Alexander Hellene's Blog, page 10
October 22, 2020
Signal Boost: 9Volt Comics
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Now this is seriously cool. 9Volt is an anthology comic series put together by a whole slew of excellent indie creators. There are two issues available: the first involves superheroes and the second is pulp!
Even better, friend of the blog and The Last Ancestor concept artist/mapmaker ArtAnon has a story in issue two!
Issue #1 is available here, and Issue #2 here.
I’ve got a sizeable backlog of stuff to read and do, but I can’t wait to get into these. So check ’em out!
If Nobody Reads, Why Write?
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If Americans don’t read, as we’re reliably informed they don’t, then what’s the point of writing? Why do I, or any of us authors, bother creating stories for an ever-dwindling base of readers who read less and less? Why bother?
If people are getting stupider–sorry, if IQs are dropping, then why bother creating an artform that requires a modicum of intelligence to comprehend and enjoy?
Movies are where it’s at. Streaming is where it’s at. Everyone is glued to their phones and computers and tablets and TVs and other screens. And they want the most basic, boring, bland, on-the-nose entertainment out there, right?
Isn’t this what people have been saying since the dawn of the TV age? Television is that “vast wasteland,” as Newt Minow so aptly put it. That can apply to any mass media, right? It’s all bread and circuses. How can freaking books compete in this space?
You have you ask yourself why you do anything. I ask myself this question all the time as I spend time and money writing and publishing novels–sci-fi novels, at that!–for an audience that seems both underserved and facing a glut of books. But here’s something I always come back to: we call what’s on television, or maybe even streaming services, “programming.”
Think about that: “TV programming.” Not the TV schedule. Not the TV itinerary. And we don’t refer to these as “TV shows” all the time; the official term is “TV PROGRAMMING.”
So I like to write to provide an alternative to this programming. I like to write for people, as small as my audience may be, who want something outside of the norm. Maybe in the world of cheap, poorly written eBooks they’ll come across one of mine and, hopefully, find it both worth the low price tag and well-written enough to make them think about things differently than what is normally programmed into their heads.
This sounds pretty arrogant, right? “Who is this guy, thinking he can make a difference?” And here’s my response to that: I don’t know. I don’t know if anything I do makes a difference, and not just writing books. Maybe it’s all for naught. Maybe we truly are just dust in the wind as the song goes, and all is vanity as is written in Ecclesiastes.
And so what? So what? If all is vanity and nothing matters, that almost makes it worth toiling at something just to kill the time and make it at least feel like your existence mattered in the long-run, or even the short-run. Otherwise, what’s the point?
It’s a bit like being a rock and roll musician. Rock and roll doesn’t matter, and hasn’t for a while. But there is still an audience for it–a small and shrinking audience–but it’s still there. Why not give them what they’re seeking while you can, while they’re still there to enjoy it?
That’s where I’m at now. It’s all quixotic. That’s my personality, I guess. Might as well tilt at those windmills while they’re there.
People keep enjoying my own books, so maybe Americans are reading more than we think after all.
October 21, 2020
Book Review: The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons
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With The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons brings his four-book Hyperion Cantos to a satisfying close. While not quite reaching the same lofty heights as its predecessors, owing mostly to a sagging middle section that grinds the narrative to a halt, Simmons ultimately sticks the landing and fulfills the promise of Hyperion, solving most of the mysteries while leaving a few others up to the readers’ imagination.
We begin The Rise of Endymion four years after the previous book on Old Earth, where Raul Endymion, Aenea, and their android friend A. Bettik have fallen in with a commune at Taliesen West in the deserts of Arizona run by a cybrid recreation of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. After Wright’s death, the now sixteen-year-old Aenea informs all residents that they must leave Earth and travel to new worlds via farcaster–strange, given that all such technology was destroyed after the Hegemony’s fall as seen in The Fall of Hyperion. But Aenea, the One who Teaches, messiah and saviour of the universe, daughter of the human Brawne Lamia and the cybrid John Keates, has her ways.
Raul is the last to leave, and his solo journey down the Mississippi river, through long-dormant farcasters to other worlds, echoes that of Endymion, but here there is added danger: not only is the Pax after him, but the TechnoCore’s newest killing machine Rhadamanth Nemes has been rescued from her prison of molten rock on the planet God’s Grove by three other such constructs, and they’re all after Raul. His journey through various worlds is exciting, as is his bout with a kidney stone that nearly derails his entire mission, and oh yeah, the Shrike pops up too. And Simmons keeps up his trend of exploring big ideas while maintaining that sci-fi sense of wonder we love about the genre, most notably when Raul teleports into the breathable atmosphere of a gas giant, where he must contend with planet-sized lightning storms and weird gasbag-like creatures.
It’s excellent and eminently readable, which makes part two all the more disappointing. Raul reunites with his friends on the planet of T’ien Shan, and while that planet of mountains poking above a toxic atmosphere is interesting, not much happens save for a lot of talking. Theological discussions between Pax officials and the Dalai Lama devolve into “Ha ha Christinaity is silly” followed by some pseudo-deep pop Buddhism, but the feared sucker-punch never came. And then by the end of part two, the action once again ramps up into a bracing and ultimately rewarding part 3.
I like how Simmons maintains a respect for all religion, including Christinaity, despite the fact that the Catholic Church are one of the main villains, the other being the parasitic AIs of the TechnoCore. As Simmons telegraphed in the previous book, Christianity isn’t the villain–what the Pax, aided by the TechnoCore and their ability to effect bodily resurrection, has done to the Church is the villain. And Father Captain Federico de Soya remains one of the best antagonists–not villains (there’s a difference)–I’ve seen in fiction.
Sure, some of Simmons’ theology and philosophy is New Agey and a bit jumbled. But it’s interesting, and it makes for a hell of a science fiction epic. Simmons wraps up plot threads that began in the first book, and while some are left unresolved, they did more to fire my imagination than leave me hanging. And though I called many of the twists and major plot points, there were some that honestly caught me by surprise, yet thinking back did not come out of the blue. You learn why the Pax and the TechnoCore fear Aenea so, what her mission truly is, and why she had to send Raul and all of those other denizens of Taliesin West on their world-hopping journeys. The Hyperion Cantos are a masterclass in plotting.
My biggest gripes with The Rise of Endymion are the same I had with Endymion: Raul and Aenea are pretty bland characters. Both have a whiff of Mary Sue about them. Raul’s “I’m just a dumb hick from a backwater planet” shtick wears thin, especially since he knows how to do everything based on a deep well of past experience, knows a lot about history and religion, and can recite vast reams of poetry at will. And Aenea is almost Deus ex machina personified–something or someone always pops up to save her in ways that sometimes stretch credibility. But both characters are still heroic and brave, and do the right thing even at great personal cost. I just found them compared to de Soya and especially when compared to Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion‘s rich casts of weirdos.
This series is great, and I recommend it to any sci-fi fan. If I had to rate each book, it would be as follows:
Hyperion : 10 out of 10. Having read the rest of the series makes me appreciate the mysteries of Hyperion more.
The Fall of Hyperion : 9.5 out of 10. There are some confusing aspects, but they in no way detract from the gripping narrative.
Endymion : 9.5 out of 10. Raul and Aenea’s relative blandness aside, this is a two-fisted action chase with high stakes and deep implications.
The Rise of Endymion: 8.5 out of 10. The sagging middle doesn’t totally sink The Rise of Endymion, coming between an exciting part one and part three’s race to the finish, it made getting through this book a bit of a slog.
That brings us to a numerical rating of 9.375 for the whole series.
And check out another wonderful cover by Gary Ruddell:
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I don’t have much else to say save that I urge anyone into epic sci-fi but who wants something off the beaten path to at least give Hyperion a try. If you enjoy that book, I really think you’ll enjoy the entire series.
My own sci-fi saga has just gotten started. Get in on the ground floor now before book two comes out later this year.
October 19, 2020
New Piece Up on The American Spectator
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My new piece is up on The American Spectator: “Video Games: The Latest Front in the Social Justice War.” I am very much appreciative to the Spectator‘s editorial staff for publishing my pieces about cultural issues that might not normally be on their readership’s radar.
If there are any certainties in life, they are death, taxes, and that your favorite hobby will be infiltrated and taken over by social justice warriors. We’ve already seen this in film, sports, novels, comic books, and role-playing games. Video games remain one of the last places where the social justice warrior cancer hasn’t fully metastasized.
It’s still there, though. Gamers revolted against the corrupt games journalism industry during the GamerGate controversy of 2014, but were not able to fully excise the cancer from their favorite pastime. Indeed, the SJW point of view persisted, and many of GamerGate’s chief antagonists saw their positions of power elevated and further entrenched. Still, the ride never ends: video game giants Electronic Arts and Ubisoft, as well as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the Anti-Defamation League recently partnered with nonprofit Raising Good Gamers to help foster the sort of gaming culture they think should exist. The Wild West days of the early internet are truly long gone.
Read the full piece here. And read their other articles. Great site!
Support my work by buying and reading my novels so I can keep writing pieces for American Spectator.
October 17, 2020
Always Has Been
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I am not deep into all the Q stuff, but if it was as dangerous as advertised, people would be dead. If it was just a wacky kooky conspiracy theory with no basis in reality, there wouldn’t be such a push to shut it down.
I can think of plenty other conspiracy theories that have far less evidence but have been pushed relentlessly by our garbage media (Russian collision, for example) with real-world consequences.
And no, don’t try to equate that weirdo who fired a gun inside or Comet Pizza–hurting nobody–to the violent left-wing and black supremacist mobs actually terrorizing dozens of major American cities.
So this tells us that the elites are afraid of the stupid silly totally not true Q thing. They’re obviously not afraid of Antifa or BLM because if those movements actually threatened their hegemony, they’d have been brutally put down yesterday.
But tell me again how “the alt-right” (whatever that means) or “white supremacists” (the three that aren’t federal agents) are the biggest threats to “our democracy” (whatever that is).
All I know is that so-called conspiracies tend to explain things better the official story. I wouldn’t be surprised if dinosaurs never existed, we never went to the moon, evolution is a lie, and the Earth is flat. And honesty, I don’t care about any of these things one way or the other. I’m not invested in them. Whether or not dinosaurs existed doesn’t affect me. I just resent being lied to.
So yeah, seeing as how our elites behave and how they are now pushing to sexualize children, it would not surprise me at all if the world is run by a cabal of rich, vampiric pedophile Satanists. And Epstein didn’t kill himself.
Anyway, the Russian collusion thing wouldn’t have surprised me if true, but that one has been demonstrably proven false.
America is one messed up place, but the writer in me is fascinated by its downfall because all of this is great imagination fuel. The truth is truly stranger than fiction. Always has been.
The positive reviews keep coming in for The Last Ancestor.
October 15, 2020
Blogging About Blogging
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The other day I saw some weenie online say that anyone who posts on their blog or website more than once a week doesn’t have anything deep or insightful to say, because there’s no way a person can be deep or insightful on such a rapid schedule.
To that, I say stop projecting your own insecurities on the rest of us.
Fact is, if you want to drive any sizeable amount of traffic to your blog or website when you are a relative unknown, you really should be posting three times a week, if not daily. Once you gain some recognition, sure, go ahead and cut back, write longer-form pieces, knock yourself out. But before then, to build an audience when you’re starting from scratch, you need to produce.
Even if you’ve built an audience, to maintain it, you really still need to produce. Attention spans are short, and if you have a relatively well-trafficked site that suddenly goes dormant, you are going to lose a lot of your former audience. There is so much competing for readers’ attentions that you really need to be on your blogging game if you expect it to amount to anything.
That sounds harsh. Let me elaborate a bit: many people write for the pure exercise of getting their thoughts out onto some sort of tangible medium. Some of this is shared, and the writer derives enjoyment and value from it even though few, if any, people, read their words. That is great. But if you’re out there trying to be a writer, you really need to give readers a reason to keep coming back to your website.
Related to that, you really should respond to all comments, positive and negative. If a reader is going to take the time to not only read what you wrote, but leave a comment, you should return the favor.
Here’s another reason I reject this guy’s advice: writing on a regular schedule makes you a more disciplined writer. This will not only spill over to your other non-blogging writing projects, but the rest of your daily life as well. It is incredibly rewarding to set a goal, stick to it, and accomplish something. Before you know it, you’ll have hundreds of posts written and will have built a body of work. This feels really good.
Remember: just because a guy with tens of thousands of followers online isn’t able to write deep or insightful posts more than once a week, or even less often, doesn’t mean that you’re incapable of doing the same.
Blogging is a different beast than novel-writing or long-form essays or full-blown non-fiction books and treatises. Treat it as such and you will find the practice quite rewarding.
Keep plugging away. Maybe you’ll write a novel or two while you’re at it.
October 13, 2020
Signal Boost: A Worthy Sacrifice (Galaxy Ascendant Book 7) by Yakov Merkin
I’m proud to announce that my friend, author Yakov Merkin has just released the thrilling conclusion to his seven-part space opera series, Galaxy Ascendant:
The galaxy has fallen, practically without a fight.
Most of its greatest defenders are prisoners of the seemingly unstoppable Kirothian League.
But the denizens of the Galaxy Ascendant do not believe in giving up, and will fight to the bitter end.
The initial shock of the rapid collapse of the galaxy before the mighty Kirothian League has worn off, and everyone is struggling to pick themselves up again.
But the situation is no less dire.
With most of the galaxy’s greatest defenders captives of their enemies, it falls to the few still free, those deemed less of a threat by this new foe, to lead the resistance.
Meanwhile, those held captive will not—and cannot allow themselves to become passive. Their fates, as well as the fate of the galaxy as a whole, depends on their next actions.
Former enemies will be forced to work together, if there is to be any hope for the future of the galaxy.
They will give it their all. But will it be enough to get them out of their most dire situation yet?
The Galaxy Ascendant series comes to its fiery conclusion with its most shocking, and pulse-pounding installment yet!
Yakov is a great writer with a prodigious imagination. If you’re sick of Star Wars and other terrible dead franchises, you owe it to yourself to read Galaxy Ascendant from the beginning.
Kudos to Yakov for his hard work and respect for his fans. A Worthy Sacrifice is available here.
New Piece on The American Spectator
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Check out my piece about Yelp’s new “racist business” initiative on The American Spectator:
As if woke capital hasn’t made life in America dangerous enough for those slightly to the left of center, popular internet review website Yelp has taken it upon itself to allow users to report “racist behavior” on the part of a business. Called the Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert, Yelp’s own blog states that the process begins with a milder Public Attention Alert “to inform consumers if someone associated with the business was accused of, or the target of, racist behavior.” It only gets escalated to a BARBA (my term) when there is “resounding evidence” of “egregious, racist actions from a business owner of employee.” Such behavior includes overtly racist slurs or symbols.” Don’t fret, though: the alert “will always link to a news article from a credible media outlet so users can learn more.” Of course, to date there has been no definition of “racist,” “resounding evidence,” “egregious, racist actions,” or “credible media outlet.”
The cynic in me presumes that, like most tech platform terms of use, these are kept vague to allow those imposing them to punish their enemies and reward their friends. Unfortunately, the cynic in me is usually right.
Read the whole thing here.
Read my books here.
October 12, 2020
Christopher Columbus Did Nothing Wrong by Modern Standards
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All Christopher Columbus did was impose multiculturalism via open borders, both things I’ve been reliably informed are good for nations and are the wave of the future.
There was no good Italian or Spanish food in the Americas until the age of exploration. Just bland, boring corn and stuff. Lame!
Interracial marriage is good for genetics. The Americas had weak-ass genetics until Columbus opened the Western Hemisphere for settlement. You’re welcome.
How many university graduates were there in the Americas before mass migration? Exactly.
Christopher Columbus opened up the free movement of capital and labor to the Americas. Free markets = free people. So quit your bitching.
Colonists to the Americas were fleeing poverty and oppression for a better life. Refugees are always welcome.
These are arguments used in favor of open borders, mass migration, and multiculturalism today. What changed between now and the 15th century?
Anyway, America can’t have any holiday, religious or secular, without racial grievance-mongers and angry political weirdos pissing all over them. So the only recourse is mockery.
Christopher Columbus did nothing wrong.
The Last Ancestor tells the tale of interstellar voyagers. It’s awesome. Buy it here.
October 10, 2020
Signal Boost: Sudden Storm by Jon Mollison
At last, part three of the saga of space trucker/interstellar hero E.Z. Sudden and his wife Princess Karenina is here from pulp rev powerhouse Jon Mollison:
Beset by enemies on all sides, Captain E.Z. Sudden finds himself in a desperate race to find allies who can back his play to save the Majesterium from a secretive enemy, a simmering civil war, the threat of organized crime, and an invasion by the machine empire all at the same time. This third installment of his adventures carries the blue collar hero from Roamer colonies to prison planets and all the way to the seat of the greatest power in the galaxy in a desperate bid to keep the universe safe not only for its own sake but for that of his wife and unborn child.
It’s more high-spirited adventure in a galaxy where nothing is as it seems, and the common man little realizes the battles for power that rage behind the scenes. Until he does, and then it is the turn of the powers that be to learn of the power of one righteous little guy in the face of overwhelming evil.
These books are really fun and I highly recommend them. Snag Sudden Storm here!
