Lost on the Last Continent, Episode 30, Attack of the Ascenders, is now posted on Patreon.
Episode 30 Attack of the Ascenders
In this exciting episode, the raiders from strange clouds descend upon the Brontosaur caravan. Colonel Lost opens fire. But will he side with his attackers, or with his oppressors?
For both my eager listeners, Max Kolbe and I have decided to take the Twelve Days of Christmas off. We will resume our normal Escaping Atheism podcasts on Wednesday, Jan 3rd of next year.
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
In keeping with the tradition here at John C. Wright’s Journal, I reprint, as I do each year, this list the feasts 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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Do you yearn for high-concept science fiction on the widest possible scale covering the deeps of time, and the deeper profundities of the human soul? Ready yourself for a prodigal overabundant feast of sheer imagination, each course grander than the last.
The triumphant finale of the Eschaton Sequence, COUNT TO INFINITY, is finally available. In terms of size, scope, and ambition, no book of mine has ever attempted so much nor reached so far.
In the opening scene, Menelaus Montrose knows exactly where he is: betrayed, blasted, beaten, disembodied and left for dead by the villainous Blackie del Azarchel in the ruined hulk of a dead starship racing at relativistic speeds toward intergalactic space, beyond any possible hope of rescue.
And then he discovers the empty ship is haunted …
Montrose loses his mind, finds it again, builds an interplanetary civilization of three artificial species of his own creation, travels across intergalactic distances, sees the singularity leading outside the universe built by the seraphim, smashes into an interstellar energy boundary at near-lightspeed, is kidnapped and enslaved, has his mind deconstructed, and uses his love of Rania to reconstruct himself by sheer willpower and by his own poxy bootstraps drags himself out of a disembodied, electronic hell, and outwits and outfights his oppressors to become the ruler of the star cluster, and of the Milky Way. And then the true battle on a larger scale begins.
Eager to know why the Andromeda Galaxy is on course to collide with Milky Way in two billion years? This is not some random event but a coldblooded war fought between deadly philosophical antagonists, a war where supernovae are weapons, and the nebulae but smoke from the discharges.
In this work, these are merely local and parochial events. In this, the final volume of the cosmos-spanning epic of near and far future, the curious reader will also learn why our universe, at the largest scale, consists of walls and filaments of galactic clusters and superclusters interspersed with enormous voids.
The fate of the one, true Rania is revealed, and the long-awaited final duel between Del Azarchel and Montrose is fought in this volume, and the mysteries of time and eternity are opened.
Buy it today!
https://www.amazon.com/Count-Infinity-Book-Eschaton-Sequence-ebook/dp/B072MFP3KT/?tag=lampwright-20
You can hear my dulcet tones ranting vociferously about something or other. You are invited to listen to it as part of the penance of Advent. My host makes some good points, though, so you can just fast-forward through my goobledegook to get to what he said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXi0PwTuDx0 Read the remainder of this entry »
A ferocious Celt with a ruddy beard does a reading of my short story ‘Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.’ This story was on the ballot, if only briefly, for a Hugo Award, for which I am grateful to my readers, even though, technically, it is a mainstream story and not science fiction at all.
Here is the link. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHPbtj8cUY&feature=youtu.be
My latest column at Dangerous is up.
At other times of the year, perhaps you have a daily routine. You look around the nation where you live, and hear the speech of men, tap your feet to their music, tend to your work and to the chores imposed on you, and after relax with a good book or a cold beer, a warm fire or a flickering screen. And, at least from time to time, the nation seems strange, the music not as good as once it was. The book is dull or the beer is flat. The fire is sullen ashes in the grate you will have to clean up later, and you wonder why you did not tune the television to the fireplace channel.
Your home here on earth does not slake this peculiar homesickness. This is a homesickness for elsewhere.
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Jagi, here.
Thank you to everyone who has helped make my recent Book Promo a success!
To date: over 1,775 free books downloaded, almost 100 of the later books sold, and the first book made it to #150 on the Kindle Free ranking.
Best any book of mine has ever done, ranking-wise!
Very uplifting in a week when our refrigerator failed, our daughter needed dental work, and our car needed several serious repairs.
A VERY MERRY Christmas to you all!
(If anyone still wants a FREE copy of The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, it is still available.)
My vaunted education fails me. I need to translate the phrase “Great Secret of the Worlds” (note the plural) into Latin. The sense is that the secret is that there is more than one world. It is not referring to a secret kept by the worlds, in case this different sense would be declined differently.
Would it be magnum mysterium mundorum ? Or do I have a pesky declension wrong?
I ask my wise and well educated readers for help.
For three days only, the first Book of Unexpected Enlightenment is available on Amazon for FREE!
Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts – A magic school like no other!
Nestled amidst the beauty of New York’s Hudson Highlands and hidden from the eyes of the Unwary, Roanoke Academy is a place of magic and wonder. It offers everything a young sorceress could desire—enchantments, flying brooms, and the promise of new friendships.
On her first day of school, Rachel Griffin discovers her perfect memory gives her an unexpected advantage. With it, she can see through the spell sorcerers use to hide their secrets. Very soon, she discovers that there is a far-vaster secret world hiding from the Wise, precisely the same way that the magical folk hide from the mundane folk.
When someone tries to kill a fellow student, she investigates. Rushing forward where others fear to tread, Rachel bravely faces wraiths, embarrassing magical pranks, mysterious older boys, a Raven that brings the doom of worlds, and at least one fire-breathing teacher.
Described by fans as: “Lovecraft meets Narnia at Hogwarts”, The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin is a tale of wonder and danger, romance and heartbreak, and, most of all, of magic and of a girl who refuses to be daunted.
Curiosity may kill a cat, but nothing stops Rachel Griffin!
“Lamplighter introduces many imaginative elements in her world that will delight…” VOYA
All are invited. Leave comments, questions in the chat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXi0PwTuDx0
Lost on the Last Continent, Episode 29, Brontosaur Caravan, is now posted on Patreon.
In this exciting episode, the weary march of the caravan of Terrors is suddenly attacked by raiders. Although a thrall, Colonel Lost takes up arms and runs toward the sound of danger.
When I started this series of posts, I did not think Trump would keep so many campaign promises. I did not think the eerie incompetence of his enemies in the media would hand the Conservative movement so many clear and seminal victories.
Let me put it this way: in seven more entries in this series, and we will be in numbers high enough that the Roman numerals I, V and X will not suffice. Brace yourself. We will have to break out the L in order to write XL.
From the Washington Post, a former newspaper:
The House on Wednesday approved a massive Republican plan to overhaul the tax code, clearing the bill’s final hurdle in Congress and sending it to President Trump to be signed into law.
The measure passed the House 224 to 201 as overwhelming Republican support carried the bill past unanimous Democratic opposition and ‘no’ votes from 12 GOP members. The House vote comes after the Senate approved an identical measure early Wednesday morning. In a 51 to 48 vote, all Democrats opposed the bill while all Republicans present supported it.
As with Obamacare, there is an unusual clarity of partisanship here. Not a single Senator crossed party lines.
Read the remainder of this entry »
The excellent Tom Simon pens a learned and entertaining essay here: https://bondwine.com/2017/12/14/gormenghast-and-the-great-tradition/
Which is an answer to my essay here: http://www.castaliahouse.com/wright-on-elf-thirst-for-waters-beyond-the-world/ in which I has the question, Why in the world does anyone consider the Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake to be fantasy?
Please do yourself the favor of reading his essay for yourself. If you have not read his essays, or his fine books you will thank me for the introduction.
Here is his Amazon page:
https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Simon/e/B00AR3EN7G
Allow me particularly to recommend these books, which are favorites of mine:
Well, thanks to the conspiracy of the news to misinform, deceive, mislead, and stupefy the voting public, the solidly Republican state of Alabama sent a crooked Dem to the Senate, shaving the razor-thin GOP majority down to a single vote. If the party does its job and passes tax relief before the Dem is seated, we may have an economy worth celebrating. So this is a setback.
But the train of win still chugs along: Trump’s FCC has finally struck down “Net Neutrality” which is an Orwellian phrase for content-based political censorship on the internet. Read the remainder of this entry »
