Excerpts from THE GOLDEN AGE, my debut novel from 2001.
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.
Part of an ongoing discussion:
Atheists routinely accuse Christians of blind faith, that is a faith not open to revision when contrary evidence arises: as when a cult member continues to believe every utterance of a prophet once proved false.
This is a human failing, and atheists are hardly immune.
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TERRORS of PANGAEA is on sale for Cyber-Monday, for all of your Edgar Rice Burroughsian inspired adventure novel needs.
This is Book I of LOST ON THE LAST CONTINENT.
Less than a dollar!
I admire Squanto enough to put his namesake as a character in one of my science fiction novels. Here he is mentioned as the founder of the feast at Thanksgiving:
The Catholic Origins of Thanksgiving
… The Puritans who came to Plymouth in 1620 almost didn’t survive. Half the settlers died the first winter. They were saved by a Native American named Squanto, who taught them how to hunt and fish and grow corn.
But here’s what is really interesting: Squanto was a Roman Catholic.
In 1614, he had been captured by an English party led by Captain John Smith (of Pocahontas fame) and taken on a ship to Spain where he was to be sold as a slave. He was rescued by some Dominican friars who instructed him in the Catholic faith. He told them he wanted to return to his people in America. They helped him get to England, where he met John Slaney, who taught him English and arranged for him to get to Newfoundland. Squanto served as an interpreter between the English and the Indians and crossed the Atlantic six times. He was never able to return to his own tribe, because they had been wiped out in a plague.
After he came to the aid of the Plymouth settlers, helping them grow their own food, he arranged for a joint harvest feast with the local Wampanoag tribe. It was this event that is the basis of our Thanksgiving holiday. So Thanksgiving was started by a Native American Catholic.
It continues in like vein describing the founding of Maryland by Lord Baltimore, also a Roman Catholic. By all means, read the whole column.
An announcement from our own Hans Schantz:
The Black Friday Based Book Sale is here! If you’re looking for something to read over the holidays, check out some of the dozens of great books that are $.99 or free, including my very own Starship Grifters.
Also, if you haven’t entered to win a free signed paperback copy of Starship Grifters (or any of my other books), you only have a few hours left. Enter now!
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Stay tuned! The Rex Nihilo Expanded Universe Kickstarter is coming soon!
As a public service, we reprint last year’s column for any readers who may have missed it.
For this Thanksgiving, let us give thanks for the lesson learned by the Pilgrims in the first harsh years of their colony.
The real history of the Mayflower Pilgrims was recounted by their leader, William Bradford, in his book Of Plymouth Plantation (1647).
The words below are his, where he explains how, at first the colonists attempted to hold all property in common:
Regarding the eco-scaremongering which has been a constant force and clamor in modern life since at least 1950, a reader with the leviathanic yet flatulential name of KrakenFartz observes:
Thomas Sowell coined the term “Teflon Prophet” to describe the scientaster, Paul Ehrlich, because even though his predictions have turned out to be wrong every single time, nothing sticks to his reputation.
My comment:
First, I salute the use of the term scientaster as a clever play on the underused word poetaster — referring to an overly self-important versifier with underwhelming skills.
Second, I suspect nothing sticks to Ehrlich’s reputation as a prophet simply because those who believe him do so for unadmitted emotional reasons related to earth-worship, to discontent with freedom and prosperity, and to the Gnostic world-view that inverts moral values. He tickles their ears with what they want to hear.
You would think folks would not want to hear that they are doomed, and more doomed, and most doomed. To the contrary, prophecies of Armageddon and Ragnarok quell quotidian worries, open a vision of life’s larger issues, and firm the resolve to heed and follow one’s prophet of choice. Such prophecies set the stage with a large picture of the war between Heaven and Hell, and the battle for the soul of the nation.
The only problem is that the false prophets are on the wrong side. Those who follow heaven obey the command to be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it. The opposition wants to subdue man, cull the population like cattle, and worship the earth as an idol, a Carthaginian idol that demands human sacrifice.
Paul Ehrlich is a false prophet. It has not eroded his support one iota.
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Excerpts from THE GOLDEN AGE, my debut novel from 2001.
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.
Quote of the Day:
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
So far, batting zero. This is but a small sample, and here the clock itself, ticking down, is not shown here. Please see the original site:
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WORST INSURRECTION IN HISTORY!!!pic.twitter.com/5KkJ6m2wdq
— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) November 17, 2023
Excerpts from THE GOLDEN AGE, my debut novel from 2001.
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.
Episode 32: A Dream Worthy of Him
Jordan Peterson’s roundtable discussion on Exodus, has much to recommend it, not the least of which is a digression which addressed an error I have often made in my godless youth, which many Americans, also godless, also make.
The Idolatry of Reason — one unwelcome legacy of the Enlightenment Era — involves the idea that one stands apart from the laws and customs, mores and ideals into which one was born, and judges them as if from an objective standpoint: the vantage from nowhere, so to speak.
Right Reason, let us hasten to add, disapproves of the Idolatry of Reason as unreasonable.
Right Reason is humble, and rightly so. Idolatry seeks to dethrone the Most High in favor of an usurper. Whether that usurper is the faculty of reason, or the pride of man, or the vanity of some high-sounding ideal, is no matter.
Putting the lesser good above the higher good makes it bad. Even the brightest angel seating himself above heaven’s highmost throne becomes a devil.
In reality, reason only operates when grounded on first things themselves not open to reason.
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