Archive for August, 2013

Niemeier on the Anti-Mothers

Posted August 30, 2013 By John C Wright

Mr Brian Niemeier has a brief comment on how subversive science fiction has become predictable, uniform, pious, and, in a word, unsubversive.

The Turkey City Lexicon is an index of speculative fiction clichés. Compiled by a venerable group of science fiction authors, the lexicon offers clear examples of what not to include in a sci-fi or fantasy work. Among the list of writing “don’ts” is the innocent-sounding Motherhood Statement.

The lexicon identifies the Motherhood Statement as: “[an] SF story which posits some profoundly unsettling threat to the human condition, explores the implications briefly, then hastily retreats to affirm the conventional social and humanistic pieties, ie [sic] apple pie and motherhood.”

Author Greg Egan claimed that science fiction is most effective when writers “burn the motherhood statement.” His assertion was likely informed by the venerable SF tradition of challenging the status quo

Read it here: http://brianniemeier.com/motherhood-statement/

My comment: when the so called freethinking rebels win, they impose a politically correct uniformity of thought far less free and far less interesting to read and far more preposterously hypocritical than the old established pieties, which at least had experience, common sense, and authentic human emotion on their side, not to mention divine revelation. At such at time the only manly response to the bold nonconformists (all strangely in perfect lockstep with each other!) is to become superversive, and write books upholding not just Motherhood and Apple Pie, but the Virgin Mary and Eucharist.

And the orcs will choke on the wholesome lembas, and spit them out like ashes.

These orcs, in the final analysis, are enemies of humanity, the free market, and freedom; they are the foes of God and Man. For them to claim science fiction as their particular bastion is beyond risible and well into the terrain of the absurd. SFF is the one literature which never will accept the mental uniformity of falsehood these anti-Mothers crave.

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Pagan and Jewish Prophets

Posted August 30, 2013 By John C Wright

This is tangentially related to a topic often (far too often) discussed on this blog. I am one of those rare souls who both believes the claim of the determinists, that all material things could be predicted by a sufficiently advanced intelligence if he had complete information about everything in the universe, and the claim of the indeterminists, that men have free will.

Of course, I must confess that part of my reason for believing the claim of the determinists is that Mentor of Arisia, the super intelligent brain creature organizing all human history and eugenics in the space opera GALACTIC PATROL by E.E. Doc Smith would not be able to create his Visualization of the Cosmic All if determinism were incorrect. And I always wanted to visualize the Cosmic All, just as much as I wanted to breed human beings like dogs and bring forth the Kwisatz Haderach, also called the Grey Lensmen, gifted with psionic superpowers — what red blooded all American boy does not?

And, without free will, how could the Grey Lensman force his lens-amplified psychic willpower with the grinding, trenchant, acute, razor-sharp yet penetrating, spectacular mind-numbing force, driven by all the power and scope of a highly trained brain and indefatigable willpower, needed to pierce the desperately held thought-shield  of Gharlane of Eddore and obliterate that fearsome wight forthwith, by pure mental effort alone?

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Unexpected Enlightenment Day!

Posted August 29, 2013 By John C Wright

If I have ever found favor in your eyes, kind reader, please go to Amazon and click on my wife’s book to help raise her numbers.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Unexpected-Enlightenment-Rachel-Griffin/dp/1937051870

rachel-griffin-cover

If you want to read a Harry Potter style book with lots of teen angst and a clever mystery (and see my character Sigfried Smith in action — I was the adviser on that character, meaning he talks and acts just like me) then by all  means buy the book. But clicking on it will be a service to us nonetheless.

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The Infinite Cage and the Escape from Middle Earth

Posted August 28, 2013 By John C Wright

I had occasion to re-read another book, THE INFINITE CAGE, by Keith Laumer, and again to compare what shallow youth recalled versus what older eyes perceive.

This book was one of those rare cases where not only did I not remember the ending, I misremembered it, thinking some matter of my own unintentional invention was in the text when it was not. Here was my greatest surprise, for normally I have a very crisp and accurate memory of books I’ve read, as accurate as my memory for people I meet is vague, shabby, and neglectful.

A smaller surprise, but one more interesting to comment upon, was the unrelenting grimness, cynicism, and sourness of the tale. This was something which made no impression on my sunny youthful mind, who had neither taste for misanthropic pessimism nor, apparently, any ability to recognize or notice it. At the time, I also thought innocence was the same as naivety. It is not; they are nearly opposites. More on this later.

Laumer is a treat to read. Other writers try to put conflict and tension in their works, but end up lumbering along. Laumer defines conflict and tension. There are no wasted scenes and hardly a wasted word, and some dramatic thing happens each easy-to-turn page. His works written after 1971 might lack this quality; none from before do. I will not say he is in top form, because all his books are written with this same sparse prose, vivid turns of phrase, and lean, fast-paced action.

The novel is short and to the point. It concerns the tragic misadventures of an mind-reading superman with perfect memory, apparently infinite intelligence, but possessing at first no selfhood nor self-awareness, and, later, a simplistic and naïve personality, utterly innocent and trusting.

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Google and the Sacred

Posted August 28, 2013 By John C Wright

You can tell what a man holds sacred not by what he says about it but how he treats it.

I notice today that Google has an image glorifying Martin Luther King, on the anniversary of his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech, which was one of the inspirations for the overthrow of Democrat Jim Crow laws in the Democrat South, which remained as a shameful legacy of Democrat slaveholding which the Republicans stopped, even at the cost of a hideous and ruinous war. The Republicans also voted in the Civil Rights Act. (Why do the Republicans never get the credit and the Democrats never the blame for these things? Because the Democrats control the public education. Thanks, Dewey.)

I notice that on Easter Sunday, Google put up an image of a communist agitator for workingman’s rights. No doubt the fellow was brave and devout, but is there no one else whom one should remember and honor on Easter Sunday?

Why does Google honor Dr King but not the King of Kings, the Lord whom King worshiped? Because they hold his struggle for equality and equal rights to be sacred, but not the faith which gave Dr King the strength to make that struggle, nor the Creator which gave him and us those rights.

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DONE! Er… Almost

Posted August 27, 2013 By John C Wright

The first draft of THE CONCUBINE VECTOR is finished as of this moment. It is roughly a zillion words over my word limit, so I will have to spend weeks and fortnights cutting it down to size.

It runs from AD 11049 to AD 51555.

The first three chapters of the next book, tentatively titled THE ASYMPTOTE OF MAN, are already written. It picks up the action at AD 70220.

The final volume, tentatively titled COUNT TO INFINITY, will have its second-to-last scene set somewhere around 21, 000,000,000 AD

For those of you keeping track of dates.

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Book Recommendations and Revolution Recommendation

Posted August 25, 2013 By John C Wright

Earlier I posted a rather lengthy list of recommended books for anyone interested in the Great Books; let me provided a shorter list here, taken from Peter Kreeft:

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Night of Delusions; Works of Subversion

Posted August 22, 2013 By John C Wright

This is not a book review, but a meditation upon the enemy prompted by a book.

The book is NIGHT OF DELUSIONS by Keith Laumer, a minor effort by an accomplished author whose accomplishments are all but unknown these days. This author is a particular favorite of mine, and always has been, and only recently did I come to realize that he is not as well known in science fiction circles as authors of frankly smaller skill and output. I cannot recall when last I saw any of his books even at the used bookstore. And I find it hard to understand why. (I hope to introduce his works to some readers who have not had the pleasure, and urge you to try him.)

The enemy is, of course, the one enemy. There is only one. More on him later.

This non-bookreview will read as if I am criticizing this book, or, rather, a single scene or a single line in the book. It will read as if I am criticizing the author. I am not. I adore this author.

I am criticizing the spirit of the age; I am criticizing subversion in literature as in life; and I am contenting with powers and principalities that have very little indeed to do with science fiction.

However, spoilers abound, since I discuss the surprise endings of several books below. Readers are warned.

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