Archive for December, 2014

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The Four Last Things in Science Fiction

Posted December 31, 2014 By John C Wright

This is a reprint, in part, of an essay of mine from AD 2011. I wanted to introduce it to any new readers of mine since that year, and to use it as a way of saying Happy New Year:

* * *

Most futures in most SF stories are monocultures, much in the same way, and for the same reason, most worlds visited by the starship Enterprise have but one culture. There is not enough room in a single novel, or a single movie, to do more than hint at complexity.

Indeed, complexity would destroy the mood and theme of the story. Imagine someone writing a realistic version of Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR or Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD. In both cases, the totalitarian dystopia cannot project an air of suffocating omnipotence if it is hinted anywhere that they will pass away in less than sixty years. The absurdly over-regulated world state in Huxley, realistically, would last even less time. Imagine if every baby born had to be decanted and birthed by the same bureaucracy that runs the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Post Office. The idea that they would produce the correct number of the different intellectual castes, Alpha to Epsilon, as conditions changed from year to year is absurd. Recall that one of the Epsilons is an elevator operator. When the book was written, every elevator had an operator the same way, now, every automobile has a driver. Science fiction writers have been predicting in vain for years now cars that would drive themselves, or fly, but Huxley did not anticipate elevators operated by a pushbutton. Realistically, the world-bureaucracy of the Ford world-state would have no more ability to predict the actions of the market place, or the needs of its wards, than Huxley himself. In the real world, the utter incompetence even of public servants who are not venal is legendary.

Obviously, the police state in Orwell would go broke the same way the Soviet Union did and communist China is (despite our heroic efforts to prop them up) going to. Perhaps it could last one hundred years, or two. But the whole theme of Orwell was that the state was like a boot that would trample a human face forever. The hopelessness is the core of the book’s message. Even Goldstein, the rebel against the system, is manufactured by Big Brother as part of the totalitarian control process.

As with Orwell and Huxley, most science fiction writers do not have the space on the page to invent a future as complex as the future will be. To introduce the reader to more than one idea takes more than one story.

This is one reason the Future History stories of Robert Heinlein were monumental in science fiction history: aside from Olaf Stapledon, no writer before had worked out over a number of tales placed in a number of eras the complexity realism requires.

Like his mentor Olaf Stapledon, Heinlein anticipated a future that was fairly complex, with ups and downs, its advances and its setbacks. After the theocracy of Nehemiah Scudder, a libertarian style Covenant government would become supreme in the world, ushering in the golden age called ‘The Maturity of Man.’

In TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE, we catch a glimpse of this utopia, where mankind is spreading rapidly across the galaxy, war is unknown, disease and aging are unknown, fathers are good to their children, and everyone has sex with everyone, male or female, human or machine.

Plus, space is a frontier without end, so the rugged frontiersmanship so beloved of Heinlein, and, in the days before PC, beloved of all Americans, finds infinite scope for its exercise. Heinlein’s future contains all the freedom of the wilderness and all the comforts of civilization wrapped up in one.

There is one oddity in the Future History of Heinlein, which I also perceive in Isaac Asimov, or, at least, in his FOUNDATION series. They do not have a satisfactory endpoint.

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An Open Letter to Mr Hines

Posted December 31, 2014 By John C Wright

Mr Jim Hines takes exception to the grave insult done to all fans of LEGEND OF KORRA by asserting, first, that I am the only one dismayed and dissatisfied by the bad writing, cheap ending, lame out-of-nowhere romance between two female characters (neither of who previously was homosexual) being shoehorned into the last scene in the closing episode of LEGEND OF KORRA for reasons of Political Correctness; and second, that the reason for my dismay was not my artistic judgment, love of the show, and a normal human sense of decency, but the pure evil of my character.

As for the first point, it is the informal logical fallacy known as ad populum. He is asserting that the minority opinion is always wrong. And it is a false assertion in any case: Their great claim to moral superiority of the pro-irrationality faction Mr Hines represents rests on their inferiority in numbers or in power or both, that is, on their underdog status. If they are in the majority, that claim evaporates.

As for the second point, it is ad hominem. Evidently Mr Hines imagines himself to be The Shadow, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

Sadly for him, the evil is not where he detects it. I am not the bigot here. The bigot is the one who denounces everyone whose opinion differs from his own as bigots.

He makes much ado of the fact that the scene is so short and so trivial, and therefore it shows a lack of judgment on my part to take offense, or a lack of moral uprightness. But, by the same logic, if the scene is trivial, then those who celebrate it (including, by their own testament, the writers themselves) are celebrating a triviality. The scene cannot be a landmark only for those who praise it, but at the same time be a triviality too small to notice only for those who dispraise it.

Here are his remarks: I do him the courtesy he does not do me, by linking to his column. He did not wish me to learn of his backbiting. That is understandable. I would also be ashamed of my cowardice, were I so cowardly as to slander and denigrate a man behind his back, and call him by name, then call him names, but not invite him to speak a word to defend himself.

http://www.jimchines.com/2014/12/john-wright-legend-of-korra/

* * *

Dear Mr Hines: If a writing team betrays me for my loyalty by halting the story to preach a sermon on a religion that is alien to my religion and hostile to it, those writers get no grief for being treacherous, sly, or underhanded; but I get grief for daring to have a religion that differs from theirs, and for following as my conscience dictates, even though I am not being treacherous, sly, or hidden here.

I am the not ashamed of my beliefs, ergo I do not need to sneak in little sly advertisement for them into a children’s show, into the literal last two minutes, without warning, and so ambiguously that it requires a later public statement to take a stand.

Nor am I, Mr. Hines, the bigot here. You are. You are so craven in your bigotry, that you do not even do me the courtesy of addressing me directly, nor linking to the column with which you took exception, nor discussing the merits of the case.

(Also: learn to read English, please, sir. I did not call for the extermination of people, but of ideas: man’s politics, policies, or faith.)

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Unexpected Enlightenment from Instapundit

Posted December 30, 2014 By John C Wright

Instapundit is boosting the Hermione-Granger-meets-Aslan-and-Cthulhu juvenile novels of L. Jagi Lamplighter, the greatest living writer today, living in my house:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/199591/

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/199588/

You must read them to see the illustrations. They were done by her husband, who I assume is named Mr. Lamplighter.

The cover art is top notch, painted by top notch cartoonist Dan Lawlis.

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Christmastide

Posted December 30, 2014 By John C Wright

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, no witch has power to charm,
So hallow’d and gracious is the time. –Hamlet

It has become something of a tradition here at John C. Wright’s Journal for yours truly to list the feast days of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and to urge my fellow traditionalists to continue the Christly and Christian work of Keeping the Feast and Partyin’ On! Let us pause for unsolemn reflection on these solemnities.

We all know the Twelve Days of Christmas from a famous nonsense song about a lady whose true love gives her 184 birds of various types, not to mention 12 fruit trees, 40 golden rings, 106 persons of the various professions either musical or milkmaidenly, and 32 members of the aristocracy variously cavorting.

No doubt you have ever wondered how the lady in the song feeds all the leaping lords and dancing ladies, pipers, drummers, and milkmaids now living in her parlor, the answer is that she feeds them the 22 turtledoves, 30 French hens, 36 colly birds, and 42 swans, not to mention the nice supply of eggs from the geese, milk from the cows and pears from the pear trees.

You may have heard that the lyrics contain a secret meaning, referring to Catholic doctrines or rites forbidden by Oliver Cromwell. This is true. The secret meaning is that the Walrus is St. Paul, and if you listen to a record of the carol backward, it says “Cromwell under his wig is bald.” All this is well known.

What is not as well known is that traditionally, these are twelve days of feasts which start on Christmas Day and run through to Epiphany on January 6th, which is the festival variously of the Adoration of the Magi and the Presentation in the Temple. (Really hard core Christmasteers extend Christmastide 40 days, ending on Candlemas February 2).

Before Christmas, during the season of Advent, while everyone else is shopping and partying, we who keep the traditions fast, pray, do penance, and make ourselves miserable. It makes the holiday much brighter by contrast.

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Three Spots in the Top Ten

Posted December 29, 2014 By John C Wright

An anonymous character on the Internet posted his Top Ten for 2014! I am pleased to see Larry Correia’s name there, as well as my own. And ‘D.B. Jackson’ is a cherished acquaintance of mine.

http://derekthornton71.blogspot.ch/2014/12/my-top-ten-fiction-books-of-2014.html

I doff my hat to you, Mr Thornton, and will aim to please you again in the coming year. We Southerners must hang together.

The following words are his:

Here is a list of the top 10 fiction books I have read this year.

10. Fallen King (Cirian War Saga Book 1) by Eric Lorenzen

9. Warbound (The Grimnoir Chronicles Book 3) Larry Correia

8. Thieves’ Quarry (The Thieftaker Chronicles) by D.B. Jackson

7. Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright

6. Monster Hunter Alpha by Larry Correia

5. Monster Hunters International by Larry Correia

4. City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

3. Sixty-One Nails: Courts of the Feyre, Book 1 by Mike Shevdon

2. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

1. Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright This one I read twice this year. Just got through reading it again!

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The Perversion of a Legend

Posted December 29, 2014 By John C Wright

I note a particular oddity in the ongoing debate about the legitimacy of the Hugo Award slate. For all the ink that has so for been spilled over it — including more than one libelous article hurredly retracted — no one is actually talking about it.

No one is talking about the merit of any of the works, mine or others, being judged.

Consider the irony of that for a moment. We masterminds of evil living in our villain lair in the cone of an extinct volcano in Antarctica are being accused of introducing politics and bloc voting into the Hugo Awards. Our main complaint is the the Hugo Awards in recent years have been a matter of politics hence not about the merit of the work. Our complaint is that meritorious works are being shut out; that the merit of the work is being ignored. And the response of our critics is …. to launch personal attacks, to attempt clumsy character assassination, besmirch and besmear our character, and never to talk about the merit of the works.

Point made; case closed.

I have so far found one and only one exception, and the comment is worthy of sustained and detailed mockery.

Here is the quote from the one and only one detractor who mentioned discontent with my work rather than badmouthing the author.

And even he only mentioned the writing in passing after several paragraphs of condemning me for badthink and thoughtcrime.

http://www.reddit.com/r/sciencefiction/comments/31pm37/entertainment_weekly_publishes_story_on_racist/:

This is regrettable, but that’s what is to be expected when you recruit Vox Day for your side and champion John C. Wright, a guy who thinks there should be laws against sex outside of marriage.

(quoting me, emphasis his) I will gladly clarify: I am not a libertarian any more. I think the state has a right and a duty and a sacred obligation to enforce marriage laws, and put men in jail for adultery, for fornication, as well as to punish the johns and patrons of prostitutes with severe penalties: http://johncwright.livejournal.com/337756.html?nojs=1&thread=11474268

He also thinks that women must obey their husbands:

(quoting me) For her part, she must vow to love and honor and obey. And if you do not understand about that obey part, you do not understand women. She wants a leader, an alpha male, a chief, a Christ, and you must be willing to die for her as Christ was willing to die for you, or she will not feel secure in your love. If she does not swear to obey, you are not a couple, not a dyad, not a unit, but are still two sovereigns dealing with each other at arm’s length, not intimate, and she cannot trust you fully, cannot love you fully, not with a divine and self-sacrificing love. http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/07/16/politics/secret-to-the-most-mind-blowing-sex-ever/

And the less said about his views on LGBT people, the better.
But, you say, maybe he is a bigot, but they championed him because he wrote great fiction last year.
To which I say – try reading it without laughing at how bad it is. Believe me, it’s not easy.

Actually, no man not bereft of this wits says of me, maybe he is a bigot.

A sane man merely wishing to publish a libel or slander would invent a more credible falsehood and level a less absurd accusation, such as, for example, by saying I am an isosceles triangle seeking to overthrow the social order of the Polygons in Flatland, and that I must be bound with the magical gossamer ribbon gleipnir before I eat the sun and moon, leaving the world in darkness forever.

Bigotry is defined as a man who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.

The words utterly intolerant do not mean respectfully and with endless, easygoing, and jovial clemency, patience, charity and magnanimity welcoming any disagreement with those of differing creed, belief and opinion, while never losing sight of their innate human dignity ergo treating them with scrupulous fairness, dispassionate justice, and princely courtesy. It means the opposite.

Except when fellows like this use the word. In his world, tolerance is bigotry, bigotry is tolerance, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

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Consistancy and Social Cues among the Herbivores

Posted December 27, 2014 By John C Wright

I have previously expressed doubt about the R/K theory of Anonymous Conservative that Conservatives exhibit typical carnivorous behavior of pack-hunting animals like wolves (including such things as having few young and lavishing resources on training each one) and Progressives exhibit herbivorous behavior (including such things as having many young and devoting little or no care to them). However, as time passes, I confess the explanatory power of the theory makes it more and more attractive.

Whether or not the theory is literally true, figuratively the point when a civilization grows successful, hence happy, fat, and lazy, can be likened to the abundant meadow of wealth where the herbivores hop like bunnies, careless and thoughtless, and as long as the predators prey only on the weak and old, the young bucks among the bunnies have no reason to be altruistic. Altruism is most needed, hence most often developed, and praised, and taught, in hard times, when neighbors are hungry, and the loss of even on member of the community wounds it.

So I find myself turning to the explanation of the Anonymous Conservative with less skepticism than previously.

For example, a reader writes and asks:

I’ve seen so many authors on social media rail against this consumer revolt, not even considering what it might be like if their ‘socially acceptable’ art suddenly becomes the target of some idealogue.

Look at Seth Rogen, who spoke against GamerGate early on, then had his own work censored by hackers, and that censorship celebrated by people on the left because The Interview was ‘in poor taste’ and ‘shouldn’t have been made anyway’.

How can other creators sit idly by and even cheer on the censorship and suppression of other people’s art?

My answer is no explanation other than that a student of the Anonymous Conservative might utter.

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The Paradigm

Posted December 23, 2014 By John C Wright

At the time of this writing, there was a Mohammedan attack in a chocolate shop yesterday, and the shoppers held hostage, and two were killed; today Mohammedans assaulted a school in Peshawar, doused a teacher in gasoline and set him ablaze, and forced the students to watch, and then killed over a hundred children, beheading many. Meanwhile a church was broken into, the priest slain, and the children beheaded when they would not renounce Christ.

Earlier this year, schoolgirls in Africa were abducted and tortured and sold as sex slaves. Riots over Danish cartoons. Death threats against novelists. Theo van Gogh stabbed to death on the street. A British soldier beheaded in broad daylight on a street in England. The Boston Marathon bombed. A nightclub in Bali. A train in Madrid. The London Underground. The Bombay massacre. The school in Russia attacked, children tortured, killed. The Twin Towers. Khobar Towers. The S.S. Cole.

To see a fuller list, go to the Religion of Peace website. But this list goes only as far back as 2001. The real list goes back from the shores of Tripoli, to the Battle of Lepanto, to the Gates of Vienna, to the Seige of Constantinople, to Battle of Manzikert, and beyond.

Meanwhile, the list of atrocities carried out by the Baptists includes … nothing.

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Reviewer Praise for CITY BEYOND TIME

Posted December 22, 2014 By John C Wright

More from the same reviewer, Keith West:

http://adventuresfantastic.com/futurespastandpresent/visiting-the-city-beyond-time/

City Beyond Time is a combination short story collection and novel. The setting is Metachronopolis, a city at the end of time controlled by the Time Wardens. They manipulate history for their own ends. This is nothing new in science fiction. Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol stories are probably the high water mark for temporal police, but the concept goes back to the pulps.

Only these time cops aren’t exactly the good guys. They’re more like the cops you find in a noir novel by Raymond Chandler. Shady and on the take, with an agenda of their own.

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Reviewer Praise for FEASTS AND SEASONS: Better Written and More Original

Posted December 22, 2014 By John C Wright

Mr Keith West of Amazing Stories has an amazingly kind review of my work:

http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2014/12/small-press-book-review-book-feasts-seasons-john-c-wright/

Here is the review, which I reprint in full, in order to flatter my bloated ego.

This week I’m reviewing a title that’s seasonal in nature, although the seasons it deals with occur across an entire year rather than a small part of the year. I’ve not read much of Mr. Wright’s work, but what I have has been better written and more original than much of what’s currently being published.

The same is true here. These stories have a great deal of depth, both in the characters they’re about and the concepts with which they deal.

Wright is a Catholic, and as a result the holidays and feasts he focuses on tend to be religious ones or have religious aspects. There are ten stories here. I’ll focus on the ones that resonated the most with me.

Wright opens with New Year’s Day. “The Meaning of Life as Told Me by an Inebriated Science Fiction Writer in New Jersey” sounds like it should be a Harlan Ellison story. Which is quite appropriate since Ellison is one of the characters. So are H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapleton, and A. E. van Vogt. It seems that what these three men wrote was actually fact thinly disguised as fiction. This is something Ellison reveals to Wright (yes, he’s a character in his own story) one night in a bar in New Jersey.

I should point out that this is the first story in the collection that directly involves the time machine as H. G. Wells described it. Wright has a fondness for time travel stories, and after reading City Beyond Time, I have to say he writes some of the best.

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Answering the Blind Vision

Posted December 22, 2014 By John C Wright

A reader with the remote and ocular name of Vision from Afar has a few questions for me. I refer to him as ‘her’ and ‘she’ because I assume she is a young lady, and I am too lazy to ask him his sex.

This is part of an ongoing conversation. Let me see if I can sum up what has gone before:

My comment

Using the word in the broad sense, no one has ‘non-religious beliefs’ as his foundation.

The Left, and those who use a secular philosophy to decide all the fundamental issues of their lives, use it as an ersatz religion. Leftism is an pseudoreligion, and it is no less based on faith, far more willing to impose its beliefs, sacraments and rites on us, and immensely far more prone to violence, than any Western faith. (Abortion is a sacrament of theirs; recycling is a rite)

Her answer

That, I’m afraid, is a matter of opinion. While several similarities may exist with codified religious mandates, a person certainly can have a non-religious worldview as a basis for behavior. The problem so often lies not in legislation for allowing the expression of religious viewpoints, but rather for legislation restricting the expression of others via a different religious viewpoint. Same-sex marriage being the best example of this. No sane person is advocating for forcing a clergy of any stripe to perform the rites against their will, but due to an over-abundance of existing mandates/laws/policies, using any word other than marriage to create an equal legal, secular footing would result in a horrible and unnecessary level of expenditure at every level of government. So why continue to attempt legislating against it, except as a religious expression attempting to subvert the will of others?

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Unexpected Illustrations for Unexpected Enlightenment

Posted December 22, 2014 By John C Wright

The illustrations for the books of Unexpected Enlightenment are now all available online.

 

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Pay No Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain

Posted December 18, 2014 By John C Wright

A reader with the inattentive yet fraternally equine name of Distracted Brony asks:

One thing I’m curious about. Do you have any, how to say this… infrastructure for your writing? Like, notebooks with scientific facts you often need to refer to, half-formed plot ideas, or personal notes on how to write a given character or convey a given idea most effectively? Or do you just hold all that stuff in your head?

All writers I know carry with them at all times a notebook in pocket or purse where he can jot down story ideas as they occur to him. Most also maintain a continually updated file on his home computer labeled ‘story ideas’ where he carries his story ideas, possible titles, scraps of dialog, and so on.

The idea of carrying all the information that goes into a science fiction novel in one’s head is not feasible for anyone other than a mentat.

The notes for my current series is a document in its 375th iteration reaching 164 pages long. This is not the outline, which is the plan of the plot, just the notes, which contains background material.

I run the risk of ruining the mystery and mystique of novel writing, let me describe this monstrous document to anyone curious about my particular, personal writing process. I am not suggesting the creative method is useful for other writers, and I may not use it for other books.

Under the first header is my chart of Orders of Ascensions, including the thematic element they represent, and the conflict in the plot. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Radioactive Dinosaurs & Writing as Fishing

Posted December 17, 2014 By John C Wright

A reader writes in with two unrelated questions:

 In your opinion, what is the best Godzilla movie?

I love questions, silly or serious. Every question is a little doorway into the walled garden of truth, big or small.

I have several Godzilla flicks that I like. What lawyer does not like Godzilla movies? All the titles sound like law cases.

The original first one, which I finally saw in Japanese (without Raymond Burr), was really a work of art that worked on several levels, as a myth, as mystery story, as a meditation on the dangers of atomic weapons, and as a monster story. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Superversive: Why Christian Comic Books Are So Necessary

Posted December 17, 2014 By John C Wright

Superversive literature is needed in the name of realism, both to correct the grim and horrid stories of socialist-flavored realism so popular in the mainstream, and to correct the opposite error of happily optimistic stories of simple heroism where the heroes never fail.

Dan Lawlis, a comic book artist, has a column on the second topic over on the Superversive blog.

http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2014/12/17/superversive-blog-guest-blog-why-i-think-christian-comic-books-are-so-necessary/

Why I Think Christian Comic Books Are So Necessary

Consider your average kid is reading your average comic book, let’s say its Batman. You know the story, the Joker is threatening the city, and in comes Batman, he throws his batarang, it hits the switch that turns off the death ray, and saves the city in the nick of time.

The problem is, it always works out. Batman never faces death, so he doesn’t have to confront life. This is fine if you’re a little kid. Kids shouldn’t have to deal with the real world. But more and more comics are being read by older teens. That’s a problem, because those fantasies aren’t preparing them for the real world.

These teens get out in the real world, and things don’t work out so well. In the real world Batman misses with his batarang and innocent people die. On top of that the jerk usually get’s the girl.

Since Batman always wins he can avoid the need for God. The writers can neatly avoid God by filling any need with fantasy. When the kids try to mimic their heroes in the real world and lose, they aren’t prepared for that, and they fall apart.

Over the years comic book story lines have grown up in subject matter, that is, the heroes face death more, but they haven’t grown up spiritually. What’s the result of this development? Well, you can see it all around you. The characters get angry at life. They become bitter, grim, mean, dark brooding types. Batman, Wolverine, even formally colorful upbeat characters like Spiderman and Superman have become more evil looking, grey and colorless.

Read the whole thing: http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2014/12/17/superversive-blog-guest-blog-why-i-think-christian-comic-books-are-so-necessary/

I had noticed the evil-looking and colorless comics myself, growing steadily ever since the days of THE WATCHMAN by that child pornographer neopagan whose name I forget, the author of LOST GIRLS. Alan Moore? He did a really good job with SWAMP THING and with almost everything he’s written. This work is all dark and nasty and vulgar, of course, as morally empty as the grin on a skull. Imagine comic books written by Hannibal Lector. It is a pity his immense skills could not be used for the side of goodness and truth.

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