Archive for September, 2014

Newer Entries »

Heinlein was a Fascist?

Posted September 7, 2014 By John C Wright
This essay was written and appeared in this space four years ago, but I thought I would reprint it now:

I just finished rereading Robert A. Heinlein’s STARSHIP TROOPERS, and I was left with an odd question lingering. Blazoned on the cover of my paperback edition boast the words “controversial best seller!” Why is this book controversial?

Science Fiction is something like a game or thought-experiment played with the reader: the author invents a counterfactual premise but uses the props and setting of the real universe to make the counterfactual seem as likely as possible. The game is to draw out the real world consequences of the non-real premise. If there actually were invisible men, so asks H.G. Wells, would they not have to walk among us nude? Not for the science fiction writer is the magical invisibility that turns your clothing transparent but not what you pick up in your hand.

In the case of STARSHIP TROOPERS, the speculation is about futuristic infantry. What happens when the advances in technology give a single trooper the firepower of a modern platoon, or even a battalion? If a footsoldier totes a tactical atom bomb in his backpack launcher, what kind of trooper, and what kind of warfare, would it have to be? What are the social implications? Who could be trusted with such firepower?

There is a second speculation: what if the franchise of the vote was limited to veterans? What kind of society would emerge?
Read the remainder of this entry »

51 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Other

Three Views of the Elf-road: By Dawn, by Dark, by Day

Posted September 4, 2014 By John C Wright

Here is a comment by Astro Sorcerer I wanted to share:

 

Science fiction and fantastic all involve wonder.

It strikes me that there are three ways that characters interact with that wonder.

One way is with yearning for that wonder, seeking to find it. This is indeed that of Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, and also the mission of the Enterprise. The goal is of the character is to seek and find wonder and the strange and exciting.

The second way is a character recoiling from a horror, or fleeing a fantastic horror or fate. Much of Stephen King’s brilliantly developed characters deal with this: they never wanted to face what they are facing, but must confront it. Greek myth also has this: heroes who were not seeking the supernatural horror inflicted on their lives. The heroes of Terminator and Aliens likewise must deal with fantastic horror.

The third way is a character who deals with the amazing and fantastic in an everyday, workmanlike sense. Harry Dresden is a great example of this, as is Dr. Who. Owin Pitt transforms form the second to the third. To them, the fantastic is the mundane, but still the artist brings a sense of wonder as they deal with it.

With multiple characters, it is possible to have characters deal with the same fantastic event in different ways: wonder, horror, just day at work.

My comment: Bravo! This is an insightful and a clever analysis. Needless to say, I agree.

Allow me to add, that each method requires a different tactic to win reader sympathy.

The first (those who long for adventure) speaks to the reader’s longing, which one assumes any reader of SFF has in plenty. In this case the author should harp on the glamor and mystery and even the nostalgia of high adventure.

Call this the rosy dawn view, when the road to elfland is still softly seen with dewy flowers.

The second speaks to common fears of the uncanny, which even an atheist walking through a moonlit graveyard understands, but also speaks to common fears of being unable to match the task hard fate imposes. Here the author must play up the terror and greatness of what the hero faces, the grotesqueness of it, the danger, as well as cast a longing eye toward the comforts of home.

Call this the midnight view, when the wayfarer casts many a glance back along the road as he walks.

The third speaks to the everyday workingman, which every man who works understands, and in this case the author should play up the skill and hard labor involved, the learning needed to measure up to the task, the toughness or wit of the hero in action, but should also treat the matter with ironic nonchalance, as if he’d seen such things before. Readers understand cool and they like skillful masters at their craft, whether that be time travel or monster hunting (or both).

Call this the noontime view, where the wayfarer is seen whistling, his lunchbucket on shoulder and eyes on the sky, skipping stepping over pitfalls and crushing scorpions without a downward glance, because he knows were they lurk.

47 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Fancies

I Wanted a Roc’s Egg

Posted September 3, 2014 By John C Wright

My wife and I were discussing how to make characters appealing to readers, especially to science fiction readers. My theory is that science fiction readers are a special breed who are seeking something invisible to mainstream readers, something not found close to home, not found within the Fields We Know, perhaps not found on Earth at all.

So an appealing character, according this particular method of approach (there are many other methods) is to give the hero that same homesickness for the unknown realms and higher stars which many a science fiction reader knows so well.

I notice that there are many characters with this particular trait: Frodo Baggins wishes his comfortable life were interrupted with adventure, and this mood comes upon him strongly in autumnal months. Luke Skywalker mocks his planet as being the world farthest from any bright center of the universe there might be. Harry Potter suffers with Oliver Tristian levels of abuse before discovering he is  a wizard, and that the world of muggles is not his home. Belle from the Disney musical BEAUTY AND THE BEAST yearns for so much more than “they have planned”, and Jasmine from ALADDIN has the same yearning. Kip from HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL opens his story with the arresting and simple line: he wants to go to the moon.

One of the best expressions of this homesickness for somewhither comes from the pen of Robert Heinlein, put in the mouth of Oscar Gordon, the hero of GLORY ROAD, and Heinlein’s homage to the swashbuckler genre. (And my thanks to Mary for reminding me of this quote http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/09/03/the-redheaded-step-genre/#comment-197627)

Read the remainder of this entry »

25 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Fancies

The Wright Perspective: Utopias from the Golden Age of Science Fiction

Posted September 3, 2014 By John C Wright

My latest is up at Every Joe:http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/09/03/lifestyle/perfect-world-utopias-golden-age-science-fiction/

 

The modern science fiction writers are the heirs to those ancient philosophers sadly because mainstream writers, while believing themselves technically more proficient in the story telling art, in fact are less proficient in the exercise of the imagination, which is the more fundamental of the two skills. In a word, the modern mainstream is not imaginative enough to write of a world other than his own, much less one better than his own due to some philosophical or technological improvement of the condition of mankind.

As a thought experiment, we are asking which utopia would be best to dwell in and raise a family, presumably in freedom comfort not less than what an average American currently enjoys. The Republic of Plato and the Utopia of Thomas More were briefly described, and rejected on the grounds that neither comfort nor freedom were available in these imaginary commonwealths, nor could any responsible father condemn his children to live as cattle.

The ancient philosophers were not penning science fiction, that is, not even trying to propose a speculation, realistic or not, of what life in a better world would be like. They were describing (with what degree of sarcasm scholars to this day debate in doubt) the situation best suited for the government of men. Both Socrates the pagan sage and Thomas More the Christian saint saw man as a creature wretched due to vice and sin, and saw the instrument of the State is needed to chastise, correct and inspire the beast within us to domestication and obedience: hence their utopians were both as disciplined as a military camp, or a Spartan city.

Now we turn to the three generations that followed the birth of American science fiction, which, for convenience, I shall call the Golden Age, the New Wave, and the Crazy Years. For better or worse, the view of mankind changed dramatically. The ancients saw nature, including human nature, as fixed, and saw the main effort of man to be a struggle for virtue, particularly the virtues needed to domesticate our crooked inner natures and unwholesome desires. Since the Victorian Age, an age of naivety, the modern has seen nature, particularly human nature, as subject to a gradual but benevolent evolution, and hence the main effort of man to be a struggle to study, outwit, domesticate and command nature, either by technology or improvements in the social order.

With the view of man evolved to an evolutionary view, hence the prescription of in what form of commonwealth men should best live changed as well.

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

Hoyt and the Redheaded Step Genre

Posted September 3, 2014 By John C Wright

Sarah Hoyt has a simply excellent meditation on her blog about her early love of science fiction (where I notice she is a fan of all the authors I love) about the narrowness of her teachers, and about the bitter and boring and petty narrowness of those who confuse ‘serious literature’ with good and deep and thoughtful literature.

http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/09/03/the-redheaded-step-genre/

She is in rare form, and this column should be the rallying cry of all of you who love science fiction and who do not love the locusts coming to eat up the fruit of our imaginations ,nor the harpies coming to befoul our feasts.

Read the remainder of this entry »

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

ONE BRIGHT STAR TO GUIDE THEM

Posted September 2, 2014 By John C Wright

This is a decades-old dream come true. It is unseemly for a writer to praise his own work, but, honestly, of all I have written this is the one novella I most wish I could have read, if a time machine lending library were available, when I was a youth.

For sale now. Here is the announcement  from my publisher:

One Bright Star To Guide Them

At long last, we are very pleased to announce the publication of ONE BRIGHT STAR TO GUIDE THEM by John C. Wright. It is a beautiful novella in which Mr. Wright once more proves himself to be the Master of the Final Word; in all my reading I have yet to discover an author who is more accomplished at writing elegant, perfectly-fitting endings that leave the reader in breathless awe. The novella is available in Kindle format for $2.99 at Amazon and in DRM-free EPUB format at Castalia House.

Read the remainder of this entry »

27 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Announcement

Science Fiction now a Hate Crime

Posted September 2, 2014 By John C Wright

From the pen of Jerry Pournelle:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/incarcerated-for-writing-a-science-fiction-novel/

Rage and grief prevent me from making any comment.

*

UPDATE: A reader named Vespers reports it may be a false alarm, thank God: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-teacher-was-not-placed-on-leave-over-books-authorities-say-20140902-story.html

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

Favorable Review: or, Making the Mos Eisley cantina look like a Drill Team

Posted September 2, 2014 By John C Wright

Joseph Moore of Yardsale of the Mind had weighed and measured the merits of THE HERMETIC MILLENNIA, and, by some kindly accident or quirk of inattention of his part, overlooks the flaws in the work and praised the merits.

His review is here: http://yardsaleofthemind.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/book-review-hermetic-millennia-status-report/

He says, in part:

Whoa.

I will assume you’ve read the first book here, so, if not, there are minor spoilers ahead.

Menelaus Montrose survives his duel with Blackie – sorry for the spoiler, there, but c’mon – and has retreated to the lair of cryonic tombs spread around the globe  he was building in Count to a Trillion. The Hyades aliens are coming in 10,500 years to enslave the earth. Montrose, true American cowboy and superlative genius that he is, figures humanity must stand and fight. The Hermeticists  merely want to engineer races of men worthy of being enslaved, for the Monument says that an enslaved race will eventually be freed if it turns out to have made it worth the trouble of travelling for 10 millennia to enslave.

In the same way as in that first book, the story is told mostly inside-out: As on his round-trip to V-886 Centari, Menelaus has been sleeping the centuries away, and so every new awakening is a mystery story where he has to catch up on what’s been happening.

Pellucid, his global AI,  hidden and distributed deep in the earth, has algorithms for waking him up: when events have reached a point where his personal touch is requires to set them straight. The Hermeticists, lead by Blackie Del Azarchel, have retreated to the far side of the moon, where they brood and plan and manipulate the races of man to their purposes. Through the centuries, Menelaus must awaken once in a while and have a classic Western showdown with a Hermeticist. So far, so good.

But something has gone very, very wrong.

Only 400 years remain until the enslaving aliens are to arrive, and the earth is a mess: an ice age has gripped the planet, and, except for some bald blue grave robbers who have inexplicably gotten past Montrose’s layers and layers of defenses to rob the tombs, no one seems to be around.  By some miracle,  no one recognizes him – he’s pretending to be a Beta Chimera, one of the past races of men. It is only a matter of time before he and the other Thaws are of no use to the robbers – and Motrose has to figure out what to do and how to do it before they are all murdered.

The chief ‘whoa’ of this book: Montrose has a standing offer to all the intelligent life on earth: come to the Tombs, and ride out the manipulations of the Hermeticists, to be thawed at some future date. This offer has resulted in the Tombs containing a collection of humanoid life forms that make the bar crowd at Mos Eisley look like a drill team. Each form, from Giants to Sylphs to Nymphs to Chimerae to Witches to Savants to Hormagaunts and so on, is the result of one or another of the Hermeticist’s attempts to control human development, and reflect the plans, biases and flaws of their creators. Each subspecies has its own languages and customs, and hatreds based on what prior species they conquered and what subsequent subspecies supplanted them. The Thaws awakened by the tomb robbers are a mix of these races. Montrose has managed to become the main translator for the Blue Men, who are apparently in charge of the tomb raiding. Thus, he gets to interview the various races, and we hear their stories. Wright is both playful and humorous as well as serious and scary in his incorporation of ideas current now and his extrapolation to where those ideas might lead, if the whole world were to commit to them.

In order to save them, Montrose has got to get them to pull together. He is honor bound to protect anyone who voluntarily entered the Tombs. Co-conspirators are recruited and schemes are hatched….

Of course, after the manner of its kind, we have another cliff hanger. And I only have to wait a week or three to see how it comes out.

So, go read Count to a Trillion and Hermetic Millennia! What are you waiting for?

4 Comments so far. Join the Conversation
Filed in Crowing
Newer Entries »