Alexander Hellene's Blog, page 14

A Place for Nihilism

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I asked a pretty provocative question fairly recently that’s actually a two-parter, and it deals with something that I personally hate but I think is worth talking about: nihilism.

The question was: Does nihilism have a place in culture? And if so, what?

I’ll give you my take on this, and it’s as lawyerly as you’d expect: YES AND NO.

NO. Nihilism doesn’t create. Nihilism is, to boil it down to is essence, the belief that life is meaningless. Therefore, any culture that is based on nihilism will eventually collapse and be subsumed by a culture that actually does believe in something, because you can’t create something out of nothing unless you’re God, and nihilists aren’t God. They think they speak with similar authority about “the way things really are” because they can totally see the true nature of life and existence, and it’s ugly and bleak and so on. 

YES. Nihilism has a place in a culture’s art, but as a cautionary tale and not its defining feature. In the realm of fiction, it can be a fantastic motivating factor for a villain. Think of all the stories you’ve read or seen that involve an antagonist who believes that life is so awful it deserves to be destroyed. I know you can. I’ll tell you one right now that leaps off the top of my head: Kefka in Final Fantasy VI. Or how about the Joker in everything he appears in? 

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Nihilism is a good foil to use when contrasting evil against good, ugliness against beauty, and lies against truth. It can make the good, the beautiful, and the true shine all the brighter, for when juxtaposed against nihilism, they are shining beacons in an endless dark.

Nihilism seems to be trendy because we’re in a post-scarcity, post-meaning, post-sanity age with nothing left to do but eat ourselves. This is why nobody cares about our fine arts like painting and sculpture, poetry, and orchestral music: They and their practitioners are so deep into their theories, and their own buttholes, that they’re utterly incomprehensible and meaningless to regular folk, not to mention ugly. Pop culture is little better, but it’s the last bastion of anything resembling a culture that America has. This is kind of sad, and it’s actively under the same assault fine arts are, but there’s at least more resistance and alternative culture creation going on in the pop culture sphere. 

But endless moping about the meaninglessness of everything isn’t a harmless amusement. It’s a dangerous idea that spreads despair and brutalizes people into looking into the sewer, metaphorical or otherwise, for meaning when they should be looking to something higher, whatever that may be. Instead of aspiring to lofty heights, those at the top would rather wallow in filth, and they want to drag you down with them.

Nihilism is a part of this plan. Just kill yourself, and so on. But I wonder if those who make money peddling such bleakness actually want to die themselves, or just want you to die live a miserable gray existence as you wait to die . . . while paying money for the privilege of consuming their product which reinforces the fact that life is meaningless, and pretty ugly to boot?

It’s a scam, in other words. Nearly everything in modern life pushed by official channels is a scam of some sort. That’s actually a fundamental feature of our age, at least here in America: The pathological inability of any institution to (a) perform its stated objective, and (b) tell the truth about anything. This goes for the arts as well. 

Fight despair. Use nihilism as a cautionary tale or as the motivation for your villains. This will make your story ring true and connect with your audience, because deep down in their soul they know that they were meant for more than misery and gray despair. 

No misery or gray despair in my books. Just fun and adventure. Check them out here.

All About Energy

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People often ask, “Where do you get the energy to do all the stuff that you do?” And here’s my answer:

I don’t!

I’m so behind on stuff I have to do, let alone stuff I like to do. Funny thing about the day job–it gets in the way of family time, let alone hobbies and other interests.

As such, the only time available to do stuff that I like to do as a hobby is either really early in the morning or really late at night. Usually late at night, usually only for a few hours, and usually not every night, given practical realities such as: the need for sleep, and a desire to spend time with my wife and kids.

So we’ve narrowed this down to “a few hours of free time a few late nights a week.” How does one then find the energy to do this? I have two bits of advice:

Look forward to it. You get excited to do anything that you enjoy. Looking forward to something–be it game night with the family, time with my wife, exercising, writing, reading–plants the seed at the beginning of the day that, when all of the work stuff is done, it’s time to engage in some recreation that you actually enjoy. It could be a movie. It could be a date. It could be, I don’t know, whittling. Working on a jigsaw puzzle. Whatever. The thing is is that the daily grind becomes the thing you have to do, and when that’s done, you have something you want to do to look forward to.


Ask yourself a question: Does what I’m doing get me closer to achieving my goal? Does sleeping an extra hour or two when I actually have some free time advance me to where I want to be? Does vegging out in front of the TV? Now, you might have planned some TV time with the wife or husband or kids or whomever, but let’s say everyone else is asleep and you have a choice of, say, watching YouTube videos endlessly or working on your song or novel or model or side-business or whatever . . . which path is going to make you feel good about yourself going to bed, and then when you wake up the next morning? 

I actually don’t have tons of energy. I’d much rather stuff my face with ice cream and then sleep 10-12 hours a night. But if I do that, I’ll be pushing myself away from my ideal end-state rather than towards it. And that’s not what I’m here on Earth for.

I wasn’t made to while away my time until I die. I’m here to praise God, enjoy my family, and leave a legacy for them and for the world. That might sound grandiose, but it’s really how all civilizations operate and need to think. We each do our part, from the teacher and artist to the ditch digger and the astronaut. Time is short, and the best time to start anything is now.

I write my novels under this paradigm. I might not be pumping out 15 per year (yet), but I do what I can. You’ll love them–The Last Ancestor is top-rated science-fiction. Check it out yourself! 

Short Fiction: Neg Bog

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It was a nonsense phrase; utterly meaningless. Yet everyone who tweeted it out or posted it to Facebook or anything like disappeared . . . if they didn’t apologize.

Carter Flannigan hadn’t apologized for posting it. And Jazmine Hernandez hadn’t heard from him in two days.

She tried texting him again: “Carter, it’s Jazz.  Really worried about you.” This time she didn’t call him “hon” or punctuate her message with a little heart. He’d have to know that meant she was super concerned . . . wouldn’t he?

Jazmine set her smartphone on her desk next to her keyboard, her computer humming quiet and low. The machine was a beast, powered by a water-cooled multi-threaded processor with dual GPUs and enough RAM to open thirty browser tabs without crashing. Three quad k zero bezel monitors, side-by-side, enveloped her like she was Batman. Batgirl, more like. Batman had been her favorite superguy when she had still been a guy herself.

She waited, tapping pink lacquered nails on her solid oak desk. They clacked too loudly for her liking, as though her small bedroom in her small Seattle apartment had become some place where human-made sounds did not occur. Like a tomb.

The phone remained stubbornly inert.  

And then it did buzz, dancing on her desk like an angry bee. Jazmine jumped, her heart pounding. She fumbled a few times before she could unlock the home screen. 

“Carter!” she said!

“Don’t I come up on your caller ID?” came Booster’s laconic Midwestern drawl. “I’m hurt. But whatever. You’re not my type.”

“You mean hot?” Jazmine said, punctuated by a nervous laugh.

“No. I mean . . . look. Jazz. Carter will show up. You know him. Probably going on one of his Internet detoxes or something. Now, I’m calling ‘cause–”

“He always announces it,” said Jazmine. “Makes a video or something. And he still gets back to me.”

“Well that’s different, because he never gets back to me.”

“Do you think the urban legend or whatever is true?”

Booster paused. Like her, like Carter, he was another free-speech absolutist. Unlike her, Booster and Carter were more on the right. But they shared a common reverence for America’s founding principle and the freedom to think and say whatever they wanted. But Booster, apparently, didn’t have the guts to say that phrase over the phone. “You mean N.B.?”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid too, Boost.”

“I’m not afriad, but I’m not stupid. Dill tweeted it out, remember, and–”

“He apologized!” Dylan “Dill” Prescott was another high-profile YouTuber and streamer in their sphere who had been one of the first to tweet out neg bog. And then he got swarmed. And then he quickly apologized–a pretty damn debasing apology that spanned nearly fifteen tweets–and afterwards, the swarm left him alone. Just like it left everybody else alone after they apologized. “That’s what bugs me, Boost: Carter never apologized.”

“Oh for–it’s a hoax, Jazz.”

“Then say it.”

“No!”

“If you’re not afraid, say it, Boost!”

Booster said nothing. 

“So you’re afraid,” said Jazmine. “Well, I’m not. They can’t touch me.”

“Jazz!” Booster snapped. “Come on . . .”

“No. I’m a half-hispanic trans liberal. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not racist. I’m incapable of being racist by their own definition. I can say it.”

“They’re listening!” 

“Who? NSA?” Jazmine snorted. “Those assholes. What’re they gonna do, disappear me? How do you think that’d look in the news? Fuck them. You think this ‘neg bog’ rumor is true.”

“God dammit, Jazz!”

“What? I said it in context.”

“It’s like the n-word!” said Booster. “Context doesn’t matter! Christ, it’s not the 70s anymore.”

“I’m not going to cower in fear, Boost. I’m going to live my principles. Like Carter. I think you should too.” She put her sneakered feet up on her desk and pushed so her chair swiveled around. “Where are your balls?”

“Least I got them still,” said Booster. “I’m sorry. That was mean.”

“It is, you asshole. But I still love you.”

“I love you too. Jazz, we still have to make a video for today.”

“I know.”

“He’ll turn up, Jazz. The whole thing . . . it’s bullshit.”

“Okay.”

“You didn’t say ‘I know,’ Jazz.”

Jazmine sighed. “I know.”

* * *

The day’s episode of American Awesomeness was spirited and fiesty. Jazmine was heated, spitting truth like a fire-breathing dragon melting the mindless orcs of collectivism. She was the left-leaning one, and Boost was slightly center-right, but together they made one formidable defense of civil liberties and constitutional rights.

The day’s theme was self-censorship, the woke corporations who have taken over an authoritarian government’s role of enforcing speech codes and thought policing. “That’s America’s great innovation!” Jazmine told her 23,000 viewers. “We’ve privatized the oppression business! We’ve outsourced the state’s role as morality police to unaccountable multinationals, and both our elected representatives who promised to protect and preserve our liberties, and our press, our ‘watchdogs of democracy’”–here, she made theatrical finger-quotes–“do nothing.”

“Worse than nothing,” Booster intoned, nodding his head and taking a small sip from his ever-present mug of black coffee.

Jazmine used his prompt as a springboard for another righteous rant. “Worse than nothing! They’re complicit! They want this! They like it! They’re either bought-off or are totally rooting for it so that when, the revolution comes and the tanks are rolling through Washington, they’ll be put into positions of authority.” She had snapped and flipped her hair, going into full angry Latina mode. “Let me tell you, honey: it don’t work that way.”

It might be gauche to brag, but the show was fantastic. They generated over five-thousand dollars from Super Chats, and the comments section was a hive of lively and reasoned debate crossed with unrelenting trolling, that particular mix of intellect and autism that only the Internet could provide.

Still, something was missing. The third-leg of their stool, the Holy Spirit of their Trinity, if Jazmine could be so blasphemous: Carter. He was a take-no-prisoners right-wing nationalist who thought Jazmine was a mentally-ill abomination, but he never treated her with anything but respect, and he truly lived his principles. If Jazmine had a dollar for every time she’s had to help bail Carter out, pitch in for his legal defense, or set up a crowdfunding campaign for the same, her financial woes would be over. 

And then came neg bog.

* * *

The show over, Jazmine removed her headphones and slumped back in her seat, the adrenaline of her two-hour performance flowing out of her like a cool morning mist burning off the mountains at dawn. Whether it was more postprandial or postcoital, she couldn’t say, but Jazmine felt as though she could sleep for hours even though it had just turned three in the afternoon.

They hadn’t mentioned neg bog on the stream. It was at Booster’s request, and with Carter seemingly MIA, Jazmine was in no mood to rock the boat too much. It felt like a cop-out because it was, but she could not lie and say she wasn’t on edge either.

She stood, feeling the satisfying pops in her back. Yoga had been helping, but she spent so much time in a chair that, no matter how comfy and expensive that chair was, all the sitting was murder on her body.

Her room was a mess. A pile of dirty clothes mingled with clean lay atop her rumpled pink comforter and on a basket against the wall. There were empty Chinese food containers and a half-empty bottle of merlot on a small table under her window. Worse was Chessie’s empty bed lying on the floor next to hers. The little Boston terrier had died last week and Jazmine still couldn’t bring herself to pick up his things . . . if she did, it would almost make it feel like Chessie had never existed.

That’s what it felt like ignoring Carter, too.

She should clean it, because she spent the vast majority of her time in this little room even though there was a whole other apartment out there, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Carter. Couldn’t stop thinking about neg bog. It was a splinter in her mind that she could not ignore.

Even if her brain had objected, Jazmine still wouldn’t have been able to fight her body as it sat back down at her computer. 

* * *

Neg bog. Called “the n.b. hoax” by most people online. Telling: Even when calling it a hoax, detractors don’t spell out the entire phrase.

“The Newest Right-Wing Boogeyman!” blared a headline on one popular and venerable left-wing website. “A Secret Phrase That Will Put You On A List . . . Or Worse.” And yet they didn’t spell it out either. 

Liberals, it seems, didn’t get an n.b.-pass.

Neg bog. It burst into the public consciousness three days ago. Thousands of Internet edgelords tweeted it. The death threats came immediately. Nasty death threats. These didn’t all look like anonymous sock-puppet accounts either–there were some big-name, big-follower users and even some blue checks in there.

Neg bog. A stealthily racist term. Not all those who tweeted it were white. And not all those who responded were people of color. 

The hours ticked by as Jazmine read story after story about the neg bog phenomenon, read dozens of articles reproducing entire tweet threads of the victim du jour who had dared blast out the phrase and the concomitant responses. Jazmine noted with a cynical amount of glee that these publications even blurred out “neg bog” as if it were a slur on par with other taboo slurs.

Maybe it was, for all Jazmine knew. Maybe it was the worst thing anybody could say, ever, to anyone who was not straight or white. 

The pattern was always the same. First, responses came urging the tweeter of the forbidden phrase to “Be better,” or expressing dismay that “Really? You went there?” in equal measure. The timestamps were within seconds of each other, sometimes dozens of replies at the same time; Jazmine could only imagine what a mess they made of the recipient’s mentions.

And then they grew more disturbing. Case in point: The article which published a sampling of responses to Carter’s neg bog tweet, amusingly titled “Far-Right Alt-Right Neo-Nazi White Supremacist Does Exactly What We’d Expect Him To Do”–ignoring the fact that his girlfriend Chontice is black–depicts such unique and healthy exercises of one’s right to free speech such as “u messin where you dont belong white-ass motherfucka,” “white boy about to get pounded,” “say goodbye to ya girl’s pussy motherfucker,” and the like. Some were more erudite, but those were interesting only in their bland conformity to the same template: You don’t understand your privilege, you have a lot of learning to do, and you’ll be sorry.

The doxxing came next. Jazmine recalls seeing those with horror, the pictures of Carter’s house, the publication of his phone number and address, Chontice’s contact info, even his mother’s. Jazmine told Carter to contact the authorities. Carter blew her off. “Why? They won’t do shit.”

He wasn’t wrong. But Jazmine’s efforts to encourage Carter to at least create a paper trail were ignored. 

Soon, the threats got too graphic for even the news websites and the culture blogs to reproduce. Knives, guns, armed men and women with their faces masked in threatening poses posted with Carter’s address and telephone number. Naturally, this was fine with the various Internet platforms who controlled nearly every aspect of digital life in America. The oligopoly was a great friend to have if you played by their rules. Or enforced them.

For others who had succumbed to the temptation, who had blasted “neg bog” out into the ether, the apology came next. Jazmine noted with sardonic pride that Carter had been the only one not to apologize. 

The mea maxima culpas disturbed Jazmine in a different way. Whether posted in writing or as a video, the language and mannerisms were those of zombies in a hostage video, humiliated, demoralized zombies.

“Hi. My name is so-and-so and I used to be a white supremacist/racist/neo-Nazi/alt-right troll. I also used to believe that free speech came without consequences. Recently, I participated in a disgusting/wrong/racist/insensitive online trend. I did not realize how hurtful words could be/that words are violence, but I have been educating myself and listening to the voices of people of color [ignoring that many who tweeted the verboten words were themselves not of European extraction] who have set me on the right path. I plan to heal the damage/pain I have caused, and learn about the lived experiences of marginal voices. To that end, I’ll be donating [insert large sum of money] to [some political cause or activist group] so that we can progress as a nation,” blah blah blah. 

Or some variation on the theme. Jazmine just hoped they people forced into such groveling apologies had a good set of kneepads and a weak gag reflex. 

This was strange enough, but what really set Jazmine’s curiosity alarm into flaming blaring overdrive was that nobody seemed to know how the whole neg bog thing had started. But Jazmine wanted to. She needed to, the way a man lost in the desert needs water. That compulsion had been a constant companion in her life. Journalists were notoriously lazy, incurious hacks directed from above to craft the narrative of the day; this was a bitter fact that a good left-winger like Jazmine had to swallow like particularly nasty medicine, but swallow it she did. It didn’t kill her faith in humanity, just in that particular profession. And it made her vow to do a better job than any of them.

The mainstream stories blamed “the chans” or “the boards” for the whole neg bog thing, but that didn’t sound right. Why would the last remaining bastions of free speech and unrepentant shit-posting devise some scheme to identify those of a similar ideological bent? It made no sense. But like so many things in this hyper-fast, attention-deficit world, the squirrel-like focus of all the very online people didn’t lend itself to deep thought.

That’s where Jazmine came in. 

She had never gone to journalism school. She actually went to college for English on a Lacrosse scholarship when she was still a he named Jose Fernandez. Her major changed along with her gender early her junior year, and she emerged as Jazmine with a degree in history. And one thing a history degree taught you to do, one of the only valuable things in Jazmine’s estimation, was to seek primary sources.

The problem was, when it came to neg bog, there were none.

* * *

It was ten to midnight now. The only lead Jazmine could find was a person deep on the boards calling him-or-herself GroypWretch. He-or-she had an anime avatar and not a frog. It was Yuki from Wolf Children, a normie-tier choice but Jazmine still approved. 

It didn’t matter much. GroypWretch would only respond to Jazmine’s inquiry about his last post from four days ago with a terse message telling her to get fucked like the disgusting trap she was.

Okay then. Jazmine had been called worse. It still, but not as much as messages exhorting her to kill herself. Hanging out with enough right-wingers like Carter Flannigan had inoculated her to such insults only up to a point; it would be nice to be treated like a human being by everyone. Someday.

That last posting from GroypWretch was a cryptic warning that “Something big is coming, something that’s going to put everything we’ve done to shame. Next day or two. Set your watches.” Tellingly, there were no further replies on the thread, nor could she find any utterance of neg bog. It seemed that the spectre of the attack swarm had silenced even les enfants terribles of the Internet.

But it wasn’t going to silence Jazmine. Not anymore.

Lying in bed, the glow of her smartphone bathing her face in 400 to 500 nanometers of unhealthy blue light, Jazmine, with her heart beating and her mouth gone dry, tweeted the following:

“Fuck it, I’m not afraid. Ready, everybody? Here we go: 

Neg bog.

Sucks when a tranny has more balls than you tough guys, doesn’t it?”

It took severe mental energy to scrape together enough willpower to shut her phone and not immediately refresh the app and check her mentions, but the sleep Jazmine got that night made such a heroic sacrifice worth it.

* * *

Jazmine Fernandez, Free Speech Warrior, host of American Awesomeness, and she of over to 500,000 followers, was well and truly frightened. 

She walked surreptitiously through the most touristy, most heavily trafficked part of the city she could think of: Pike Place Market. It was late morning and she had just bought some candied nuts from a vendor near the entrance. His stall was next to a fish seller whose proprietors were doing that fish-tossing thing out-of-towners loved. This particular group were Chinese, no longer sticking out for the masks they wore as they pressed flesh with the locals. 

Turning away from the aerial fish, Jazmine hurried up some stairs, intending to buy a cold brew and sit at a table near as many people as current social distancing practices allowed. 

She’d woken up around seven; earlier than normal, but she felt as though she’d emerged from a long hibernation. That good mood did not last when she turned on her phone. The last vestiges of sleep shimmered and faded as sunlight hit her eyes, along with the sense that yesterday had been the dream. 

The number of texts waiting was beyond comprehension; Jazmine never knew her phone could handle that many messages. 

She ignored them and went to her voice mails, scrolling down past dozens of numbers she did not recognize until she found Booster. Ignoring his message, she tapped the “Call back” button and waited for his familiar drawl.

“Jazmine, fuck! Goddamn what the fuck?”

“Good morning to you too?”

“Are you all right?” Booster was frantic, his voice a scratchy shriek. 

“Yeah, just woke up. You saw it?”

“Did I see it? The fuck is wrong with you, Jazz? God damn it, you apologize right now! It’s not worth it!”

“Slow down, and don’t yell at me,” said Jazmine. She hated how her voice devolved into nasally uptalk when she was agitated, but Booster was being unfair. 

“Grow up,” Boost spat back. 

“No, you grow up, and grow a pair while you’re at it. Do you want to find out what happened to Carter or not?”

“He’ll show up. He’s just, you know, being Carter.”

“Oh yeah? Have you gotten in touch with Chontice?”

Silence. And then: “No.”

“Me neither. Even Carter’s parents are freaking out now.” Her hand went to her lap, where Chessie used to sit when she’d talk on the phone, ready to pet the dog that wasn’t there. “This is different. This is wrong.”

“Did you talk to Dill, Jazz? Did you check with him?” When Jazmine, embarrassed at failing to follow up on the most obvious lead, said nothing, Boost went on. “I did, okay? Want to know why he apologized?”

“Why?” said Jazmine, her voice a petulant shadow of its usual clarity.

“Because they sent him real time screenshots of himself. From his webcam. Motherfuckers got into it somehow, saying all sorts of crazy shit like ‘We know where you live’ and ‘You’re gonna pay,’ all of that stalker stuff. This isn’t a game , Jazmine. Apologize, or I swear to God . . .”

“You swear to God what, Boost? What? You’re going to, I don’t know, make an example of me? You’re an atheist, anyway–”

“Skeptic!”

“Oh, same thing.” Jazmine waved a hand. “This is the only way I can figure out where Carter is. Trust me, Boost. I got this.”

“Just be careful,” said Booster. He sounded deflated, his fury replaced with concern. “You need me to come out there? It’s only four-and-a-half hours from Indy to Seattle.”

“You’re sweet, but no. I’ll be fine. Trust me: they can’t touch me. I’m too . . . how do you always put it?”

Booster laughed; it felt good to hear that. “Demographically dense.”

“Right. I’m too demographically dense for them to do anything without serious blowback. Don’t worry about me, Boost. Worry about Carter.”

“I am, Jazz. I am. Trust me.”

“And you trust me. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

“Okay Jazz, sounds good.” She heard Booster exhale heavily. “Just, please do me a favor and don’t check your mentions.”

They hung up, and Jazmine checked her mentions.

* * *

Condensation beaded on Jazmine’s glass of cold brew. It felt good against her forehead, a small way to fight back against the summer heat. If only she had a way to fight back against the torrent of hate, real hate, directed her way.

The responses to Jazmine’s neg bog tweet started out in typical concern troll fashion: “Oh no, not you too”; “Don’t tell me you’re one of them, Jazmine”; “Please reconsider this tweet. Sincerely, someone who respects you and your work.”

They were mostly from people she did not know, accounts she didn’t think she’d ever interacted with in her life. Many were blue-check accounts, officially sanctioned and authorized movers and shakers in the political and cultural spheres actually taking an interest in Jazmine.

And then, as was the pattern with the neg bog Internet swarm, they got worse.

“Ur dead cunt,” read one of the milder messages. “I know Rodney your doorman,” read another, “$500 says he lets me into your place you evil racist piece of shit.”

“Kill yourself trannie.”

“Gonna chop your balls off, whore.”

“Fuckin racist freak.”

“You are dead. You hear me? Dead!”

“The only place for racist white bitches is in the grave.”

“Got somethin with ur name on it,” coupled with a picture of a large, black gun. There was another with a similar message coupled with a picture of a large, black cock.

It was demonic. Jazmine was too smart to believe in God, but she sure believed in evil. She looked surreptitiously around the coffee shop. It was crowded, giving her some anonymity, but Jazmine couldn’t escape the feeling that several sets of eyes were focused on her.

It’s only online, she told herself. The Internet isn’t real life. The same shibboleths she told other culture warriors when their hearts wavered and they faced doxxing or cancellation. Jazmine should follow her own advice . . . but she didn’t think any of them had experienced anything like this.

Dylan. Dylan had.

Fingers shaking, cold brew with organic cashew milk left undrunk, Jazmine called Dill, praying to some undifferentiated being, or the universe, or whatever, that he’d pick up.

“What’s up?” Dill barked in his brusque, New England accent.

“Dill, oh God, it’s . . .” How could he not know? Dill was one of the most plugged-in out of all of them. “Dylan, I tweeted it.”

“What?” 

“You know the . . . the words, Dill. That you did.”

“Well, you have to apologize now.” He sounded calm and confident. That was what Jazmine needed now.

But she would never cave in to the mob. 

“I know I should, Dill, but . . . but they win if we do.”

His next words were enough to stun Jazmine into utter speechlessness. “They already have, Jazz.”

How could he say that? What does he mean? That stands against everything–everything–we’ve ever fought for. 

“I’m telling you, you can’t fight this, Jazz. Don’t bother.”

“But it doesn’t mean anything, Dill!”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does, Dill! Words have meaning, Dill! This matters!”

She was crying, and her voice was loud enough to elicit looks from several patrons. Jazmine wiped runny mascara with a finger and turned towards the window. The sight of Puget Sound calmed her, and though having her back turned to the room was scary, she could at least see the rest of the shop reflected in the window. “I even called the cops because the death threats–oh God, they’re bad, but of course there’s nothing they can do . . .”

“Apologize and move on. You’ll be fine. Look, I know this is wicked hard for you, but you won’t lose a goddamn thing by apologizing. It sucks, Jazz, but it’s for the best. I want you to still have a career, you know?”

“How . . . how will I if I cave?”

“You’re not a coward, come on! We all know that.”

“Who started this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why are they doing it?”

“I don’t know, Jazz.”

“That’s not good enough!”

The coffee shop went silent. Jazmine could feel the weight of eyes on her like a funeral shroud. She stood and left, the cold brew in its clammy plastic cup still on the table.

“Miss, you forgot this!” someone called after her as she ran down the steps to the street, intending to head down Alaskan Way to Waterfront Park, but turning down Union Street to her apartment instead.

Jazmine should take an Uber, but what if the driver had it in for her? 

Paranoid! I’m going crazy! Talk about losing it. But she would take no chances. “Carter’s still missing, Dill. Have you heard from him?”

“He should’ve apologized.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Something felt off. This wasn’t like Dylan. He was just as combative as Carter, maybe not as ideologically rigid but he could certainly go toe-to-toe with Carter on the “pugnacious asshole” scale.

“Nothing, Jazz. It’s just I’m too smart to risk everything for some abstract principles. If we’re the only ones playing by these fuckin’ rules, then what’s the point?”

“I don’t . . . I’m gonna go, Dill.”

“Want me to come keep you company?”

“You’re in Boston, Dill. It’s . . . it’s fine.” In truth, Jazmine didn’t trust him, but now she did feel like she’d be safer with someone else by her side. Maybe she’d call Boost and see if his offer still stood. “But thank you.”

“Okay, but if you change your mind, let me know.”

“Thanks.”

“And Jazz . . .”

Jazmine swallowed hard. “Yes?”

“Just apologize. Before it’s too late.”

* * *

She did not apologize. No, that wasn’t Jazmine’s style. Neither was sitting on her bed, huddled in a ball and crying, wishing against all hope that this stuff would just somehow go away. 

It would, if she apologized. But then she’d forever be known as a hypocrite who gave in to the outrage mob, and that would be worse than all the scary online abuse.

Almost.

How could she sleep? There was no way she could sleep. But she couldn’t go outside either. It felt so strange, but she wasn’t safe out there. Anybody on the street could . . . what? Be an agent? Be some sort of secret morality police who would get their pound of flesh for Jazmine’s blasphemy against the pieties of the day?

It was ridiculous. But those threats were so raw, so real. Stupidly, she unlocked her phone and scrolled through them again:

“Damn TERF ruining the world for trans folk and people of color.”

“. . . knife fit up your fake snatch . . .”

“. . . what your head look like on my mantlepiece . . .”

“. . . never seen a tranny bleed before . . .”

Jazmine let out a strangled cry and threw her phone across the room. She had a weak arm, and it thumped lackadaisically against the white-plastered wall before falling into a pile of unfolded clean laundry lying in a basket. 

It felt better getting rid of the device, like a weight had been removed from her heart. Jazmine fell back down in bed, her hand reflexively going once again to her stomach, where Chessie used to sleep, before she finally drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep. 

She couldn’t say how long that dreamless sleep lasted, but it had to have been at least six or seven hours, since the light coming through her blinds was not sunshine, but street lights. 

Jazmine blinked, her eyes gummy. She’d fallen asleep in her contact lenses, but that was a small price to pay for some honest-to-goodness rest. That was what she needed. Her mind was clear and she could think once again. She could utilize her famously logical and analytical brain which had made her a maven of the YouTube world.

Her bedside clock told her it was past midnight; she’d slept much longer than expected. Whatever. When your brain and your body told you they needed rest, you’d better listen. 

But the late hour gave Jazmine serious misgivings about the knocking at her door, soft but insistent. What the hell? she wondered. Was it Boost, doing that annoying thing where he’d have GrubHub deliver her a pizza or a burrito in the middle of the night from halfway across country? Was he trying to cheer her up? Or was it something else?

Come on, Jazz. Don’t be paranoid. Internet randos love threatening dissenting thinkers. This’ll all blow over and make a great story. Neg bog doesn’t mean a thing. It’s an urban legend. Dill just chickened out for a moment. There’s nothing to worry about. 

Except Carter was still missing.

“Coming,” Jazmine called, pulling a bathrobe over her rather slinky pajamas and grabbing her purse from the table near her apartment’s front door. 

“Open up, Jazz,” came a voice from the other side.

“Dylan?” Jazmine tried to pat her hair down into some semblance of order as she fumbled with the locks on her door and pulled it open without bothering to look through the peephole.

With a sinking feeling, she wished she had. It was Dylan, but he was not alone.

“Told you I could make it here quickly,” Dylan said, tapping an aluminum baseball bat against an open palm. 

“Dill, what . . . who are they?”

Behind Dylan stood four of the strangest people she’d ever seen: a scrawny black teenager wearing a black belly-shirt and thick problem glasses; a morbidly obese white girl with dyed pink hair and matching lipstick; a muscular woman with a shaved head, black lips, and spikey jewelry; and a doughy, balding white guy with a scraggly beard and food stains on his t-shirt. Like Dylan, each carried a baseball bat. Like Dylan, each had a strange smile and a look of murderous glee in their eyes. Not just glee–something else. Something metallic, almost golden . . . 

“You should’ve apologized, Jazz,” said Dylan. He stepped into the apartment and raised his bat.

I also write novels: check out The Last Ancestor here.

Writing: You’re Not Doing It Wrong Despite What Internet Randos Might Say

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If writing hurts, you need to get a better typewriter.

No, no, that’s not it . . . let’s see . . .

If writing hurts, you should probably talk to your doctor about your arthritis . . . 

Almost there . . . wait, I’ve got it:

If writing hurts, get that broken glass off of your keyboard, and buy a couple of Band-Aids to boot.

There. I’ve solved your problem.

What is this, exactly, a solution for? For a strange idea I was made aware of by my friend, the author Chris Lansdown, that writing should somehow hurt.

Chris shared this bit of Internet writing advice he came across: 

Writing Tip: If “editing” your first draft consists of fixing a few typos and changing a word here and there, you’re not doing it right. A first draft should be ripped apart, refashioned, and sewn back together. Anything less is vanity.

“Anything less is vanity.” No, sorry. That’s not how it works.

As Chris notes, some writers can bang out very good first drafts. Others can’t. It’s not a question of “vanity” or “not doing it right.” It’s a question of skill and writing method. As with most things artistic, there is no right or wrong process, because process is not a one-size-fits-all thing. There are some universal tips and techniques that usually work for most people, but to say that usually first draft should be “ripped apart,” “refashioned,” and so on, or else you’re just ego tripping, is stupid.

I was going to say “preposterous,” but that’s too kind a word.

So where does this idea that “art is pain” come from? Do artists in other media think this way? Are painters like, “Listen bro: if you’re not painting over your entire painting 47 times, you’re doing it wrong!” Does a lack of ripping apart, refashioning, and sewing back together a first draft of a painting make, say, Bob Ross a bad painter?

NB: I will not tolerate Bob Ross slander on this blog. You have been warned.

Anyway, Chris gets to the root of where this idea comes from, and I agree with his assessment:

There is of course the explanation that such a writer just cannot see beyond their own limitations, but I can’t help but wonder if this attitude isn’t tied in to the idea of the tortured genius. It was an idea that, so far as I know, became popular somewhere in the 1800s, around the time of Byron and Shelley, who were tortured not so much be genius as by their inability to control their lust. Shelley, in particular, seems to have been afflicted in this way, and his vices seem to have been excused by himself and his wife and friends as, not weaknesses, but virtues. To try to say it was not bad for Percy Bysshe Shelly to cheat on his pregnant wife, they invented a new kind of morality where artists were excused from being halfway decent human beings because of the enormous value they gave to humanity. Their art, I mean.

I’m not sure why this idea was popular, but it does seem to have had some currency through at least the 1930s—at least if golden age detective stories are anything to go by. It also seems, curiously, to be more popular with women than with men; it seems to have been female writers who wrote about it approvingly, and within their fiction it was generally only the women (and occasionally a close male friend) who bought the nonsense. Why that is, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s related to the “bad boy” phenomenon. And for that reason, the idea that one should tear a first draft up in a passion of anger at how far it falls short, and completely rework it, may be related.

As a related side-note, actual geniuses never seem to have been tortured, except occasionally by actual problems, like Beethoven being deaf. Shakespeare was, so far as we know, as reasonably happy as a recusant Catholic could have been in England in the late 1500s. Mozart seems to have no greater troubles than having a period when he didn’t make much money because a war made it hard for musicians; summary biographies don’t mention anything which would interest modern people by similarity, such as profound depression.

Shelly’s genius, to the degree that anyone still holds that he was a genius, seems very overrated. Ozymandias is a good poem, but certainly nothing worth excusing adultery for.

Casting the mind’s eye over other examples of tortured geniuses and actual geniuses, it seems like perhaps the thing that’s really attractive about the tortured genius is not the genius part, but the torture part. And I can’t help but think that this attitude that writing should be torture—what else can throwing away something one worked long and hard at be?—is an attempt to try to find some shreds of life in pain, by people who have no idea where to find life in this world.

Ah, the “tortured genius” trope. The artist featuring their hurt and inflicting their neuroses on US as they work them out via their art. You see this in the old Boomer mentality that “drugs totally made all of those bands good, maaaaan.”

It’s a joke to think that artists have to be tortured. It’s just silly. For every tortured genius, there are dozens of normal people who made fantastic art and weren’t miserable people and awful to others.

There’s another idea at play here, one we see with “aspiring writers” and other internet folks who look to other internet folks for validation that they’re doing this writing thing the right way: the idea of discipline.

“How do you handle writer’s block? What do you do if you don’t feel like writing?”

Just write, dammit. If you write or produce anything based upon the mercurial whims of your personal feelings, you’ll get nothing done. Hunker down and do it. You don’t perform your best at your day job based upon your feelings. At least, I sincerely hope you don’t; if you do, then God help your clients or anybody else who’s relying on you. Why would you rely on your feelings when it comes to doing something you ostensibly love to do, and would do for free?

I don’t understand it. 

Finding the energy to do stuff will be the focus of another post, but it’s still an important issue to talk about now. I understand full well that the original poster didn’t say anything about a lack of motivation, and in fact the idea that a first draft should basically be destroyed and rewritten or else you’re doing it wrong might speak to the writer in question having a lot of discipline. It’s just that it’s dumb.

Also, what’s the point of writing Moby Dick just to tear it up and write Don Quixote instead. Where do you stop? When you tear up Don Quixote and write Harry Potter instead?

I’m being ridiculous to prove a point here. Everybody has their own writing process–outlining versus winging it is but one obvious example–and they’re all equally valid as long as they work for you. If your process allows you to produce good writing, then that process is successful. How that process looks doesn’t matter. Maybe it matters to Mr. or Mrs. “Anything less is vanity,” but it sure doesn’t matter to me. And it shouldn’t matter to you either.

You’re not doing it wrong, and you shouldn’t listen to random internet people who tell you that you are (but totally feel free to listen to random internet people who tell you that you’re not). 

“This story is fantastic. Great setting, interesting worldbuilding, and solid characters. I loved it!”

Dreamers and Misfits Status Update

The IndieGoGo campaign for Dreamers and Misfits is over. While I did not hit my goal, I did reach a high enough mark to have Jesse L. White paint the cover.

The bottom line is this: THE BOOK WILL STILL HAPPEN. I’ll just have to edit it myself, which is already underway; this will take more time, but the important thing is that it will get done.

Given this, I’m also closing the fan survey. What I’ve got is more than enough for the book–you’ll see when you dig into the Appendices.

You can still support me via direct donations through my PayPal account, or by buying my books.

Next step, beyond editing and formatting: get the fan profiles to backers who selected that perk, integrate those into the book, and interview those backers who selected those perks, as well as get addresses and preferred eBook format for those who selected either the digital copy or signed paperback perks.

I’m excited and while I’m disappointed we didn’t hit the full mark, or reach our stretch goals, I am still very excited to finish Dreamers and Misfits and get it into all Rush fan’s hands. 

Rock on everyone, and thanks for your continued support!

The Intersection That Cannot Be Ignored

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“I just want apolitical entertainment!” some say. “The creator’s politics don’t matter!”

Except they do. Not to your enjoyment of said art–plenty of stuff is good and can be enjoyed even if you personally disagree with the artist’s politics or personal life.

That said, the creator’s politics and overall worldview will by necessity influence their art. This goes for the people at the top as well as at the bottom. All fiction is message fiction. The questions are: what’s the message and how is it being delivered?

In order to get an idea of this before spending money and time on a book or movie or whatever, you can look at the people behind it.

Commenter Hardwicke Benthow recently left an excellent comment on this post explaining this concept and why it matters. It’s such a good comment, I’m reproducing it in whole here:

When it comes to the MCU in particular, the politics behind the scenes are a long and interesting story.

Marvel Studios was once owned by the Marvel corporation, whose CEO was Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter. When Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk (both released in 2008) were made, Marvel (including its movie division) was an independent company run by Perlmutter.

Now, Perlmutter was not a flawless Marvel CEO. He was hard to work with, was a notorious skinflint who cared about money above all else, assumed that movies led by female and non-white superheroes would inherently financially underperform, etc. But while he had his issues, he may have served to check and balance a separate (and far worse, in my opinion) set of issues that his once-underling Kevin Feige seems to have.

[image error]Isaac Perlmutter

As Marvel CEO, Perlmutter cared about money above all else. And I’m sure that he was smart enough to know that heavy-handed social justice programming doesn’t help sell tickets or toys. One person who worked under Perlmutter stated, “Ike Perlmutter neither discriminates nor cares about diversity, he just cares about what he thinks will make money.” Furthermore, Perlmutter was (and still is) right-wing in his politics. So much so that he’s currently an adviser to President Trump, and has been spotted at both the White House and Mar-a-Lago. He is even one of President Trump’s biggest donors, which Armie Hammer publicly “cancelled” him for on Twitter last year.

Unfortunately, Perlmutter fell for the smooth-talking Bob Iger, who convinced him to sell Marvel to Disney (a deal that went through in 2009).

While Kevin Feige was (and still is) the creative powerhouse of the studio, Perlmutter and his Marvel office in New York held the power of the purse, and Feige had to run all decisions through him. This continued even well into the Disney era of Marvel Studios, as Disney initially left the Marvel command structure untouched (presumably seeing how successful Marvel Studios already was and figuring “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”)

So keep in mind that Perlmutter, who is right-wing in his politics and wouldn’t dream of unnecessarily risking financial loss, was essentially the head honcho on every MCU movie until and including Captain America: Civil War. Feige had to clear everything through him. When you consider this, it’s no wonder that every MCU movie released from 2008-2015 avoided going full-blown “woke”.

But during the production of Captain America: Civil War (2015), Feige and Perlmutter had a serious falling out over creative differences resulting from Perlmutter’s concerns over the movie’s budget. This battle left Feige so frustrated that he threatened to quit, so Disney integrated Marvel Studios directly into the Disney command structure, thus cutting off all influence from Perlmutter’s New York office and effectively ousting Perlmutter from his leadership position at Marvel Studios. Feige now answers directly to Disney’s Alan Horn. Although shorn of all creative control over the movies, Perlmutter still had a nominal position at the Marvel corporation until 2020, when he was completely fired (less than a year after Armie Hammer outed him as a Tump donor; coincidence?).

If you look at the chronology of the MCU movies and look for social justice messaging or pandering present or not present in each movie, it becomes instantly obvious that it was not long after Perlmutter’s 2015 departure that the plague began to grow within the MCU. Although they are often greenlit and announced far in advance, a typical Marvel movie goes into actual pre-production about two years before premiering on theater screens. That means that movies starting pre-production around 2015 and premiering around 2017 would be the first ones to be created from beginning to end with no significant influence from Perlmutter.

And right on schedule, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok (both released in 2017) had an amount of “wokeness” that was unprecedented for the MCU at the time. This was especially the case with Ragnarok, which is subtextually about the necessity of destroying Western civilization. Its director, Taika Waititi, has been shockingly candid about his extreme disrespect for source material, fans, and Western civilization. I’ve documented the extreme wokeness of the movie and its director in these two comments at John C. Wright’s blog:

http://www.scifiwright.com/2020/03/retrocausality-at-marvel-comics/#comment-4853439265

http://www.scifiwright.com/2020/03/retrocausality-at-marvel-comics/#comment-4857485069

Then in 2019, Marvel released Captain Marvel, a blatant third-wave feminist propaganda movie that, for extra woke points, also ruined the Skrulls by portraying them as innocent refugees oppressed by the colonialist Kree and separated from their families.

Both Kevin Feige and Bob Iger have let slip that Perlmutter’s 2015 ousting was at least partially because of his opposition to what they viewed as “diversity” (keep in mind that among leftists like Feige and Iger, that word doesn’t hold it’s true meaning).

In his memoir, The Ride of a Lifetime, Iger wrote that he, Alan Horn, and Kevin Feige felt that the predominance of white male characters in the MCU was problematic and came up with plans to change it, and that Ike Perlmutter and the “New York team” (those working under Perlmutter in Perlmutter’s New York Marvel office) were against these plans.

[image error]Kevin Feige

Furthermore, Iger states that he called Perlmutter to demand that he greenlight Black Panther and Captain Marvel against his will. This incident would have been about a year or two before Perlmutter was eventually removed from his Marvel Studios position by Iger, and a couple of years before either Black Panther or Captain Marvel went into actual pre-production (the greenlighting phase comes quite earlier than pre-production–years earlier in some cases).

Iger also mentions being extremely impressed with Ta-Nehisi Coates in general and his run on Black Panther in particular. Coates is a far-left political activist and his Black Panther run (not to mention everything else that he’s written) heavily reflects that.

When asked in an interview if Perlmutter’s 2015 ousting was due to his lack of support for diversity, Kevin Feige replied “That’s part of it.”

Despite Perlmutter’s imperfections, I think that Feige was at his best when he was reined in by him. Now that Feige is free of Perlmutter’s control, he can run things the way that he wants to. And that includes not only promoting wokeness in the movies, but also encouraging his actors to be Twitter SJWs.

Chris Evans (who was shy and rarely talked about politics when first cast as Captain America, but has become a rabid SJW on Twitter more recently) said the following:

“Marvel has never said anything. On the contrary — when I bump into Kevin Feige the first thing out of his mouth is ‘Man, I love what you’re doing [on Twitter].’”

And Feige said this about Evans’ Twitter activism:

“I don’t see it as trash-talking. I see it as very astute, very honorable, very noble, very Cap-like. Commentary and questioning. I’ve said to him, ‘You’re merging! You and the character are merging!’”

Think about that. This is the boss of a major movie studio encouraging one of the actors working for him to be a Twitter SJW, and filling his head with nonsense about this being the same as becoming like Captain America. That’s unprofessional at best.

It’s a shame that Chris Evans couldn’t learn some lessons from the version of Captain America that he played, rather than from Kevin Feige. The movie version of Captain America is a small-government, anti-globalist, Christian patriot.

In Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), the Red Skull shouts “I have seen the future, Captain. There are no flags!”, to which Cap replies “Not my future!”

In The Avengers (2012), Cap gets ready to pursue Thor and Loki, when Black Widow warns him not to go after them, saying, “These guys come from legend. They’re basically gods.” He replies by saying “There’s only one God, Ma’am. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.”

In Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Nick Fury reveals that S.H.I.E.L.D. (essentially a fictionalized FBI or CIA) is creating a new surveillance/weapons program called Project Insight that uses artificial intelligence to predict which people will become terrorist threats and automatically kill them with giant drones before they act. Cap disagrees with the decision to create this program, believing that this is a vast overreach of power and could be abused. Cap is proven right when it turns out that S.H.I.E.L.D. is infested by HYDRA agents who plan on using Project Insight to kill everyone who the AI system predicts would stand in the way of their new world order (a phrase actually used by a HYDRA member in the movie).

In Captain America: Civil War, Cap disagrees with the Avengers’ decision to sign the Sokovia Accords, an agreement that would force the Avengers to only go on missions that are approved by the World Security Council (essentially a fictionalized United Nations), as he believes that the Avengers need to be capable of acting independently of foreign authorities.

Interestingly, all of those movies except the last were made fully during Ike Perlmutter’s reign, and the last was made during its last days. None of the post-Perlmutter Marvel movies had featured scenes or themes like those that I just mentioned.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you cannot avoid this stuff. The answer, however, isn’t to strive for some mythical apolitical purity, but to have your art teach true, beautiful, and good messages. After all, if you’re on this side of the divide, that’s our bread and butter. Notice how even the best art made by left-wingers seems to embody traditional right-wing principles of heroism, honor, duty, sacrifice, and objective good versus objective evil (see, e.g., Star Wars, Harry Potter, as well as the best of the MCU, as Hardwicke pointed out above).

You know, all the stuff they mock, belittle, and work to undermine in the real world.

Positive values abound in my fiction. Check it out for yourself!

Signal Boost: The Pulp Mindset: A NewPub Survival Guide by J.D. Cowan

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J.D. Cowan is one of the most exciting authors in the PulpRev, crafting tales of adventure and wonder with a modern edge but steeped in the adventure fiction of yore. Cowan is prolific and varied too, writing hardboiled action, interplanetary sci-fi, and superhero stories, among others.

How does he do it? From where does he draw inspiration and energy? That’s where his new book, The Pulp Mindset comes in.

No, this isn’t a how-to writing guide. What it is is a guide to how you’ll need to think of you want to compete against the traditional dinosaur publishers of sci-fi and fantasy, and a primer on what pulp is and how to live it:

Out with the Old, in with the NewPub

Nobody reads anymore. In an age where audiences consume more art than ever before, books have remained irrelevant to the ever-changing West. Nothing seems to change this unavoidable reality. The industry is over.

Or is it?

A new frontier has opened where anything goes! We live in a pulp landscape now, a place where the past and present comes together to create a better future. In this book you will learn just what this NewPub world is, how to adapt to it, and change the way you think about everything.

The Rules Have Changed!

You can do anything! The Pulp Mindset will help you adapt to this crazy climate and become the best artist you can be. Read on and join the revolution!

The Pulp Mindset is punchy, direct, and practical. If you’ve been seeing what the PulpRev has been putting out and want to get in on the action, read The Pulp Mindset, available here.

Full review to follow.

Enjoy some of my own PulpRev work, like The Last Ancestor, available here!

Book Review: The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

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The Fall of Hyperion may as well be titled Hyperion: Part Two, as it picks up right where the first book in Dan Simmons’s Hyperion Cantos abruptly ends. Yet The Fall of Hyperion doesn’t merely pick up the story, it runs with it into wild, exciting directions before delivering a deeply satisfying conclusion that actually resolves mysteries while creating a few new ones to propel the narrative into the final two books of the series.

To discuss a sequel is, by nature, to delve into spoilers, so while I’ll try to be as circumspect as possible in this review, I may give away plot points you’d rather discover for yourselves. For starters, The Fall of Hyperion is written in several different styles, much as Hyperion tackled each pilgrim’s narrative distinctly–Paul Dure’s story in epistolary form, Brawne Lamia’s as a hard-boiled detective noir, Martin Silenus’s in the first person, and so on–The Fall of Hypeiron‘s main narrative character is a second cybrid (biological humans with an AI consciousness created by the TechnoCore) reconstruction of the poet John Keats–last seen before he was killed and implanted into Brawne Lamia’s neural shunt as Lamia’s lover and the father of her unborn child–who goes by the name of Keats’s real-life friend, the artist Joseph Severn. Here, the second John Keats cybrid works as an artist drawing pictures of important scenes in history.

The Fall of Hyperion begins with Keats/Severn attending a party on the planet Tau Ceti Center, headquarters of the Hegemony of Man’s government, as the war with the Ousters begins in earnest. Keats/Severn becomes very close to Hegemony CEO Meina Gladstone, sitting in at high-level meetings and offering his advice in addition to illustrating the historic proceedings for posterity. Simmons writes the Keats/Severn sections in a first-person perspective, shifting to third-person present when Keats/Severn dreams about the pilgrims on Hyperion.

In a weird twist, some residual echo of the first John Keats cybrid, now in Brawne Lamia’s head, allows the second to know what is happening on Hyperion, and through these two narratives we learn the fate of Templar Het Masteen, presumed killed by the Shrike as the pilgrims crossed the Sea of Grass on their way to the Valley of the Time Tombs; whether Father Lenar Hoyt was able to find relief from the cruciform parasites attached to his body; whether the Consul will find help for the pilgrims or betray them; whether Martin Silenus will find his muse; whether Brane Lamia is able to discover why Hyperion is so important to the Shrike Church, the Hegemony, the Ousters, and the TechnoCore; whether Fedmahn Kassad is successful in defeating the Shrike in armed combat; and the fate of Sol Weintraub’s daughter Rachel, cursed by the Shrike to age backwards. Further, you’ll finally learn just what the Shrike actually is and why it is on Hyperion. 

There’s a lot at stake, and though Simmons weaves a sprawling tale that covers many worlds and the spaces in between, The Fall of Hyperion never loses focus and remains a tight, well-constructed reading experience despite its scope and breadth. My hat is off to Dan Simmons–he’s basically crafted a sci-fi future as varied, imaginative, and philosophically heavy as Frank Herbert’s, but leaner and more focused. 

There is so much to get into: The true fate of Old Earth, the true purpose of the Time Tombs and the Shrike, the war between the three factions of AIs in the TechnoCore, and the difficult choices CEO Gladstone must make to save humanity. Though written in 1990, Simmons anticipated the culture-deadening effects of high technology, instant access to information and virtual worlds, and the constant buzz of electronic activity. It’s as if he knew the Internet was coming and what it would do to human beings, leading to a period of comfortable stagnation where we’d have material excess with little of lasting value to show for it. 

But humanity’s detrimental overreliance on technology is but one aspect of The Fall of Hyperion. Simmons asks questions about God and His nature, about history and leadership, about friendship and loyalty, all the while showing that goodness, truth, beauty, heroism, bravery, and forgiveness can and do play big parts in serious and mature science-fiction. There is on gray, sludgy ambiguity or moral relativism to be found. Nor are their politics gracelessly shoehorned into the narrative. There are only timeless truths and questions that human beings have been asking since we were capable of conscious thought. 

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And yet, the very fact that Simmons writes about truth, beauty, heroism, and these other universal themes is in and of itself a political act, at least when read in the second decade of the increasingly stupid twenty-first century. One wonders whether, if Simmons were a new writer today, he’d get his Hyperion Cantos published at all, given their lack of the current hallmarks of approved science-fiction, including but not limited to: the primacy of race- and sex-based identify politics; transgenderism; homoeroticism; nihilism; thinly-veiled allegories for contemporary American politics; and criticism of organized religion, usually Christianity, and usually the Catholic Church. 

I’m glad Dan Simmons wrote this book when he did, and I am eager to read the second half of his Hyperion Cantos, beginning with Endymion and ending with The Rise of Endymion. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that The Fall of Hyperion has another stellar cover by Gary Ruddell. Give me fully painted covers over generic minimalist graphic design any day.

I highly recommend The Fall of Hyperion–and obviously Hyperion when you have to read first if you want this book to make sense. I hope Simmons managed to stick the landing of the entire series as well as he stuck the landing of The Fall of Hyperion. 

Support independent science-fiction in the spirit of Hyperion: asking the big questions and tackling big themes and having fun doing it.

The Do-Nothing League

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In a story guaranteed to give you a sickening sense of deja vu . . .

I used to disagree with them a bit on this, but people like @RealKiraDavis, @MartinaMarkota, and @robsmithonline are absolutely right when they say we on the Right have to throw ourselves into entertainment more.

I’m amazed how effective it is for the Left.

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) July 23, 2020

. . . mainstream conservative heavyweights still don’t get it.

No arguments here.

— Kira (@RealKiraDavis) July 23, 2020

There are tons of conservative and right-wing creatives out there. Maybe the mainstream ConInc. dorks don’t care about them because they’re not making explicitly political art.

But I think it’s more because the conservative grift comes from complaining about stuff rather than doing stuff. ConInc. saves its nastiest vitriol and its most fervent action for its own side, those who actually hit back.

The more stuff sucks, the more ConInc. can complain with “CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT AOC JUST SAID?!” clickbait, and the more the ad revenue keeps rolling in.

This raises the question to people like Jesse Kelly and Kira Davis and Rob Smith: what have you done? I’m leaving Martina Markota out of this because she’s actually out there in the entertainment world. But the others? Jesse Kelly writes some pretty based columns from time to time; Kira Davis works for Red State, which is as boring, lame, middle-of-the-road, stuck-in-1985 warmed-over NRO type conservatism; and Rob Smith is black and gay and a vet and used to be a liberal but now is a Republican.

If you want to talk entertainment, how about sci-fi and fantasy? Have any of these people lamenting the sad state of conservatives in the arts reached out to me, or Brian Niemeier, or Jon Del Arroz, or Adam Lane Smith, or Russell Newquist, or Benjamin Cheah, or Rawle Nyanzi, or Richey, or Jessie White, or Shell DiBaggio, or Josh Howard, or Timothy Lim, Jon Mollison, or John C. Wright, or J.D. Cowan, or any of the rest of us?

No.

I can count exactly two people in the conservative world who have: Christian Toto of Hollywood In Toto and Oregon Muse of Ace of Spades HQ.

That’s it. And while I appreciate them greatly, there needs to be more.

On the filmmaking side, did any of these people get in touch with Mike Cernovich, Jon du Toit, and Scooter Downey about their excellent media documentary Hoaxed?

Of course not. Conservative media ignored them just as hard as liberal media did. It’s pathetic.

Conservatives bemoan the lack of conservatives in academia . . . but don’t go into academia.

Conservatives bemoan the lack of conservatives in government service . . . but don’t go into government service.

Conservatives bemoan the lack of conservative public school teachers . . . but don’t become public school teachers.

And conservatives bemoan the lack of conservatives in entertainment . . . but don’t go into entertainment. Sure, they’ll quote Andrew Breitbart (whom they hated when alive and pretend to love since he died), but won’t create any culture that will flow down to politics.

Maybe because they forget that culture is downstream from religion.

* * *

I’ll grant the left one thing: they’re right when they say “conservatives can’t make art.” I used to wonder if it was a “won’t” versus “can’t” thing, but lately I think it’s the latter.

But right-wingers can make art.

There’s a huge difference.

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Conservatives are, by their name, closed off to any new experience. They don’t want to leave their comfort zone. Conservatism is liberalism-lite, just with more weird focus on protecting and enriching the rich instead of the left’s weird focus on murdering babies and ruining society. But otherwise, they’re slow progressives. Today’s progressive policy is championed by conservatives five years from now.

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Right-wingers, on the other hand, believe in tradition, family, nation, faith, history, virtue, and what is right for the individual and society as a whole, not atomized individualism, not do-what-thou-wilt libertarianism, and not Austrian economics/free-trade globalism that hollows our nations and communities.

In other words, right-wingers believe in the fundamental stuff of good stories.

Look at Star Wars, at least the original movies. They were made by a left-winger, but they are right-wing stories. Yes, even the anti-Vietnam theme in Return of the Jedi. The movies are full of faith (celibate Jedi warrior monks), bravery, selflessness, healthy relationships, and redemption.

Look at Harry Potter. The books were written by a left-winger but feature many trappings of classic literature from much less progressive time, as well as the themes of heroism and sacrifice and the stark difference between good-versus-evil. And no, neither The Empire nor Voldemort really represent “the right.” They represent the type of evil imperialism right-wingers oppose as much as left-wingers do.

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Look at comics like Watchmen, a “deconstruction” of heroes. And yet who resonated the most? Who were we supposed to find farcical but instead found the only likable character because he had an uncompromising moral core? That’s right: Rorschach.

Even when they’re not trying, leftists can’t help but gravitate to the themes they hate and oppose: morality, clarity of vision, and doing the right thing no matter the cost.

* * *

The right should have no trouble competing against gray boring nihilism, endless reboots and remakes, stale superhero fare, and fantasy and sci-fi absent any adventure or wonder but heavy on the women’s studies nonsense.

Another reason conservatives can’t compete is because they seem to think they need, and people want “conservative” art, not good art that upholds their values. There’s a huge difference.

Part of this seems to stem from the strange desire to be “apolitical” and “not make message fiction,” when the fiction they do make is embarrassingly heavy handed.

No. First, all art is political and carries a message. The trick is you need to make your message the truth. Why else do you think Harry Potter resonates, despite its fans’ weird obsession with grafting left-wing politics onto it? Because it upholds timeless values and virtues.

None of this is to say I don’t think left-wingers can’t make good art. That’s patently false and absurd. There’s so much good art made by left-wingers it’d take years to list it all. But today’s left-wing is not the left-wing of yore. Not by a long shot. Conversely, today’s right-wing is, thank God, not the conservatives of yore either.

Ms. Davis and Mr. Kelly could put their money where their mouths are and have Red State and The Federalist actually promotes all the great art made by the right that’s out there. But in keeping with their unwillingness to indulge in new experiences, they’d rather whine about Dead Franchise Number 7 and keep totally owning AOC on Twitter.

Lame. That’s why nobody things they can make any waves in the cultural sphere.

Unlike ConInc., I and many others eagerly jump into the arena. Support my work: there’s lots more to come.

It’s None of My Business

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There comes a time in everyone’s life where you realize that, in one sphere or another, playing by the rules is a sucker’s game. When you are expected to be a good little law-abiding citizen fighting for the constitutional rights of every man while the other side, whomever that may be, gets to beat the snot out of you and burn your stuff down with impunity as the police look on, you either realize the true nature of the game or you slide further into irrelevance.

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I understand very well that the Fourth Amendment is a thing, that American citizens are entitled to certain constitutionally guaranteed rights. I understand that, in a perfect world and all things being equal, we should stand up and defend the rights of anyone being railroaded by the government, regardless of who they are and what they stand for. After all, this could happen to any of us, right? And if the shoe was on the other foot, we’d love for our opponents to rush to our aid, wouldn’t we? This is America after all, isn’t it? We’re all in this together.

Are we?

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But it’s not a perfect world, and all things are not equal, and the opponents of the good, the beautiful, and the true have never, in the history of their existence, been shamed into behaving by the good behavior of those they seek to destroy.

In fact, all your exemplary, principled, above-it-all posturing does is embolden them.

This is because those who find fists and fire, deplatforming and disemploying you so you can’t feed your family–and find it funny–as valid forms of political expression, as long as you don’t get to do the same to them, have no shame.

You can’t shame those who want you dead.

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Yes, in a perfect world, all things being equal, we would be there standing up for the rights of our enemies. We’d be defending their rights to do and say whatever even though we disagree with them and all that jazz. But all things aren’t equal and haven’t been for decades.

When some hardcore progressives start risking all to replatform and re-monetize and re-hire and rehabilitate the reputations of various rightie personae non grata, when they vociferously defend us and decry their own side with the same passion that conservatives are willing to throw their own fighters to the wolves, when they lay down their Molotov cocktails and Marxist aims, and police their own murderous extremists. . . then maybe I’d shed a tear when Federal agents drag them off the streets of America’s failing cities.

Because, and here’s the secret: they’re going to do this to us when they have the power anyway.

They need to change their ways and start sticking up for us, not the other way around. I won’t hold my breath, though, because I’ve seen this movie many times and while I’m no genius I have pretty good pattern-recognition skills.

So until that day comes, it’s none of my business.

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What my business is is writing top-rated science-fiction, including exciting sword-and-planet adventure. Buy The Last Ancestor here.