L. Jagi Lamplighter's Blog, page 17
January 2, 2016
Four Funerals and a Wedding
John did not have a chance to write his normal holiday story this year, so I gave him one of mine to post.
This story comes from my Against the Dying of the Light background, which currently remains unwritten–this story would take place somewhere in the later half of the series.
December 21, 2015
There Will Be War — Released Today!
Signal Boost!
The Premier Mil-SF Series Returns 25 Years Later
At the height of the Cold War, the most important series in military science fiction was THERE WILL BE WAR.
Created by science fiction legend Dr. Jerry Pournelle, the nine volumes of THERE WILL BE WAR combined the very best science fiction writers with some of the most influential military writers on the planet. A living chronicle of the Cold War, the series was thought to have ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.
But history did not end. A new power, dedicated to world peace through world submission, has arisen from the ashes of Iraq and continues to steadily grow. A new type of asymmetric warfare, 4th Generation War, has struck everywhere from Paris to San Bernardino. The USA and Russia are clashing everywhere from Ukraine to Syria, as China quietly expands her influence in the South China Sea. It is clear to even the casual observer that, once more, there will be war.
There Will Be War Volume X is edited by Jerry Pournelle and features 18 short stories and articles that explore the new challenges posed by new enemies and new forms of warfare. From genetic war on Planet Earth to space combat among the distant stars, from ancient history to hyperintelligent weapons, the latest volume in the revived anthology series contemplates warfare from every angle. The non-fiction essays are intelligent and insightful, written by subject experts representing four of the U.S. Armed Forces; the centerpiece is an original essay by military historian Martin van Creveld on the bloody history of "War and Migration" that is as significant as it is timely.
The Volume X contributors are: Gregory Benford, Charles W. Shao, William S. Lind, Lt. Col. Gregory A. Thiele, USMC, Ben Bova, Allen M. Steele, Michael Flynn, Martin van Creveld, Matthew Joseph Harrington, Cheah Kai Wai, Col. Douglas Beason, USAF, ret., John DeChancie, CDR Phillip E. Pournelle, USN, Russell Newquist, Brian J. Noggle, David VanDyke, Lt. Col. Guy R. Hooper, USAF, ret., Michael L. McDaniel, Poul Anderson, and Larry Niven.
There Will Be War Volume X is 401 pages, DRM-free, and $4.99. Available only on Amazon.
All New Release subscribers who buy the book on Amazon before noon EST on Wednesday, December 9th, have permission to download free copies of West of Honor by Jerry Pournelle as well as the novel First Conquest from bestselling mil-SF author, and Volume X contributor, David VanDyke. It is not necessary to send any proof of purchase prior to downloading.
For those who require EPUB format, you can either email us a request with your receipt from Amazon attached, or better yet, download Calibre, the free open source ebook management program. The Amazon file is DRM-free, so it can be converted automatically in a manner of seconds. We recommend using Calibre; it is extremely useful to any reader.
"History has not ended. The world has not united in peace and liberal democracy. This series has been revived to again offer stories and essays on the challenges of the future; in a time when There Will Be War. "
– Jerry Pournelle
December 10, 2015
A Supeversive Story: A Girl I knew
A Girl I Knew
A brief Superversive short story by our favorite teen, April Freeman!
I knew a girl, she was an angel. Her beauty, soft and innocent, was so pure it seemed untouched by the corruption of the world. It was a beauty I’d never known before. Her soft hair was like a waterfall floating down her back, her skin was ivory and smooth, and she had a smile to be sought after; for it made her glow with warmth, and joy sparkled in the crinkles by her eyes. Her sweetness and humor was intoxicating, her wit sharp and her mind clear.
Her beauty was subtle, not like the glaring magazine covers with their glossy, made-up girls. No man passing by would ogle her, as they would the film stars with their showy bodies. Not this girl, she was a different kind of beauty. Pure, angelic, it come from within her. No one could deserve such a grace, yet that was exactly why she came to me.
I cannot tell you how many cold night and isolated days I spent, stuck in my own destructive ways, before I met her. But I’ve long since forgotten those days. She has that kind of effect on you, you know? When it feels like forever since you last were happy, truly happy I mean; then here she comes, all wide-eyed at the world and dazzling, making you remember what joy is, how to wonder at things again like when you was a child, and suddenly you can’t stop smiling, all the dark nights fade, and all you see is her.
You’ve got it bad by then. Your whole world has got a new spin on it, and it’s her. Smiling, beautiful, amazing her! You do anything for her. She makes you into a gentleman, brings out the best in you and forgives you of your worst. You treat her right, buy her gifts, you learn to control yourself when that beauty sits close to you, for you know that pleases her. And she’s sweet and humble, never demanding, or at least not without reason. She lights up your world, and you do anything you can to return, even a small portion, the love she gives freely to you. She gives without restraint. But nothing is free. Everything comes with a price.
Many have sought after her hand, wishing to make her their wife. To have her as their own to love and cherish for the rest of their lives, for surely it would take that long to repay all she has given. But all such dreams futile. For an angel has wings, and wings are meant for flight. She can no more rest in a home on the land, then a bird can make its nest in the sea. It is, perhaps, her curse.
Her only reward, when she seeks the lost and those drowned in despair who have forgotten how to love, is to heal them. An angel, a beauty, a fair maiden sent to show them how to live and love in a better way. Yet there is often pain that accompanies such growth, and always another soul she must fly to.
I thought my heart was broken all over again, but I found I had more strength then I thought. It was her last lesson to me, to not let myself fall, and if I did, to pick myself up again. And I found my past, the loneliness and depression that held me captive before, was just that. The past.
It’s been years since I could call that beautiful angel mine, and many things have happened. Another girl, more suited for myself, and as lovely and noble as the day, has planted herself firmly next to me. A true woman such as her would’ve never put up with the ways of my past self. She’s an amazing catch, who has filed my life with many wonderful and terrible things, such as children.
Yes, many things have passed, and this miracle-worker of a girl had long since slipped to the back of my mind. But, as much of my life has moved on and time has passed, I realized another price I had not seen in my sorrow for my angel’s departure.
To heal a man fallen into darkness, such as I and many others were, she had to get close. You know, it wasn’t enough to simply tell us there was still love and beauty in the world. Stubborn as we were, she had to show us. And so with each broken heart healed, a piece of hers was given any. And though she can never run dry, for her heart is deeper and purer then any can imagine, it is no less painful when she draws away.
If you have looked into her eyes, those eyes the color of the sea, you’ll see and understand exactly what I say. For in her gaze holds both the merriment and playful innocence of the rolling waves, and the depth and knowledge of the ancient creatures of the deepest sea. For, to heal each broken heart, she has wrapped hers around it; and when two hearts are mixed together, it’s never easy to separate. She has carried a thousand loves and a thousand broken hearts, none less painful then the last. And this girl, this crusader for the broken and forgotten, has a thousand more to come before she’d done.
I knew a girl, she was an angel, never stopping, always searching, saving lives, and spirts of men. She was a hero, never realized ‘til the battle was done, and a healer, taking the price of the medicine upon herself. She was beauty, she was life, she was powerful, and she was hope. And for a time… she was my angel.
For more from April, visit her blog Lost In La La Land.
November 29, 2015
Superversive Blog: Help the spin rack make a comeback
Article by LOU ANTONELLI
Back in 2008, when Tor publishing launched Tor.com, they apparently decided to reach out to mainstream media – as opposed to genre outlets – and used an outside public relations company.
I was contacted as the managing editor of an Associated Press daily newspaper, and offered an opportunity to do a phone interview with Tom Doherty. At this point, I had already been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction and Jim Baen’s Universe, among others, so I obviously knew who Tom Doherty was, and I jumped at the opportunity.
My far ranging interview ultimately became a newspaper article which I ran in a weekend edition, as well as another story I sold to the SFWA Bulletin. The Bulletin article focused on Doherty’s role in the genre, and his observations on the changes and turmoil in the publishing industry he’d seen in his long career.
The newspaper article focused on the role Tor envisioned for the web site. In talking about publishing original fiction, Doherty mentioned that those paperback spin racks we used to see in stores and pharmacies were often a point of entry for people to the s-f and fantasy genres.
They used to be ubiquitous – those tall, vertical wire racks that you could spin around to see all four sides loaded up with mass market paperbacks. Doherty noted how the consolidation of book distribution had all but eliminated them. He said he hoped the fiction published by Tor.com would serve the same function as a point of entry for new readers in the digital age.
A few months later, I was reminded of how common those spin racks used to be – and how often you could find science fiction and fantasy titles in them – when in the course of rummaging through some boxes of books I found a paperback copy of Diana Wynne Jones' "A Tough Guide to Fantasyland" which I bought in the only convenience store in Ovilla, Texas, in 1998.
Back then I owned and operated a small community weekly paper – so small I brought the papers to stores and vending machines myself. One day, as I dropped off copies of The Ovilla Vanguard at the store, I saw the “Tough Guide”, and I was so tickled that I bought if off the spin rack.
Picking it up again in 2009, I recalled what Doherty had said, and how true it was – the spin racks had really pretty much disappeared.
Now, fast forward two and half years, to the summer of 2011. I was scheduled as a panelist at ArmadilloCon in Austin, and one of the panels was on “Secret History”. The Thursday before the convention I stopped at a local Dollar General in Mount Pleasant to pick up some groceries on the way home from work, and while standing in line, I caught sight of a spin rack.
Yes, Dollar General still believes in the spin rack. I walked over and saw that among the books was a copy of Steven Brust's "The Paths of the Dead". While I don't read high fantasy, I bought the book because Brust was on the panel with me.
The following Sunday afternoon, as the panel on Secret History broke up, I stopped and pulled the book out. I told Steve "you know you are a best-selling author when you're on the spin rack in the Dollar General in Mount Pleasant, Texas! That means your books are sold EVERYWHERE!"
He really got a kick out of that! I asked him to sign the book, too, and he did, with a big smile.
The next time I visited the store, I checked out the spin rack again. This time, it looked like there were a few more s-f books. I found a copy of Kristine Katherine Rusch's "Paloma”, and then I remembered something Doherty said back in 2008 when I interviewed him.
Not only did spin racks make cheap paperbacks available to the masses, he said, but the men and women who ran the distribution routes made note of what genres sold, and they would restock accordingly.
So I decided to test a theory. If the same principle applied, every time I bought a paperback the person stocking the spin rack should notice.
Bear in mind, these paperback books are only selling for a dollar or three dollars – they have been discounted. I felt it would be a small investment – whether I planned to read the books or not –to support those last lonely spin racks.
I’ve been doing that for four years now. I’ve found plenty of excellent titles, such as the Martin and Dozois “Warriors 3” anthology, “Fugitives of Chaos” by John C. Wright, “The Last Days of Krypton” by Kevin J. Anderson, “Rebel Moon” by Bruce Bethke and Vox Day, and the “Fellowship Fantastic” anthology by Greenberg and Hughes, among many others.
I’ve donated most of them to free book giveaways, a local book store, and, best of all, a group called Books for Soldiers. If you join the group, you can review requests and make up boxes for soldiers who specifically ask for s-f.
Has my plan to boost s-f paperback sales worked? Hah!
Over the past four years whoever was in charge of stocking that spin rack loaded it up with so much s-f and fantasy books that they finally moved all of them to a separate shelf nearby. Now the spin rack has the westerns and romances and thrillers, while s-f and fantasy has shelf space!
This is just one store, but I’d like to suggest that if you do the same, who knows what good may come of it? How can you go wrong?
Earlier this week, I stopped by that Dollar General store again, and as usual looked over the spin rack. Now I have an enormous selection of books to choose from. I saw an anthology I never heard of, another Greenberg/Hughes compilation:
“Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies”.
And yes, once again, I plunked down a dollar and took it home.
I feel somewhat bad for the authors – I know they will get essentially nothing from my purchase at that price, and I know some of them in that anthology personally, such as Jody Lynn Nye and Steven Silver. But in the long run, just getting more and more of these books out to the public has to have a positive effect.
I know many fans and authors who are so broke that spending even a dollar or three dollars hurts, but I would suggest that if you can, these little occasional investments may pay off and help bring back a greater distribution of fantasy and science fiction mass market paperbacks.
My local grocery store recently did an extensive remodeling, and in the process added a shelf for mass market paperbacks. I assume they must have some market information to indicate that, after the slump caused by the advent of digital media, the cheaper, durable and disposable paperback format is making somewhat of a comeback.
Let’s encourage that.
November 26, 2015
November 18, 2015
Superversive Guest Post: Transport and Guides from Hellish to Heavenish
Today, we have a guest post by the intrepid S. Dorman
Transport and Guides from Hellish to Heavenish
Without a guide, how is one to get from the city of destruction to the celestial city? During the Middle Ages pilgrims traveled on foot (or hoof). In John Bunyan's work, Christian conversed with Apollyon, out of whose "belly came fire and smoke," and whose look conveyed disdain. But his intermittent guide was The Evangelist. Modern characters traveled by comet or a train, and what about drones for post-modern transport? Below are some inklings of how one might be guided afoot, but first some variations on the theme of transport.
Nathaniel Hawthorne used the template of John Bunyan's footsore progress to send himself comfortably toward his own celestial destination on the railroad. He wrote, "The engine looked more like a sort of mechanical demon that would hurry us to the infernal regions than a laudable contrivance for smoothing our way to the Celestial City." (Hawthorne, The Celestial Railroad.) The engineer of Hawthorne's train is apparently Apollyon, who kept the Castle of Destruction in Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress From This World To That Which Is To Come.
Sixty years after Hawthorne's train ride, Mark Twain sent his first person character to heaven aboard a comet cum steamship. In Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven readers are traveling through outer space along with Stormfield, hitching a ride on a comet far beyond our solar system. Twain wrote:
"In less than ten seconds that comet was just a blazing cloud of red-hot canvas. It was piled up into the heavens clean out of sight—the old thing seemed to swell out and occupy all space; the sulphur smoke from the furnaces—oh … nobody can half describe the way it smelt. …The captain of the comet had been rousted out, and he stood there in the red glare for’ard, by the mate, in his shirt-sleeves and slippers, his hair all rats’ nests and one suspender hanging, and how sick those two men did look!" Twain's story carries the type of "backwoods fantastic" fairly even-handedly, balancing it with the comet-like steamship's 19th C. applied science.
In C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce conveyance from hell to heaven is a flying bus. The features of its driver, though filled with light, are a far cry from those of Apollyon. Lewis, the traveller, saw in this driver's face only competence, authority, and the intension to do his job. He is one of Lewis's "solid people" doing the work they've got to do. The bus and driver come from heaven itself, not the infernal regions suggested by Hawthorne's engineer. In his railway carriage, Hawthorne had seated himself comfortably with Mr. Smooth-it-away for a quasi-guide. But Lewis was jostled by passengers fancying arrogance on the part of the driver while complaining that his steady competent look was offensive and unnatural.
These engines of transport suggest a progression, yet the personal is highly evident in this progress. Will some near-future literary journey go a-droning? No doubt some creative soul might fabricate such a journey. Would anything be lost in the adventure, if so? The person as pilot is important to me, so it must be an artificially intelligent drone. Not far off-topic—remember the robass in"The Quest For Saint Aquin" by Anthony Boucher? This artificially intelligent donkey was equipped with both wheels and hooves to aid over various terrains.
In the late 1600s, our first pilgrim began his journey to "The Celestial City" under his own power, on his two feet. Being told as a dream, Bunyan's tale of Christian is, as Hawthorne's story, an allegory, a morality tale with allegorical names. Here now are two Inklings' accounts of footsore travelers moving through hellish landscapes toward a celestial destination. In these examples I usurp two stories as allegory for my theme of guides from the underworld towards an eventual celestial destination.
In CS Lewis's The Silver Chair, Puddleglum is the literal footsore hero, a good guide through Overworld for two children who've been assigned by The Lordly Aslan to find Prince Rilian. Puddleglum leads the way and gives advice (albeit with negative commentary), and also becomes a saving figure in sacrificing a bit of his flesh to mesmerizing fire. However, in The Underworld they are guided by another. They've fallen under the earth, there encountering one of the lugubrious earthmen who commands them to journey with him, and come before the queen of the underworld. This journey through the underworld is dark with strange objects and living, sleeping things, including the gigantic Father Time. Clearly their guide is deeply melancholy, and the populace, through which they make their way, are all very unhappy.
Puddleglum, as played by Tom Baker (The 4th Doctor)
One of the guided children, Jill Pole, wishes she could cheer the inhabitants, and with her friend Eustace and Puddleglum's help, guards against becoming hysterical or unhappy herself. The underworld queen and these experiences echo the narrative of H. Rider Haggard's novel SHE as its heroes travel to meet her inside the mountainous earth—She, the Queen who must be obeyed. CSL's lugubrious guide is under the enchantment of the underworld queen, along with all the realm, and cannot believe in the good of anything—because her will is not to be questioned.
Once their mission is complete Puddleglum and the children emerge with the Prince into Narnia in time to witness the passing in death of King Caspian the Seafarer. Caspian had always wanted to go to the end of the world, to Aslan's Country, but had to oversee the kingdom of Narnia instead. Jill and Eustace are so sad seeing him die that they wish to be home in our world again. But joyfully, in this allegory of traveling to the celestial realm, they find him alive again in the Country of Aslan.
There's another Inklings' story dealing with guidance that is worth considering. I had considered using JRRT's story of Beren and Lúthien's journey because the pair must go through Angband, the underworld of the First Age. Their journey ended in the beautiful afterlife haven of Mandos before their return to life in Middle-earth. Though Huan was with them, still this episode had no guide. The best hell-land guide in a Tolkien story, I find, is the one in which Gollum guides Frodo and Sam through hellish Mordor, beginning on its outskirts. This pathetic, small and malicious guide, along with their horrendous journey, are so familiar to Tolkien readers that I will not recount it here. The demented Gollum has great stamina, is largely unheroic but not wholly so. Gollum's hysterical inadvertent culminating success as guide saves him from his torturing obsession, and transforms the journey for his travelers. They are found worthy to transcend Middle-earth in a vessel powered by the Winds of Manwë, gaining life in the (Celestial) West and healing from all hurts of Middle-earth and hell (Mordor).
CS Lewis provides us with the most heroic guides in this thematic grouping. One is simply going about his business in a competent and conscientious manner; the other, though negative and depressing, is nonetheless of the heroic and sacrificial type. But in all these tales, the heroes are those who make the journey.
Links to Fantastic Travelogue: Mark Twain and CS Lewis Talk Things Over in the Hereafter.:
November 17, 2015
Rachel In The Air
Rachel Griffin in flight, drawn for me during my reading at Sasquan by Codex of Codex and Quizzer, the team behind Tempest in a Teardrop.
And if you haven't been reading Tempest in a Teardrop, they've gotten pretty funny! I recommend this sequence:
Approching the Vile Demense (of the Supreme Lord of Evil Vox Day)
And, best of all (if you've read the rest) I Dared to Delve into the Demesne of Vox Day, and Did not Die The fake comments are really funny. They got Vox spot on.
November 11, 2015
Culture War Post 4: The War Over Archetypes!
Forth in our series of articles of Speculative Fiction meets Jung as viewed through the work of Ruth Johnston in her new book: Re-modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance.
SF Culture Posts
Part One: What Forces Drive the SF Culture War?
Part Two: Optimistic in the Night Land
Part Three: If You Had Introverted Intuition, My Love
Part Four: The War of Archetypes
Q: We've talked about how an individual personality sees the world and how this influences stories, which reflect how we see the world. However, it's a big jump from individuals to groups large enough to sway the votes in a competition like the Hugos. Are you suggesting that everyone who sided one way or the other has the same personality?
A: No, it's tempting but I can't go as far as saying that. If the connection between personality and belief framework was as simple as that, we'd have figured it out long ago. I think what happens is that some leaders and influencers in thought and culture do have a particular cast of personality, and the belief framework they create really does reflect just how they see the world. But other people have many different reasons to subscribe to the belief framework. Certainly, when their own personality also sees the world that way, they're very likely to feel like the framework is just plain true, and that finding it is like coming home. But they can also have different ways of processing the world, and yet be nudged toward this belief framework by their own experiences and fears. And then the sense of group membership takes over; we identify with a group of people and adopt their belief framework, and after that, it just seems right. I think this is true for any split of factions, and I'd say it's true of myself and the people who agree with me—I don't mean it as a hostile way of talking about some "other."
Q: Belief framework is an interesting concept. Can you give more specifics in this case?
A: There's a very strident battle in the wider American culture right now over the basic meaning of being human: does the archetypal image of "man" or "woman" have any real meaning? Is it biological and factual truth, or is it a cultural belief that is limiting our options and making many people unhappy to the point of killing themselves?
The culture war over "gender" has been especially bad in the last two years. You know it started out as about job equality for women, then it shifted to ending exclusion and discrimination against gay people, but lately it is going much farther. If marriage is the same whether a man marries a woman or another man, then in a sense, being a man or a woman is just an external accident, like having a birthmark or blonde hair. What really counts is who you are inside, not how you look on the outside. The next logical step is transgender, the idea that you can shift from man to woman at will, regardless of what you were born. As we write this piece, there are news stories about the federal government ruling that any man who identifies as a woman must be given unrestricted access to women's locker rooms and bathrooms, and a few days ago, voters in Houston rejected a proposed city law to that same effect. I've read any number of opinion pieces that say "gender is a construct," and that you are a man or woman only to the extent that you believe it inside.
I see this battle as a war over the importance or reality of archetypes. As I laid out in previous conversations, Introverted Sensing (part of the A combination) sees the world in terms of visual archetypes, while Introverted Intuition (part of the B combination) suspects that visual appearances may be false fronts or masks. Introverted Intuition is searching for some truer truth that's hidden behind appearances. So at heart, I think the culture war going on around us is a battle for which archetype is better. I call it the Battle of the Archetypes in my own mind. Which is more important, the appearance of being a man or a woman, or the idea that your identity can be different from your appearance?
Because archetypal ideas are part of our animal instinct, our sense of what makes the world right and safe, the war over gender issues always has a layer of fear to it. When I read things about why we should accept whatever gender someone feels they are, there's usually an argument about how people will die if we don't. They will commit suicide, or they will be beaten up by gangs. It's not just an argument, there are news stories linked to show that this very thing has already been happening. The argument goes that we need to make these changes so that people won't die tragically. If you resist and oppose change, then either you don't realize that people are dying, or you don't care, or in your own small way, you're participating in killing them. And if you aren't actually killing them, then you're helping keep them vulnerable by denying their reality a full place at society's table. So it's not an academic dispute, it's felt to be about life and death, good and evil. There's a call to action: which side are you going to take, the side of hate and death, or our side?
On the other side, there's a numerical majority of people in all places and times who feel that Man and Woman are very deep concepts that can't be wished away, nor should they be. If we became interchangeable Humans, there would be dangers that we can't quite imagine now. Retooling obvious reality is like burning your house down just to see what happens. Men and Women have key roles in maintaining the generations of mankind and they each have ways to guard against various evils. It's okay for individuals to be "different," but we must hold onto the archetypal ideas of who we are. Anyone who wants to blur or erase the boundaries between archetypal roles is actively dangerous, perhaps as an individual, but certainly as a force against stable human society.
Q: So the group that is interested in exploring gender roles and seeing them as less restrictive probably loves books like Ancillary Justice or Left Hand of Darkness, which do just that. In fact, it was probably a major factor in Ancillary Justice winning the Hugo in 2014.
A: If there's one thing the two sides in the Hugo controversy agree on, it's that the most important thing about Ancillary Justice is not the story itself but the way it used pronouns to obscure gender. Everyone is "she" until the narrator has a reason to identify male or female. It's explained in the story as just part of the narrator's native language which, like Chinese and Turkish, doesn't specify gender in a normal sentence. The narrator, writing in English, is forced to make gender choices in every sentence, so instead just uses "she" for everyone. But I had to read some of the story to understand the thing about language, because when people talk about Ancillary Justice, they elevate the single pronoun to such importance that it's like the story was really just about obscuring gender. If they liked the story, it's because at last we're disrupting mental assumptions that gender will always be visible. If they didn't like the story, it's because obscuring gender became more important than whatever was happening.
So that's a great example of the wider culture battle interfering in science fiction and crowning a winner in what might otherwise just be a dispute about literary taste. Once it's connected to the wider question of how we, in real life, see men and women, then it's about life and death, good and evil. It's like they're saying, "If you don't like this story, maybe it's because you want to suppress the "'other'." Those who didn't like the story respond in defensiveness: "well maybe if you like the story, it's because you care more about message! You just want to disrupt society." Now it's no longer about literary taste, it's about hurting people or destroying the culture, and things "just got real," as they say. There are pre-existing political sides to take, and these sides are ready to swing into action even if they don't care about science fiction or fantasy.
Q: One thing I've been wondering a lot is why the Sad Puppies are always being called "straight white males" or even "white supremacists." If you look at the works they promoted, and at the people who were doing the promoting, you'll see women as well as men, and plenty of people who aren't of Anglo-Saxon descent. But every time the Sad Puppies said "this is really about stories," the mainstream antagonists said "you're just saying that to cover up that you're actually suppressing non-white, women, or gay people."
A: That's the very point that started me thinking about archetypes and personality. As we've said, I'm an outsider to fandom. But watching this from a distance, I noticed the vehement insistence among the mainstream publishers that it was about race and gender identity. Not just insistence, but vehement, at times highly emotional, insistence. A core idea in my personality theory is that parts of our minds are organized around inborn ideas of what a safe world looks like. When I see such vehemence, I suspect that at least some of the people actually feel, deep in their minds, that safety is being challenged. It's not just "politics" to them, and if you use that word, they'll get mad. Because it's really about whether we'll live in a world that allows us to define who we are, or one that does the defining for us. The people who feel most strongly about transgender and same-sex marriage have their own reasons to fear a world that defines us.
When you already have a strong fear, it's very hard to believe that something isn't connected to it. And with this particular set of fears, Introverted Intuition is a driving force. It is always suspicious that someone is trying to cover things up so that we can't see what's really going on. It easily falls into believing conspiracy theories (though on the other side, someone with that kind of Intuition could be just as hotly against conspiracy theories). All you need is for someone to suggest that "Gamergate and straight white men are trying to hold onto power" and anyone with this belief framework will instantly feel the truth of it. From that point on, any protestations to the contrary are just so much rubbish and self-deception.
When I look at the Sad Puppies, I don't see straight white men, but I do see leaders who have personalities that value human role archetypes. Their books don't try to confuse roles like hero and villain or man and woman. They have what I've been calling the A combination, in which Intuition is willing to believe anything, but Sensing is deeply tied to roles. When they attack "message fiction," they are not attacking fiction with any message, but rather the fiction that has the anti-archetypal message.
Q: These ideas are fascinating. I think, for the first time, I an put into words some of the differences between the A and B, at least in our SF field, that even I, who have sympathy for both points of view, had not seen before.
To the A's, who believe that, say gender roles, may be flexible, but that they have a certain amount of objective truth to them, the concept that they are fluid seems, both unpleasant and–more importantly–uninteresting. So when they see a story about this issue, to them it is as if the author picked that subject so as to stick a finger into their eye, to flaunt a message that the As have already rejected.
But to the B's, to whom the subject of how flexible these roles may be is fascinating, a story exploring these roles is science fiction, i.e. it is the exploration of unknowns, an investigation of what if's, just like other science fiction.
My big question, however, is: Is there any way to solve this mess? If we look at it as based in personality, as you're suggesting, what do we gain? Can this approach help us build bridges between the A’s and the B’s?
A: The first step has to be gaining some understanding of how the other side sees itself, as you just pointed out. What makes the 2015 Hugo antagonism so interesting is that nobody even agrees on what is at stake. How can you solve a problem that isn't definable?
So as you pointed out, you can now see that people who value Ancillary Justice's gender-obscuring language really believe that it's probing a fascinating idea. They want to find ways to downplay and exclude simple appearances, whether it's male/female or just not being a T. Rex. This becomes a proposition you can debate: is appearance and identity a valid part of science fiction, or is it an avenue of speculation that's heading in some new genre direction? That's a problem that can be solved, where hating Larry Correia isn't.
One of the cultural problems we're up against is that the outside culture has already made some decisions about what's good or bad: "if you don't think Caitlin Jenner is a woman, you're bad. You're clinging to the old archetype of Male and that harms a person. Your precious archetype is harmful." Much would be gained if the archetype-busting viewpoint could grudgingly admit that human role archetypes are not always oppressive or harmful. When I claim that some personalities have archetypes built in as instinctive knowledge, and that this is morally neutral, I am flying in the face of what's generally called PC culture. It may be that many people just can't go that far. Their own instinctive fear of archetypes (masks! false fronts!) may block the generosity required to say "okay, you have a different way of being virtuous or kind, one that doesn't require ditching archetypal roles. You're not harmful."
Another huge cultural problem I see is that the word "fear" has been turned into something we're ashamed of. We're generally okay with saying we're afraid of cancer or severe snowstorms, but the idea of an internal fear has been converted into an accusation. Someone who beats up a gay man is a homophobe: he fears alternative sexuality. In this way fear became a code word for something bad, especially if I say that it's a fear you're not fully conscious of. It feels like I'm calling you a stupid noob.
But that idea has to be thrown out completely. The way I talk about personality in Re-Modeling the Mind, every personality is organized around innate fears; we all have inborn templates we can't do without. The "fear" I'm talking about is an existential fear that if you do or permit certain things, bad stuff will happen. If the center doesn't hold, we'll have chaos. If you don't have fears like that, then you don't have a conscience, and nothing personal but I'll lock my doors when you're around.
When we don't recognize our own existential fears, then we assume that our viewpoint is identical to objective fact. (I think my saying this is going to sound to some people like I'm saying "morality is relative." I don't mean that. If you want a fuller explanation, please read my book!) It's basic common sense to sort out misunderstandings before accepting a declaration of war. Then at least the battles and debates can be meaningful.
So, Jagi, let me ask you a question now…
Ruth Q: Do you think that the 2015 Hugos will prompt some debate about the nature of science fiction? One science fiction fan pointed out to me that the Golden Age stories were written in the shadow of the nuclear threat and the race to the moon, so they tended to explore how technology can save us or turn on us. Our time is posing different questions, such as "what is the meaning of civilization?" Will the meaning of science fiction change with the times?
Jagi A: This is an ever-ongoing debate in our field. People have many interesting takes and what one person will allow is science fiction, another person distinguishes as fantasy, magical-realism, or some other genre. Though, often, nowadays, when we say Science Fiction, we really mean science fiction and fantasy. The two genres used to be in different sections of the bookstore, back when I worked at the now-defunct Walden Books, years ago. But there was so much confusion about where to put certain books—and therefore, for customers, where to look for them to buy them—due to the overlap, that, basically, they are the same genre today.
But it is true that when science fiction was young, technology was new and there was a sense that science could do anything, that it could solve any problem. Therefore, science fiction was by its basic nature a hope-filled fields. Not that all stories were hopeful. Many were cautionary tales about science going awry, but the underpinnings of hope were there—both in the field and, more importantly in our culture.
Nowadays, very few people still believe that science is the answer to all problems. So, hope is now not an intrinsic part of the field. Thus, we have a larger disconnect between those who came to it for the hope and those who came for the exploration of “what if”, but not necessarily a hopeful “what if”.
I hope that answers your questions, Ruth.
***
In closing, thank you all for reading. Ruth and I urge our readers to send us their questions, comments, major dilemmas, as well as objections to any part of this series you think is half-baked, as my father would have said. If we get enough responses, we can do a 5th post highlighting readers’ thoughts about the series.
For more of Ruth’s work:
Re-modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance
Ruth’s extremely interesting site on the Middle Ages: All Things Medieval
Ruth’s excellent book on Beowulf
Culture War Post 4: The War of Archetypes!
Forth in our series of articles of Speculative Fiction meets Jung as viewed through the work of Ruth Johnston in her new book: Re-modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance.
SF Culture Posts
Part One: What Forces Drive the SF Culture War?
Part Two: Optimistic in the Night Land
Part Three: If You Had Introverted Intuition, My Love
Part Four: The War of Archetypes
Q: We've talked about how an individual personality sees the world and how this influences stories, which reflect how we see the world. However, it's a big jump from individuals to groups large enough to sway the votes in a competition like the Hugos. Are you suggesting that everyone who sided one way or the other has the same personality?
A: No, it's tempting but I can't go as far as saying that. If the connection between personality and belief framework was as simple as that, we'd have figured it out long ago. I think what happens is that some leaders and influencers in thought and culture do have a particular cast of personality, and the belief framework they create really does reflect just how they see the world. But other people have many different reasons to subscribe to the belief framework. Certainly, when their own personality also sees the world that way, they're very likely to feel like the framework is just plain true, and that finding it is like coming home. But they can also have different ways of processing the world, and yet be nudged toward this belief framework by their own experiences and fears. And then the sense of group membership takes over; we identify with a group of people and adopt their belief framework, and after that, it just seems right. I think this is true for any split of factions, and I'd say it's true of myself and the people who agree with me—I don't mean it as a hostile way of talking about some "other."
Q: Belief framework is an interesting concept. Can you give more specifics in this case?
A: There's a very strident battle in the wider American culture right now over the basic meaning of being human: does the archetypal image of "man" or "woman" have any real meaning? Is it biological and factual truth, or is it a cultural belief that is limiting our options and making many people unhappy to the point of killing themselves?
The culture war over "gender" has been especially bad in the last two years. You know it started out as about job equality for women, then it shifted to ending exclusion and discrimination against gay people, but lately it is going much farther. If marriage is the same whether a man marries a woman or another man, then in a sense, being a man or a woman is just an external accident, like having a birthmark or blonde hair. What really counts is who you are inside, not how you look on the outside. The next logical step is transgender, the idea that you can shift from man to woman at will, regardless of what you were born. As we write this piece, there are news stories about the federal government ruling that any man who identifies as a woman must be given unrestricted access to women's locker rooms and bathrooms, and a few days ago, voters in Houston rejected a proposed city law to that same effect. I've read any number of opinion pieces that say "gender is a construct," and that you are a man or woman only to the extent that you believe it inside.
I see this battle as a war over the importance or reality of archetypes. As I laid out in previous conversations, Introverted Sensing (part of the A combination) [link to past article about A?] sees the world in terms of visual archetypes, while Introverted Intuition (part of the B combination) [link?] suspects that visual appearances may be false fronts or masks. Introverted Intuition is searching for some truer truth that's hidden behind appearances. So at heart, I think the culture war going on around us is a battle for which archetype is better. I call it the Battle of the Archetypes in my own mind. Which is more important, the appearance of being a man or a woman, or the idea that your identity can be different from your appearance?
Because archetypal ideas are part of our animal instinct, our sense of what makes the world right and safe, the war over gender issues always has a layer of fear to it. When I read things about why we should accept whatever gender someone feels they are, there's usually an argument about how people will die if we don't. They will commit suicide, or they will be beaten up by gangs. It's not just an argument, there are news stories linked to show that this very thing has already been happening. The argument goes that we need to make these changes so that people won't die tragically. If you resist and oppose change, then either you don't realize that people are dying, or you don't care, or in your own small way, you're participating in killing them. And if you aren't actually killing them, then you're helping keep them vulnerable by denying their reality a full place at society's table. So it's not an academic dispute, it's felt to be about life and death, good and evil. There's a call to action: which side are you going to take, the side of hate and death, or our side?
On the other side, there's a numerical majority of people in all places and times who feel that Man and Woman are very deep concepts that can't be wished away, nor should they be. If we became interchangeable Humans, there would be dangers that we can't quite imagine now. Retooling obvious reality is like burning your house down just to see what happens. Men and Women have key roles in maintaining the generations of mankind and they each have ways to guard against various evils. It's okay for individuals to be "different," but we must hold onto the archetypal ideas of who we are. Anyone who wants to blur or erase the boundaries between archetypal roles is actively dangerous, perhaps as an individual, but certainly as a force against stable human society.
Q: So the group that is interested in exploring gender roles and seeing them as less restrictive probably loves books like Ancillary Justice or Left Hand of Darkness, which do just that. In fact, it was probably a major factor in Ancillary Justice winning the Hugo in 2014.
A: If there's one thing the two sides in the Hugo controversy agree on, it's that the most important thing about Ancillary Justice is not the story itself but the way it used pronouns to obscure gender. Everyone is "she" until the narrator has a reason to identify male or female. It's explained in the story as just part of the narrator's native language which, like Chinese and Turkish, doesn't specify gender in a normal sentence. The narrator, writing in English, is forced to make gender choices in every sentence, so instead just uses "she" for everyone. But I had to read some of the story to understand the thing about language, because when people talk about Ancillary Justice, they elevate the single pronoun to such importance that it's like the story was really just about obscuring gender. If they liked the story, it's because at last we're disrupting mental assumptions that gender will always be visible. If they didn't like the story, it's because obscuring gender became more important than whatever was happening.
So that's a great example of the wider culture battle interfering in science fiction and crowning a winner in what might otherwise just be a dispute about literary taste. Once it's connected to the wider question of how we, in real life, see men and women, then it's about life and death, good and evil. It's like they're saying, "If you don't like this story, maybe it's because you want to suppress the "'other'." Those who didn't like the story respond in defensiveness: "well maybe if you like the story, it's because you care more about message! You just want to disrupt society." Now it's no longer about literary taste, it's about hurting people or destroying the culture, and things "just got real," as they say. There are pre-existing political sides to take, and these sides are ready to swing into action even if they don't care about science fiction or fantasy.
Q: One thing I've been wondering a lot is why the Sad Puppies are always being called "straight white males" or even "white supremacists." If you look at the works they promoted, and at the people who were doing the promoting, you'll see women as well as men, and plenty of people who aren't of Anglo-Saxon descent. But every time the Sad Puppies said "this is really about stories," the mainstream antagonists said "you're just saying that to cover up that you're actually suppressing non-white, women, or gay people."
A: That's the very point that started me thinking about archetypes and personality. As we've said, I'm an outsider to fandom. But watching this from a distance, I noticed the vehement insistence among the mainstream publishers that it was about race and gender identity. Not just insistence, but vehement, at times highly emotional, insistence. A core idea in my personality theory is that parts of our minds are organized around inborn ideas of what a safe world looks like. When I see such vehemence, I suspect that at least some of the people actually feel, deep in their minds, that safety is being challenged. It's not just "politics" to them, and if you use that word, they'll get mad. Because it's really about whether we'll live in a world that allows us to define who we are, or one that does the defining for us. The people who feel most strongly about transgender and same-sex marriage have their own reasons to fear a world that defines us.
When you already have a strong fear, it's very hard to believe that something isn't connected to it. And with this particular set of fears, Introverted Intuition is a driving force. It is always suspicious that someone is trying to cover things up so that we can't see what's really going on. It easily falls into believing conspiracy theories (though on the other side, someone with that kind of Intuition could be just as hotly against conspiracy theories). All you need is for someone to suggest that "Gamergate and straight white men are trying to hold onto power" and anyone with this belief framework will instantly feel the truth of it. From that point on, any protestations to the contrary are just so much rubbish and self-deception.
When I look at the Sad Puppies, I don't see straight white men, but I do see leaders who have personalities that value human role archetypes. Their books don't try to confuse roles like hero and villain or man and woman. They have what I've been calling the A combination, in which Intuition is willing to believe anything, but Sensing is deeply tied to roles. When they attack "message fiction," they are not attacking fiction with any message, but rather the fiction that has the anti-archetypal message.
Q: These ideas are fascinating. I think, for the first time, I an put into words some of the differences between the A and B, at least in our SF field, that even I, who have sympathy for both points of view, had not seen before.
To the A's, who believe that, say gender roles, may be flexible, but that they have a certain amount of objective truth to them, the concept that they are fluid seems, both unpleasant and–more importantly–uninteresting. So when they see a story about this issue, to them it is as if the author picked that subject so as to stick a finger into their eye, to flaunt a message that the As have already rejected.
But to the B's, to whom the subject of how flexible these roles may be is fascinating, a story exploring these roles is science fiction, i.e. it is the exploration of unknowns, an investigation of what if's, just like other science fiction.
My big question, however, is: Is there any way to solve this mess? If we look at it as based in personality, as you're suggesting, what do we gain? Can this approach help us build bridges between the A’s and the B’s?
A: The first step has to be gaining some understanding of how the other side sees itself, as you just pointed out. What makes the 2015 Hugo antagonism so interesting is that nobody even agrees on what is at stake. How can you solve a problem that isn't definable?
So as you pointed out, you can now see that people who value Ancillary Justice's gender-obscuring language really believe that it's probing a fascinating idea. They want to find ways to downplay and exclude simple appearances, whether it's male/female or just not being a T. Rex. This becomes a proposition you can debate: is appearance and identity a valid part of science fiction, or is it an avenue of speculation that's heading in some new genre direction? That's a problem that can be solved, where hating Larry Correia isn't.
One of the cultural problems we're up against is that the outside culture has already made some decisions about what's good or bad: "if you don't think Caitlin Jenner is a woman, you're bad. You're clinging to the old archetype of Male and that harms a person. Your precious archetype is harmful." Much would be gained if the archetype-busting viewpoint could grudgingly admit that human role archetypes are not always oppressive or harmful. When I claim that some personalities have archetypes built in as instinctive knowledge, and that this is morally neutral, I am flying in the face of what's generally called PC culture. It may be that many people just can't go that far. Their own instinctive fear of archetypes (masks! false fronts!) may block the generosity required to say "okay, you have a different way of being virtuous or kind, one that doesn't require ditching archetypal roles. You're not harmful."
Another huge cultural problem I see is that the word "fear" has been turned into something we're ashamed of. We're generally okay with saying we're afraid of cancer or severe snowstorms, but the idea of an internal fear has been converted into an accusation. Someone who beats up a gay man is a homophobe: he fears alternative sexuality. In this way fear became a code word for something bad, especially if I say that it's a fear you're not fully conscious of. It feels like I'm calling you a stupid noob.
But that idea has to be thrown out completely. The way I talk about personality in Re-Modeling the Mind, every personality is organized around innate fears; we all have inborn templates we can't do without. The "fear" I'm talking about is an existential fear that if you do or permit certain things, bad stuff will happen. If the center doesn't hold, we'll have chaos. If you don't have fears like that, then you don't have a conscience, and nothing personal but I'll lock my doors when you're around.
When we don't recognize our own existential fears, then we assume that our viewpoint is identical to objective fact. (I think my saying this is going to sound to some people like I'm saying "morality is relative." I don't mean that. If you want a fuller explanation, please read my book!) It's basic common sense to sort out misunderstandings before accepting a declaration of war. Then at least the battles and debates can be meaningful.
So, Jagi, let me ask you a question now…
Ruth Q: Do you think that the 2015 Hugos will prompt some debate about the nature of science fiction? One science fiction fan pointed out to me that the Golden Age stories were written in the shadow of the nuclear threat and the race to the moon, so they tended to explore how technology can save us or turn on us. Our time is posing different questions, such as "what is the meaning of civilization?" Will the meaning of science fiction change with the times?
Jagi A: This is an ever-ongoing debate in our field. People have many interesting takes and what one person will allow is science fiction, another person distinguishes as fantasy, magical-realism, or some other genre. Though, often, nowadays, when we say Science Fiction, we really mean science fiction and fantasy. The two genres used to be in different sections of the bookstore, back when I worked at the now-defunct Walden Books, years ago. But there was so much confusion about where to put certain books—and therefore, for customers, where to look for them to buy them—due to the overlap, that, basically, they are the same genre today.
But it is true that when science fiction was young, technology was new and there was a sense that science could do anything, that it could solve any problem. Therefore, science fiction was by its basic nature a hope-filled fields. Not that all stories were hopeful. Many were cautionary tales about science going awry, but the underpinnings of hope were there—both in the field and, more importantly in our culture.
Nowadays, very few people still believe that science is the answer to all problems. So, hope is now not an intrinsic part of the field. Thus, we have a larger disconnect between those who came to it for the hope and those who came for the exploration of “what if”, but not necessarily a hopeful “what if”.
I hope that answers your questions, Ruth.
***
In closing, thank you all for reading. Ruth and I urge our readers to send us their questions, comments, major dilemmas, as well as objections to any part of this series you think is half-baked, as my father would have said. If we get enough responses, we can do a 5th post highlighting readers’ thoughts about the series.
For more of Ruth’s work:
Re-modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance
Ruth’s extremely interesting site on the Middle Ages: All Things Medieval
Ruth’s excellent book on Beowulf
