Archive for June, 2012

Newer Entries »

From the Pen of Laura Resnick

Posted June 11, 2012 By John C Wright

One Steve Wasserman, whose name shall live in infamy for his fifteen minutes of fame, in The Nation holds forth as follows:

In certain genres (romance, science fiction and fantasy) formerly relegated to the moribund mass-market paperback, readers care not a whit about cover design or even good writing, and have no attachment at all to the book as object. Like addicts, they just want their fix at the lowest possible price, and Amazon is happy to be their online dealer.”
To which the excellent and imperishable Laura Resnick on her website replies with fine fettle:
OMG! This is such a relief! I’ve been so misled.

I can finally stop editing and taking pains to package my romance backlist well! NO ONE CARES! They’re just addicts!

I can finally stop editing and taking pains to package my fantasy backlist well! My readers don’t care about quality!

I can tell my dad, a science fiction writer, to relax and stop sweating over Hugo-quality material! No one cares! Science fiction readers are just junkies!

I can tell my publisher to stop spending all that money on my award-winning cover artist! An LA Times book reviewer has declared that it’s pointless! My readers are indifferent to brilliant cover art! We could probably just package the worthless sh*t that I write in a brown paper wrapper!

Whoa! So GLAD Mr. Wasserman enlightened me. The pressure to write well, the pressure on my editors to acquire and edit well, and the pressure on my cover artists and designers… Gone! It never mattered! Our readers our brain-dead junkies! Yay! What a RELIEF not to have to behave like REAL writers, editors, artists, and publishers, after all!

Hat tip to superversive. And a salute if not a toast to Laura Resnick. Well said, ma’am. Very well said.
15 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Drollery, Only Posting a Link

From the Pen of Jonathan Moeller

Posted June 11, 2012 By John C Wright

A short description all new authors should read of the work and days of the quest for a book to find its audience, and poet to find his dream.

http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/writer/?p=2133

Since my lovely and talented wife is seriously debating adopting this business model, it has a particular interest for my household.

It has taken me just about ten years to write this post.

In 2002, I took a class on the History of Rome. One part that stuck keenly in my mind was the account of the Roman Civil War. Of course, ancient Rome went through any number of civil wars, but this was THE Roman Civil War, the big one that turned Rome from a decaying Republic to an Empire ruled by the Caesar Augustus who issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. It is a fascinating and dramatic historical period, and so it is not hard to see why so many works of fiction are set in the period – William Shakespeare’s plays about Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra, HBO’s graphic ROME series, and innumerable historical novels.

Inspired by that class, I bought a book by Stephen Dando-Collins called CAESAR’S LEGION, about Caesar’s elite 10th Legion. I was reading it when I came home to my parents for the summer, and I had gotten to the chapter on the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, specifically the part when Caesar’s army almost starved to death due to want of supplies before facing Pompey’s legions.

While I had been gone, the local town’s Wal-Mart had been upgraded to a Super Wal-Mart, the kind that carries groceries and food in additional to the usual dry goods. I remember, very distinctly, walking into that Super Wal-Mart for the first time and being stunned at the sheer quantity of food available. What would Caesar have done, I wondered, if he had had access to that kind of food? Or to canned food – he needn’t have worried about spoilage on the march, and he could have fed all his men.

Then I wandered past the sporting goods section, and wondered half-jokingly what Caesar would have done with a shotgun. Or with fifty shotguns. Or AK-47s. With fifty AK-47s, his men could have mowed down all of Pompey’s army.

The idea percolated.

Read the remainder of this entry »

6 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Only Posting a Link, Wisdom

The Skeptical Doctor Quote for the Day

Posted June 8, 2012 By John C Wright

From Theodore Dalrymple’s latest book, ANYTHING GOES:

The most famous object in Colmar is the Issenheim Altarpiece, painted by someone the world knows as Matthias Grunewald, though whether anyone of that surname ever actually existed is doubtful. The altarpiece has had a colourful history, having been shifted hither and thither in the last century and a half as a pawn in the cultural politics of France and Germany in their struggle over the ownership of Alsace.

It was painted for the confraternity of St Anthony at Issenheim, an order that no longer exists and that once specialised in the care of the sick on religious pilgrimages in search of a cure. St Anthony had a disease named in his honour, St Anthony’s Fire, which was caused by the growth of a mould on damp rye, the consumption of which gave rise to ergotism. Ergot produced a powerful constriction of the peripheral arteries that was agonisingly painful. Gangrenous extremities had to be amputated (without anaesthetic, of course, and no doubt in conditions of the utmost filth); ergotism also caused dramatic visual hallucinations that led people to behave in bizarre ways. These hallucinatory experiences have sometimes been used to explain the extravagant fantasies in Netherlandish or German paintings of the Temptation of St Anthony, such as one of the panels of the Issenheim altarpiece, and by extension to argue for the mind-expanding properties of psychotropic and pschedelic drugs (it is the same argument that De Quincey used in favour of opium in The Confessions of an English Opium Eater). Thus self-indulgence is given a patina of intellectual and aesthetic enquiry.

I don’t think it necessary for people to have had drug-induced visual hallucinations for them to be able to imagine monsters, or indeed anything else; but even if one or other of the painters such as Grunewald, Bosch or Breughel had experienced them, it is inconceivable that they should have produced their work while still under their influence, when they needed the utmost eye-hand co-ordination as well as self-consciousness. I don’t know of any serious work of art that is directly attributable to the consumption of psychotropic or psychedelic drugs. Thus there is nothing to be said, from the mind-expansion point of view, for repeated use of these drugs.

I insist upon this, because I came to adulthood in the decade when the young were invited to tune in, turn on and drop out. Extravagant claims were made for the beneficial effects, both personal and social, of various illicit drugs; but when I compare these claims today with the devastation caused by the mass use of these drugs, especially by the poor in rich societies, among whom I have spent so much of my professional life, I feel something approaching rage. It has given me an abiding hatred of intellectual frivolity.

14 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Only Posting a Link

SFFing in the Rain

Posted June 7, 2012 By John C Wright

And one more memory of Ray Bradbury

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302040/remembering-ray-ted-elrick

From this let me reprint the money quote:

I once was professionally fortunate enough to interview Ray and Harlan Ellison, separately, for an article on the question “What makes a science-fiction film?” Many films were dismissed because they were stories that could never happen. To them, science-fiction stories occur without violating the laws of science. At the time Ellison was conceptual consultant on Babylon 5 and spoke about how that series fell well within the genre of science fiction, rather than fantasy, like Star Wars.

Ray explained to me that he really didn’t consider himself a science-fiction writer, but he did have a very interesting example of a science-fiction film — Singing in the Rain. He explained that the plot exists solely because of a technological advancement, in this case sound coming to movies, and how that technology affects every character’s life.

I had to ask Ellison a follow-up question, and in the process wondered what he thought of Ray’s example. Ellison said, “Well, I respect Ray greatly, but you have to remember . . . ”

And there was a long pause. Then he said, “You know, Ray has a point.”

 

 

 

11 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Only Posting a Link

Bradbury and Card

Posted June 7, 2012 By John C Wright

Orson Scott Card sings of the power of the prose of Ray Bradbury, may his poetic soul in peace eternal rejoice.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302032/thoughts-ray-bradbury-orson-scott-card

He he took his leave of earthly life during the transit of Venus.

And here is another memorandum from a man who shared an agent with him:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/302065/ray-and-don-michael-walsh

 

1 Comment. Join the Conversation
Filed in Only Posting a Link

Dalrymple and Mieville

Posted June 7, 2012 By John C Wright

Theodore Dalrymple chides China Mieville.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0308td.html

My respect for Mr Mieville increases. I had not realized that one of my guild, a science fiction writer, was famous enough to earn a tongue lashing from Theodore Dalrymple.

Of course, I know nothing of Mr Mieville aside from what I read of the first hundred pages of PERDIDO STREET STATION, to which my reaction was negative. I have not read the article the good doctor denounces.

9 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Only Posting a Link

What Makes a Great Book?

Posted June 6, 2012 By John C Wright

In this space, I reprinted a copy of a list painstakingly compiled by an Ubiquitous Mr Baxter of the Great Books. It was immediately greeted with scoffers who would throw away half the list or more.

Lest the conversation be entirely occupied with criticisms of what should and should not be called a Great Book, it is useful in his space to reprint Mortimer Alder’s own description of the process which compiled this list.

The words below are his:

What were those three criteria of selection? The first was the book’s contemporary significance — relevance to the problems and issues of the twentieth century. The books were not to be regarded as archaeological relics — monuments in our intellectual tradition. They should be works that are as much of concern to us today as at the time they were written, even if that was centuries ago. They are thus essentially timeless — always contemporary, and not confined to interests that change from time to time or from place to place.

The second criterion was their infinite rereadability or, in the case of the more difficult mathematical and scientific works, their studiability again and again. Most of the 400,000 books published each year are not worth carefully reading even once; many fewer than 1,000 each year are worth reading more than once. When, infrequently in any century, a great book does appear, it is a book worth reading again and again and again. It is inexhaustibly rereadable. It cannot be fully understood on one, two, or three readings. More is to be found on all subsequent readings. This is an exacting criterion, an ideal that is fully attained by only a small number of the 511 works that we selected. It is approximated in varying degrees by the rest.

The third criterion was the relevance of the work to a very large number of great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individuals for the last twenty-five centuries.

Read the remainder of this entry »

92 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Musings

After two centuries of intolerance, not dead

Posted June 6, 2012 By John C Wright

Here is a corner of history I did not know. At the risk of sounding like a shallow novelist, I wonder if anyone has ever done an historical novel in praise of those who died. At the risk of seeming like a lazy schoolboy, allow me to reprint the whole article here:

Japanese Martyrs

There is not in the whole history of the Church a single people who can offer to the admiration of the Christian world annals as glorious, and a martyrology as lengthy, as those of the people of Japan. In January, 1552, St. Francis Xavier had remarked the proselytizing spirit of the early neophytes. “I saw them”, he wrote, “rejoicing in our successes, manifesting an ardent zeal to spread the faith and to win over to baptism the pagans they conquered.” He foresaw the obstacles that would block the progress of the faith in certain provinces, the absolutism of this or that daimyo, a class at that time very independent of the Mikado and in revolt against his supreme authority. As a matter of fact, in the province of Hirado, where he made a hundred converts, and where six years after him, 600 pagans were baptized in three days, a Christian woman (the proto-martyr) was beheaded for praying before a cross. In 1561 the daimyo forced the Christians to abjure their faith, “but they preferred to abandon all their possessions and live in the Bungo, poor with Christ, rather than rich without Him”, wrote a missionary, 11 October, 1562. When, under the Shogunate of Yoshiaki, Ota Nobunaga, supported by Wada Koresama, a Christian, had subdued the greater part of the provinces and had restored monarchical unity, there came to pass what St. Francis Xavier had hoped for. At Miyako (the modern Kiyoto) the faith was recognized and a church built 15 Aug., 1576. Then the faith continued to spread without notable opposition, as the daimyos followed the lead of the Mikado (Ogimachi, 1558-1586) and Ota Nobunaga. The toleration or favor of the central authority brought about everywhere the extension of the Christian religion, and only a few isolated cases of martyrdom are known (Le Catholicisme au Japon, I, 173).

Read the remainder of this entry »

27 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Apologetics, Only Posting a Link

The Great Books Online!

Posted June 6, 2012 By John C Wright

Our Mr Baxter has painstakingly tracked down the works included in Mortimer Alder’s Great Books series he compiled for Encyclopedia Brittanica. As a public service, and so that Mr Baxter’s efforts will not be lost in the wilderness of comment boxes, I reprint his collection of The Great Links. The words below are his:

Here’s so far the first seven volumes, tediously tracked down whenever possible:

Read the remainder of this entry »

62 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Only Posting a Link, Wisdom

Politics of Star Trek

Posted June 5, 2012 By John C Wright

I thought these articles by Andrew Price might interest the readers of my journal:

Conservatives often talk about what they don’t like about Hollywood. That’s okay, but it’s not productive. Maybe it’s time we talked about what we do like? More to the point, let’s point out when Hollywood has gotten it right. And that brings me to the original “Star Trek” series.

I’m not saying the creators of “Star Trek” were conservatives; they weren’t. But liberalism has shifting values, and for a brief period at the end of the 1960s, liberalism temporarily overlapped with the values of classical liberalism, which is the foundation of modern conservatism. “Star Trek” benefited from this. In fact, I think you’ll be surprised how deeply conservative these shows are.

The Nazi Episode:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/02/11/the-politics-of-star-trek-patterns-of-force

The Hamlet Episode:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/03/30/politics-star-trek-conscience-king

The Viet Nam War Episode:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/06/02/Politics-of-Star-Trek

11 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Only Posting a Link

Economists and Antieconomists

Posted June 5, 2012 By John C Wright

Someone unwisely asked me to put forth my arguments in favor of my political position. Obviously this would take a small book, or a large, to do rigorously. But as a courtesy to any reader curious about my basic assumptions, allow me by way of introductory matter to reprint an article from two years ago on the topic of economics.

*   *   *

A reader comments:

 “I believe that most socialists strongly believe the world would be a better place if everyone believed and acted as they do and they may well be right. The problem is that everyone doesn’t believe and act as they do but their system requires such a thing for it to succeed so they turn to government to enforce the act part if not the believe part. In the end, any system that starts with, “If only everyone would do X…” is doomed to failure.”

Here I must respectfully disagree. Even if everyone believed as the Marxists believe and acted as unselfishly and irrationally as Marxist theory commands, they still would not be right.

In other words, Marxists are not only evil. They are also wrong.

Read the remainder of this entry »

10 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Reasonings

The Disabled Hardly Even Mentioned

Posted June 5, 2012 By John C Wright

Michael Coren a Canadian TV Host and columnist, writes this guest editorial in the National Review on the topic of how well the secular humanist policy has run in Canada, and he asks us to take warning.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/reply/301641

He writes in part:

Four years ago, a Christian organization in Ontario that works with some of the most marginalized disabled people in the country was taken to court because of its disapproval of an employee who wanted to be part of a same-sex marriage. The government paid the group to do the work because, frankly, nobody else was willing to. As with so many such bodies, it had a set of policies for its employees. While homosexuality was not mentioned, the employment policies did require that employees remain chaste outside of marriage, and marriage was interpreted as the union of a man and a woman. The group was told it had to change its hiring and employment policy or be closed down; as for the disabled people being helped, they were hardly even mentioned.

In small-town British Columbia, a Knights of Columbus chapter rented out its building for a wedding party. They were not aware that the marriage was to be of a lesbian couple, even though the lesbians were well aware that the hall was a Roman Catholic center — it’s increasingly obvious that Christian people, leaders, and organizations are being targeted, almost certainly to create legal precedents. The managers of the hall apologized to the couple but explained that they could not proceed with the arrangement, and agreed to find an alternative venue and pay for new invitations to be printed. The couple said that this was not good enough, and the hall management was prosecuted. The human-rights commission ruled that the Knights of Columbus should not have turned the couple down, and imposed a small fine on them. The couple have been vague in their subsequent demands, but feel that the fine and reprimand are inadequate.

As I write, two Canadian provinces are considering legislation that would likely prevent educators even in private denominational schools from teaching that they disapprove of same-sex marriage, and a senior government minister in Ontario recently announced that if the Roman Catholic Church did not approve of homosexuality or gay marriage, it “would have to change its teaching.”

Read the remainder of this entry »

84 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Musings, Only Posting a Link

Hudson and Adler and the Unexpected Treasure

Posted June 4, 2012 By John C Wright

Let me tell of events many years apart, and you will see the connection, and, it is hoped, understand my disorientation and delight.

First:

Mortimer Adler is to alumni of St John’s College what Moses is to Jews, or, if you like, what Lycurgus is to Spartans. He is our founder. I would never have read or learned the Great Book had it not been for him, and, indeed the Great Books would be a less well defined list were it not for him.

As it so happens, as a student I asked him a question or two, no more, during the Q&A session after his annual lecture.

The topic was whether science would soon prove an insuperable obstacle to religion, such as, when and if computer engineers ever designed an artificial self aware being, or when and if neuropsychologists learned to read or download or manipulate human thought artificially.

Even though a zealous atheist at the time, I saw clearly that Mr Adler was underestimating the resilience of religion to mere changes of fact and circumstances. As if a Byzantine in the Sixth Century were to opine that the fall of the  Empire in the West would sweep away Christianity without a murmur.

I was pleased, of course, that such a potent intellect was on my side, the side of reason (for in such terms in that day I flattered my atheism) against the chaotic forces of unreason (for in such terms I dismissed all religion.)

Mr Adler was making a simple category error: treating religious belief as a physical rather than metaphysical theory, and therefore thinking the invention of new physical sciences, such as robo-psychology, or new techniques, such as brain-washing or mesmerism , would invalidate, or even influence, the metaphysical beliefs of Christians.

I, who cannot recall my own phone number, can remember the conversation.

Read the remainder of this entry »

30 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Musings

Happy Feast Day of Justin Martyr!

Posted June 1, 2012 By John C Wright

Today is my name-day, as well as my second son’s birthday.

“O God, who through the folly of the Cross wondrously taught Saint Justin the Martyr the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, grant us, through his intercession, that, having rejected deception and error, we may become steadfast in the faith.”

For those of you unfamiliar with his works:

St Justin Martyr
– First Apology
– Second Apology
– Dialogue with Trypho
– Hortatory Address to the Greeks
– On the Sole Government of God
– Fragments of the Lost Work on the Resurrection
– Miscellaneous Fragments from Lost Writings
– Martyrdom of Justin, Chariton, and other Roman Martyrs
– Discourse to the Greeks

It was because he penned sentences like the following that I added his name to mine when I entered the communion of the Church, both to honor him, to ask his guidance and to remind myself to follow the highest ideals of philosophy:

Reason directs those who are truly pious and philosophical to honour and love only what is true, declining to follow traditional opinions, if these be worthless. For not only does sound reason direct us to refuse the guidance of those who did or taught anything wrong, but it is incumbent on the lover of truth, by all means, and if death be threatened, even before his own life, to choose to do and say what is right.

To which I say, amen.

7 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Announcement

Clowns in the Ruins

Posted June 1, 2012 By John C Wright

A reader with the electrifying name of Mr Sparks writes:

This is a rather strange article which I thought might interest or irritate you, I’m not sure which.

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2012/04/living-end-times

He seems to see sci-fi as a sort of terminally “them over there” sort   of thing, even though he sounds like he’s writing science fiction himself.  And his ruminations on 9/11 are decidedly tangled.

My comment: I confess at the outset that I cannot bring myself to read this article closely. If it is any comfort, I suspect the writer did not mean to have it read closely. It reads like loose ruminations. I will reciprocate by ruminating myself, making no attempt at a rigorous argument, merely listing my impressions.

At the risk of boring you — and the man is drearily boring — let me quote the opening and closing paragraphs of this rambling essay.

On a cold afternoon this winter I sat before a glass wall at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, fielding questions about Jewish dystopian literature. Outside was New York Harbour and the audience seemed distracted by the passing boats. My fellow panellist was Joshua Cohen, author of Witz, a novel about the last Jew on earth. My novel The Flame Alphabet concerns a poisonous language spoken by children and is set in a world of failed science where Jewish mysticism might offer the only clue to the language toxicity. Cohen and I were asked, with some impatience, why the future in our novels was so dour. Why write about the future at all when the present was, you know, so interesting? Doesn’t the real trump the unreal? And maybe most importantly: what was this attraction to dark visions of the last days, a burgeoning literary genre that might as well be called “end times porn”?

Read the remainder of this entry »

114 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Fancies, Musings
Newer Entries »