Archive for November, 2013

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Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters – Part 5

Posted November 29, 2013 By John C Wright

Part of an ongoing rant where your humble author chews the scenery.  In our last episode, we discovered that Political Correctness is not political program but a cultic worldview with no particular center and no particular goal, bound together only by a general discontent at the sufferings of the world, and the belief that a rebellion destroying the legitimacy of all prior institutions and the erection of a totalitarian utopia will solve everything.

We left asking whether this had anything to do with science fiction. The answer proposed was that it does not, or rather, it has about the same relation that commercial advertisements have to the magazines in which they appear.

The cult wants to put leftwing messages into stories to influence the minds of the reading public and make their leftwing worldview seem like the norm, the default view, so that everything natural and decent and traditional and rational seems unbearably wicked and disgusting.

Speaking of magazines, I feel the an answer to the charge that women in the bad old days before the Women’s Liberation Movement were portrayed in SF as weaklings and ninnies is merely to glance at covers circa 1940-1950. This is hardly a scientific or thorough survey, but then again, we are talking about what subconscious impression is left in the minds of young women reading space adventure stories. I invite anyone to compare them to the same number of images from current SF paperback or trade paperback covers of adventure stories.

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Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters – Part 4

Posted November 27, 2013 By John C Wright

In a previous essay in this space, it was proposed that reviewers who yearn for more strong female characters in science fiction frequently mistake strength for masculinity.

That essay argued that by the nature of male and female biology, a certain stereotypical psychology and set of virtues, priorities and values was necessary and desirable to differentiate the sexes and increase their joy in each other.

The virtues of men are called masculinity; the virtues of women are called femininity. The argument given there was that females can be strong and should be portrayed in stories as strong in the way that is particular to women, but not in the way that is particular to men. What writers should not do, so the previous essay argued, is merely give female characters manly characteristics and call that ‘strong’.

So far, in none of these essays, have I mentioned what the objection is to the effort to making these masculinized glamor-model Amazons into main characters.

I have said I have no objection to Supergirl, who is Kryptonian, and stronger than any mortal, and no objection to Wonder Woman, who is, er, an Amazon. Not only do I have no objection to Batgirl either when played by Yvonne Craig or when drawn by Bruce Timm and voiced by Tara Strong, I actually have an unsightly crush on her.

I have no objection to Mary Sue style wish-fulfillment characters who are good at everything and loved by all men. I do not see them as different from James Bond style wish- fulfillment characters who are good at everything and loved by all women.

I have no objection to angst-ridden leather-clad buxom vixen in highheeled boots fighting her werewolf ex-lover not in highheeled boots with her silver switchblade on the back of her flaming Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the moonlight on a storm-drenched burning train-trestle collapsing beneath the roaring unmanned freight train carrying jet fuel and nitroglycerine bearing down on her. Will she be able to stab the handsome brute in time to swan-dive to safety into the raging piranha-filled and ice-choked river far below, and still find forgiveness and love, before the inevitable explosive break-up of the Transcontinental Railway and her relationship with her brutally handsome demon-lover?

Who am I to criticize any of this? I mean, good grief, I watched RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION and almost enjoyed it. (I actually have rather plebeian tastes. Albeit I suppose a real plebeian would not know the word plebeian. He would use the phrase  the hoi polloi  instead.)

So what is my objection?

My objection is to falseness, insincerity, propaganda, bad drama, bad art, and treason against the muses.  My objection is to using art for propaganda purposes. My objection is to Politically Correct piety. My objection is to the Thought Police.

My objection is to the spirit of totalitarianism.

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Day of the Doctor

Posted November 26, 2013 By John C Wright

I went to the theater and saw the latest Dr Who episode in 3D . My verdict: more than well worth it.

Steve Moffit is one of my favorite science fiction writers. I say that without making any distinction between media SF and magazine SF, a distinction which I think it proper to discard as irrelevant since around 1990, when GHOST IN THE SHELL appeared on American telly, and we entered the Golden Age of SFF Television.

I am saying that Moffit has written scripts for DR WHO which are stories as good as THE TIME MACHINE by Wells, as good as BY HIS BOOTSTRAPS by Heinlein, as good as DINOSAUR BEACH by Laumer, as good as THE BIG TIME by Lieber, as good as any and every other time travel story or time paradox story you’d care to name. The days when literary SF types could look down their nose at media SF types are dead.

My friend Keith de Candido has praise of this episode (with spoilers) over at Tor.com. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/11/a-moment-of-heroism-thinky-thoughts-on-doctor-whos-qthe-day-of-the-doctorq

I agree with his compliments and disagree respectfully with his criticisms. I thought the spaceman thing was perfect, and perfectly set up. I thought all the Christmas Specials were fine (except for the wee thing that none of them mention what Christmas is, which I believe has been illegal in England since Cromwell or since the modern version of Cromwell, Political Correctness.)

Happy Birthday, Doctor.

 

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Saving Science Fiction From Strong Female Characters – Part 3

Posted November 25, 2013 By John C Wright

Let us start with a few questions:

 

Why cannot both men and women be free, and leaders, and strong?

Women cannot be kings for the same reason men cannot be queens. Women in leadership roles do not lead in the same fashion as men do. They still lead (as we have seen in leaders from Queen Boadicea to Queen Elizabeth or Margaret Thatcher) but the tone and approach is different.

 

Why cannot both sexes, or (to be more specific) as many members of either sex as wish and can, perform tasks requiring boldness of action and clarity of thought and physical courage?

Physical courage is something boys are good at and proud of and naturally included to do. Even those effete intellectual men such as myself who do not cook outdoors and bowhunt grizzly bears or know how to fix a car engine still nonetheless approach life through a metaphor of conflict, war, duels, and tournaments. The reason why I behave honorably in a philosophical discussion is that I think of it as a duel to the death.

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Testing the Bechdel Test

Posted November 24, 2013 By John C Wright

I had the misfortune of hearing someone refer to the Bechdel test, and despite my misgivings, asking what it was.

“Basically, a work passes if:
1) It has at least two female characters.
2) They speak to each other at least once.
3) It is about something other than about men.”

Such is the test for purity of sexual thought and lack of bias against women in the story. What is the test for racial purity in the story? Two non-Christian non-White must appear together in a scene and talk about something unrelated to Western Civilization and its concerns?

I ask because I remember reading a reviewer once who judged one of my stories as one that did not pass the racial purity test.

This was not because of the race of any of the characters, by the way. The main character was explicitly said to be a Mestizo, that is, an English-Spanish hybrid with some Red Indian blood thrown in, what is now called a ‘Hispanic’ albeit as best I understand the Ahnenpass rules of racial purity used by Democrats, Hispanics do not count as Caucasians, even though they are from Europe, and neither do Persians count as Caucasians, even if they live in the Caucasus Mountains.

So in the story there were no Anglo-saxons at all (all the characters with speaking roles were Mestizo, Hindu, Dravidian, Iberian, Coptic, Tibetan, or an artificial biofact, but this was insufficient race diversity to sate that particular mavin of correct race thought) but I was denounced as a racist. Since I am a Christian and a pro-Constitution pro-limited government free market type, the reviewer in that instance decided that any from Texas two of four centuries from now has to be a White Man, despite that the text said otherwise, and therefore I am a racist.

That experience shows that ideological purity tests have an innate flaw. Any joker dishonest enough and partisan enough to judge a book not on its merits but on its race-purity is also dishonest enough to lie about the test results if the results allow a Christian to pass.

We are the bad guys in the Leftwing worldview, and it is childishly simple worldview, one where the bad guy cannot be an antihero with some redeeming characteristics: all  we conservatives are utterly vile and cruel and bigoted without exception, or the else the Leftwing worldview is unworkable.

In this case, sex is being treated like race, so if the story does not have enough characters of the right sex behaving according to this new stereotype of female behavior, it flunks, and the writer has committed thoughtcrime.

Let us quickly see what passes the test of Lefty Ideological Race Purity, or Sex Purity, as they case may be. Of the Great Books of Western Literature:

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Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters – Part 2

Posted November 23, 2013 By John C Wright

In this space we have been examining and excoriating the attempt of many reviewers and activists in science fiction to increase the number of ‘strong’ female characters in science fiction yarns. I put the word strong in scare quotes because it is my contention, argued in the previous essay, that this word conflates two distinct ideas. Good authors can make strong female characters who are strong with the virtues particular to women, feminine strength. Lazy authors make strong female characters by making them masculine.

Now there are several arguments which can be raised against this position: first is that virtue the same in men and women, so that what I am calling feminine strength in reality is the same as masculine strength, and ergo the distinction on which the argument is based fails. This argument has the strong point that temperance, justice, fortitude and prudence are the same in both sexes. The counterargument, which I think is sufficient as far as this point goes, is that the particular character of male and female virtues comes not from the virtues, but from the difference in priority, emphasis, approach, and skill sets involved.

The argument is experiential rather than logical: if you have not noticed that men, and for good reason, tend to be proud of their physical prowess, tend to be direct and adversarial, and tend to look at the world in terms of winners and losers, then I can do no more than to bring it to your attention. I call upon experience as my witness.

If you have no experience of real life, aside from what you see on the modern television or read in modern books, I might remind you that these jolly pasttimes are not meant to reflect reality, but is instead meant to reflect a vision of the world, a narrative, with which I am taking issue. Your witnesses, modern television and modern books, are corrupt.

Second, it can be argued that while indeed men do act in a more masculine fashion than women, they do not have a good reason for this: that the typically masculine and feminine roles are the product of historical accident or perhaps cruelty and social injustice. By this argument, the fact that they have always existed hence is an argument for their overthrow, because injustice has always existed, so any alternative is worth trying. The counterargument is that femininity is based on female biology, and that psychology, despite the fact that it can be trained to defy biology, ought not to be, as this leads to inefficiencies, injustices, and a general lack of joy.

Here again I point to experience as my witness: compare the divorce rate, the suicide rate, the crime rate, the rate of drug abuse, or any other honest indicator of social happiness between a modern urban setting, where the modern and Politically Correct ideals have had full sway for more than half a century, with a postwar rural setting where the traditional ideals have full sway. Neither one is utopia, but the number of bastard children belonging to drug running gangs beaten to death by his mother’s live-in lover is far smaller in rural Pennsylvania of 1953 than urban Detroit of 2013.

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The Hammer of Reality

Posted November 22, 2013 By John C Wright

I would say something about the ongoing slowmotion national suicide which is America’s infatuation with getting medical care free of cost from the Santa Clause which once was the US government, the last best hope of freedom on Earth, but another man has said it more succinctly than I. Hear him.
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An Added Comment

Posted November 22, 2013 By John C Wright

Politically Correctness is not built on lies, it is built on aggressively and insolently and outrageously false lies, almost like a Zen koan that shocks the mind into a suspension of thought.

The idea that the 1950’s, an era when women were respected and practically worshiped was worse for women than the modern era when even a Disney teen ends up as a trash whore is aggressively and outrageously false.

Compare Donna Reed with Miley Cyrus. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters – Part 1

Posted November 21, 2013 By John C Wright

Anyone reading reviews or discussions of science fiction has no doubt has come across the oddity that most discussions of female characters in science fiction center around whether the female character is strong or not.

As far as recollection serves, not a single discussion touches on whether the female character is feminine or not.

These discussions have an ulterior motive. Either by the deliberate intent of the reviewer, or by the deliberate intention of the mentors, trendsetters, gurus, and thought-police to whom the unwitting reviewer has innocently entrusted the formation of his opinions, the reviewer who discusses the strength of female characters is fighting his solitary duel or small sortie in the limited battlefield of science fiction literature in the large and longstanding campaign of the Culture Wars.

He is on the side, by the way, fighting against culture.

Hence, he fights in favor of barbarism, hence against beauty in art and progress in science, and, hence the intersection of these two topics, which means, against science fiction.

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Wright’s Writing Corner Relaunch

Posted November 20, 2013 By John C Wright

Latest writing post from the beautiful and talented Mrs. Wright:

The Trick: Raising expectations in one direction but having the story first go in the opposite direction.

The Trick is the secret to writing, the thing that makes a story work: expectation followed by something other than the expected outcome – but something that is thematically consistent with the original events.

In art, artists use shading to emphasize the lighter portion of their work. The shading provides contrast that draws the eye back to the non-shaded part. In a story, writer’s need to do the same thing. One way of providing that contrast is with The Trick.

Of all writing techniques, The Trick is the easiest to do. You just decide where you want the story to go, and then you indicate—through dialogue, character thought, or narration—that the opposite is coming. If you want to have a happy incident, you make your character glum. If you want something bad to happen, you make him unexpectedly happy. It is that simple, and it is tremendously effective.

You just have to remember to use it. That is all.

To read more:  http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/

 

 

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Feminist Islamophobia

Posted November 13, 2013 By John C Wright

From Robert Spencer over at PJ Media:

Late-night comic Conan O’Brien tweeted Friday night: “Marvel Comics is introducing a new Muslim Female superhero. She has so many more special powers than her husband’s other wives.” The predictable self-righteous firestorm ensued.

O’Brien was referring to “Kamala Khan,” Marvel Comics’ new Muslim superhero, unveiled with great fanfare last week. They are only introducing this Muslim superhero because of the hugely successful post-9/11 campaign by Islamic supremacists and their Leftist allies to portray Muslims as victims of “Islamophobia” and “hatred” — when actually the incidence of attacks on innocent Muslims is very low (not that a single one is acceptable or justified), and the entire “Islamophobia” campaign is an attempt to intimidate people into thinking that there is something wrong with fighting against jihad terror and Islamic supremacism.

Will Kamala Khan fight against jihadis? Will Marvel be introducing a counter-jihad superhero? I expect that the answer is no on both counts.

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True Love and Mere Lust

Posted November 12, 2013 By John C Wright

Lacking the time to write an essay for this week, I offer to the gentle reader this essay from back in the days when I was an atheist. Note please that none but purely secular reasons for admiring virtue are here given.

I have been asked what the vice might be in a man and woman, both adults, and unmarried, fornicating. The question is not rare in the modern day, where we have all been taught, and are continually reminded, that fire does not burn and water is not wet.

It is only after we are burnt or drenched that we begin to wonder if the modern Epicureans are all so very wise.

I used to be a loyal partisan of the sexual revolution: firmly libertarian, and firmly committed to the principle that whatever harmed no other did no wrong. Then I became a father, and I realized that I did not want my sons to be raised to believe this empty doctrine. Pleasures have consequences, not the least of which is, the pursuit of false and temporary pleasures hinders the discovery of true and lasting pleasures.

When Hugh Hefner, a man every partisan of the sexual revolution must admire, got married, and then divorced, I realized that he is a sad and lonely man. A big looser.

No matter how successful in pelf or worldly praise, no matter how admired by every horny schoolboy on Earth, his life is not worth living. He should hang himself from a oak tree branch.

In contrast, I have found true love, with a woman to whom I am and shall always be faithful, and I was a virgin before I met her. I live in the suburbs with my three and a half children, and work nine-to-five. I am everything the Playboy philosophy disdains: but I am as happy as the shining gods who dance on Olympus, far above the storms and stinks of earth, compared to him.

My joy is like strong sunlight, shining: his pleasure is like a wine-cup, drained to dregs. My joy grew a garden for me, my plowing and planting has produced fruit, which will give me further joys in the winter-tide of life: I mean my family, my children. He has the filthy dregs of an empty cup, and a headache. Who was wiser?

You see; my view of human nature is different from the Playboy view. Hefner says we can disport ourselves like minxes and stags in heat, coupling like satyrs and nymphs, without commitment and without consequence.

Satyrs do not marry, and nymphs are not given in marriage. Perhaps they can fall in love, true love, for an afternoon.

Humans are nobler creatures. An afternoon is not enough: we seek immortal love. We seek true love, a love true as a sharp sword, that will not shatter in the hand, a weapon equal to the task of keeping all life’s rude attacks at bay.

If you have the Hefner view of human nature, dear reader, nothing I say can make sense to you. Read no further.

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The First Dr Who

Posted November 7, 2013 By John C Wright

…was actually a sinister and mysterious figure cut straight from the mad scientist mold of not explaining things to lesser mortals, and electrocuting them if they meddled with controls…
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Stoics and Romance

Posted November 7, 2013 By John C Wright

This essay was among the first I published when I began keeping an Internet Journal back in 2003. I thought it curious to see what had changed and what was the same. I was particularly interested to note that, while I was a diehard Atheist, I was not enamored of that meretricious and disgusting libertinism which is the leitmotif of our era. This is a position to which I was slowly and reluctantly forced by the logic of Stoic doctrine, very much against my own inclinations, and decidedly against my upbringing, which was modern.

It is a commonplace of the Leftists that the only motive for men to be chaste and decent in sexual matters is either the superstitions of religion or the suppressed hypocrisy of neurosis. Here below is at least one example to show that facile rhetoric to be a lie.

Stoics and Romance

Posted on May 14, 2003 by John C Wright

Stoicism, as far as I have read, is mute on the issue of the morality of romance, except for certain brief and severe injunctions to avoid indecorous conduct. Perhaps the stern old Roman writers thought the matter was too obvious for more exposition.

It is impossible to believe the Stoics could have approved of the libertine doctrines of the libertarians, or thought the sexual revolution was anything but the overthrow of the monarch Reason by a mob of rebel appetites. If moderation and temperance are virtues, than mere pleasure is not a sufficient excuse for anything.

If good fortune or bad should keep the moderate man away from his wine-glass or his wife’s kisses for a time, he does not grieve: but the drunkard kept from his wine is tormented. The adulterer would not seek to embrace another man’s wife unless either his passion were so violent and uncontrolled that his fidelity means nothing in contrast; or he is so light-hearted and false to being with, that he never meant his marriage vows even when he took them.

It is seem incredible to any modern reader that our fathers once took sex so seriously that they would not permit it to anyone but him who had vowed eternal love to one perfect woman, his mate, and the vow was meant in all seriousness to restrict the wild lusts into a creative and reproductive use, so that love would produce only more love, and not, as it does today, hatred, indifference, broken hearts, fatherless children. The modern view of sex is dull and unromantic because it is so pathetically immoderate.
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El último informe de la Unidad de Twenty-Two

Posted November 6, 2013 By John C Wright

If any of my readers are curious about a foreign language review of one of my short stories ‘Last Report on Unit Twenty Two’ appearing in the anthology SO IT BEGINS (Mike McPhail, ed.), here it is:

“El último informe de la Unidad de Twenty-Two”, de John C. Wright es el segundo relato de la antología. Wright es el marido de otro autor fantástico, L. Jagi Lamplighter (Wright). Tanto escribir obras impresionantes de la fantasía y MilSF que recomiendo encarecidamente. Unidad de Twenty-Two es un robot sensible cuyo trabajo consiste en extraer mineral de los asteroides. Él tiene un cerebro que es muy similar a la humana, y aunque ha habido extracción de mineral diligentemente durante años, se lo mete en la cabeza por recoger las transmisiones de publicidad que hay más en la vida de la minería. Unidad de Twenty-Two quiere viajar de alguna manera a la Tierra y pasar el resto de sus días, él no-hacer, que sería como el cielo. ¿Cómo llega allí y qué pasa con él cuando se hace una gran adición a esta antología.

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