Archive for June, 2015

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The Feast of Sts Peter and Paul

Posted June 30, 2015 By John C Wright

A reader writes and asks:

John, convince me not to turn to Islam after what just happened earlier today with the Supreme Court ruling, because right now, I’m trying to think of ways to commit something that I know is heinous while minimizing my digital fingerprint.

Sir, I cannot convince you, but I can tell you what convinced me. Here is the tale:

I was in Chattanooga, visiting a science fiction convention, when, on the Christian Sabbath, I went to a basilica which was all of four blocks away.

The nave was decorated with solemn beauty, and was sublime. Thanks to the miracle of the Information Age, I can find and show you a picture. Imagine you have just stepped off of a hot street in a warehouse district whose wealth and beauty sagged and departed around the turn of the century, and you see this: Read the remainder of this entry »

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Filed in Apologetics

Reviewer Praise for THE GOLDEN AGE

Posted June 29, 2015 By John C Wright

A rather favorable review:

http://www.rachelneumeier.com/2015/06/23/recent-reading-the-golden-age-trilogy-by-john-c-wright/

Here is one remark about the ideal reader which I thought worthy of note:

The ideal reader: In order to be engaged by this trilogy, I think the reader has to enjoy complicated, ornate, nonstandard settings; technological extrapolation; and exposition. I think plot readers are going to like it better than character readers.

I think that readers who particularly enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson should give The Golden Age trilogy a try. Robinson is the better writer – in particularly, a lot of his description and exposition reads like poetry – but then, Robinson is an outstanding writer who’s been at it a lot longer.

This trilogy also makes me think of stories like Ringworld by Larry Niven and the Gaian trilogy by John Varley. I would also actually be very curious to know what readers who love Ancillary Justice would make of The Golden Age trilogy, because despite the differences between the two works, in some ways I think they are doing similar things.

If you’ve read The Golden Age, what else would you consider similar?

Now I need to read The Player of Games to compare that utopia with this one …

My comment:

Ironically, the first review I ever received as a professional writer was from someone who vehemently and viscerally disliked the very same passage this reviewer mentions as the one that engaged her sympathy and attention, namely, the gentle bickering of man and (almost) wife.

I have not had the pleasure of reading ANCILLARY JUSTICE, but I have read PLAYER OF GAMES, and did see some of the parallels and polar opposites with that most imaginative of works.  The approach toward what constitutes a utopia is very different indeed.

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Tor and the Volunteer Thought Police Department

Posted June 24, 2015 By John C Wright

As noted before, a conflict of interest requires I recuse myself from expressing either support or opposition to the boycott of Tor, my publisher, urged on by my readers. Obviously I would prefer to retain the goodwill of both.

Also obviously, I would prefer the matter be solved in a civil and professional fashion.

To some readers this might seem logically to imply that the solution requires that the uncivil and unprofessional persons whose extracurricular activities led to this debacle depart from Tor, and let the rest of us, the professionals, simply get on with the business of writing and selling books.

I allow myself to express no opinion on that point, but I do note that Tor cannot prosper without the goodwill of readers whereas the readers certainly can prosper without the illwill of Tor.

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Filed in Announcement, Only Posting a Link

Quotha: The Fully Christian Society

Posted June 23, 2015 By John C Wright

From Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis:

… the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one’s work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no ‘swank’ or ‘side’, no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience—obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls ‘busybodies’.

If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, ‘advanced’, but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old fashioned—perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself. You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian: every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest.

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Filed in Wisdom

Left, Right, Texan

Posted June 23, 2015 By John C Wright

As my latest six-book trilogy stars a futuristic Texan, I thought I had to pass along this observation.

https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/the-difference-between-liberals-conservatives-and-texans/. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Filed in Drollery

Laudato Si

Posted June 23, 2015 By John C Wright

Someone asked me my opinion of the Pope’s recent encyclical letter,
Laudato Si which the Leftstream Press reported as being in support of the theory of Man-caused Global Flooding/Drought and Warming/Cooling.

I have not had the opportunity to read the encyclical, but friends of mine brought quotes from it to my attention. Hence this column is merely my flippant first impression, unmingled with any serious purpose of close study.

Without reading it I can say two things.

First, I am a loyal son of the Church and believe and follow everything she teaches authoritatively. No Catholic can dissent from the teachings of theology contained within the letter.

Sorry, halfcatholics and latitudinarians and Laodiceans. You knew what you were signing up for when you got baptized, abjured the devil and his angels, and the world and its false glamour, and vowed fidelity instead to the world’s creator. The World’s dark prince and the World’s bright maker are at odds, and you chose a side.

Second, these remarks I see here quoted out of context do not seem to fit the Leftfoot, sorry, the Leftwing narrative. It reads like what every orthodox Catholic theologian has said since Saint John was assumed to heaven, differing only in nuance and emphasis. That gives me pause for thought, and an excuse for mockery. Maybe the Pope is Catholic after all, and not Progressive? Hmm….

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Filed in Apologetics, Drollery

Tomorrowland

Posted June 22, 2015 By John C Wright

Tomorrowland.

0

This is a movie about jetpacks.

I almost did not go to see this film because a film reviewer I trusted panned it, criticized it, said it was a mess. But since I have been burned by reviewers I trusted before, I trusted my instinct, and let my daughter take me as a Father’s Day gift.

Never trust reviewers. Never. This movie made me feel like flying.

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The Three Laws of Morlocktics

Posted June 22, 2015 By John C Wright

Below is a comment I simply had to share:

39. Jack Aubrey

They are as predictable as Asimov’s robots, whose three laws were programmed into them.

1. An SJW may not tell the Truth or, through inaction, allow the Truth to be told.

2. An SJW must obey orders given it by the Hive Mind, and double down except where doing so would conflict with the First Law.

3. An SJW must protect its own existence by projecting its behavior on the Enemy and acting accordingly, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

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Filed in Only Posting a Link, Puppy Sadness Syndrome

And now back to the real world

Posted June 20, 2015 By John C Wright

Let us not forget that, outside the little teapot in which the latest hysterical tempest is swirling, that there is a real world outside, with real battles to occupy our attention, real lives being lost.

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Filed in Musings

Moshe Feder Speaks for Himself

Posted June 20, 2015 By John C Wright

Tor Books editor Moshe Feder is my wife’s editor. Hence, her customers, her readers, the people who are delighted with her novels, are his customers as well, the people who pay him to do his job so that he can make a living.

He has decided publicly to rebuff those customers Mr Feder calls our customers unhappy with the recent unprofessional antics at Tor Books by the charming epithet “idiots”:

As you may have heard, certain scoundrels have declared a boycott of Tor, starting today, to protest the efforts of some Tor employees to defend the Hugo Awards from attack. In response, some of our friends have declared today “Buy A Tor Book Day.”

I wouldn’t have the temerity to ask you to buy a book just because some idiots have declared war on us. But if there _is_ a Tor Book you’ve been meaning to get anyway, buying it today would be a a gesture I’d appreciate.

[As always here on Facebook, I’m speaking for myself and not the company.]

Ah… Well, thank you for your help mollifying our customers, Mr Feder. I am sure that being told they are idiots will make them eager to spend their hard earned book-buying dollars the product you and I are working together to produce for them.

The honorable and upright man being referred to so colorfully as a scoundrel is, of course, Mr Peter Grant. Mr Grant expresses a strong doubts about Mr Feder’s veracity:

Read his first sentence.

Now, read it again.

It’s a lie. It’s a bare-faced, out-and-out falsehood. He’s lying in public, and he appears to believe he’ll be allowed to get away with it.

The boycott of Tor has nothing whatsoever to do with “the efforts of some Tor employees to defend the Hugo Awards from attack”. It has everything to do with some Tor employees (including Mr. Feder) deliberately, repeatedly and publicly lying about the ‘Puppies’ campaigns, those behind them, and anything and anyone else they regard as ideologically impure and/or unfit to associate with SF/F fandom as approved by them. I’ve already described in detail Ms. Gallo’s contribution, which sparked the boycott. Mr. Feder’s latest lie merely confirms and reinforces her mendacity (and my position).

He states that he’s speaking for himself and not the company . . . but I haven’t seen Tor repudiate any of his earlier lies, some of them issued on company time using company equipment, so I’ll give this latest assurance the same credibility I’ve given his earlier ones.

My comment:

Since I have a conflict of interest, I must remain neutral. Loyalty to my publisher demands I not take sides. Loyalty to my beloved customers demands I not take sides.

Mr Feder has taken sides. Loyalty to his political correctness outweighs, for him, loyalty to publisher. And he just called you, my dear readers and customers, idiots and scoundrels.

This has nothing to do with the Sad Puppies. We are only here for the Hugo Awards.

This particular fight is between, on the one hand, those at Tor Books who think political correctness outweighs all professional and personal loyalties, all standards of decency, all need to be truthful, and who damn their own customers; and, on the other, those who are thankful to the customers and who think the purpose of a business is business.

One side consists of those calling for the resignations that any professional worthy of the name would long ago have proffered for the damage they have done to the company name and public goodwill.

The other side consists of people at Tor who regard Tor as an instrument of social engineering, an arm of the Democrat Party’s press department, or a weapon in the war for social justice.

Without expressing any personal opinion, I can say that there is an easy compromise which our free and robust capitalistic system allows: we can all wish the best to Miss Gallo and Mr Feder when they day comes when they decide to take their interests and obsessions elsewhere, and leave the company in the hands of those of us who merely want to write, publish, and read science fiction told from any and every point of view, political or otherwise, provided the story is well crafted.

If you are a customer and have an opinion, please make your voice heard.

tom.dohertyATtor.com
andrew.weberATmacmillan.com
rhonda.brownATmacmillan.com

Substitute the at sign where I have written AT.

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Filed in Announcement, Puppy Sadness Syndrome

Embargo On

Posted June 19, 2015 By John C Wright

Peter Grant is no longer going to buy anything from Tor:

Regrettably, due to the apparent lack of action by (and the deafening silence from) Tor and Macmillan, the time has come to do as I promised.  I therefore ask all those who believe, as I do, that the recent statement by Irene Gallo, and the pattern of behavior and statements from others at Tor whom I’ve previously named, are completely unacceptable, to join me in refusing to buy any of Tor’s products from now on.

I support and endorse what Larry Correia said about this yesterday.

    … this is between Tor and its readers who feel insulted, not the Sad Puppies campaign or the people who ran it … To the Sad Puppies supporters, do what you think is right. All I’m asking is that whatever you do, try to be as civil as possible in your disagreements. Stick with the facts.

I am not a member of, and I do not speak for, either the ‘Sad Puppies’ or ‘Rabid Puppies’ campaigns (although I support the former).  I don’t represent cute puppies, playful puppies, cuddly puppies or hush puppies – only myself.  If you share, in whole or in part, my values and outlook on life, I invite you to join me in this boycott.  Don’t do so just because I, or anyone else, is asking you to do so.  Act on the basis of your own informed conscience and reasoned judgment.

My comment: it seems the embargo is on.

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Libertarian SF versus Establishment SF

Posted June 19, 2015 By John C Wright

The science fiction stories promoted by the establishment authors, libraries, schools and lit-critics has become so dreary, smug, self-righteous and politically correct as to be unreadable, save by those seeking a political commentary, not a space princess.

If the establishment were content to kept its moist hands to itself, and write books to its taste to please its own narrow niche audience, all would be well and good.

But the nature of dreary smug self-righteousness, the very definition, is a desire to improve the lives of others by vexing and browbeating them, and then shedding crocodile tears at any sign of opposition or demand for civility, as if such demands were cruel and heartless.

Such is the absurd situation in which science fiction finds itself today. The dreary and self-righteous nags and scolds will not let us be, and scream bloody murder if we, the normal and sane science fiction fans, the one who have been here since the genre was invented, want to give the normal science fiction awards to the normal writers based on merit, not on political correctness. That is something they cannot stand.

They seek to impose a tyranny of drear. Wrongfans, beware!

To paraphrase the great George Orwell, imagine a fat lady wagging her finger in a human face…. forever!

Mr Allan Davis Jr at the Lew Rockwell site describes the upcoming boycott of Tor Books in admirable brevity and precision:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/06/allan-davis/the-sci-fi-establishment/

I have been a science fiction fan from day one.

I can say that, with all honesty and a straight face.  My mother loves to tell the story of how she watched an episode of Star Trek while in the hospital in labor, and asked my father to buy a television set so she could watch more.

I’ve also been a reader of science fiction for as long as I can remember, since she loaned me her copy of Dune when I was eight years old.  My tastes in science fiction have always leaned towards the “hard”–Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Robert L. Forward, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle, to offer up a few examples.  It’s getting harder and harder to find stuff by those authors, for the unfortunate reason that many of them aren’t around anymore.

…

For their part, Tor Books seems content to continue to ignore this dissatisfied segment of science fiction fandom.  And, in fact, Tor employees are content to insult them.

Irene Gallo, the Creative Director at Tor Books and an Associate Publisher at Tor.com, wrote

There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.

In Ms. Gallo’s defense, these remarks were posted on her personal Facebook page.  On the other hand, they were in a thread announcing an upcoming Tor release.

…

Writer Peter Grant was infuriated.

…

He called for a deadline of June 15th, but was convinced to extend that deadline to Friday, June 19th.  If he has not heard any acceptable response from either Tor or Macmillan by then, he will call for a general boycott of Tor.

…

Vox Day called for a letter writing campaign, not only to Tor, but to Macmillan, their parent company.

Since many of those emails were copied to Vox and to Peter Grant, they were definitely sent.  To date, Tor has not responded to the emails or made any acknowledgement of the situation.

…

L. Jagi Lamplighter requested that science fiction fans take pictures of their Tor books and email them to her, “not to shame Tor, but to help readers let Tor know they are real people.”  

I have always preferred Robert Heinlein to Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Forward to Samuel Delaney, and, more recently, John C. Wright to John Scalzi and “A Throne of Bones” to “Game of Thrones.”  Somehow, those preferences in science fiction and fantasy apparently make me something other than a “science fiction fan”–at least in the eyes of the current science fiction establishment.  And, in the opinion of some, they make me a pariah, a “heretic against the true church of science fiction.”

At least, now I know I’m not the only one.

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Reviewer Praise for TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN

Posted June 16, 2015 By John C Wright

A robot named Stobor makes this observation on File 770 (http://file770.com/?p=23180&cpage=1#comment-285609)

Then there were the “Transhuman and Subhuman” essays. Admittedly, they aren’t stories, but in that case, being “hit over the head” doesn’t properly describe the experience. Rather, reading the author’s extremely non-mainstream views felt like being at ground zero of a nuclear explosion after being dosed with anthrax and sprayed with nerve gas.

I can think of no finer compliment. You may purchase this fine work, described with such glowing if not fulsome terms of praise, here: http://www.amazon.com/Transhuman-Subhuman-Essays-Science-Fiction-ebook/dp/B00K4D7LO6

By ‘non-mainstream’ of course, this reviewer, who is a Morlock of AD 802701, means that the views agree with what all normal Americans, all sober Christians and all faithful Catholics have known, lived and believed for two thousand years, and what all healthy men of ordinary and non-perverse tastes have known, lived and believed since before the dawn of recorded history.

Whereas I disagree with what is fashionable with an inbred, insular cult of degenerate cannibal troglodytes for this fashion season, and no more.

Sir, you lost my sympathy long before that rocket scientist who landed a robot on a speeding comet was mocked for wearing a Hawaiian shirt showing sexy action-hero girls. But I want to mention it again to show how far from the mainstream of human life, of Western civilization, of Christianity, and of humanity you have drifted. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Filed in Crowing

I Am A Real Person

Posted June 15, 2015 By John C Wright

Dear Readers,

I have received more messages, publicly and privately, from fans who enjoy and buy my works but who, deeply offended at at least four, perhaps more, of the ranking officers of my publisher, have told me they can no longer buy my works.

This is unprecedented, or, I should say, at least I have never heard of readers disavowing books based not on the content or author, but the publisher.

Some have likewise written to Tor books to express their displeasure at this high handed and unprofessional treatment.

However, the latest slander issued from the enemy is that these readers do not exist.

They are trying to blank you out of their minds. You are unpersons. The claim is that the emails and letters sent to Tor expressing the displeasure of the customer are said to be faked, counterfeit, written by robots.

If you are a reader of mine, and now or in times to come write to my publisher to express your preferences on how we are supposed to serve you and offer you goods for purchase, in order to prevent this slander from squelching your voice, please do the following:

Send to each of these three people one email apiece:

tom.doherty@tor.com
andrew.weber@macmillan.com
rhonda.brown@macmillan.com

Let the messages be curt, plain, and polite. Please put I AM A REAL PERSON in the subject line.

  • State that you are a real person, a customer, and not a robot.
  • If you have not been well served by the public statements of any senior persons at Tor Books, politely express your disapproval.
  • Request a confirmation that your email has been opened and read.

Remember Tor Books, and your truly, are in the business of providing you with entertainment. Tom Doherty has officially and publicly stated that we are in the business of finding great stories and promoting literature and are not about promoting a political agenda.

Of course he speaks for me and for all loyal authors and employees honored to be published or employed by him. I do not publish my humble works to promote a political agenda.

I can speak with authority for the other Sad Puppies. We explicitly and openly said and meant from the outset to promote the opposite of a political agenda with our slate:

We promoted for your consideration, dear readers, works thought good because they were entertaining, well crafted and imaginative; not bad works thought useful because they served political correctness, starred or were written by some favored mascot or supported some cause of the Left, and had no science fiction in them at all. The only color we care about is the black of the ink and the green of the pay. The hue of the hand that wields the pen does not somehow magically make the story more well written.

For this we were libeled, slandered, and insulted in every possible way in every venue the enemy could reach, with a fervor and a blinding soul-destroying hatred even now impossible to credit.

Who in his right mind calls his own authors and readers, on whom his livelihood depends, neo-nazi racist psycho bigots on the ground that they prefer this year’s offering by Cixin Liu to that of John Chu?

Those who make libelous, false, and outrageous statements about the authors and readers and fans of Tor’s many fine publications have no honest reason to remain at their posts at a company whom they despise and undermine, serving readers they hate.

Let them take their political divisions and unprofessional venom-tongued hysteria elsewhere, and leave the professionals alone to craft and sell our product, and entertain readers we adore and serve.

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Filed in Announcement, Blogbegging

Word Fetishes

Posted June 12, 2015 By John C Wright

This is a reprint of an earlier column which, due to a recent discussion here, bears repeating:

You cannot reason someone out of a stance he was not reasoned into.

A Leftist is not someone who has an alternative political philosophy to yours, or different reasons. He is someone who, in the realm of politics, has decided to eschew philosophy and abandon reason.

Leftism is what you get when you stop reasoning, kill it dead, and substitute word fetishes instead.

Consider: Marx proposed an economic system where goods and services would be produced without reference to prices, to supply and demand, and to the scarcity of resources. In other words, he proposed economics without economics. This would like someone who proposed a geometric system without points and lines, without definitions and without common notions. In order to answer his critics, Marx told them that to minds conditioned by bourgeoisie means of production, the results of the material dialectic once the dictatorship of the proletarian had ended the exploitation of private property forever was unimaginable to them. For those of you who don’t speak Leftist,  Marx merely proposed that oldest and most favorite of Leftist counter-arguments: he told them to shut up.

A close study of Marx will show that he was not an economist at all, he was someone making up a plethora of windbaggy excuses, slurs, counter-attacks, and slanders to deconstruct, that is, to destroy economics. Economics led to a conclusion that Marx did not like, namely, that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch; you cannot eat your cake and save it, too. So rather than accept the conclusion, he rejected the art of reasoning. Keynes followed in his footsteps, and used a more convoluted terminology.

These terminologies are word-fetishes. A fetish is a magic token you use in order to get a magic effect in the world, and, when the effect does not take place, instead of throwing the fetish away, you adore it and implore it all the more.

A word-fetish is when you have a bit of language which you hope will have a magical effect on the world, turning gold into lead.

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Filed in Reasonings
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