen of Simcha Fisher

Posted August 29, 2011 By John C Wright

A bit of wisdom from a Christian woman (Who are sexier than atheist women, because they submit to their husbands, and don’t indulge in artificial sterility or prenatal infanticide. Sorry, God-haters. You know it is true.)

Ten Things I Wish I Had Known as a New Wife

by Simcha Fisher Friday, August 26, 2011 

1.  You’re just an amateur, and that’s why your marriage isn’t perfect. The first meal I cooked was disgusting, indigestible—but I learned over time, and now I have the hang of it (with the occasional mealtime disaster). It’s the same with marriage, which is a much more complicated recipe to follow. Be patient with yourself and your husband, and be patient with the relationship. You’re in it for the long haul. Things that are worth doing take time to learn.

2.  Do not mention divorce. Do not even allow words beginning with the letter “d” to cross your brain. If you’re hurt and angry with your husband, but it was a valid marriage and he isn’t doing any of the things listed in those abuse hotline posters in the YMCA bathroom, then remember that you married a human being, not a god. You can either work it out or learn to live with it, but no, you cannot leave.

3.  Pray together every night, even if it’s just a three-pack (an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be—the go-to evening prayer for tired or lazy Catholics). If your husband doesn’t want to pray, then snuggle up to him in bed and pray silently. The Holy Spirit sometimes appears unable to distinguish between two married people, and may react as if you’re praying together.

4.  Don’t be anxious to prove that you have a happy home by producing instant traditions. Traditions take time to develop. It’s hard to have a complete-feeling holiday with just two people, especially with no kids around. Also, newlyweds are often poor. (Yes, the best things in life are free. Christmas trees, however, are expensive; and so are the other trappings of the holidays.)

Read the other 6 things here: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/simcha-fisher/ten-things-i-wish-i-had-known-as-a-new-wife/#ixzz1WSBnsQFI
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Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat

Posted August 25, 2011 By John C Wright

A reader with the diminutive name of Michael the Lesser asks:

Dear Mr. Wright,

I recently read your conversion story as you posted last year and some of the comments that followed. I was intrigued that you expressed the conviction that Christianity was more mature and philosophically advanced than the Eastern religions.

I have a friend, who is a Catholic convert, but struggles with letting go to of her attachment to Hinduism and specifically Hare Krishna.

So, in what ways do you see that Christianity is more mature and philosophically advanced than Eastern religions?

An excellent question, and I tremble to think I now must make good on my rash words, for I fear my powers are inadequate.

As with all philosophical conversations, we must begin with definitions, lest we be misled into thinking some claim not present is being made.

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Paedophiliaphobia

Posted August 25, 2011 By John C Wright

A cloud the size of man’s hand was seen in the distance:

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/evil-attendees-at-prominent-pro-pedophilia-conference-horrified-by-sessions

The conference examined the ways in which “minor-attracted persons” could be involved in a revision of the American Psychological Association (APA) classification of pedophilia.Conference panelists included Fred Berlin of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Renee Sorentino of Harvard Medical School, John Sadler of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and John Breslow of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Speakers addressed the around 50 individuals in attendance on themes ranging from the notion that pedophiles are “unfairly stigmatized and demonized” by society to the idea that “children are not inherently unable to consent” to sex with an adult. Also discussed were arguments that an adult’s desire to have sex with children is “normative” and that the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) ignores the fact that pedophiles “have feelings of love and romance for children” in the same way adult heterosexuals and homosexuals have romantic feelings for one another.

Could this cloud grow and produce a storm?

I submit that all that is needed is to characterize opposition to paedophilia as a violation of a civil right, or a sign of mental illness. All that is needed is to coin a catchy word: I suggest paedophiliapobia.

Do you think such tactics will not work, given the current philosophy of the current culture?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/19/florida-teacher-suspended-for-anti-gay-marriage-post-on-personal-facebook/

Patton said the school system received a complaint on Tuesday about something Buell had written last July when New York legalized same sex unions. On Wednesday, he was temporarily suspended from the classroom and reassigned.

Patton said Buell has taught in the school system for 22 years and has a spotless record. Last year, he was selected as the high school’s “Teacher of the Year.”

But now his job is on the line because of what some have called anti-gay and homophobic comments.

Buell told Fox News Radio that he was stunned by the accusations. “It was my own personal comment on my own personal time on my own personal computer in my own personal house, exercising what I believed as a social studies teacher to be my First Amendment rights,” he said.

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Citizen Solomon Kane

Posted August 24, 2011 By John C Wright

This comment by Leo Grin (by way of NRO) about the new CONAN movie has quashed my desire to see it. Movies should be made about barbarians, say I, not by barbarians.

Leo Grin says:

Saw Conan the Barbarian last night. Revoltingly stupid, incomprehensibly plotted and edited, and overflowing with the kind of quasi-erotic torture porn (seemingly pulled wholesale out of a serial killer’s wet dreams) that’s become a staple of both fantasy literature and Hollywood films this century. Easily one of the worst films I’ve seen during decades of painfully slumming through mediocre genre fare — I daresay even Uwe Boll (the ham-fisted director commonly seen as the modern era’s answer to Ed Wood) has never made anything this irredeemably rotten. As you know, the best of Robert E. Howard’s pulp tales of the 1930s — which in recent years have been reprinted everywhere from academic presses to Penguin’s prestigious Modern Classics imprint, and which the various silly comic books and movies resemble not a whit — cry out for the cinematic talents of a Akira Kurosawa or a Sergio Leone, men possessed of the same operatic poetry, grandeur, heroism, and thematic depth found in Howard’s original stories. Perhaps someday. Until then? Well, the audience I saw the movie with seemed to have cheerfully low expectations, yet even they didn’t so much leave the theater as recoil from it. You’ve been warned.

I also link to the Black Gate comment on this comment because it has the following “crowning moment of win” and I am stabbed with scorpion stings of envy because my pen did not father these immortal words:

someone desperately needs to make a movie entitled Citizen Solomon Kane about an elderly Puritan who owns a media empire and dies with the mysterious word Rosebud on his lips after a long life spent reporting on politicians and industrial magnates by day and slaughtering the bad ones with a sword by night

* * * *

Those of you unfamiliar with the character of Solomon Kane, Puritan Adventurer, let this bit of poetry serve as an introduction. Those of you not familiar with CITIZEN KANE, hie thee and with all haste to Netflicks, and netflick.

Solomon Kane’s Homecoming

The white gulls wheeled above the cliffs, the air was slashed with foam,
The long tides moaned along the strand when Solomon Kane came home.
He walked in silence strange and dazed through the little Devon town,
His gaze, like a ghost’s come back to life, roamed up the streets and down.
The people followed wonderingly to mark his spectral stare,
And in the tavern silently they thronged about him there.
He heard as a man hears in a dream the worn old rafters creak,
And Solomon lifted his drinking-jack and spoke as a ghost might speak:
“There sat Sir Richard Grenville once; in smoke and flame he passed.
“And we were one to fifty-three, but we gave them blast for blast.
“From crimson dawn to crimson dawn, we held the Dons at bay.
“The dead lay littered on our decks, our masts were shot away.
“We beat them back with broken blades, till crimsom ran the tide;
“Death thundered in the cannon smoke when Richard Grenville died.
“We should have blown her hull apart and sunk beneath the Main.”
The people saw upon his wrist the scars of the racks of Spain.
“Where is Bess?” said Solomon Kane. “Woe that I caused her tears.”
“In the quiet churchyard by the sea she has slept these seven years.”
The sea-wind moaned at the window-pane, and Solomon bowed his head.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and the fairest fade,” he said.
His eyes were mytical deep pools that drowned unearthly things,
And Solomon lifted up his head and spoke of his wanderings.
“Mine eyes have looked on sorcery in dark and naked lands,
“Horror born of the jungle gloom and death on the pathless sands.
“And I have known a deathless queen in a city old as Death[1],
“Where towering pyramids of skulls her glory witnesseth.
“Her kiss was like an adder’s fang, with the sweetness Lilith had,
“And her red-eyed vassals howled for blood in that City of the Mad.

“And I have slain a vampire shape that drank a black king white[2],
“And I have roamed through grisly hills where dead men walked at night[3].
“And I have seen heads fall like fruit in a slaver’s barracoon[4],
“And I have seen winged demons fly all naked in the moon[5].

“My feet are weary of wandering and age comes on apace;
“I fain would dwell in Devon now, forever in my place.”
The howling of the ocean pack came whistling down the gale,
And Solomon Kane threw up his head like a hound that sniffs the trail.
A-down the wind like a running pack the hounds of the ocean bayed,
And Solomon Kane rose up again and girt his Spanish blade.
In his strange cold eyes a vagrant gleam grew wayward and blind and bright,
And Solomon put the people by and went into the night.
A wild moon rode the wild white clouds, the waves in white crests flowed,
When Solomon Kane went forth again and no man knew his road.
They glimpsed him etched against the moon, where clouds on hilltop thinned;
They heard an eery echoed call that whistled down the wind.

 

Footnotes: The adventures to which Solomon Kane refers are from the following Robert E Howard tales:

[1] The Moon of Skulls
[2] Red Shadows
[3] The Hills of the Dead
[4] The Footfalls Within
[5] Wings in the Night

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Faith and the Scientific Imagination

Posted August 16, 2011 By John C Wright

( This piece was originally published (for pay) here in the Catholic Herald as Aliens need Christ’s redemption, too. Richard Dawkins on his website reprinted it without permission (and without paying me), and the comments boxes are filled with vitriol by folk who by their own admission did not read the article. Rather than having Mr. Dawkins maintain the only version on the web, I reprint it here to archive it.)

The Times reports that Father Jose Gabriel Funes, the Vatican’s chief astronomer, condones the idea that we have fellows among the stars, Little Green Men, so to speak, who are our brothers in Christ.

Fr Funes said that just as there existed a “multiplicity of creatures on Earth”, so there could exist “other beings created by God, including intelligent ones. We cannot place limits on God’s creative freedom.” St Francis of Assisi had described our fellow creatures on Earth as our brothers and sisters, “so why can we not also speak of our extra terrestrial brothers? They too would be part of Creation.” He said that aliens, like humans, would be able to benefit from the redemption offered by Jesus Christ and “the mercy of God”.

The newsmen regard this as news only because they are hypnotised by the concept that religion and science are antithetical, so to hear a Jesuit Vatican astronomer speculating about science fiction amuses and astounds them. This is merely a sad commentary on the ignorance of newsmen, who seem not to know the noble role the Jesuits have always played in the history of higher education, or what the role her handmaiden science fills in relation to the Church.

Nonetheless, this little article suggests several questions that lead us to interesting speculation.

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Harry Potter and the Christian Magicians III — Theological Speculative Fiction

Posted August 15, 2011 By John C Wright

A reader writes in to ask three questions:

1. What is the right way to answer the accusation that the fantasy genre turns kids into satanists/gnostics/pagans? One sees this argument most used against Harry Potter, but in recent years I’ve come upon people who believe that the inclusion of magic in a work is so evil they won’t even let their children read Narnia.

2. Related to this, I’m curious what your opinion is in regard to what the proper way is for a Catholic author to handle magic in his work.

3. What would be your response to those who say that all magic ought to be portrayed as evil or only used by characters who are stand-ins for God (Aslan) or who are agents of God (as I have seen some argue that Gandalf is)?

The first question I answered at some length here. The second I answered at even greater length here. Let is now turn to the third.

As with most questions in life, this question is one concerning how to strike a happy medium between to opposing duties or desires. The first is the writer qua man and his duty to the truth and to heaven; the second is the writer qua writer and his duty to turn out a workmanlike product.

The first cannot be ignored for the second. A Christian writer cannot become a pagan for the sake of the marketplace while he takes up his pen. Indeed, if anything, the opposite. He must take up his pen for the greater glory of God.

There are two basic kinds of ideas: those that demand the total loyalty of the total person and influence every aspect of life, and those that do not. In general, the former are religious or semireligious ideas, and the latter are everything else. (I call Socialism a semireligious idea:  there is no aspect of a man’s life that is beyond its reach, neither the use of gender-pronouns nor the use of Sterofoam or lightbulbs nor the use of recreational drugs nor the abuse of scientific climatological data.)

For the Christian, no aspect of life is or should be untouched and uninfluenced by Christ: even the humblest of work, baking bread or cobbling shoes, should and can be done in some fashion that reflects the glory to God, and displays virtue. While the heathen might find this concept remarkable (or contemptible) it is no  more remarkable than saying and honest man does any work honestly, whether baker or shoemaker.

The heathens of the modern day who find the concept remarkable are, it must be admitted, hypocrites of astonishing insouciance: surely more than half the commentators on literature list subversion of the current social order as their express goal: they regard the introduction into the mind of the impressionable reader skepticism about the values and the virtues taught by Western civilization to be a healthy part of the maturation process. But a book supportive of any of the basic values or virtues of our common Western heritage will be denounced as fascist. Note, for example, the difference between the applause heaped on STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, a snide satire against monogamy and monotheism,  and the opprobrium heaped on STARSHIP TROOPERS, a heartfelt paean to the unsung virtues of the footsoldier.

Yet neither can the second be ignored for the first. I have an obligation to write stories that will entertain not those who share my philosophy, but those who share my tastes, including the honorable opposition. Can I not, as a Christian, entertain heathens? Their world is dark enough as it is. Am I to tell them no jokes, no daydreams, no glittering ideas about the world of the future nor the world of fantasy?

Now, as science fiction and fantasy writer, my employers, the buyers of my wares, are ultimately not the editors but the readers: their interest is primarily in hearing a well told tale. They do not want to be on the receiving end of propaganda or lecture, certainly not coming from the pens of the disreputable tribe of fiction authors, that is, men who earn their bread by inventing fables rather than by honest labor that callouses the hands.

There are exceptions, of course. Fan of Ayn Rand are fans, by and large, fond of her lectures, and the same is true of Robert Heinlein: but such exceptional books are written for a narrower audience or by a wider talent than the norm. Outside such rare exceptions, tales are meant to entertain as editorials are meant to editorialize, and tales should be told for the sake of the telling.

Unfortunately, three factors militate against tale-telling for telling’s sake with no concern for the underlying philosophy or moral of the tale: first, the Enemy of Man and God and his agents and tools are firmly entrenched in the literary circles, so much so that to find a Christian writer among them is like finding an oasis in a sterile desert. Such few and refreshing shady pools exist, to be sure, but the uncounted acres of sand stretch bare and lifeless to the horizon. For every rare and beautiful pool of Tolkien, there are allegedly subversive writers busily sharpening and poisoning their pens against the purely imaginary Victorian prudes they see lurking beneath every doorstep, or watching with narrowed eyes behind the blinds, writers who think it best to use their dull sword-and-unicorn books as the proper venue to propagate the latest fashionable causes of the eternal rebellion: and they are as countless as the grains of sand in the wasteland.

We cannot abandon the literary field to them, or the market, or the impressionable minds of the young, or the battlefield.

For one thing, the characters and situations they invent are dreary, and boring only except when they are shocking or grotesque. The cathedrals of modern literature are carven more and more with goblins and gargoyles, and less and less with saints.

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The superversive Mr Simon

Posted August 15, 2011 By John C Wright

Below please find a comment by Tom Simon on an issue being discussed recently in this space. I add it here both to show that he can say in a paragraph what it takes my rather more mundane mind ten pages to say, and to urge any who have not read his essays to do themselves a favor starting with my favorites, here and here and here.

Today, as it happens, I was rereading the inimitable G.K.C.’s Tremendous
Trifles; and there I found, and paused to ponder, this neat turn of phrase which
seems apposite to the matter at hand:

Folklore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of
marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the
soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is — what will a
healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is — what
will a madman do with a dull world?

I would submit that the magic of fairy tales is the magic of a wild and
marvellous universe; and the magic of the occult is the magic of a sick and
screaming soul — the art of the Elves and the deceits of the Enemy, as Galadriel
called them respectively. I would submit that if we keep them clearly
distinguished, and reserve our admiration for the former and our condemnation
chiefly for the latter, we shall have done our duty as Christians not to aid the
Enemy. Moreover, we shall do two positive goods: the good of what Chesterton
called Mooreeffoc and Tolkien called ‘Recovery’, of waking the imagination to
the marvels that are in real things, and recalling the divine gift of
astonishment; and the good of discernment, of teaching our readers the vital
difference between the joyous appreciation of wonders and the dry, salt lust to
possess and control them. Neither of these goods will they be likely to obtain
from any other source.

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Harry Potter and the Christian Magicians II — Baptizing Dumbledore

Posted August 11, 2011 By John C Wright

A reader writes in to ask three questions:

1. What is the right way to answer the accusation that the fantasy genre turns kids into satanists/gnostics/pagans? One sees this argument most used against Harry Potter, but in recent years I’ve come upon people who believe that the inclusion of magic in a work is so evil they won’t even let their children read Narnia.

2. Related to this, I’m curious what your opinion is in regard to what the proper way is for a Catholic author to handle magic in his work.

3. What would be your response to those who say that all magic ought to be portrayed as evil or only used by characters who are stand-ins for God (Aslan) or who are agents of God (as I have seen some argue that Gandalf is)?

The first question I answered at some length here. The third, and to my mind most interesting, because it asks the relation of entertaining fiction to theological fact, must wait until another day. Let me gird up my loins and address the second.

The second question has deep roots. To discuss it, we need to discuss the relation of Christianity to paganism, of poetry to fantasy, and fantasy to the faith.

Each of these discussions is worthy of its own essay: unfortunately for any longsuffering reader, I will cover all three points below in one long essay to suffer through.

This second question is by no means new. The question was put AD 797, by the scholar Alcuin of the court of Charlemagne, echoing the words of St Paul in an address to Higbald, bishop of Lindisfarne, where the monks spent more time chanting the lays of Ingeld than chanting the liturgies and hours: “What has Ingeld to do with Christ?”

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Latin Begging

Posted August 9, 2011 By John C Wright

Are any of you scholars out there willing to help a poor student with his Latin? Here is text from my current manuscript:

His voice was so horse and cracked that it made me wince and wish I had a canteen to lend him. He sounded like he’s swallowed sand. “Ego sum, ego sum, sicut vinum sanguis tuus bibiturus sum usque ad ebrietatem.”

It was Latin. The magic was that allowed me to understand languages was not helping me out, but I did catch the gist of what he’d just said.  It is I, even I, who shall drink your blood like wine even unto drunkenness.

What world was he from? This one? Another?

He spoke again in his voice of dry creaking: “Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.”

The tone of voice was clear: sardonic, contemptuous, deadly. The Fates lead the willing, the unwilling they drag.

Your humble author is afraid he has butchered the language. Courtroom Latin is about the extent of my knowledge.

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Harry Potter and the Christian Magicians

Posted August 5, 2011 By John C Wright

A reader writes in to ask three questions:

1. What is the right way to answer the accusation that the fantasy genre turns kids into satanists/gnostics/pagans? One sees this argument most used against Harry Potter, but in recent years I’ve come upon people who believe that the inclusion of magic in a work is so evil they won’t even let their children read Narnia.

2. Related to this, I’m curious what your opinion is in regard to what the proper way is for a Catholic author to handle magic in their work.

3. What would be your response to those who say that all magic ought to be portrayed as evil or only used by characters who are stand-ins for God (Aslan) or who are agents of God (as I have seen some argue that Gandalf is)?

The second question would require another lengthy essay, as will the third. Perhaps another day I can address them. For now, I will address but the first, and I warn the patient reader this is rather a long answer, because the topic is one I have much pondered.

And it is a topic that has been very much on my mind of late, because in the manuscript under my hand at the moment, I have to decide whether the witchcraft used by one of the characters will be portrayed in that background as lawful or unlawful. (I will have to speak to what I decided in the promised next essay.)

Had you asked me this question a few years ago, I would have said that the best way to answer the accusation was with a belly laugh.

No doubt I would have uttered some snark, along the lines of: “If your biggest worry in the age of dictatorship of relativism in the ever-more socialist dystopia of the culture of death during a global war on terror, faithful Christians, is that a witch flying on a moonless night above your chimney pot will cast her Evil Eye on your milk cow, then you must live a pretty stress-free life.”

But in good conscience, I can no longer be so dismissive. Experience has corrected me.

It is bad form to begin with a digression, but a kind reader will indulge me.

One of my best friends in the world is Willy the Witch.

Willy is a perfectly nice fellow in every respect, kind and generous, funny, clever, a good father, a loyal husband, an honest man, big-hearted to a fault. I love him like a brother.

But he is convinced that occult powers are his to command, and the gods and spirits of the unseen world are manifestations of a mystical force that he, by his rituals and disciplines, can harness to work his will on the world.

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Wright’s Writing Corner

Posted August 4, 2011 By John C Wright

Wright’s Writing Corner includes a post on chapters and what makes them what they are.

For three weeks now, I’ve been on the last two chapters of my novel. Not because I haven’t written much in the last three weeks, quite the contrary-I’ve been writing with every free moment, putting other things, like feeding the children, on hold. (Okay, I have been feeding the children. They make a lot of noise if I don’t. But I haven’t been doing other things that really need doing. You would not want to visit my house at the moment.)

No, I’ve been two chapters from the end because I keep deciding to add another chapter break, making the distance between where I am and the end still two chapters, even though I just finished a chapter. (Actually, as of this afternoon, I believe I am only one chapter away.but it could still surprise me and take two chapters to get to the end. Or, I could decide that the last scene, which I have pretty well mapped out in my mind, is long enough, once I write it, to merit it’s own chapter.)

So, the question becomes: What makes a chapter?

 

Read the whole thing here
http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/201895.html

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Raise the Debt Ceiling!

Posted August 3, 2011 By John C Wright

A Republic cannot survive once half its citizens become convinced that the other half are irredeemably evil when they are merely good-natured and reasonable patriots.

But, again, a Republic cannot survive once half its citizens, convinced that they are merely good-natured and reasonable patriots, become irredeemably evil.

Please peruse this tidbit from the Anchoress:

http://www.patheos.com/community/theanchoress/2011/08/01/the-veep-goes-vile/

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Derbyshire and Christophobia

Posted August 1, 2011 By John C Wright

I once had respect for John Derbyshire, and was amused and edified by his views, even go so far as to buy one of his books: a decision he has given me cause to regret.

It seems Mr Derbyshire has contracted a terminal case of foaming Christophobia. It is terminal in that it kills any desire I have of reading any further words he pens.

Here, Derb reviews a Religion of Peace? — Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t by Robert Spencer

http://johnderbyshire.com/Reviews/Religion/religionofpeace.html

This is a book maintaining several things which I would have thought to be beyond dispute in any put the most lunatic fringe of far Left of circles, namely, the idea that Christianity upholds the rational conception of the universe which is a necessary precondition for the scientific method, and that it is fundamentally a civilized and peaceful religion, the root and core of our Western civilization, whereas Islam is none of these.

But no, Derb’s dislike of Christianity is vehement enough he does not say whether he thinks what Spencer says about Christianity and its role in history is true or false, he merely brays his donkey laugh at the notion of defending Christianity from slander.

He begins by he scoffing that Spencer (or anyone) should bother criticizing the morally retarded stance of regarding Christianity and Islam as morally equivalent. Derb says that the two faiths are equivalent in that they are both magical thinking, or, if they are not equivalent, not that many people say so, therefore it is not an issue worth discussing, and annoying to hear it discussed.

Got that? Derb’s criticism of Spenser is that he should not waste time defending Christianity because no one equates it to Mohammedanism, and, besides, Christianity is no better than Mohammedanism. In the finale of his critique, Derb undercuts himself even further, arguing that Christianity is worse than Mohammedanism.

(Even my lawyerly mind cannot puzzle out a way of setting these arguments as alternatives. They appear to be direct contradictions of each other.)

The whole review is on this same asinine and juvenile level, on the same intellectual plane as drawing a mustache in crayon on the picture of someone you dislike.

It is merely bullying and puking.

I cannot think of a behavior better calculated to compel a reader of my sense of honor to go out immediately and purchase said book. Let me see if I have any dollars left in my book-buying fund.

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