Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 292

All the Trouble in the World

All the Trouble in the World is a great PJ O’Rourke book, which I highly recommend, but that’s not important right now.

It occurred to me the reason we’ve got to this particular state of shambles is that we’ve given in to the therapeutic/do-gooder notion that we have to solve all the trouble in the world.

This is a relatively new notion.  it used to be, when the West was mostly Christian (with a smattering of Jewish) that we assumed the troubles the world is full of would get solved when the...

If You See Something, Say Something

So, between the book banners and those who would fire people for sourced documents stating what any neuro-scientist will tell you over breakfast, the left has been on a tear and is going insane.

It is not, as some of my very young friends think, that the left has more dominance or is going more bully-like than ever.

No, this is the mark of a cultural revolution, where the dominant faction is losing its grip.  You see, they controlled the entire culture for decades and anyone who talked back w...

Being Free

I am almost fifty five years old.  In my entire life, in two countries, I’ve never come across a book so dangerous it couldn’t be read.  I’ve never come across an idea so dangerous it couldn’t be debated.  And I’ve never come across a book that while being read went out and hurt other people.

In fact the only books I ever heard say one shouldn’t read or it would hurt people if one read it, it was because some group, often some government thought that the ideas in those books could hurt them.

...

The Myth of the Peaceful Woman by outofthedarkness

The Myth of the Peaceful Woman by outofthedarkness

There’s a persistent trope in science fiction and fantasy about a society consisting solely of women. It’s a peaceful and prosperous society, free from all violence. There may be some female warriors, who are somehow better than all male warriors everywhere despite having no real pressure or battles to harden themselves on. As a female reader with a strong taste for rational thinking, I am begging authors to stop doing this. Every female over...

Don’t Be A Victim! A Blast From The Past from June 4, 2014

Don’t Be A Victim! A Blast From The Past from June 4, 2014

This is a post about victimhood: admiring, sanctifying, exploiting, parading and – strangest of all – stealing victimhood.

Guys, seriously, if aliens dropped in from alpha centauri tomorrow they would think we are very odd creatures. What is it with the big fights over who the biggest victim is, shaming and trying to make people feel guilty because they aren’t victims, claiming victimhood on behalf of anyone else and, most important o...

Real Life

Over at Mad Genius Club my friend (is that what he is?  It would seem our relationship would be much closer, we’d been sitting with the murky water of publishing side by side in the same trench for 15 years now.  We’ve seen each other’s kids grow up from a distance, we’ve shared the victories (few) and the kicks in the teeth (many) and talked each other out of the extreme dismals so many times.  You’d think he’d be more a brother-at-arms, a co-combatant, something closer than the much-abused...

Just the Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

Just the Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend tha...

The State of Things

Today is one of those days I woke up with absolutely nothing that deserves to be said in a blog.  It’s amazing how often the block hits only one part of the writing.  Today I don’t have blog-brain.

Of course, you’ll say, it was exactly for this purpose that I started doing a serial novel.  And you’re not wrong.  The problem is that I need to go over what I have of Rogue Magic, before I can finish it.  There are “wrong pointers” throughout it that need to be corrected before I go on with the t...

Sin Eaters

A friend got caught in a discussion on Facebook where he was told that Lenin and Marx were center-right.

After he was done face palming, he asked what that even meant.  He was told that any military action or violence is right wing.

Now, we’ve long, here, and in many other places, said that left and right make no sense as universal designations, as they have have completely different meanings in say Europe and America.  Hell, they have different meanings in America from the seventies to now.

...

It’s been that sort of month

For me, and for a whole bunch of people I love.

So, I just want to say no one asks you to be perfect, and no human beings are perfect, and some of the strongest and best people I know are those fighting the greatest handicaps.  And sometimes the handicap is just the way you are: in your mind and in your sense of honor, in what you can do, and the way the world is setup.

Sometimes it is when you fail and fall on your face that you find the path in which you’re meant to be.

And sometimes it is...