Archive for December, 2014

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What Wages Pay the Unpaid Apologists for Utter Evil?

Posted December 16, 2014 By John C Wright

A reader with the celestial yet thaumaturgic name of AstroSorcorer comments on the alliance between the Left and their beloved Jihad, for whom they act as unpaid apologists:

I suspect that many of the apologists are also motivated by terror. A coward without virtue will cleave to whoever is the most violent, the most threatening, the most evil. Thus, do cowards become the agents of evil.

With all due respect, I strongly disagree. None of the apologists for this evil seem to speak or act as if they fear the Jihadists. Indeed, if anything, quite the opposite, as if they are utterly unaware of the danger, and regard anyone with a rational apprehension or caution toward the enemy to be the victim of a neurotic and irrational fear, namely, Islamophobia, or motivated by an irrational and contemptible hatred, namely, racism. These are not the words or actions of appeasers. The bespeak not fear, but a blindness to the danger nearly impossible to comprehend; and meanwhile, like Chicken Little, they take trembling steps under the sky, eyes wide and wet with unshed tears of fear, terrified of the weather, convinced the earth is about to be fried like an egg by Global Warming. (Or Global Cooling. Or Alar. Or DDT. Or arsenic in drinking water. Or a hole in the ozone layer. Or acid rain. Or radiated foods. Or…)

The Anonymous Conservative has a rather elaborate theory to explain this, or, rather, since it can neither be proved nor disproved, a rather elaborate ‘just-so’ story (http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/warfare-and-group-selection/):

If the r-type psychology curried favor with this enemy, before initiating the defeat of their population, they would be well positioned to actually use the K-type Warrior’s competitions against him, ala the r-type transvestite cuttlefish’s exploitation of the rules governing their flashing competitions. Following their society’s defeat, the conquering force would likely allow them to survive, and might even promote them to positions of power within the new occupation. Meanwhile, their primary competition within the population, the K-type Warriors, were killed in the defeat, without the r-type individuals even having to compete against them.

Since the r-type adaption to group competition is such a complex divergence from simple individual Anticompetitiveness, we differentiate this further evolution of the r-type psychology by naming it Appeasement.

In the book, we show how the Liberal’s diminished amygdala volume in their brain is associated with a tendency to judge threats as allies, as well as exhibit diminished pro-sociality, both of which would tend to produce defeat in group competition. We examine research showing Liberals will show increased openness to out-group interests, and diminished loyalty to in-group interests. We also point out how r-strategists need a form of mortality, applied to their population, to free up the resource availability they need to enjoy advantage, relative to K-strategists. Using violent conflict to reduce population loads, and kill local K-selected competition is a brilliant strategy to increase the ability of the r-strategist to survive, under what would otherwise be lethal K-selecting environmental conditions

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Hillaire Belloc on Mohamedanism

Posted December 16, 2014 By John C Wright

A priest of Opus Dei, Fr. C. John McCloskey, joins me in calling for a new Crusade. The original is here: http://thecatholicthing.org/2014/12/10/spirited-visitor/

My old friend Hilaire Belloc spoke to me from heaven, where the Catholic sun doth shine and there is no need of plenty of wine. I was delighted to see him, even though he interrupted a fine sleep to communicate some suggestions to me and my confreres on how to handle the current threat to the civilized world posed by resurgent and aggressive Islam.

As many readers of The Catholic Thing already know, Belloc predicted that Islam would return as a major world threat, this time even more dangerous and armed with weapons of mass destruction, posing a serious challenge to the decadent West, which no longer even procreates at levels that replace its population. Over time Islam may well win the battle against the West via procreation, without firing a shot.

…First, as a good Catholic Belloc, urged that the NATO nations and other countries willing to pitch in should come up with and immediately implement a rescue plan to offer humanitarian asylum to all endangered Christians (and peaceful members of other religions facing Islamic persecution).

Second, Belloc envisioned all European countries of Christian origins, including Russia (though this is a long shot in the current geopolitical situation), and their erstwhile colonies that are Christian, including Latin America, forming a coalition of armed forces to attack and destroy the forces of the Islamic State and its allies and lookalikes.

He cautioned that, of course, such a coalition should strictly abide by just-war principles – among other things, by stopping short of the use of nuclear weapons and other WMDs, giving warning of attacks, and doing everything possible to save innocent lives and civilians.Next, Belloc the historian referred to an era of European history now widely vilified, but (despite lapses) worthy of present-day emulation. He argued (also a long shot) that if the Islamic nations were signing on for jihadism, bent on killing and maiming, we of the West should once again don the Crusader’s cross, seeking from Pope Francis the customary plenary indulgence and the blessings of our separated Christian brethren, the Orthodox churches of the East.

Assuming that such a modern Crusade would meet with the success (unfortunately, temporary) of the one that wrested away control of the Holy Land from Muslim invaders in 1099, Belloc advised that we confiscate our defeated foes’ weapons, reopen all formerly closed Christian places of worship, and rebuild the demolished churches, financing the reconstruction with money from the oil-rich Muslim countries (such as Saudi Arabia and others) that have armed the jihadists.

Of course, Muslims in these territories should be allowed freedom of worship, but their (rebuilt) mosques should be open for all to see and hear the proceedings to prevent any secret incitement to violence against Christians or other peaceful religions or sects in the Middle East.

Read the whole thing: here: http://thecatholicthing.org/2014/12/10/spirited-visitor/

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The Saints and Mahound

Posted December 15, 2014 By John C Wright

Some quotes from a column What Did the Saints Say about Islam? By Andrew Bieszad appearing on the fine site OnePeterFive on August 12, 2014:

 

The following is a brief list of quotes from Catholic saints about Islam and its founder, Muhammad. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is illustrative of how Catholics — particularly those favored sons and daughters of the Church we now know to be in heaven — viewed the Muslim faith in prior generations:

“Whoever does not embrace the Catholic Christian faith is lost, like your false prophet Muhammad.”

-St. Peter Mavimenus (d. 8th century), martyr from Gaza. Response reported in the Martyriologum Romanum when he was asked to convert to Islam by a group of Muslims.

 

“There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist…. From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy. Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that a certain book had been sent down to him from heaven. He had set down some ridiculous compositions in this book of his and he gave it to them as an object of veneration.”

-St. John Damascene (d. 749), Syrian Arab Catholic monk and scholar. Quoted from his book On Heresies under the section On the Heresy of the Ishmaelites (in The Fathers of the Church. Vol. 37. Translated by the Catholic University of America. CUA Press. 1958. Pages 153-160.)

 

“We profess Christ to be truly God and your prophet to be a precursor of the Antichrist and other profane doctrine.”

-Sts. Habenitus, Jeremiah, Peter, Sabinian, Walabonsus, and Wistremundus (d. 851), martyrs of Cordoba, Spain. Reported in the Memoriale Sanctorum in response to Spanish Umayyad Caliph ‘Abd Ar-Rahman II’s ministers that they convert to Islam on pain of death.

 

“Any cult which denies the divinity of Christ, does not profess the existence of the Holy Trinity, refutes baptism, defames Christians, and derogates the priesthood, we consider to be damned.”

-Sts. Aurelius, Felix, George, Liliosa, and Natalia (d. 852), martyrs of Cordoba, Spain. Reported in the Memoriale Sanctorum in response to Spanish Umayyad Caliph ‘Abd Ar-Rahman II’s ministers that they convert to Islam on pain of death.

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Defending Lovecraft (S.T. Joshi replies to Charles Baxter)

Posted December 15, 2014 By John C Wright

This column was brought to my attention by Larry Correia, and I wish to pass the favor on to my readers.

Mr Correia in his column was responding, in his incounterfeitable style, to Grimi Wormtongue, son of Gálmód, who, writing for the British printed matter called Guardian, we find busily if frenetically savaging HP Lovecraft for reasons best explained by the Anonymous Conservative.

To anyone attempting to exploit the link and read the Guardian column, I must include a ‘trigger warning’ to those who, like me, love the the nuance, precision, and strength of expression of the Queen’s English, for the Guardian publication (I cannot in good conscience call it a newspaper) retains a most negligent editor, who permits his writers yammer in jargon not as amusing as the neologisms of Dr Seuss, nor as gay as those in a Marry Poppins song, which seemingly erupt in an epileptic spasm of ink. This phenomenon, which is of interest in alienists, seems similar to glossolalia, in that it seems to be the fluid vocalizing of speech-like syllables that lack any readily comprehended meaning, but is prompted by the inspiration of a spirit somewhat more unclean and dubious than that which inspires revivalists and evangels. 

Here is my trigger warning: always keep the trigger finger outside the guard until you are ready to shoot. Do not point until you are ready to shoot, do not shoot until you are ready to kill, aim for the center of mass and empty the cylinder.

I include below the cut an image of Mr Correia holding his typewriter as a warning to the wise. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Supermanity and Dehumanity (Complete)

Posted December 13, 2014 By John C Wright

This is one of my longer and older essays on a topic very near and dear to my heart, from 2010, which I reprint for the benefit of any newer readers. I note with considerable satisfaction that there have been more examples in the cinema of comic book or science fiction films since this writing that lend support to my theme:

Part I — On Dehumanity

Let me address a question which, if answered, would answer several questions at once. Why are crass popular comic book superhero movies better than mainstream Hollywood movies?

Why are they better and more honest, more sound, and more true than a modern comedy or tragedy or melodrama, or what passes for it? Why are they better drama?

There are some deep questions unexpectedly connected to this shallow question. Let us see into what oxbows of digression the river of conversation leads. A prudence of space may require the discussion to be drawn over several parts.

Read the remainder of this entry »

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Gamergaters Rally! To Arms, Citizens!

Posted December 12, 2014 By John C Wright

A request from the Dark Lord of the Evil League of Evil, whose signal I wish to boost:

#GamerGate crushed Gawker

Nero reports on the costs to Gawker of attacking #GamerGate:

The cost to Gawker Media of its ridicule and viciousness toward video gamers was “seven figures” in lost advertising revenue, according to the company’s head of advertising, Andrew Gorenstein. In addition, founder Nick Denton has stepped down as president and editorial director Joel Johnson has been removed from his post and will probably leave the company, reports Capital New York….

And now here is a chance to kick the SJW while he’s down. An Ilk suggests action:
A few of us were inspired by that stupid Change.org petition that got GTA5 banned to try to use the same tactic against Gawker’s biggest revenue sources. I figure it may be especially effective to kick them when they’re already reeling from the previous damage we’ve done, while Hulk Hogan’s suit and their insurance company threaten to bleed them further. The petition is here: Get Google and Amazon to stop advertising on Gawker Media.

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Diamond Hard SF to Mushy Soft SF

Posted December 12, 2014 By John C Wright

I draw your attention to this handy chart devised by M Kazlev (I think) grading the realism of the science in SF stories. He is clear to emphasize that this is not grading the overall craft of the story, just the scientific plausibility of the props and settings.

I add this so that my compliment of THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir by calling it ‘Diamond Hard’ one can see what company he keeps. INTERSTELLAR, by contrast, is somewhere between ‘Very Hard’ and ‘Plausibly Hard.’

For the whole discussion (which I frankly thought was fascinating!) see here: http://www.kheper.net/topics/scifi/grading.html

Major CategoriesRating used hereCommon TropesA few examples
Hard Sci Fi“Present Day Tech”Cutting edge Present Day Tech, some developments and speculation, but nothing major that has not been attained today (so no AI). Basic space exploration, very near futureTechnothrillers, Allen Steele’s Orbital Decay
Ultra Hard (Diamond Hard)Plausible developments of contemporary technologies – AI, Constrained Nanotech, DNI, Interplanetary colonisation, Genetically engineered lifeforms. Nothing that conflicts with the laws of physics, chemistry, biology etc as currently understoodWilliam Gibson, Neil Stephenson, Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” Trilogy, Robert Forward
Very HardPlausible developments of provocative contemporary ideas, bot nothing that conflicts with the known laws of physics, information theory, etc – Assembler Nanotech, Nano-Goo, Uploads, Interstellar colonisation, Relativistic ships, vacuum-adapted lifeGreg Egan, Linda Nagata, Greg Benford’s Galactic Center series, Stephen Baxter’s Manifold Series, GURPS Transhuman Space
Plausibly HardThe above but with the addition of some very speculative themes, some of which may well turn out to be impossible, others may be possible. Requires some modification of current understanding, but nothing that is logically impossible, or has been conclusively proved to be impossible (so no FTL without time travel) – Wormholes, Reactionless Drive, Sub-nanotech (Femto-, Plank, etc), Domain Walls, exotic matter, FTL drive with time travel, etcStephen Baxter’s Xeelee universe, Greg Bear’s Forge of God series, Orion’s Arm
FirmAs realistic as the above categories were it not for unrealistic/impossible plot devices (e.g. FTL without time travel paradoxes), although these are kept to a minimum as much as possibleAsimov’s “Foundation” Series, “Giants” series by Hogan, Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky
MediumSimilar to the above but with a larger number of unrealistic plot devices; e.g. FTL without real explanation (ore with pseudo-explanation), alien biota in some instances very similar to terragen life, psionics, a great many alien civilizations. However still preserves plot and worldbuilding consistency, and the science is good and consistent.Niven’s “Known Space” series, Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Banks’ “Culture” novels, David Brin’s “Uplift” series, Frank Herbert’s Dune, Traveller RPG
Soft Sci FiSoftA number of unscientific themes – e.g. aliens as anthropomorphic “furries”, handwavium disintegrator guns, Alien Cultures and psychology all extremely uniform, and so on. However, still retains story consistency.Various TV series: Babylon 5, Farscape, Andromeda, Matrix, StarGate for the most part
Very SoftAs above but either even more unscientific elements (humanoid of the week, lifeless planets with beathable atmosphere, etc), and story with less consistencyVarious TV and movie series; for the most part the Star Trek Canon and Star Wars Canon
Mushy SoftAs above but even more unscientific (alien races never before encountered speak perfect English without a translator, animals too large to stand in Earth gravity (Godzilla), weapons that make energy beams without putting energy in, interstellar travel without FTL or centuries long voyage, mutants with super energy powers, etc)Godzilla, Comic Book Superheros, badly written TV sci fi, elements of some franchises
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Release the Correia!

Posted December 11, 2014 By John C Wright

Another must-read too-good-to-miss fisking and public flogging by Larry Correia against the forces of darkness, or, at least, the forces of nagging nattering nonsense about nothing.

http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/12/10/fisking-the-guardian-again-this-time-for-hp-lovecraft/

As usual the original article is in italics and my responding comments are in bold.

Move over HP Lovecraft, fantasy writers of colour are coming through.

A stupid title. If you are so desperate to prove racism in sci-fi you’ve got to dig up somebody who has been dead for 77 years, your argument might be a little weak. 

By Daniel Jose Older.

Normally when the Guardian tries to prove how horrible racist/sexist/misogynist/homophobic sci-fi or fantasy is they trot out village idiot Damien Walter. This time they’re using somebody who has actually published something. Good for you, Guardian. Way to step up your game.

Non-white readers and writers are falling in love with speculative fiction in increasing numbers –

Excellent!

which is why we need to remove its racist figurehead

You’ll note that almost all SJW articles start like this. Here is a good thing, but here is why you are actually racist because of it.

Last month I walked through the crowded corridors of Javits Center with tears in my eyes.

Maybe it is just because I’m a manly cismale gendernormative fascist who is required by the patriarchy to keep my feelings bottled up, but the only thing that made me cry at the Javits Center was the line at the food court.

It was New York Comic Con and around me flourished a sea of black and brown faces, many partially concealed beneath goggles, prosthetic zombie wounds or masks.

I was also at this very same convention. I gave out a couple thousand free paperbacks and talked to people for three straight days. But since I’m not a SJW I didn’t feel the need to keep a tally of what color, religion, or sexual orientation every single person I talked to seemed to be.

The people I talked to were people who liked to read books. If you are an author and you feel the need to subcategorize much beyond that, you are setting yourself up to fail.

For one of the first times since I started writing speculative fiction five years ago, I felt at home in my own genre.

I started seriously writing speculative fiction seven years ago so I’m assuming we’re about the same age and we’re dealing with the same industry. This statement is either horseshit or Older hasn’t been to very many sci-fi conventions.

I’ve been to dozens of them all over America. I attended thirteen in 2014 alone. Cons and fandom are usually about the most inclusive bunch you’ll find anywhere. Hell, they accept Furries… FURRIES. Your argument is invalid.

But SJWs love to look for invisible micro aggressions at cons. Here is one where I fisked a SJW who tried to make GenCon sound racist  http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/08/19/no-tor-com-gencon-isnt-racist-a-fisking/ (short version, it isn’t).

Earlier this summer, the old guard of fantasy got very uncomfortable over a petition I started asking for the World Fantasy Award to remove the bust of HP Lovecraft as its statuette and replace it with Octavia Butler.

Uncomfortable? I don’t think that is a synonym for WTF.

A few things for those not in the loop. HP Lovecraft is one of the most famous authors in history, who basically created a whole genre. Authors commonly use the word Lovecraftian today to describe themes and elements that he popularized. Among the creators who list Lovecraft as a major influence are Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Joe Lansdale, Alan Moore, F. Paul Wilson, Brian Lumley, Clive Barker, Guillermo Del Toro, H.R. Geiger, John Carpenter, Mike Mignola, and Neil Gaiman. Plus thousands of other authors, artists, and film makers.

Have you heard of Cthulhu? Yeah. That guy.

Lovecraft has influenced video games, movies, comics, and more heavy metal bands than you can count. Almost eight decades after his death every nerd in the world knows who HP Lovecraft is. There have been thousands (not an exaggeration) of stories set in Lovecraftian worlds.

And hell, Lovecraftian is actually a word!

Octavia Butler was also an author. She passed away in 2006. I think I read a couple of her books as a kid but don’t remember anything about them. I’m certain she’s had some influence, but Lovecraft influenced orders of magnitude more.

Butlerian isn’t a word.    

Read the whole thing.

I actually used the word Butlerian in a novel of mine (JUDGE OF AGES) in total shameless ripoff respectful homage to Frank Herbert, but as I rushed to make the snarky comment on the blog, some machine intelligence beat me to it! Darn those machine intelligences! The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood should do something about them — if only I could think of what —

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The Torture and Martyrdom of the Apostles

Posted December 11, 2014 By John C Wright

I thought today would be an edifying time to review the fates of Apostles, which at one time, all Christians knew, in these days inexcusably forgotten. I list them here in order tradition assigns:

Read the remainder of this entry »

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The Martian by Andy Weir — Short Review

Posted December 10, 2014 By John C Wright

Simply the best novel I have read all year, and easily the best Hard SF novel I’ve read in five years, maybe ten. The science is harder than rock hard: it is diamond hard, so much so that I am unable to detect if he made anything up.

In days to come, I hope to post a real review, but I just finished the book, and am so elated, that I had to tell the world.

First INTERSTELLAR and now this. Hard SF is making a come back.

Away, sexually ambiguous sparkly vampire were-seals with moody emo girl problems! Give me astronauts who do not raise their voices during emergencies, who can change a tire on the moon and grow a potato on Mars! Give me a hero who knows how to patch a leaking spacesuit, and navigate using Phobos to measure his longitude! Give me protagonist who know how to make a bomb with pure oxygen, sugar, and a stoppered jar! Give me astronauts, I say!

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SUPERVERSIVE: Why “Realism” Isn’t

Posted December 10, 2014 By John C Wright

As part of the world-storming Superversive Literary Counterrevolution, my beautiful and talented wife describes the fundamental unreality of so called realistic literature:

http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2014/12/10/superversive-blot-why-realism-isnt/

I have never liked dark, gritty, ‘realistic’ stories—the kind that are unrelentingly grim. The kind where there’s no hope, everything is covered in dirt, and terrible things are happening one on top of another like a stack of pancakes. (Sometimes, these stories have a lot of blood or sex, sometimes not.)

For a long time, I could not put my finger on why.

Friends would say, “Oh, I understand, they are too dark for you.” Or “They don’t bother me, I don’t find them scary.” But that did not seem to put into words the impression I suffered when reading/watching such stories.

I wasn’t scared. Something else was wrong.

Oddly, it was a funeral that finally solved the mystery for me.

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A Last Comment on INTERSTELLAR

Posted December 8, 2014 By John C Wright

When I saw this film, I honestly thought it had found that long-sought point of maximum overlap for all audiences, Leftwing and Rightwing, Science Fictioneers and Muggles, Faithful and Infidel, carefully crafted to put across its message of hopeless hope and the brightness of love in the darkest of worlds in a way that everyone would like.

I was a little surprised, but perhaps I should not have been, when Leftists hated it, though. They are simply much crazier than in my youth when they still had the Soviet Union to lust after. Now they have nothing aside from accusing the innocent to warm their cold and empty souls. While they talk about hope and change, and say they like films with messages, actually they don’t. So a message of faith and hope and love will of course provoke their ire. Gollum cannot eat the Elfish waybread.

When Science Fiction people started criticizing it, that shocked and confounded me, and the little numbered badge at my robotic neck began blinking, requesting help from Norman.

I could not fathom how anyone could find fault in a film that had taken far, far, far more painstaking trouble to get the smallest of astronomical details right, and complain about the science.

One critic complained about the size of the wings on the drone seen in the opening scene as being too small to hold enough solar cells. But the film never establishes anything about the propulsion or composition of the craft, nor how many years in the future this is, nor what technologies have been developed. The film simply does not say.

Another critic complained that the spectrum shift of dark lines seen through a spectroscope of the accretion disk surrounding rapidly rotating supermassive black hole should have created a visible brightening on one side of the accretion disk — even though such Doppler shifts are invisible to the human eye, and even though the film gives no figures of mass nor rates of spin nor temperature or anything else could be determined. The film simply does not say.

I did my homework on such things for one of my previous books, but even among science fiction writers, knowing the esoterica of Doppler shift and black hole spin rates and so on is rare, and no science fiction writer in his right mind expects the reader to know. Nonetheless, the what the film did say or show, the film got it right, and the critics got it wrong.

Such criticisms are not like complaining about the lack of altitude jets on Larry Nivens’ RINGWORLD, a story where there is teleportation, unobtainium materials stronger than possible, faster than light drive, and successful breeding for magical luck. There, Niven actually made an oversight in his world building which he corrected in a later sequel. It is like complaining about the lack of a counterweight asteroid on the beanstalk in Kim Stanley Robinson’s MARS Trilogy, when the author took the trouble to put the counterweight in!

This kind of thing is inanely trivial. If the wing size of a futuristic drone or the lack of a visible special effect for a phenomenon that, in real life, cannot be detected without an instrument anyway, or other trifling minutiae inconsequential to the plot jars you out of the film and ruins your ability to enjoy it, then there is no science fiction story, much less any science fiction film, nothing in the genre which can ever satisfy you.

There are more sound complaints: why does the earth liftoff require a multistage rocket, but liftoff from a world with 30 percent higher gravity not? How can a rocket make a transit to Saturn in merely two years? Again, the film does not say, but anyone with a highschool smattering of astronomy could answer the questions: the Earth liftoff is to get to escape velocity, which is a higher velocity than the orbital, or even suborbital velocity needed to rendezvous with a ship in orbit. The two year figure for Saturn is very low if a ship is matching the speed of Saturn, because a ship would accelerate, turn, and decelerate; but not if she is passing through a point in space near Saturn at a high speed, in which case the ship might as well accelerate the whole way.

The theological complaint is even less comprehensible to me. My brothers in Christ, if you cannot see that this film about faith, hope and love does far more to spread and confirm our worldview than infinite numbers of movies like LEFT BEHIND or FIREPROOF, you don’t know the power of story telling.

For nearly a hundred years the Left has used the power of story telling to propagate lies, but the stories are so well crafted, that they become part of the unspoken shared assumptions of the culture. How many people believe that institutional racism exist in America? How many people believe JFK was shot by a rightwing conspiracy rather than by a Commie? How many people believe sex outside wedlock is normal, expected, natural, wholesome, but premarital virginity is shameful?

If this is the way the Science Fiction readers or the Christian community, or just people who like good and complex stories that do not recite the trite messages of whining or sentimental pudding-headed Leftist bromides are received, we cannot expect film makers to go to the trouble to tale about the future in the future.

A little more gratitude and a little less criticism would seem to be in order.

Are you not sick and tired of the endless nihilism that pours out of Hollywood like an explosion in a sewerage factory?

This was a tale about a hero who does not boast and loves his daughter and who just wants to do his job and go home. It is a story about a pilot who loves to fly. It is a story about a little girl who grew up but who never grew out of her sense of hope and her sense of wonder.

This is the only film I have seen all year where the father was portrayed as a man, an actual masculine man in a leadership position who worked hard and could do a hard job well, and who was, as all fathers should be, willing to sacrifice everything for his family.

Even if all the criticisms about the theology and the science in this movie were true — and, so far as I have seen, not one of them are even making a prima face case — are you not hungry for heroes, O fans of science fiction? Do you not thirst for wonders? Let my eyes feast on the majestic rings of Saturn or the dark and blazing horror of a supermassive singularity!

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First Sale! Riding the Red Horse

Posted December 8, 2014 By John C Wright

Mr Tedd Roberts of our own Evil League of Evil announces that he has made his very first sale: his story ‘They Also Serve’ is to appear in the anthology RIDING THE RED HORSE, forthcoming from Castalia House, my publisher, to be released on Dec. 15.

The anthology is meant to reprise the format of Jerry Pournelle’s old THERE WILL BE WAR: a mix of military SF and military futurology, written by a SF authors, serving military personnel, and experts in military subject matter.

Related: the publisher is looking for some beta-readers for the anthology, or other contributors. See his announcement here: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/12/riding-this-way.html

 

RH1_475

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The Feast of the Immaculate Conception is Today

Posted December 8, 2014 By John C Wright

So remember to go to Mass!

For those of you who are curious, let us see what the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say on the matter:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm

In the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary “in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin.” Read the remainder of this entry »

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An Open Letter to the Theo Scoffers of INTERSTELLAR

Posted December 7, 2014 By John C Wright

Dear people, and you know who you are, who have written the complaint about the film INTERSTELLAR:

You say that because Cooper, in the final climatic scene, speculates that the mysterious powers from the fifth dimension who saved his life and, working through him, saved the human race in the movie, are the remote descendants of the human race, from an era after our children evolved into beings and superhuman power and enter eternity, transcending the bounds of space and time, that this means this movie is hostile to God.

You say the filmmakers made the benevolent aliens into descendants of man rather than making them into angels in order to shut out the idea that the miracles that save man in this movie could have been arranged by Providence.

I will not, like the sci scoffers, tell you to go pound sand, because I think your mistake is understandable. It is, nonetheless, a mistake.

You are as utterly mistaken as to the intent of the movie as it is possible to be. Take it from me as a science fiction writer: when you put powerful, mysterious, unknown superbeings in a science fiction story, every writer assumes every reader will assume these are ALIENS, things strangers to us. When you find out that the aliens are human beings, the children of mankind, it is a discovery and a wild relief, because now you know they stand to us as Cooper stands to Murph. Instead of being horrible bug-things from a methane world, the superbeings are our own daughters who came back in time to hug us.

If from that idea you somehow get the idea that the filmmakers were saying ‘these angelic and saintlikes beings are humans therefore not sent by God’ then you did not see the same film I saw. Nay, I will say more: if that WAS the film maker’s intent, he failed as miserably as it is possible to fail. If anyone makes a story about faith, hope and love, about falling into an inescapable darkness in an act of self sacrifice, turning into a ghost, seeing one’s loved ones again, aiding them from beyond the grave and emerging again by a miracle into the life and light, and then tries to add one line to say that all this is part of the godless, hopeless and loveless secular world, that filmmaker is attempting the impossible.

Your arguments is the same as if I were to argue that ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE is godless because Clarence Odbody is a human being rather than an angel, and that there is no mention of Christ by name.

The point of the scene was that the mysterious THEY who established the wormhole, saved Cooper, and saved all mankind are “Human therefore not alien” not “Human therefore not sent by God.”

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