Archive for April, 2016

New Warriors FTW!

Posted April 30, 2016 By John C Wright

Nate Winchester comments on my affection for the New Warriors from Marvel Comics:

New Warriors? Man your tastes really ARE plebeian. ;) (said with all the fondness and love I can muster)

Plebeian? I’ll say. NEW WARRIORS are the most starchy, idea-free, second-hand collection of Z-list supers ever. I achieve the state of a paragon of bad taste by liking them.

Night Thrasher is a badass cut-rate Bruce Wayne ripoff on a razor-sharp bulletproof skateboard. Except if Alfred were a crazed Vietnamese extradimensional witch who wants to eat his soul.

I can hardly explain my fascination with this trainwreck of a bland, unimaginative superteam of fourth-rate third-stringers. Except that I have a fondness for the overlooked lesser gods of any pantheon. (This is why, in my stories, one is more likely to meet Phobos or Eros, Iris or Glaucon, than Apollo or Venus.)

Namorita is female Namor the Submariner. Firestar is female Human Torch. Speedball is Bouncing Boy, except not as fat. Nova, the Human Rocket, is the Green Lantern in a dumb helmet except without the power ring. Marvel Boy is male Marvel Girl, except later they gave him the lamest most on-the-nose name for a super ever, Justice.

And not one of them has a backstory, or an innate human drama, a love interest, dependent NPC, or even an ability to quarrel with the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing, even half as engaging as the originals of whom they are cheapest possible knock offs.

Read the remainder of this entry »

38 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

We Also Call Them Morlocks

Posted April 29, 2016 By John C Wright

I used to be a newspaperman and newspaper editor, so I know the business, and I understand the pressure newspapermen are under to lie, and lie, and lie again.

Some, as did I, resist the temptation.

Others, many others, very many others indeed, not only give into the temptation to dwell in falsehoods, but bathe in falsehood, dive into it, drink it, anoint themselves in it, baptize themselves in it, breathe it in, absorb it through every skin pore, mainline it, insert it as a suppository, and perform unnatural sexual acts with it, and in all other ways regard falsehood as a holy calling, and deception a sacrament.

However, even so, the true shocking nature of the falsehood, the insolence of it, the recklessness, the sheer magnitude of it, cannot truly be felt except to one, like me, who has been on the receiving end.

It is astonishing to hear newspapermen who have never made the slightest effort to contact you, who neither interview you nor quote anything you say, nor offer the slightest scintilla of evidence, reporting your innermost thoughts and motivations hidden in the most secret chamber of your heart, and to discover that your motives are the opposite of everything you have said, thought and did your whole life. Astonishing.

Here is a roundup of some links of various media outlets who decided that their honesty, integrity and sacred honor were worth selling in return for the questionable gratification involved in spreading an untruth so unlikely to be believed.

Read the remainder of this entry »

67 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Political Correctness is Neither from Mars nor Veus

Posted April 28, 2016 By John C Wright

I myself grow rather weary of watching shows or reading books from a foreign culture, where fornication is considered lawful and admirable, sexual perversion laudable, and there are no families to be seen. No one goes to Church, no women are feminine, and no men are masculine.

That culture is political correctness — but it is more foreign to me, and more offensive, than reading traditional Japanese novels or watching Chinese historical dramas where polygamy and suicide are regarded as normal. At least the Chinese dramas show a proper respect for motherhood and family duties. They are peopled with real, if pagan, people, whose emotions and motives make sense to me.

I will be reading merrily along in what I think is some perfectly ordinary adventure story or science fiction yarn, when suddenly a minor character, such a policeman, will announce that he has a husband. No one around him reacts as if he is a sick pervert or a crazypants. Because in crazypantsland male is female and female is male.

Or the characters will time travel to ancient Mesopotamia or the Jurassic, but the narration will give the date in terms of a calendar called ‘B.C.E.’ which is a calendars whose only purpose is to tweak the nose of Christians, and call them evil for daring to make a scientific calendar that coordinates between earthly seasons and astronomical motions.

Whereas in a Chinese costume drama, a mother who is worried that he son is too deeply in love with his first wife, and therefore too distracted to serve the Emperor, will arrange to marry him to a concubine, so as to dilute that love. She selects as the concubine the first wife’s best friend, that way they are more likely to find domestic harmony with their mutual husband. The son throws himself on a sword in front of the Dowager Empress to prove his love for the first wife, but he never disobeys his mother.

These are all non-Western and non-Christian but perfectly understandable expressions of perfectly understandable human emotions.

On the other hand, when in a cop show, the cop’s partner decides to fornicate with the cop’s daughter, the true depth of emotion is displayed when the partner kneels and offers the daughter a box from a jewelry store. Inside is not a ring — fooled ya!–but a key. He is offering to move his gear into her apartment, to make the fornication and the eventual break easily to manage logistically.

The cop, instead of drawing his sidearm and blowing the brains out of the man who is frelling his daughter outside of wedlock, merely looks mildly grumpy and says the situation is ‘weird’ but he is glad is his daughter is seeking happiness in shallow copulation with an unmarried man who has only moderate affection for her.

These are not human emotions. A Martian, perhaps, would look upon the reproductive antics of his daughter, and hopes that she will raise his grandchildren as bastard in a single-mother home with no father, almost certain to be beaten or killed by one of her serial live-in lovers, but no real father from our planet, not one worthy of the than, hopes this.

The creatures in politically correct films and stories have a stiff and unconvincing range of emotions: characters designated good guys are tolerant, and designated bad guys are intolerant, everyone is self-centered but not selfish, and they all refer to friends as family members.

It is like watching dead-eyed manikins being moved in awkward jerky motions through human poses, and hearing slightly flat and oddly-spaced words issuing from frozen, half-smiling lips.

39 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Comment Overheard on Another Blog

Posted April 27, 2016 By John C Wright

I read this with great interest.

Comment by gxg dated April 27, 2016 2:50 PM

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/04/why-theyre-terrified.html#c3061587443693767064

I know I’ve alluded to this before, but as a successful indie romance novelist, I can say from experience that there’s a noticeable difference between indie-published stories and what comes out of trad publishers.

For one thing, in indie-books, the guys are much more likely to be actual guys. They fight. They’re protective. They will actively seek justice (and not through the courts) if someone wrongs them or their loved ones.

It’s not just on price that indie-publishers are killing it. It’s on the fact that there’s a noticeable trend away from left-wing virtue signaling. I once read a trad-published vampire romance where the hot vampire drove a Prius. A Prius…?

My author fan page is a good example of something else: My readers are, for the most part, not SJW types. They’re mostly married, and from what they post, happily so. They praise their husbands and brag about how wonderful they are. They post pix of their kids and talk about how much they enjoy spending time with them. If they post about the Target bathroom controversy, they’re more likely to side with girls exposed to wieners over confused dudes dressed up as chicks.

Before indie publishing, 99% of all books had to go through coastal left-wing gate-keepers who, to this day, don’t even realized how out of touch they are from Mainstream America.

Read the whole thing.

Albeit not a romance fan (we Vulcans only go into heat once every seven years) I am fascinated by the inverse proportion between political correctness and real romance with the kind of real men real women find worthy of daydreaming about.

19 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Reviewer Praise from the Informed Reviewer

Posted April 27, 2016 By John C Wright

Best.. Review … Ever …

Rarely, very rarely, in the life of a writer, does he come across a book review by a critic who actually “gets” the point of the book he wrote.

 

I reprint the whole thing:

REVIEW: Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright

Monday , 25, April 2016
Read the remainder of this entry »

3 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Rabid Puppies Sweep Hugo Nominations

Posted April 27, 2016 By John C Wright

Here is a press release from my publisher and Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors, our own Mr. Theodore “VOX  DAYYYYY” Beale, announcing what promises to be the first of many triumphs:

RABID PUPPIES
Make the 2016 Hugos Great

RP_2016_mail2

Much to the surprise of the social justice warriors in the science fiction community, who believed stern disapproval and a record voter turnout would suffice to leash the Rabid Puppies, the nominations for the 2016 Hugo Awards were once more dominated by the corybantic canines. 64 of the Supreme Dark Lord’s 81 recommendations made the 2016 shortlist, an increase of 6 from last year’s 58 finalists.

“I’m not even remotely surprised to learn that the Rabid Puppies did so well,” said Vox Day, as he mopped his brow with the flayed skin of an SJW after an arduous night of celebrating his fourth and fifth nominations. “For over 20 years, the mainstream science-fiction publishers have been trying to pass off romance in space and left-wing diversity lectures as science fiction. Support for the Puppies is a popular reaction to mediocrities and absurdities being presented as the very best that the field has to offer.”

Many of the finalists were delighted by the news. Chuck Tingle, author of “Space Raptor Butt Invasion”, nominated for Best Short Story, tweeted: “understand #HUGOAWARDS nominate Space Raptor Butt Invasion as best book ever. This PROVES that we exhist in the first layer of tingleverse!”

Others were less pleased. Tor Books author David Barnett declared in The Guardian: “The Hugo awards, once the watchword of quality in the SFF world, appear to have been utterly derailed for the second year running.”

Some of the more notable Hugo Award finalists include:

  • Moira Greyland’s account of her childhood abuse at the hands of her mother, the award-winning science fiction writer Marion Zimmer Bradley, nominated in Best Related Work.
  • SF great Jerry Pournelle, whose groundbreaking There Will Be War series returned after a 25-year absence due to the end of the Cold War, nominated in Best Editor, Short Form.
  • “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” by Chuck Tingle, a sensuous space romance that is a tribute to true diversity in science fiction, nominated in Best Short Story.
  • SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, the political philosophy bestseller by Vox Day, nominated in Best Related Work.
  • My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic, Season 5, Episodes 1-2, “The Cutie Map”, nominated in Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

The official list of the finalists in all 16 categories, including the 2016 Campbell Award for Best New Writer, can be found here:  http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2016-hugo-awards/

17 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Asking the Japanese about Whitewashing Anime

Posted April 26, 2016 By John C Wright

Social Justice Warriors with too much time on their hands have decided to raise a stink about Hollywood hiring persons of the wrong and inferior race to portray member of the Master Race.

I found this highly enlightening interview. This is what people from a nation who are not crazy sound like when you talk to them about race.
Read the remainder of this entry »

39 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

And Put Harriet Tubman on the Metro Card

Posted April 25, 2016 By John C Wright

prince 1999

26 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Comment Overheard on Another Blog: Civilization

Posted April 24, 2016 By John C Wright

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/04/fighting-fire-with-fire.html?showComment=1461555667194#c2058459623491693344

 krymneth                                  

April 24, 2016 8:01 PM

People mistake the result of civilization for the contract of civilization.

The contract of civilization is that you will defend it. Said defense involves being obligated to attack those who break the contract of civilization, with whatever it takes to preserve it.

The result of consistently applying this principle is that eventually you don’t have to anymore, and you get peace. (At least locally.) But this is not because you pre-commit to peace at all costs; it is because you pre-commit to defending the peace, and by doing so, often don’t have to.

The SJWs are barbarians. They lack the civilized virtues, they lack respect for their civilization, they have opted out of the contract of civilization, they hate civilization.

Those who refuse to honor their contract to defend are perhaps not barbarians… but neither are they civilized. They are some third category that our language lacks a word for since we haven’t had this kind of wealth in the past before to get this far along the post-civilization track. (“Cuckservative” is a flavor of this, perhaps, but not the totality of the concept.)

It is not a higher morality to insist on not using effective defense against the barbarians. It is a lower morality. I could make a case for it being a lower morality than even the barbarians have, though that is debateable. But that is the moral debate that it raises, not “which is a higher morality, those who effectively defend civilization or those who consider only their own moral character?” but “which is preferable, the barbarian or the one who does nothing to stop the barbarian?”

Braying about one’s refusal to honor their civilizational obligations is not a point of pride; it is a badge of shame.

My comment: brilliant. Bravo.

20 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Demanding Discourtesy in Courtesy’s Name

Posted April 23, 2016 By John C Wright

A reader with the euphonious name of Ecreegan hold forth an opinion on the courtesy owed to transvestites, transgendered, and transrationals.

Sometimes there’s no polite option. Tell me, what pronoun do I use for a pre-operative male-to-female transexual? “She” is a lie. “He” is considered highly offensive, and “it” is considered beyond the pale. (I try to use names. The new name is not a lie, even if it doesn’t make any sense.)

I very strongly disagree, so much so that I cannot tell if you are making a joke.

When you say the words “considered highly offensive” I cannot imagine anyone having any right to be offended at such a thing, nor any honest man taking such offense seriously.

Highly? Really?

To the contrary, it is highly offensive even to assert that an honest man should lie like a dog, a lie no one believes and no one can believe, merely to please the arbitrary whims of some petty tyrant trying to demean your soul and rob you of dignity.

The rule in English is that males and male objects are “he”, and persons whose sex is unknown or undetermined is also “he.” One says “he or she” only in a legal document where that degree of precision overwhelms the need for good grammar. Otherwise is it an error. “They” used in a singular merits horsehwipping.

A man who cuts off his penis and has false breasts implanted is not changing his sex, that is, his biological reality, but is attempting to change his social role: he is a man who wants to be treated with the honors and titles of a wife and mother. He also suffers from profound mental illness, so much so that he cuts off parts of his body.

But since the pronoun deals with the sex and not with social roles, he has no right to be offended if he is a “he”.

It is like being offended that A is A or being offended that twice two is four. If twice two were four, then there would be four lights. There are five lights!

More to the point, it is like being offended if a prole says Oceania was allied with Eastasia last year. Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia!

Saying a he is a “he” is not what offends.

The political correction officer is playing a social dominance game with you.

He is making himself to be offended with you so that you will obey him.

He uses your desire to avoid offending him as a tool to establish social roles. You are supposed to assume the role as the inferior, the lower order, the ignorant, the follower, the benighted. He assumes the role as the superior, the higher order, the wiseman, the leader, the enlightened.

Of course he is offended and most deeply so!

He is offended at your insubordination. You are an uppity niggra. If the lower orders shoot off their mouths and starting thinking for themselves, why, there will be rebellion among the proles and slaves. So shut up.

He is not offended at your lack of courtesy. That is risible.

No politically correct person has ever displayed the courtesy of a swine since the beginning of the world: they neither doff their caps to ladies, nor ask if you need any comfort, nor listen to your point of view, nor salute you will courteous greetings, nor say “sir” and “ma’am” and “miss” and “missus” like anyone not raised in a barn would do.

Indeed, they go out of their way to cheat these forms of address, and will call God by the pronoun “She” and call the year “CE” just to see how often they can offend and insult Christians without being slapped in the mouth.

I have never known one not to use four letter crudities or to encouraging others to do so. Even their most grave politicians in public swear in a fashion former generations, who had a right view of the dignity of man, would never have had allowed.

No doubt the politically correct lunatics you’ve met really act vexed and hostile if you call Bruce Jenner “he” as logic, love of truth, common sense, common decency and good grammar demand, but you are utterly insane if you consider their insanity to be legitimate.

If I have a bit of paper I claim is the title deed to the Moon and I say by right you owe me money for getting light from my moon without paying me, my title deed has no legal force or effect, because, despite my claim, I have no legal right to moonlight. In reality, by international treaty, no man owns the moon and, by logic, no one can own the moonlight, since it is a free good.

Likewise here: if a man grows vexed and irate, and wets his pants and shrieks like a loon and rolls on the ground in a pool of his own spleenish vomit because you will not call a crazy person who cuts off his dick and dresses in girly clothing a “she”, his vexation is a sign of his witlessness, not a sign of his due righteous indignation. It is as phony as the alleged title deed to the moon. Even if I believe I own the moon with my whole heart, as strong as I can make myself believe what I want to believe, I am outside my rights, and my claim on you for money is invalid.

So here. A man has no right to demand you pretend him a woman, no matter how badly he wants it.

He has no right to be vexed if you do not give what he has no right to ask.

A man can act offended at anything he wishes, but if he has no right to be offended, he act is just an act. He should be chided, silenced, and, if he will not conform to the demands of polite society, be removed from it. If he grows violent, he should be confined, or killed. That is what you owe him.

He is the one being very offensive, not you.

95 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy

Posted April 22, 2016 By John C Wright

A comedian utters the same truth as St. Augustine. What gives the human heart rest? Not gizmos, not gadgets, not things.

27 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Three Arguments Against Political Correctness

Posted April 19, 2016 By John C Wright

The lovely and talented Mrs. Wright has a column to which I should like to direct your attention:

http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2016/04/19/three-arguments-against-political-correctness/

In my recent discussions about political correctness, I ran into a number of people voicing some version of the following argument:

“When I am triggered, I react with anger. I shout and scream at people who I perceive as having said rude and hateful things.”

Now, am I wrong, or is the main argument against politically incorrect speech: it is rude and hurtful?

So…is rudeness acceptable?

Or is it not?

If rudeness is not acceptable in other people, shouldn’t we also not behave rudely ourselves?

If rudeness is acceptable in us, the triggered person—if it is okay for us to behave in an angry and emotional way toward the person who said the thing we perceived as offensive—then, must it not also be okay for other people to say offensive things?

For surely, we cannot have the standard: it is okay for me to be obnoxious, but not for you to be obnoxious.

That is hypocrisy.

A second argument I saw was: “People who complain about being attacked political correctness are just babies who should be more thick-skinned.”

This answer delights me.

I would love to see everyone be more thick-skinned.

But again, it has to be everyone or no one.

It is ridiculous to say: “Stop being a baby because you got attacked by five, or ten, or fifty, or two hundred people on the internet, who all screamed and shouted at you because they didn’t like something that you said that had not been considered offensive yesterday.

And yet say: “It is okay for a person to take offense at a comment that was not meant as a slur.”

Read the whole thing. http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2016/04/19/three-arguments-against-political-correctness/

25 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Announcing GOD, ROBOT

Posted April 19, 2016 By John C Wright

A short story of mine appears in this daring anthology. It is the only science fiction anthology this year which will actually do to your imagination what science fiction is supposed to do. All the groupthink pablum you will read will be bland, safe, politically correct, and dull as dishwater. This challenges the Narrative. This will expand minds and opens hearts.

 

It is the year 6080 AD. Detective Theseus Hollywell has at last discovered the hiding place of William Locke, a notorious fugitive from justice who has been hunted for decades after committing unspeakable crimes.

But Locke has a trick up his sleeve, one that the detective couldn’t expect: He has a story to tell.

This is the tale of the theobots, the robotic beings created to love God and Man with a perfection no mere mortal could achieve. In ten stories by eight different science fiction authors, Locke recounts the role of the theobots throughout history, from the purposes for which they were originally created to their ultimate role in deciding the fate of Man, the galaxy, and one lost and tortured soul.

Read the remainder of this entry »

13 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

Dr. Strange Film — By the Hoary Hosts of Alinksy

Posted April 16, 2016 By John C Wright

So in the upcoming DR STRANGE movie, the Ancient One is no longer an elderly Tibetan, but a bald Scottish girl, aaaannnnddd Baron Mordo is no longer an Eastern European aristocrat, but a young, impressive-looking Black man. With a sword.

Strange and Black Mordo

Read the remainder of this entry »

68 Comments so far. Join the Conversation

A Comment Overheard on Another Blog

Posted April 16, 2016 By John C Wright

Save for the flattery that overpraises an undeserving author, I must say this is very well said, concise, poignant, and shockingly clear and true. The words below are those of D. G. D. Davidson.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/04/500-more-votes.html#c2368806063696487832

 D. G. D. Davidson ——————– April 16, 2016 1:05 AM

There are three points of view that it seems I cannot be tempted to join because, viewed from outside, they produce an obvious smallness of soul.

First, there is the “New” variety of atheist. The Bible has inspired great men for 2,000 years, and Western Civilization for all of its existence, but the New Atheist sneers that it is full of bad and boring stories.

Second, there is the materialist. When someone says that universals are real and also immaterial by definition, he sneers, and he reacts with shock as if this is a new and unconscionable idea unworthy of entertainment, though philosophers have discussed it for literally thousands of years.

Third, there is the SJW, who says John C. Wright, who has written some of the finest passages in current English literature, the guy who wrote Awake in the Night Land, is a bad author.

Each of these, and they are by no means mutually exclusive, appears to have killed something in himself, some capacity to behold truth or beauty, or to contemplate great ideas. It is no wonder that Postmodern man obsesses over sexual perversions and so-called identity politics; he has lost the ability to imagine anything greater.

20 Comments so far. Join the Conversation