This is the least fantastic book that has ever been shelved with the fantasy.
I confess out the outset that TITUS GROAN is decidedly not to my taste, but I will try manfully to give an honest picture of its merit to anyone whose tastes differ from mine.
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Some day I will discover the source of my obsession with this topic, and need impose no longer on weary readers who have heard me hold out my opinions before.
Each time I think I have a clear answer to the question, something happens to provoke me to puzzlement again.
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Excerpts from THE GOLDEN AGE, my debut novel from 2001. Arkhaven Comics is also reprinting such excerpts.
In the far future, where humans have become as gods, living lives of perfect peace and prosperity, Phaethon of Rhadamanthus House discovers centuries of his memory are lost. Like his namesake, has flown too high, and must be cast down: for he has committed the one act the Golden Age forbids, to have ambitions higher than utopia can contain. Now his quest is to find himself.
My wife went to see the film SOUND OF FREEDOM, and I did not, because the subject matter is too disturbing to me. So, obviously, I can write no review on a film I have not seen. But that does not mean I cannot write a recommendation.
For I have seen the reactions from other reviewers, and they are ghastly.
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I did a review of the Golden Age and deservedly forgotten MISS FURY comic penned by Tarpé Mills, where I said the writing had some clever ideas, but was turgid and slow, too wordy.
Not everyone has the same taste as mine, so, in all fairness, allow me to display a page taken from MISS FURY which shows a good example of everything both right and wrong.
This will also give me a chance to post two more cheesecake shots I could not fit into the column.
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At first, I was as aghast as any man at the spectacle of Russia conquering territory in Europe, first Georgia under Bush, then Crimea under Obama, and now Ukraine, under Jill Biden.
Naturally, like most Americans, I thought it the duty of the Western Powers to unify and support Ukraine, as the attacked party.
But how much support? And for what gain?
What American interest is involved?
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Miss Fury is a forgotten heroine of the Golden Age. She is remembered these days, ironically, for her tangential resemblance to what she is not.
She first appeared as The Black Fury in April of 1941 as a Sunday comic strip by June Tarpé Mills, one of few women working in comics at the time, and it shows. There was a contemporaneous comic about a dark-coated stallion named Black Fury, so she, and her strip, was retitled Miss Fury in November 1941, and later gathered into comic book form.
Black Fury is remembered as the first a crime-fighting superheroine, dressed in a skintight black catsuit, complete with cat ears and claws, predating DC’s comics iconic Catwoman and Marvel’s clone Black Cat.
One article about Miss Fury (read in preparation for this column) asserted that the black leopard catsuit, worn for crimefighting, had the supernatural voodoo ability to bestow increased strength and speed on the wearer.
All this is untrue, or, at least, highly doubtful.
Miss Fury is not a superheroine. She is not Catwoman.
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Excerpts from THE GOLDEN AGE, my debut novel from 2001. Arkhaven Comics is also reprinting such excerpts.
In the far future, where humans have become as gods, living lives of perfect peace and prosperity, Phaethon of Rhadamanthus House discovers centuries of his memory are lost. Like his namesake, has flown too high, and must be cast down: for he has committed the one act the Golden Age forbids, to have ambitions higher than utopia can contain. Now his quest is to find himself.
From Paul Harvey’s immortal THE REST OF THE STORY
Our Founders had everything to lose and nothing to gain … except one thing.
“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.” — John Adams, 2nd President.
“Posterity — you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” -John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, 6th President.
A reader with the cervine yet dogged name of Rudolph Harrier observes that Affirmative Action makes racial discrimination rational. It creates more of the very disease it seeks to cure.
His argument runs as follows.
Suppose that you have two doctors you can go to. They both went to the same school. Beyond that all you can tell is that one is an Asian man, the other is a black man. But you know that the school that gave them their degrees was willing to accept dramatically lower MCAT scores from black applicants, and presumably they also were more lenient on black students after application.
Now it’s possible that the black doctor didn’t need those accommodations and is actually much smarter and a much better doctor than the Asian doctor. But the only information you have tells you that it is also possible that the black doctor is underqualified, while this is not possible for the Asian doctor. So the rational decision is to choose the Asian doctor.
He argues that, by game theory logic based on available information, affirmative action creates a disincentive to patronize Negro doctors, and to patronize Oriental ones.
Because the Affirmative Action committees select race as the basis for falsifying the reward-system, race becomes a legitimate and rational basis for making judgments in situations of limited information, that is, bias. In this case, it becomes a rational and justified bias.
My comment:
Elevating anyone above his merits, as when the Gold Medal is bestowed to one who only performed at the level of Bronze, is getting something for nothing. All affirmative action, in other words, is theft.
This is not returning stolen property to the dispossessed. This is dispossessing him of whatever lesser worth he might have had.
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Addendum to an earlier post:
Justice Thomas, writing the concurring opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, refuties the dissent of Justice Jackson. He produces such gems of judicial wisdom, faceted with clarity and brilliance, that I am unable to restrict myself to one paragraph or passage.
There are worse ways to idle away an hour, dear reader, and to read may restore one’s faith in human reason and in the American way of life. Here is treasure.
This excerpt begins in Section IV of the concurrence, and omits footnotes and references for ease of reading.
*** *** ***
IV
Far from advancing the cause of improved race relations in our Nation, affirmative action highlights our racial differences with pernicious effect.
In fact, recent history reveals a disturbing pattern: Affirmative action policies appear to have prolonged the asserted need for racial discrimination.
Parties and amici in these cases report that, in the nearly 50 years since Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, racial progress on campuses adopting affirmative action admissions policies has stagnated, including making no meaningful progress toward a colorblind goal since Grutter.
Rather, the legacy of Grutter appears to be ever increasing and strident demands for yet more racially oriented solutions.
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