John C. Wright's Blog, page 102
April 22, 2013
Personal Appearance!
Mrs Wright, the authoress Virginia Johnson and I will be signing books at Prospero Books in historic downtown Manassas, Virginia on Saturday, May the Fourth, between 11am and 3pm.
The Address:
Prospero Books
9129 Center St.
Manassas, VA 20110
(703) 257-7895
May the Fourth be with you!
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 18, 2013
It is Nice to Read a Review
.. from a Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic reviewer who understand the book better that I do. I am not being sarcastic: the reviewer here points out an interesting (to me) and unintended (by me – what the muse intended I do not know) contrast between the human and alien civilizations in HERMETIC MILLENNIA . I hope, as the author, I can be forgiven for quoting at length, since the reviewer is discussing a work I’ve spent years pondering and planning, writing and rewriting.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Wright’s Writing Corner: Watch Out, or You’ll End Up in My Novel
The lovely and talented Mrs Wright says this:
Today’s post is in reponse to a reader’s request. Come by and comment on
your experiences with writing from real life.
http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/285281.html
Excerpt:
First, I will start by saying that if there is a legal aspect to this, I don’t know what it is. There is this disclaimer the publishers put in books that says that any resemblance of characters in the story to real people is coincidental. I don’t know what they do when the resemblance is not coincidental. It’s not like my publisher asked me: is anyone here based on a real person?
I have written many characters based on real people…or on real people’s roleplaying characters. Jacob and Nicky in the Lost Boys books are based on my sons. Miranda’s family in the /Prospero Daughter /trilogy were based on NPC (Non-Player Characters) John invented. While that is not the same as basing them on a real person, the process of copying the character and adapting it to your story.
Adapting them to the story is the key. I have found that I cannot actually put the real person into the story. I have to make them my own. Or rather, make them their own character that fits the specific background and let them come alive in their own right. If I spend time worrying about whether the real person would do that, I freeze up.
The characters can be inspired by so-and-so, but they can’t be so-and-so. They have to be themselves.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 17, 2013
Nothung! Nothung! Neidliches Schwert!
I confess I have having a rather glum day today, and then I saw something that cheered me immensely. Somewhere in the world are kindred souls to mine, who remember the old, fine, strong stories and seek to see them told again in new ways.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 10, 2013
When they came for the Auto Industry, I did nothing, because I was not an Industrialist
This is from MSNBC Host Melissa Harris-Perry, who is also a professor at Tulane University.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 6, 2013
Tell the Federal Government to Respect Religious Freedom
Monday, April 8 is the deadline for submitting comments to the Obama Administration on the latest version of its HHS contraceptive/abortifacient/sterilization mandate.
Please take a moment to submit a short online comment in support of religious freedom.
Religious freedom is not just the right to go to church. It is the freedom to live one’s faith, including the freedom to run a business or charity in accordance with one’s religious beliefs.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 5, 2013
Whistle While You Work
If, like me, you have too much free time on your hands, you have probably wondered why Snow White, at least as Walt Disney portrays her tale, has small woodland animals to help her with her household chores, with bunnies and chipmunks scrubbing dishes, songbirds helping to sew and fawns dusting the furniture with their white tails.
If, like me, you have too much education on your hands, you probably have used Aristotelian categories to analyze the question.
If, as a child, you ever asked the question “But WHY must I go to bed?—I am not sleepy!” and heard the answer, “Because Daddy says so!” and you found the answer unsatisfying, you experienced the frustration of hearing the wrong kind of answer to the right kind of question.
The sleepy child is asking for a justification, asking what fair purpose light’s out for unsleepy children serves, and the impatient parent is explaining a formality, that a command from a lawful authority must be obeyed independent of its fairness. It answers a different “why” than the “why” that was asked.
Aristotle answers that there are four kinds of answer to the question “why.”
Final cause is motive, or, in other words, it is the answer in terms of that for the sake of which the thing is done to explain the thing.
Formal cause is structure, or, in other words, it is the answer in terms of how the thing is put together, the relation of parts one to another, to explain the thing.
Material cause is substance, or, in other words, it is the answer in terms of the content, what stuff the thing is, to explain the thing.
Efficient cause is the past, or in other words, it is the answer in terms of the mechanics of cause and effect leading up to the thing being asked.
In this case, we can discard the answer that “Snow White has maidservant bunnies because Uncle Walt put them in the story” – this tells us the efficient cause, and we don’t care about that.
Likewise, we can dismiss the answer that “Snow White has maidservant bunnies because it is a fairytale and therefore made of make-believe: in real life, when I tried to get my bunny to clean the rug, he left poop pellets over everything, and ate the leather slip covers on my couch” — this tells us that you never want to ask me for advice on housekeeping or animal-training.
Likewise again, to answer that “Snow White has maidservant bunnies because they are a convenient labor-saving pets for her” gives the story-world final cause, that is, it tells us Snow White’s motive inside the story; but it does not tell us the real-world final cause, that is, it does not tell us Walt Disney’s motive outside the story.
Presumably the motive of Uncle Walt is to tell a good and memorable and charming story to entertain both young and young-at-heart. That we can presume, but it does not answer the question asked.
In this case, the answer we are asking is one of formal cause, that is, what makes this particular conceit entertaining, that is, charming and memorable and good?
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 1, 2013
Walking Through the Valley of Mist
A reader with the avian yet leonine name of Griffin ask this question:
I guess I’m curious about how you get from inspiration to actual words on the page… Do you start with an interesting idea and see where it takes you as you write? Your short stories tend to have a very strong structure, and both the internal and external references are very well woven. Do you find this difficult to achieve, or does it come easily, perhaps due to lots of practice? How much work is it to get from an idea like “the redemption of the animals” to the finished work posted above?
The short answer is that writing is like walking through a valley of mist. Before setting out, you see the peak on the far side of the valley where you want to end up, you pick out, as best you can from your coign of vantage on the ridge before entering the valley the likely landmarks you need to hit to make your way from the one to the other, and then you place your faith in the elusive native guides called muses, you check your napsack of writer’s tricks and sleights of hand, and you set out.
The long answer is that Writing is like a magic trick. You trick the reader into imagining a world that does not exist. If the reader is imaginative, or if your story just so happens to remind him of some memory to which in him a rich vein of symbolism and deep emotion is attached, he thinks the story is deep and wondrous, full of insights, which then he ascribes to you.
If you are unwise, you believe his flattering assessment of your talent, and take credit for an act of imagination where the reader did most of the work, and your ego gets inflated. This is why many writers are jerks. Or if you have an ulterior motive, you ascribe the power of the story to the preaching of the particular philosophical or political point you were trying to make, and your sense of being a visionary gets inflated. This is why many writers are sanctimonious jerks.
If you are wise, you ascribe the lucky accident of the intersection of your seed and his soil, and the fruit thereof to the inspiration of the muses, or other higher powers. This is why some writers are actually humble men deeply grateful for the chance to be a writer. Those men are real writers and true artists.
(Myself, I am a sanctimonious jerk who would like to be a deeply grateful true artist. The Blue Fairy told me that one day I would be a real writer. I asked her how, and she told me some confused nonsense about the Seven Lucky Gods of Shu Mountain. Gar! Never ask elves for counsel.)
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
March 30, 2013
The Parliament of Beasts and Birds
The animals gathered, one by one, outside the final city of Man, furtive, curious, and afraid.
All was dark. In the west was a blood-red sunset, and in the east a blood-red moonrise of a waning moon. No lamps shined in the towers and minarets, and all the widows of the palaces, mansions, and fanes were empty as the eyes of skulls. All about the walls of the city were the fields and houses that were empty and still, and all the gates and doors lay open.
Above the fortresses and barracks, black pillars upheld statues of golden eagles, beaks open, unmoving, and still. Above the coliseum and circus, where athletes strove and acrobats danced and slaves fought and criminals were fed alive to wild beasts for the diversion of the crowds, and the noise of screams and cries rose up like incense toward heaven, statues of heroes and demigods stood on white pillars, glaring blindly down.
Within other walls were gardens whose trees were naked in the wind, and the silence was broken only by the rustle of the carpet of fallen leaves wallowing along the marble paths and pleasances.
Above the boulevards and paved squares where merchants once bought and sold ivory and incense and purple and gold, or costly fabrics of silks from the east, or ambergris from the seas beyond Fortunate Isles, and auction houses adorned and painted where singing birds and dancing girls were sold to the highest bidder, or given to the haughtiest peer. And here were gambling houses where princes and nobles once used gems as counters for cities and walled town, and the downfall of nations waited on the turn of a card. And there were pleasure houses where harlots plied their trade, and houses of healing where physicians explained which venereal disease had no cures, and arranged for painless suicides, and houses of morticians where disease-rattled bodies were burnt in private, without any ceremony that might be bad for business.
And higher on the high hill in the center of the city where the libraries of the learned and the palaces of the emperors and kings adored as gods. But no history was read in the halls of learning and no public laws debated in the halls of power.
Not far outside the city was a mountain that had been cut in two, crown to root, by some supernatural force. On the slopes of the dark mountain, in a dell overgrown and wild, two dark creatures met, peering cautiously toward the empty city: A black wolf saw a black raven sitting in a thornbush. “What is the news, eater of carrion? Did you fly over the city and spy out where the corpses are?”
The black raven shrugged uncomfortably. “I thought it unwise to intrude. What of you, bold corsair against the sheepfolds of Man? Man has always feared your kind. Surely you crept into the unwatched and unguarded gates? Surely you were not afraid.”
The wolf was embarrassed and turned away. “Surely I am not a fool.”
“Who, then, can go into the city?” asked the raven.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
March 28, 2013
Reviewer Praise for HERMETIC MILLENNIA
From the pen of John Vogt. Vanity urges me to reprint the whole thing, if not justice (since I think his rather minor criticisms about the pacing are fair and correct):
Ever read a book that has such high-concept scope and genius-level characters that it just makes you feel dumb and inferior? After reading The Hermetic Millennia, you may come away wondering why you don’t have eyes that can perceive the entire energy spectrum, retractable poison claws, and a mind that can perform alien algebra as an afterthought.
The sequel to the epic space opera, Count to a Trillion, The Hermetic Millennia doesn’t hold back from the large leaps the first book took into our future. Rather, it spins the time dial forward at an even headier pace and challenges the reader to keep up.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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