Archive for April, 2012

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Who is Space Princess?

Posted April 14, 2012 By John C Wright

Because there has been some debate on whether Space Ponies who are princesses officially qualify as ‘Space Princesses’ I here re-print an article from 2010 which defines the Movement’s official stance on the matter.

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I am happy to announce that the New Space Princess literary movement now consists of two members: me and Edward Willet, a Canadian writer who would be profoundly embarrassed to be associated with me if he knew what a disreputable person I am. But no matter! Recently the SWFA Mansion in New Jersey was rocked and shattered with tumult as Mr. Willet and I disagreed over the definition of who is a “Space Princess” — for example, is Princess Padme of Naboo a Space Princess, or only a Space Senator? Do elected Princesses count? What about a girl whose father is the Tyrant of Pluto — if Pluto is no longer a planet, does that mean she is no longer a Space Princess?

I wonder if the guys over at the New Weird Movement or the Mundane SF Movement or the People’s Front of Judea have to make such nuanced and elaborate definitional arguments just to see what is inside or outside their literary cannon?

We lack as yet a ready definition to cover all forms of Space Princessship. Several possible criteria suggest themselves: (1) Does she wear a crown?  (2) Does she have a bare midriff? (3) Does she have a raygun? (4) Is she from Outer Space? (5) Is she a non-reigning member of the Royal Family? (Non-reigning, because, of course, we are not the Space QUEEN movement — they are our rivals!)

In the interests, therefore, of obfuscating the matter, and making it look as if our literary movement is larger than it really is (three people instead of one and a half) I suggest a survey of all the great classics and popular blockbusters of science fiction, to see which of them can be shoehorned into membership in our mighty literary juggernaut of a movement, perhaps by some sleight of hand or by switching the definitions while you are not looking. Ready? Let’s begin!

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Prospero Lost did not Lose!

Posted April 12, 2012 By John C Wright

Or win. The words below are from the wife:

——————————————————–

Prospero Regained and Shadowfever tied for first place! We are both the Best Book of 2011!

Thanks, Everyone!

For more information and the exciting controversy that to the tie, you can read more at:

http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2012/04/11/6th-annual-bsc-book-tournament-winner/

Here is the beginning:

Shadowfever or Prospero Regained. Moning or Lamplighter. Bestselling, high-seeded, well-known series or scrappy underdog dark horse competitor.

These were the questions BSC readers faced as they voted to determine the best book of 2011 in the opinion of our readership.

Like any good championship should, our book tournament’s final round came down to the wire in a hotly contested battle.

We had questionable directions from the ref (yours truly). We had screams of foul play from the sidelines. We had an instant replay consultation.

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Space Princess Movement Motto and Dress Code

Posted April 11, 2012 By John C Wright

Since our literary movement is rapidly being crushed by the ongoing juggernaut of the New Human Wave movement, another post trumpeting the New Space Princess movement is long overdue!

Without any more ado, let us do the overdue post.

First, let us see how many Space Princess questions have come flooding in the mail bag! And by flood, I mean there is exactly one letter. And it is from the other member of the movement, Mr Willet.

Edward Willet writes:

Hey, isn’t it about time, o classical scholar, that you coined a Latin motto for our movement?

Aha! The answer is no. According to my records, the New Space Princess movement already has a motto, and it was written by a man named Edward Willet, aka YOU.  It reads:

Nobody Likes to Read About the Beautiful Daughters of Elected Officials!

Now, how to translate that into Latin is beyond the reach of my scholarship. I should dearly like to have a catchy Latin motto, but I do not know how to say ‘Absolute Sovereign Power and Bare Midriff’ in Latin.

We should be careful to note that our unstoppable literary movement only deals with young and attractive and alluring princesses, like Dejah Thoris of Barsoom or Aura of Mongo, or Leia of Alderaan, not with plainjane married middleaged space princesses name Lady Dumpy.

I don’t even know if there is a word ‘princess’ in Latin. ‘Regis Filia’? ‘Regina’?

Another possible choice for our motto is this:

If Outer Space is filled with nubile, fertile and comely yet lonely royalty, able to reproduce comfortably with Earthboys, and eager to be rescued, then even a loser can get a date!

In this regard, Mary writes:

Are bare midriffs absolutely necessary? A steampunk space princess might revolt at such un-Victorian attire.

Are they indeed necessary? The topic is a delicate one, requiring a scientifically and scrupulously accurate statistical study of Space Princesses, to see how often the official court costume of the young female royalty exposes the midriff to the hard vacuum and radiation of space.

Instead of performing such a survey, which would be tedious and time-intensive, I propose instead to post a bunch of pictures of half-clad Space Princesses and merely call it a survey.

On with the survey!

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New Human Wave and Where do I Sign Up?

Posted April 11, 2012 By John C Wright

With the introduction into the literary world of the New Human Wave Movement, proclaimed by Sarah A. Hoyt, the New Space Princess Movement (which, due to staggering growth since 2008, still consists of myself and Canadian SF writer Edward Willet) is in danger of being eclipsed.

What is New Human Wave? Patrick Richardson of PJ Media describes it this way:

… we’re sick of grey goo SF. Books where unlikeable characters with no redeeming value wander about doing nothing for 300 pages in a grey landscape without hope or joy.

We are tired of the “message books,” foisted on us by the pretentious literati gits who currently control almost all of the major publishing houses.

We want to return to the sense of wonder and awe we felt when we picked up our first SF novel as children.

Sarah A Hoyt, tellingly enough, list what the New Human Wave permits and allows, and scoffs at the idea of the Wave forbidding anything except, perhaps, a gray tale and dull. The Human Wave permits heroics, wonder, action, and stories that have a point, and even (gasp) tale that have a plot, complete with happy ending. In her words:

Your writing shouldn’t leave anyone feeling like they should scrub with pumice or commit suicide through swallowing stoats for the crime of being human, or like humans are a blight upon the Earth, or that the future is dark, dreary, evil and fraught with nastiness, because that’s all humans can do, and woe is us.

If I did not have my own personal literary movement going, I’d join it if they’d have me.

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A Happy Ending to a Vandal Story

Posted April 10, 2012 By John C Wright

For those of you curious about the ongoing situation at Northern Kentucky University, where, as is typical with Lefties, craven vandals have been attempting to trample both the truth and the freedom of speech of the students, we have an update that the cowards have been caught:

(Names replaced to avoid any breaches of confidentiality.) It was fairly cold out around 1 AM Friday Morning. A few hours ago I had been at a Latin Holy Thursday Mass with some friends, muddling through a wonderful Sacrament that I knew well in a language that I did not. My friend Perry and I were sitting on the inside of the giant metal modern art sculpture, hiding far back in the cleft facing the NKU University Center, keeping to the shadows and keeping quiet. Last night had been easier, as me and my two other friends, Jackson and Mark, had been blessed with more shadow to hide in. The nearly full moon had been covered by clouds then. It had also been warmer and the wind had not bitten half so harshly. Earlier Perry, Jessa, Sally and I had been hiding among roughly broken rocks underneath the UC/BEP walkway. It is entirely reasonable to ask why on earth we were hiding out like this, and why myself and other compatriots had been hiding out the previous night.

The answer is simple. We were hiding near the Northern Kentucky University Right to Life Onesie Display, to protect it from vandals. You see, a simple sign with a properly researched and cited fact on it, coupled with a few clotheslines that had baby clothes hung on them, is apparently enough to warrant the destruction of property under the cover of darkness. Did I mention that the display was approved by the University, or else it would have never been put up in the first place? Or that once used, the baby clothes, of which every fourth article had a red X in tape that was easily removable, were to be donated to babies in sore need of help? Yet, of course, because our stance is not the most popular, on Monday and Tuesday night our display was torn down, with all the onesies picked from their clothespins like charries and dropped to the dirt. We do not know what time this happened on Monday, but, Tuesday, we know it happened before 1AM, as Perry, Jackson, and I, along with several of our friends, had gone to check on it and found the onesies taken down again. We also know the deed was done after 11 PM, thanks to a passerby who remarked that she had been out smoking around then, and the display had been just fine at that time.

Being very tired of this sort of guerilla trampling of our Right to Free Speech, we called the Campus Police, and various measures were taken to ensure that if it happened again, the perpetrators would be identified and caught. However, we decided that we would do what we could ourselves, after making sure our methods were legal by checking with the proper Authorities. You see, this is not the first year this sort of thing has happened. When our club was founded, one of NKU’s Professors took her class outside to tear up the crosses in our Cemetery of Innocents. She was let go and soundly chastized Each cross represents a varying number of children slain daily by abortion in the USA, depending on the space available. Year after year, semester after semester, despite constant recriminations and condemnations from the University, displays have been damaged, and flyers torn down. With the flyers at least, some of our members have caught those responsible in the act. They were almost always unrepentant and hostile.

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Hoyt on Loss of Wonder

Posted April 10, 2012 By John C Wright

Sarah A Hoyt at According to Hoyt has an essay well worth reading: Bring Back That Wonder Feeling.

The author contemplates the slow decline of science fiction, debunks the common explanations “The age of wonder in SF is between 12 and 14”  or “They’re living in a science fiction world ” as “bullsheep” and offers a more insightful theory as to its causes.

Loyal readers will see a similarity of theme between Mrs Hoyt and Mr Wolverton, whose essay on the limits of mainstream genre I lauded and recommended in a previous article.

Here is a quote from Hoyt:

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VOTE NOW! It is the finals! Prospero is trailing badly!

Posted April 10, 2012 By John C Wright

A message from the beautiful and talented Mrs Wright:

Hey Folks,

I have made it to Round Five of the Six Rounds of the Book Tournament. This means that I actually won the bracket I was in. I was the top book out of the 16 books.

I am now up against the top book of another bracket. This book got twice as many votes last time as I received. So my chances are slim. In the hope of doing my best, I would like to ask that, not only will those of you who are willing to support me go vote…but if you might be so kind as blog, repost on Facebook, or Tweet this link and ask friends and followers to vote, I would be most grateful!

http://www.bookspotcentral.com/

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Soothsayers, Revelations, Portents and other Celestial Signs

Posted April 9, 2012 By John C Wright

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/japanese-quakes-epicenter-located-near-marian-apparition-site/

Niigata, Japan, Mar 12, 2011 / 07:17 am (CNA).- The epicenter of the earthquake that caused a deadly March 11 tsunami is located near the site of an apparition in which Mary warned about a worldwide disaster that could afflict humanity.

Japanese church officials have confirmed that the Diocese of Sendai, in the north of the country, was hit hardest by the 8.8 magnitude earthquake – the worst in Japanese history – and the resulting 23-foot waves.

Hundreds of people have already been confirmed dead in the city of Sendai, located less than 90 miles away from the apparition site of Our Lady of Akita in the town of Yuzawa.

The city of Akita, which experienced fire damage and flooding along with many parts of northern Japan, is a place of veneration for Catholics.

In 1973, the Virgin Mary was said to have predicted a number of future events – including natural disasters even more serious than Friday’s earthquake and tsunami – during three appearances to a Japanese religious sister, Sr. Agnes Sasagawa.

The purported appearances of the Virgin Mary in Japan were reviewed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1988. During his time as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prior to his election as Pope Benedict XVI, he let stand the local bishop’s judgment that the apparitions and the messages were acceptable for the faithful.

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The Sheathed Paw of the Lion

Posted April 6, 2012 By John C Wright

A short story for your mediation on this Good Friday.

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I realize another century is supposed to pass before you wake from cold sleep, but, since it is my turn to be alive, I thought I should quickly summarized the events of the late Twenty Fifth Century for you, and for Rogers, Graham, Davis,  Taylor, and Arthur.

I should mention that, while we were coldsleeping, psychology has apparently become an exact science, and the method of rendering human nervous systems to match their environment, both physical and political, has been precisely defined. As it turns out, the human nervous system reacts most clearly and strongly to pain signals, especially when combined with psychological disturbances such as shame and humiliation, and so the Harmonic Scientists and doctors of infliction take special care, when applying negative rewards, to use method that to us might look awkward or even cruel. But it is all based on a very carefully determined theory. It is called the Harmonic Science, since it allows all elements of society to operate together in peace and joy, especially those born to be burdened with concern for the public weal, and other positions of great responsibility.

Rogers had the watch before me. You remember those events. The National Aerospace Administration had long since lost the capacity to launch rockets into space, for obvious reasons, but the Forbidden City allowed us to retain receiving dishes, radiotelescopes, and the like, since these did not disturb the harmony of the World Kingdom.

Perhaps the Forbidden City regretted that decision when certain Search-for-Extraterrestrial-Intelligence signals were answered with a simple code spelling out the digits of pi in base two, of the square root of two in base forty, and then a simple grid drawing a recognizable diagram of the Pythagorean theorem.

At first the signals were thought to originate in Epsilon Carinae, one of the four stars making up the asterism called the False Cross, so named because of its reputation for being mistaken for the Southern Cross and leading to navigation errors.

At the command of the Son of Heaven, Peking turned the mile-wide orbital array known as the Thousand-Eyed Bodhisattva toward the signal source.

This was against the cautious advice of the Harmonic Scientists. As they predicted the lack of observation produced a disharmony. There were riots among the ruins of the major cities in North America — it was a holiday from the omniscience of the Akashic Internal Intelligence Service, so what else did one expect? — but the array caught clear pictures of what the press immediately dubbed the Big Dumb Object.

The rioters, and anyone unlucky enough to be netted in municipal purification sweeps, we executed by sawing. One of our still-loyal descendants in the waking world died that way. The Harmonic doctors hung her by the feet and sawed through her body from the crotch down. This method allowed the blood to drain into her brain during most of the slow process, to keep her alive longer.  I never learned her name.  She looked like a fourteen year old, but it is hard to tell, since the people are shorter these days, due to malnutrition.

The Object was in a hyperbolic path, more distant than the orbit of the planet Eris.

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Mark Steyn on THE HUNGER GAMES

Posted April 5, 2012 By John C Wright

Having written an essay-length review of the movie (not the book) THE HUNGER GAMES, I am chagrined to read  Mark Steyn, columnist to the world, so adroitly articulate my inarticulate misgivings about it:

What were your thoughts on the Hunger Games trilogy?

MS: It seems to me there is something empty about the Hunger Games. In the end the stakes aren’t big enough for it to quite work. There’s nothing primal at stake in the Hunger Games, in part because I assume the author doesn’t subscribe to any particular transcendent meaning to life. I think there is a kind of absence of that in the book.

You can read the interview here: http://www.hillsdalecollegian.com/2012/03/qa-mark-steyn/

I would make the broader point that Christianity is inherently dramatic, with its unfashionable insistence on the dangers of hell and the promise of heaven, whereas paganism is inherently tragic, or, in the case of Buddhism, inherently dispassionate. Gnosticism, except for the one narrative of the plucky rebel overthrowing the evil oppressive Demiurge, inherently robs narratives of drama, by making everyone an unheroic victim or an unheroic villain, and by insisting that the actions of the drama are either not worth doing, or make no difference in the long run. (And political correctness is a modern materialist version of Gnosticism).

But something was missing from HUNGER GAMES, which in my review I groped toward by saying I did not see what philosophy Panem stood for, or what the point was. Mr Steyn, with more clarity than I possess, identified the missing element as a transcendent meaning.

I am not saying this as a Christian, but as a writer: had Katniss been the daughter of Artemis, hounded by an inescapable fate, fighting alongside Arjuna against Grendel or Hector, some of the grandeur and nobility of the doomed pagan would have been in her tale.

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Corner of Saint and Peter

Posted April 5, 2012 By John C Wright

Just a moment ago I found in my coat pocket a crumpled bit of paper, the stationary of the Hilton Hotel. For a writing workshop at a science fiction convention, the participants were called upon to write a beginning of a story within a short, set period, I think less than twenty minutes.

The tutor urged us to establish, within the first hundred words, a hook to lure the reader in, character and setting, the suggestion of a plot conflict or problem, and to raise the question which would prompt the curious reader to read on. As a professional writer, the tutor was canny enough to ask me to go last, since I had already mastered the technique the others were trying to learn.

More than one person has since that time urged me to finish the story. I give it here so that, should I ever lose the scrap of paper, the opening will not be lost.

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It was not that I minded being dead, it was the hours.

No one ever calls me up during the day, and most people decide to wait until after midnight for some reason. I am a morning person, so thse meetings in the still, dark house lost between midnight and dawn make me crabby.

This time, it was not some comfortable seance room or graveyard.

I came to the surface of mortal time on a street corner of some American city, late Twentieth or Early Twenty-First Century. You can tell from the size of the buildings that it is American, and from the fact that the road names are written on signs rather than walls. The main road was Saint Street. The small alley was Peter Way. Great. I was crossed by Saint and Peter. Twenty Third Century buildings are not lit up at night, of course.

I smelled her perfume before I saw her. I could not mistake that silhouette, slender, alluring, like a she-panther as she walked.

“Mike,” she said. “You look well, ah, considering.”

“Angie,” I grunted. My arms ached with the desire to hug her.

She sighed. “Mike, this time, you have to tell me if you were murdered. You have to! They will not let your will out of probate if there is an investigation. And  I have bills to pay.”

I took a puff on an imaginary cigarette. I have a good imagination, so the cigarette was just like it was there, odor and texture and all.  “I ain’t saying.”

She stamped her foot. “But I can see the wounds! You’re dripping!”

“It could have been an accident, sweetie. Lots of people shoot themselves cleaning their gun.”

“Have you been to the morgue to look at yourself? You took forty five slugs to the head, chest, abdomen, groin area, both legs, and one foot! You were killed with a high caliber machine-gun!”

“Lots of people shoot themselves cleaning their high caliber machine-gun.”

“You don’t own a machine gun, Mike!”

I took another long imaginary puff.  It’s not like I have to worry about imaginary cancer, after all. “There is a lot you don’t know about me, baby.”

—————————–

That’s all I wrote. Being a professional, and uncontrollably longwinded, I went beyond the 100 word mark.

Please note the hook technique, which I stole from Robert Heinlein: the first sentence always contains a bit of self-deprecation where the main character establishes, perhaps in a humorous way, or at least an understated way, the main character problem.  Let me use two examples from famous Heinlein novels:

“I always get the shakes before a jump.” (From STARSHIP TROOPERS) Is not a boast, but a confession of fear. While understated, it immediately creates sympathy with the character, and impresses upon the reader the seriousness of the situation. The reader is curious what a “jump” is, or what the situation is that causes the hero to get the shakes: in this case, the magnificently simple and impressive science fictional idea of an orbital-to-surface paratrooper drop.

“You see, I had this space suit.” (From HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL) Again, mildly self-deprecating, as if the character is confessing something embarrassing, and immediately provocative: the reader is prompted to wonder where the spacesuit came from.

Here I did the same thing as he, introducing a character who is dead and griping about the hours. The reader is informed in the first sentence that this world is far from the fields we know, but not too far. I give the setting merely in a declarative sentence: American city, Twentieth Century, while letting the reader wonder what happens between now and the Twenty Third that they no longer light their buildings at night. The conflict is an old stand-by: a murder to be solved. In this case, the oddity is that the murder victim seems to be covering up the clues. Why?

In both cases, the reader is curious enough to read the first paragraph. If you can keep the reader entertained and interested through the first paragraph to roughly the third page, your chances of losing his attention after that, barring a major mishap on your part, are small.

Whether or not this story will ever have a middle and an end, that I know as little as you. I admit I am a little curious myself.

 

 

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Free Speech for Me, Not for Thee

Posted April 4, 2012 By John C Wright

I received this note this day in my mail.

“Mr. Wright, I find myself and my compatriots in need of assistance.I am a member in Northern Kentucky University’s pro-life group, Northern Right to Life. Since our conception, every year when we put up our displays, which are obviously anti-abortion, they are vandalized and torn down.

The year we were founded, Professor Sally Jacobson took her class outside to tear down our Cemetery of Innocents (the one with the hundreds of white crosses representing the murdered children). She was let go, but the damage continues.

It has happened again this year.

Our “Onesie Display”, some clotheslines with baby clothes hung and every fourth garment marked with a red X in tape for the one out of four children murdered, has been torn down twice in as many days. The cops have been notified, and  are taking measures to stop this. However, I am tired of it, and with the approval of my President have decided to start as much of a Publicity Firestorm as I can.

I have already been interviewed by the Campus Paper, though I am not sure if this will be used for article fodder. I would go to the local news, but this seems like something they would consider to small to mention.

This is where you may be able to help. If you could make some sort of mention of this on your blog, and if possible contact Marc Barnes of bad Catholic and any other bloggers sympathetic to the cause, all of us would be immensely grateful.

At your service, Mr. Nathaniel Thomas Hall

Since the display is only up until Easter, I thought I should simply post his letter and ask anyone interested in free speech and saving babies and all the things the PC-niks hate to gin up some publicity for this guy.

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In Free Market Competition against Socialism, People Buy Socialism

Posted April 4, 2012 By John C Wright

Just a short thought today, instead of my normal four and five page essays:

Let me ask whether there is an inherent and innate weakness of democracy: namely, that free enterprise encourages as if by natural selection, the creation of a large number of consumer-minded short-sighted and unthrifty individuals. It encourages selfishness. In times of rough going, among a Christian society, the Church and the nature of reality keep the innate selfishness endemic to capitalism in check. But when times are fat, and Christianity is despised as being too judgmental and harsh and unscientific, nothing keeps the selfishness in check.

The theory runs that selfishness naturally begets socialism, since the appeal of socialism is that another man not only pays for your living, he also pays for your altruism, so you get the lifestyle of a robber AND the self esteem of a philanthropist. Under socialism, the Ayn Rand-style looter-moochers bathes in the glowing self-esteem of self-righteousness, because he favors forcing other man then himself to do right by the poor and oppressed. It is, from a purely game theory point of view, a win-win situation. And all one need to do is sell one’s soul, that is, renounce integrity of character and logical coherence of thought (a renunciation which all modern philosophy, by no coincidence, stands ready and eager to aid one to do.)

My worry about democracy is as old as democracy. John Adams fretted that the wealth a system that prospers would create would corrupt the system itself.

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Vote Prospero!

Posted April 4, 2012 By John C Wright

A message from the beautiful and talented Mrs Wright

Hey Folks,

I have made it to Round Five of the Six Rounds of the Book Tournament. This means that I actually won the bracket I was in. I was the top book out of the 16 books.

I am now up against the top book of another bracket. This book got twice as many votes last time as I received. So my chances are slim. In the hope of doing my best, I would like to ask that, not only will those of you who are willing to support me go vote…but if you might be so kind as blog, repost on Facebook, or Tweet this link and ask friends and followers to vote, I would be most grateful!

http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2012/04/04/6th-annual-book-tournament-round-6-championship/

Voting for championship opens April 4 !

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Hypocrisy and Moral Inversion by Bruce Charlton

Posted April 3, 2012 By John C Wright

These paragraphs are taken from a Blog called Bruce Charlton’s Miscellany – http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/ – published as a 2010 booklet called DECLINE OF THE WEST EXPLAINED. I strongly recommend any reader curious about the peculiar oddities and insanity afflicting Western society to read it. It is available online here.

I reprint here two of his pensées in hopes of stirring up some interest in this writer’s remarkable thoughts: one on Hypocrisy and one on Moral Inversion.

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