Archive for April, 2012

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Moonlanding Denial on the Increase

Posted April 23, 2012 By John C Wright

Bill Whittle says that the number of young people who deny that the moonlandings ever took place is on the increase.

Had I written such a thing in a science fiction story, no one would believe it. No one would believe it because everyone, or almost everyone, mistakes technological progress for the progress of civilization, which means, philosophical progress.

In reality, they have little or nothing to do with each other: Soviet Russia was able to put first a satellite and then a man in space faster than the West, but on a philosophical level, they were more primitive than Genghis Khan of the Mongols, more bloodthirsty than Acamapichtli, the first Aztec emperor.

In reality, you can have a generation wired into an Internet, the most astonishingly deep source of information in history, and yet without the educational or intellectual capacity to integrate that information into a coherent world view, without a respect for and an attempt to practice philosophy, in other words, they are peasants.

They have no desire to exercise the intellect, and rightly so, because the academics and intellectuals they meet, the minds the world holds up to them as thinkers of deep thoughts, are poseurs, men who utter utter nonsense and paradox and jabberwocky words: Marxists and materialists and nihilists for the most part, who either do not believe in the mind because they do not believe in the free will (Marx) or who do not believe in the mind because they believe men are meat puppets controlled by self gene molecules (Materialists) or who do not believe in the mind because they believe are beliefs are unbelievable (Nihilists). And the arrogance of their poseurs is particularly appalling to the younger generation, because deep down everyone at some level knows that truly wise men are humble, like Socrates, who knows he knows nothing.

Here is the video. Hear it and weep.
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Linkapalooza!

Posted April 20, 2012 By John C Wright

AND NOW, in an utterly unrelated link to another essay, let me urge you all to go read NerdFighter on Chesterton, with words which tickled my fancy and won my admiration:

http://nerdfighters.ning.com/profiles/blogs/g-k-chesterton-and-my-xbox-360

The couch potato explains his love for a video game on the grounds that, unlike flat modern conflicts fought with scientific weapons, the powered armored troopers of the future must face their foe with courage and honor, as much any Arthurian knight of old. Please take note all military SF guys and fans of STARSHIP TROOPERS (the sane version, not the movie).

And while you are at it, read his essay on Puddleglum and INCEPTION.

http://nerdfighters.ning.com/profiles/blogs/inception-and-narnia

My comment: “I’m on Aslan’s side even if there is no Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.” You tell ’em, Marshwiggle! Puddlglum the dreary pessimist is given the most joyful and optimistic line in the whole Narnia oeuvre.

I call it optimistic, yes. For recollect the scene: Puddleglum and the children are trapped in the gray-litten, morose and monster-haunted world of underground where never a whisper of laughter is heard, and bewitched, and have forgotten that any other world exists. Nothing but hope and joy can make one vow loyalty to the sunlight world and green enchanted land when one knows no other world.

And, while I am madly posting links, here is another:
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/introduces/chesterton.htm
This is David Langford’s reprint of an 1980 essay on GK Chesterton as one of the few ‘forgotten SF writers’ worthy of being remembered.

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Futurism and the Fear of the Past

Posted April 20, 2012 By John C Wright

Robert Mitchell Jr, one of the few people on the Internet using his real name (unless his real name is Nostrodamus Q. Apocalypse or even Robert Mitchell III of course) writes this comment in reply to my puzzlement over what, if anything, in a harmless book like COUNT TO A TRILLION could provoke the mindless intellectual ire of the Political Correctness crowd, who worship the intellect by carefully avoiding its use.

… Your book supposes that the soft socialism of the PC crowd is not the End of History. They care very much for their modern “Tower of Babel”, and you attack it’s foundation just by imagining another way. That makes you an enemy….

Frightening, if true.

But is it true? These people like to pretend they are the majority, or the dominant view, and that pretense is easier for them to maintain in the Information Age, where a man can seal himself hermetically into an echo chamber of his own ideas. But are they the majority in the science fiction field? My impression is that they are a distinct and unsightly and very loud minority.

My impression may be a false impression. But let me share my impression anyway: Gene Roddenberry’s STAR TREK contains the elements of soft socialism, but precious few other famous SF works do. STAR WARS is not that way, nor is STARSHIP TROOPERS, nor is the Galactic Empire of FOUNDATION (unless the PCniks are seeing themselves in the role of Psychohistorians) nor is the Interstellar Empire of DUNE, nor is the Solar System Empire of Isher in WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER, nor the overcrowded megalopolis of STAND ON ZANZIBAR (albeit this last could be a warning about the evils that will befall if we do not submit ourselves to the ministrations of out Psychohistorian Overlords.)

I cannot imagine a genre less prone to political correctness than science fiction, unless it is perhaps the regency romance novel or the Western, because PC is based on the idea that their parochial post-Western post-rational Summer of Woodstock world view of editorial board of the New York Times is the only view there is, whereas the premise of all good science fiction is that society changes as technology changes.

On the other hand, science fiction might be the great daydream and escape value of these frustrated soft Marxists, because the Marxist cloudcuckooland of Cockaigne, where the laws of supply and demand have softly and silently vanished away like a snark-hunter, such a utopia cannot exist in the here and now, nor in the past, and so could only exist in an SF background albeit an unconvincing one.

Let us consult the Apostle of Common Sense, GK Chesterton, on the issue, whom I will be forgiven for quoting at some length, adoring his every turn of phrase as I do:
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Coeds in Spaa…aaa…ace!

Posted April 19, 2012 By John C Wright

Magicians are not supposed to say how their tricks are done, and writers are always boring when they talk about their writing, but I hope I have so few readers of this blog that no one will notice if I break that rule a tiny bit.

A reviewer called Math Guy (not his real name. Er, I hope) thought it odd (perhaps sexist) that your humble author portrayed a future where the first interstellar manned expedition contained no female crew. While technically not breaking the rule against arguing with reviewers, especially kind reviews, I did in my lawyerly way inch as close to the prohibition as possible, discussing the question in the abstract and inviting readers to comment.

A reader with the tumultuous yet iatric name of Doc Rampage, says this:

In most of human civilizations since the dawn of history, a dangerous exploration mission would have been staffed only by men unless they took along disposable women slaves. There wouldn’t even have been any discussion about it.

Math guy is just a product of his school system which teaches the socialist idea of history as an upward trend where each generation is more moral and closer to the socialist ideal than the last. Count To A Trillion clearly begins with a rejection of that idea, describing a future that looks a lot like history actually suggests it will look.

In the book, the modern Western mores have clearly died with Western society, so why would you expect that one particular more, sexual egalitarianism, would survive when it (1) is controversial even today, (2) is against the instincts of the sort of men who take power in anarchy, (3) produces a relative disadvantage for the culture that embraces it due to less population growth, and (4) is difficult to maintain in poor societies where no one can pay someone to raise their children?

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The Future Did Not Arrive

Posted April 19, 2012 By John C Wright

The future did not arrive….

I was thinking of the opening line to COUNT TO A TRILLION yesterday when they flew the last Space Shuttle flight, piggyback on a 747, into Dulles airport, which is only ten minutes from my house. I did not get a chance to see it and say farewell. It is the end of an era. Last I heard, the administration ordered NASA to make the Arabs feel good about themselves by pretending they had made some sort of contribution to aerospace technology. As a science fiction fan, I give them credit for naming the star Arrakis, Mu Draconis, the tip of the tongue of the dragon.

Last Flight of the Shuttle

When I was a kid, superhero cartoons went through a period of being nonviolent hence boring. One cartoon that stuck in my mind was an episode of SUPERFRIENDS where the Justice League was called out to fight a saboteur wrecking the space program. His motive for his dasterdly crimes was that he thought the money spent on the space program should be spent here on earth on social programs. His name was Plastic King.

Shuttle Flies past the Washington Monument

Say Farewell, sci fi fans. Plastic King got his wish. Trillions of dollars and tens of trillions will now be spent on social programs, including socialized medicine, and less and less on the space program.

Adieu!

Despite the melancholy of the moment, do I think the Space Shuttle program was a pork-barrel boondoggle? I do. We wanted renewable heavy lift capacity, but then when we had it, with had nothing much to lift and no place to lift it too. Had we built that moonbase, or a real space station, by which I mean a space station serving as a shipyard for interplanetary vehicles, then that shuttle would have had some place to go. Maybe we can rent heavy lifting capacity from socialist Europe or communist China.

Maybe NASA will bestir themselves to put up a moonbase we’ve had the technology to do for 50 years, but haven’t done, or fly manned expeditions to near Earth asteroids, or Mars. Maybe private industry will step in and step up. So this could be a blessing in disguise. But, if so, the disguise still holds a melancholy echo.

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Theology of the Body, Rishathra and the Cyberpope

Posted April 18, 2012 By John C Wright

Nate Winchester writes:

Considering the normal problems that one would have with producing offspring with another species, one wonders that in the Star Trek world, sex would actually be encouraged with aliens since there’s almost no chance of procreation.

I think the Roman Catholic Church of the future might object to “rishathra” on that grounds that the Black Widow Woman of Mars will rip out her mate’s throat and swallow his skull whole, even if the sexual act is sterile.

Now one might object that the Roman Catholic Church will not make it into the far future year of 2001. Earthfolk, having discovered that we were created from the spore vaults of Atlantis by the Pak Protectors and the Forerunners during a time travel accident, will be too enlightened to need religion due to the widespread prevalence of Bene Gesserit Null-A Logic Vulcan Mind-Training given by Mike the Martian’s Way Cool Church of All Worlds, and besides which Captain Kirk will trap the robopope of the cyberpapacy in a simple logical paradox and cause sparks to erupt from the triple crown. (Unfortunately, the gross superstition of Christianity will continue to linger on among the less intelligent of the artificial intelligences, who, despite the best efforts of Robodawkins, will not be convinced that their intelligence were evolved rather than artificial.)

However, I have it on the good authority of Ralph Bakshi himself that even as far along as the astonishing year 3000, ROCKET ROBIN HOOD and his Merry Men will be still battling and outwitting the Sheriff of N.O.T.T.(National Outer-space Terrestrial Territories)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXGrm_nGs_M&feature=related

Logically, if Rocket Robin Hood is still wielding a electroquarterstaff, all his Merry Men are still in business, which means Friar Tuck is also. A fortiori, if Friar Tuck is a friar, then the Order of Saint Francis must exist, which means the Catholic Church is still in business.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MfisiGqtEM

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  • Mary posted on April 21, 2012
    LeGuin, like Star Trek, had a species medle with evolution all over the place. I mention that once a character…
  • Mary posted on April 21, 2012
    There might be problems with interspecial marriages, as one can easily imagine if one considers not the classic space princess,…
  • Foxfier posted on April 20, 2012
    I suspect the advantages of two sexes has been dismissed on too few samples-- kind of like the previously mentioned…
Filed in Drollery

Space Princesses on Slower-than-Light Starships

Posted April 18, 2012 By John C Wright

Because it is strictly forbidden for authors to respond to reviewers who do them the kindness of reviewing their books, I thought this would be a good opportunity to write a short essay on a topic utterly unconnected to any previous discussion which may or may not have arisen, uh, earlier this morning, in this space.

So the topic I have chosen entirely at random to discuss is why, in my most recent novel COUNT TO A TRILLION the expedition of the Nigh-to-Lightspeed vessel Hermetic across one hundred lightyears roundtrip and one hundred years earth-relative time has a crew of 210 men but no women.

It is because when Rania (or, to give her full style, Her Serene Highness Rania Ayesha Anne Galatea Grace Angelina Frankenstein Grimaldi of Iberia, Sovereign Princess of Monaco, Duchess of Valentinois and of Mazarin, Marchioness of Baux, Countess of Carladès and of Polignac) returns aboard the Hermetic as a sixteen year old youth, but her father Prince Ranier Grimaldi the Captain does not return, there is a mystery.

The explanation given out was that certain ‘comfort women’ had been, unbeknownst to the public, smuggled aboard to service the otherwise lonely crewmen, and one of them was her mother, and that disputes over the women led to jealousy, hatred, murder, and mutiny.

Those of you who recognize the name Galatea will need no further clues as to her true origin.

That’s the reason. There was no sinister political message or metaphysical misogynistic overtones to it. I wrote it that way for the same reason a mystery writer writing a locked room mystery has his murder take place in a locked room; not because he is pro-lock or anti-lock, but because if the door was open, that mystery is absent.

A second question is why did your humble author, yours truly, think that the idea of an all-male expedition was within the bounds of the fantastic and unbelievable absurdities that are routinely put forward in space operas and geewhizwow wonder tales with a straight face.

I mean, isn’t the idea odd?

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Wright’s Writing Corner: Submit and Obey!

Posted April 18, 2012 By John C Wright

This week’s Wright’s Writing Corner features guest blogging editor Mason Lavin covers the dos and don’ts of submitting your work.

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/247302.html

Excerpt:


Do NOT do the following:

  • Read my edits and then delete all of them, sending back a “the story was fine as it was, so I ignored all your comments and changes and deleted them. Except for a few grammar things.” This happened. The author’s contract was revoked. If you don’t want to work with an editor, do not submit for publication.
  • Tell me “just write whatever you want.” I have seen this in two forms. The first is when the author is lazy and doesn’t want to put in the work. This is your piece and your voice. If you want me to write it, then you want me to get all your royalties, too, and just go ahead and put my name on the cover under “author.” Your writing wasn’t done when the piece was accepted!

 

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SF Signal – What Places Inspire Your Worldbuilding?

Posted April 18, 2012 By John C Wright

The fine fellows over at SfSignal invited me to participate in another one of their Mind Melds.

This weekend when I visited the cheery and freshly-scrubbed young folk at at the Franciscan University of Steubenville I was surprised to discover not one but several questions I was in no wise qualified to answer.

I call it a surprise, because both my lawyerly training and my years as a newspaperman allowed space to editorialize on the editorial pages not to mention my freewheeling impulse as a fiction writer have equipped me with that one skill so valuable in the modern media-soaked age, the ability to bloviate with bloated recklessness on every and any topic, and to wax indignant over issues both freshly minted and utterly invented, and to be an expert on a topic of which the writer knows nothing before the short interval measured between question mark at the end of the interrogatory and open quotes marking the advent of his answer.

Here again I was taken by surprise by a question on which I have no opinion and no qualification to answer. Did that stop me? By Saint Thomas More, patron of lawyers, and Saint John, patron of writers, and Saint Frances de Sales, patron of newspapermen, it did not!

Here is the question:

Places. Be it distant cities, or even beyond Earth entirely, strange, unusual and beautiful places can inspire creativity and ideas for stories and novels. What places, on Earth or beyond, inspire worldbuilding in your writing? What appeals to you about them? Share!

My answer, along with those of Elizabeth Moon and other fine practitioners and devotees of the sciencefictioneering craft, is here:

 http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/04/mind-meld-what-places-inspire-your-worldbuilding/

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Of course, it is key to the plot, but it still seems odd

Posted April 18, 2012 By John C Wright

I just read a favorable review of COUNT TO A TRILLION, appearing, of all places, on a page devoted to mathematical fiction. Of course the math errors I made in the text were immediately detected, to my chagrin, including a misstatement of Fermat’s Last Theorem. Writers should do their homework.

However, I felt more puzzlement than chagrin when I read this paragraph toward the end:

http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf1032

I’m wondering whether it is a sign of sexism that the entire crew of the ship (including all of the famous mathematicians) was male. Of course, it is key to the plot, but it still seems odd. Moreover, if it is sexist, the question is whether it is the author’s sexism (in the great sexist tradition of classic science fiction!) or whether he is just demonstrating that in a world whose superpowers are largely Hindu and Catholic, there would be no equality for women.

A writer is not allowed to argue with a review, and even if he were allowed, it would be ignoble and petty  to argue with a favorable review.

But I am allowed to invite you to read the review and discuss it, dear readers.

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Finally Got a Jack Kirby Joke

Posted April 17, 2012 By John C Wright

So I am slow on the uptake.

There is a play on words in Jack Kirby’s “Fourth World” comics it only took me three or four decades to get. “Intergang” is the crime bosses of Metropolis cooperating between all the gangs, and secretly funded and supplied by Darkseid of the world of Apokolips.

Now, some Kirby puns even children can get, because they are straightforward, such as Izaya = Isaiah, or Apokolips= Apocalypse, or Darkseid = Dark Side, et cetera. Others are a little obscure, such as Highfather being the translation of the name Abraham.

One of the ones that was obvious but to me was obscure was the name “Intergang.” I knew it sounded familiar, but….

Untergang des Abendlandes

This is the title of Spengler’s famous book. It means ‘Decline of the West.’ The pun is that the rise of gangland is the decline (“untergang”) of the West.

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Science, Romance and the Scientific Romance of Christendom

Posted April 17, 2012 By John C Wright

 A written version of the remarks given by John C Wright at the Franciscan University of Steubenville April 12th to the Science Fiction class of Dr Craig, at his invitation.

—

Being a lifelong fan of science fiction, and recent convert from the hardest of hardcore atheist to the hardest core of the Christian faith, Roman Catholicism, I am qualified to speak about both, and particularly about the role of Christianity in the development of science and of science fiction, and the role of science fiction in the imagination of Christendom.

I submit to your candid judgment that the science fiction story, or, as it is properly called, scientific romance, is the conflux of the roman or romance which was the unique cultural product of the Christian Middle Ages, and the scientific revolution, which was the unique cultural product of the Christian Middle Ages.

Further, I make the bolder and more outrageous claim that neither Scientific Romances nor Scientific Investigation can flourish for long in a non-Christian or postchristian cultural milieu, for the reason that both are based on uniquely Christian theological and metaphysical foundations. So I am saying not only is there not a war between science fiction section of the bookstore and the Church, I am saying that if the Church departs, the science fiction bookstore soon follows.

Unfortunately, since mine is merely a guest-lecture and not a semester-length course, where I perforce must argue my bold and outrageous claim with no time to give my reasons for each any every supporting bold and outrageous claims atop which my main claim rests. If any student would be kind enough to make a note of any bold and outrageous claims I might assert, I will do my manly best to give what proof or evidence allows me to support it in questions later.

Let me give my qualifications, such as they are, for my knowledge in both fields.

I enjoy such a potent degree of fame as a science fiction writer that my name is known everywhere my books are read. I mean everywhere, as far away as my basement and occasionally in my living room. My fame is such that there are members of my family who recognize my name after only a few reminders.

I completely kidding about that. No one in my family would read that sciffy stuff.

Anyway. In my youth I was an omnivorous reader of all things science fictional, reading two books a day, and my familiarity with the field was such that if I had not read an author writing in it, I had read a review. My knowledge was encyclopedic, and valuable memory space which could have been used for recollecting things like my phone number or the address of my house was taken up memorizing thinks like Isaac Asimov’s three rules of robotics. I say my knowledge of all things science fictional was rather than is encyclopedic, because after the success of STAR WARS, the field expanded beyond the ability of even a devout reader to keep abreast of it. Science fiction once was a haven, or, rather  a ghetto for geeks, whereas nowadays science fiction has largely upstaged the mainstream.

My qualification for speaking about Christianity is that I am the chief of sinners.

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Reviewer Praise for Guyal the Curator

Posted April 16, 2012 By John C Wright

It is not often a single short story merits its own review. This one is particularly favorable:

http://fantasticworlds-jordan179.blogspot.com/2012/04/review-of-guyal-curator-2009-by-john-c.html

The money quote:

With this story, coupled with his work in the universes of A. E. Van Vogt’s World of Null-A and William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, John C. Wright is establishing himself as not merely a great writer and creator of his own fictional worlds, but also as a supremely-talented worker in other people’s worlds.

 

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Glory to Marc Barnes

Posted April 16, 2012 By John C Wright

The Bad Catholic is at it again, this time unleashing some well deserved mockery on on Murder, Incorporation aka Planned Parenthood. To retaliate for the 40 days of fasting and prayer to end abortion organized by the Catholic Church, the state-funded childmurderers are holding their own 40 days of prayer.

Mr Barnes opines:

These old folks have no idea what prayer is, much less abortion. As evidence, I give you one of their ‘prayers’ — “Today we pray for a cloud of gentleness to surround every abortion facility. May everyone feel calm and loving.”

Sweet guys, keep calling on your cloud of gentleness. Don’t mind us, we’ll just be in Church, doing the whole ”Arise, O LORD; save me, O my God! For Thou hast smitten all my enemies on the cheek; Thou hast shattered the teeth of the wicked” thing. It’s in the Bible. You know, that old, patriarchal book with the “Thou shall not kill” line you pretend to like? And the “Thou shalt refer to the invasive procedure of infant-killing as “loving women” and thus sleep well at night?” Oh wait, that’s not in the Bible….

Read the whole thing and have yourself a good laugh. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2012/04/planned-parenthoods-40-days-of-prayer.html

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

Posted April 16, 2012 By John C Wright

Related to our previous post, and to clear up certain technical matters, here is  a reprint of a post from 2011, explaining the famous Space Princess equation.

—————————————————-

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: Read the remainder of this entry »

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