John C. Wright's Blog, page 137

Wright's Ten Rules on Writing

Since becoming an author, from time to time interested fans (or else people willing to make me feel better by playing along with the idea that I am real writer by pretending to be fans) will ask me to pass on my writing tips. This is one question I find easy to answer, because my advice is the same for any new writer, no matter his age or level of skill.

 Here are John C. Wright's patented and guaranteed Ten Commandments for How to be a Writer.

 1. In order to be a writer, you must write. Give yourself a page-per-week quota or an hour-per-week quota, or whatever is needed, so that you will write when you are not in the mood to write.

 2. In order to write, you must use proper spelling, punctuation, grammar; or, if you violate these rules, the violation must be deliberate, to create an artistic effect. Avoid politically correct jargon at all costs. Do not use ugly constructions like "he or she"; it will date your work, and the cool people will laugh at you.

 3. In order to be a writer, you must sell what you write. No manuscript should spend a single night on your desk; the same day you get a rejection, put the manuscript in the mail to the next editor. Let the manuscripts spend their nights on the editor's desk.

 4. In order to sell what you write, read the editor's guidelines for his magazine or publishing house and follow them. These guidelines are available in a reference book called Writer's Market. Get the reference book for the current year. If the guidelines say double-spaced white paper single sided, and no samurai vampire stories, do not send him "Lightning Swords of the Nosferatu of Kyoto" printed on blood-red paper, single-spaced, double sided. Failure to follow the guidelines shows you are a dude, a greenhorn, a tenderfoot, a punk, a novice, not someone meant to be treated with professional courtesy. Your story is your child: no mother would send her child out to look for a job without fixing his tie and shining his shoes.

 5. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope with proper postage affixed, if you want the manuscript back.

 6. You will receive on average ONE HUNDRED rejection slips before you make your first sale. This is an average. This means that if someone, say, Lester del Rey, makes his first sale on his first attempt without getting a rejection, that someone else, say, Ray Bradbury, will get two hundred rejection slips.

 7. If your manuscript is good or bad, send out your manuscript again. Genius does not count. Only persistence counts. The world will not recognize your genius until after you are dead. But the world can recognize your persistence now.

 8. If the manuscript is good, send out your manuscript again. The editor who rejected it last month or last year may have different needs or a different budget this month or this year.

 9. If the manuscript is bad, send out your manuscript again. The worst thing you ever wrote will someday, somehow, be some schoolboy's favorite story ever. Your readers are your employers. Respect and fear them. Do not approach this work with pride or selfishness or any of the other emotions to which men of fragile artistic spirits are inclined. It is a profession. Act professionally.

 10. Selling writing means your manuscripts go out, and money comes back in. Money always goes toward the writer. Money never goes away from the writer. This means you do not hire a manuscript doctor, you do not pay a reading fee, you do not enter a contest which charges an entry fee. Those are scams. Agents are paid on commission, paid when and only when they sell your wares, whereupon the money comes from the publisher and goes toward you; You do not pay the agent a retainer.

 Do not wait to be inspired. So-called inspiration consists of sitting down at scheduled times for scheduled amounts of time and actually doing the work of writing. It is the same inspiration used by a cobbler to make a shoe, or a carpenter to make a chair.

 Writing is not accomplished by inspiration. It is accomplished by not making excuses to not accomplish it.

 Let me add one more rule to my list of ten rules. This is the Eleventh Commandment, the unwritten rule:

 11. When you get a rejection slip, be thankful.

 Yes, you heard me. Not only are you NOT to take it personally, you are to have thanks and gratitude in your heart for getting rejected.

 Rejection slips come in three grades: (1) impersonal form letters (2) form letters with specific reasons for rejection (3) personal notes from the editor explaining the rejection.

 You are to be thankful for getting an impersonal form letter because it means one more rejection slip of the one hundred or two hundred you must collect before you make your first sale has been checked off. This means that your manuscript, which has been sitting on his desk for seven months, is now free to be submitted to another editor, perhaps even to that one special editor which God or Fate or Blind Chance or the Seldon Plan of History (take your pick) had intended from the first to be the place where your manuscript would find its home. It means a fresh chance, another turn of the Wheel of Fortune. 

 You are to be thankful for getting form letters with specific rejection reasons because you can use this information to improve the story or improve your sales pitch, and because there is no other place in the universe you can get this information.

 You are to be thankful for personal notes from the editor explaining the rejection, because this means you have graduated to the rank of being a real writer, even if you have yet to sell a single word of your art, because editors do not take the time to explain themselves to rank amateurs. It means you are good enough to make the sale, and you just so happen not to have made it this time. It is encouragement.

 The main reason why you are to be thankful and grateful for rejection slips rather than bitter and insulted is that professionals are thankful. Above all, you are thankful Fate has allowed you even a slender chance at entering a profession made of wonder. You get to write down daydreams and people pay you money for it. A few blows to the ego are a small price to pay, and are probably good for improving your character anyway.

 If you take things personally, your professional life will be purgatory. 

 Writers know writing is the best profession in the world, and they are grateful for all it, good and bad alike, rejections and sales alike. That is what makes them professionals.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Strange What You Can Find on the Internet

Someone has assigned my book as an AP lit course over spring break. It is a high school in Encinitas, California.

http://www.kleal.com/AP%20Lit%20Reading%20Schedule%20Spring%202012%20-%20Period%202.pdf

 

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Vote for Prospero and he will free Ariel!

The novel by my lovely and talented wife, PROSPERO REGAINED, is in a book tournament today. Various books are being put up against other books to compete for Best Book of 2011.

PROSPERO REGAINED is, sadly, up against A DANCE WITH DRAGONS by George R. R. Martin. Her only chance for success is if you, dear reader, immediately vote for her book before the great Mr Martin becomes aware of the contest, and with a wave of his hand dispatches his many hordes of fans his talents have won him to flood the ballot box.

Today is the last day! Vote right away!

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

A Reluctant Hero of Mars

How was the new JOHN CARTER movie?

The short answer: if you have not read, or do not particularly adore, the source material, the movie is a fine, if unexceptional, entry into the Space Princess genre of space opera. There is action, humor, spectacle, swordfights, gunfights, flying machines, mystery, romance, monsters, and everything a Space Princess story should have, including a space princess.

The only thing it lacked was John Carter.

The long answer: I cannot answer in detail without spoiling some surprises. Since the movie is, on balance, worth seeing, you might want to go see it after reading a less spoilerific review than this one.

Spoiler Warnings! READ NO FURTHER! For after the break, I am making no attempt to keep the surprises fresh, because I cannot say what I disliked without actually mentioning the plot twists.

* * *

As the founding member of the titanic, world girdling Space Princess movement in Science Fiction, which, at the time of this writing consists of me and Canadian SF writer Edward Willett, let me freely confess that I had unrealistically high hopes for this film.

I have been waiting one hundred years to see this film. The book was written in 1912. It is now 2012. Okay, perhaps technically speaking, I personally was not waiting all that time, particularly the years before I existed, or before the motion picture camera was invented, but fans of Barsoom have been waiting and hoping.

Those hopes were dashed.

Even so, the film is not without merit, and I might, with great reluctance, recommend it, but only to someone warned aforehand of its drawbacks.

Let me bellyache about the bad before commending the good.

A PRINCESS OF MARS is, after all, not merely the ur-novel or primordial precursor for all American science fiction, it is the foundation-stone and guiding star of the Space Princess movement.  The incomparable DejahThoris is, after all, the prototype, architype, and stereotype of what a space princess should be.

And John Carter is the prototype, architype, and stereotype of what a earthling hero should be: stalwart, honorable, manly, devout, courageous to the point of recklessness, but carrying the civilized values of Earth to those older planets, like Mars, whose inhabitants of dry sea bottoms and super-scientific ancient cities have forgotten the finer and nobler sentiments of civilization in their eon-old decay, or carrying the civilized values of Earth to those barbarian and younger worlds like Venus, whose inhabitants of dinosaur infested and cave-men haunted swamps and cycad jungles have not yet learned them.

What John Carter is not, and never has been, is a reluctant hero, someone unwilling to fight. That point is emphasized over and over again in the books, even from the first scene where Carter rushes headlong into an armed Apache camp to recover the body of his friend, tortured to death at savage hands.

The book very carefully shows the progression from captive to war-leader among the barbaric and savage six limbed Green Men of the dead sea bottoms of Mars.  John Carter, in one feat of arms after another, impresses the Tharks, obeys their savage rules and violent customs, and rises in their ranks, earning first their reluctant and then their enthusiastic respect.

Likewise, the savage calot or Martian dog Woola, Carter treats with compassion and respect, and wins the simple and savage creature's simple and savage love.

One of the most touching and moving things of all, however, is the discovery of Sola, the one Green Martian women of all the race who knew the love of her mother and the identity of her father. It is carefully explained in the book that the Tharks and other Green Men raise their eggs communally, weeding out the weak ruthlessly, and distributing the hatchlings to nurses who have no motherly affection for their charges. The inhuman system breeds the whole race, deprived of family love, a deep seated cynicism, bitterness, and lust for death, an unparalleled savagery.

And John Carter from the outset of his advent on Mars is willing, nay, eager to fight to the death with a grin on his lips and a light in his eye, for trifles of honor or for the all-important love of his life, whom he loves at first sight, and awkwardly cannot bring himself to woo, the incomparable Dejah Thoris.

The one thing John Carter in the books is not, is unwilling or unready to fight.

The John Carter in the movie is so exactly opposite this that I was dumbfounded.

If you look up 'the reluctant hero' on Wikipedia (which, as we all know, is as reliable as asking a total stranger at a bus stop his opinion) you will see Arjuna from the Mahabharata (who at the opening of the Bhagavad Gita throws down his weapons, ashamed to fight and kill his own teachers and cousins, the Kuvaras) as the archetypal example of the reluctant hero. His charioteer, the demigod Krisna, must explain to him all of cosmic philosophy before the mighty hero takes up his all powerful weapons and faces the fray.

Also listed, you will see Rand al-Thor, Bilbo Baggins, Han Solo, Ash "This is my BOOM STICK" Williams, and Neo from the Matrix, as reluctant heroes. Aragorn son of Arathorn in the movie version was also self-doubting and reluctant to fight. Aragorn son of Arathorn the real version was not, no, not in the least.

John Carter the real version is like non of these people, except, perhaps, Aragorn the real version.

However, there is many a man who does not like unreluctant heroes. This is a typically Christian notion: that the hero should be humble, until his own merits or the exigencies of fate propel him into the fore. There is also a Politically Correct notion that war and fighting are evil unless helping the underdog against an oppressor, and so the reluctant hero satisfied both Christian and Postchristian notions that a hero should not crave heroism, or know himself to be a hero.

Moreover, the film-makers perhaps thought that the story arc of the hero learning to face and want his destiny would make for more depth of character than the cardboard figure of an Earthman who falls in love at first sight and is willing to kill and die for his beloved Princess.

The notion of a reluctant hero is not itself a wrong notion. But it is so wrong, so very wrong, for the formula of a Space Princess novel.

Let me tell you the formula:

In a Space Princess novel, or a Planetary Romance, you take an Earthman who is supposed to represent every man, especially every man who feels hemmed in by the growth and overgrowth of civilization.

You transport him by plot device to an unknown and alien planet, but not a scientifically realistic alien planet, where he would no doubt fall over choking on methane gas or freeze instantly in sub-arctic cold, no, the planet, for some reason that need not be explained, is as similar to the ancient Rome or ancient China or ancient Babylon as you can possibly get away with, so that you can have opulently rich cities in one spot and barbarian hordes following herds of space animals covering countless miles of prairie or steppe.  You can have rayguns or radium guns provided they are not the weapon of choice: the weapon of choice is the sword.

There is a princess, who is not merely gorgeous, she is the most beautiful woman on two worlds, and the Earthman, without knowing anything about the customs, rules, politics, wars, laws of physics, lay of the land, or whathaveyou falls instantly and totally and absurdly in love with her, and slaughters her enemies like a Cuisinart blender on overload, spraying gallons of blood and severed limbs in each direction. Space Princess is abducted, preferably by a blackhearted villain eager to violate her honor and marry her against her will, so the hero has all the most primal motivations every primate can understand.

There is one other element. The hero has to be an Earthman who is disgusted with the lack of honor found on modern earth, and who therefore fits in well, nay, fits in perfectly with the glorious barbarian codes of honor of the far world to which fate casts him.

Got it? Good. That is how you write a Space Princess yarn.

The one thing, I would say, the only thing, you cannot have in a Planetary Romance or Space Princess novel is a reluctant hero. Notice the list above: Arjuna is from an epic, and from a civil war; Bilbo is a short fat little burglar who is not built for heroism even if he craved it down to his furry little toes; Neo is from a cyberpunk reality-bending story, combination paranoid thriller and messiah stories (and all messiahs should be reluctant, or at least reluctant to be killed); Rand al'Thor is from the Tolkienesque fantasy;  Ash Williams is Bruce Campbell, who makes me laugh my ears off no matter what he is in, but he is not in a Space Princess story. All these reluctant heroes are from different kinds of stories where reluctance makes sense.

The whole point of throwing an Earthman onto another planet is that he is a total fish out of water, and therefore he throws himself into the fray without knowing or caring what is going on, because he knows that, despite the laws and customs of the barbaric world, the political situation, the weird gods and strange tech and whatnot, he has got to save the girl.

The movie makers messed up the beginning something royally. To show that our hero was both tough as nails and unwilling to fight, the movie has him being harassed  in an admittedly well done and funny scene where the Cavalry officers try to recruit him to fight Apaches. Unlike the real Carter, the movie version, whom I will hereafter call Anticarter, voices the cynical comment that the human race is corrupt, and is willing to jump through windows and turn horse thief to avoid a fight.

Because the movie makers have politically correct gunk between their ears instead of brains, when the Apaches do come on stage, a panicky White Man shoots one of them during a parley, thus showing the White Men are both cowardly, and dishonorable, and undisciplined, and the Injuns are the victims.

Well, at least the Indians get to kill a few White Men to show that they are not the helpless victims the PC niks would like them to be.

Once on Mars, John Carter spends half the film trying to go home, not because he had anything at home, but because he has found a cave of gold, and wants to return to his empty life and spend his money — perhaps the least noble motivation every devised in the history of moviedom for an alleged good guy.  Even Han Solo the pirate had a bounty to pay off.

I forgave all my misgivings for exactly one second. When DejahThoris, her airship shot down over the Thark territory, falls screaming, John Carter, whose Earthly muscles allow him to make prodigiously superhuman leaps under the less gravity of Mars, leaps hundreds of yards to catch her in midair. Landing, he then faces the scores and scores of foes, places the maiden behind him, and says, "Stay behind me ma'am, this could get dangerous." And draws his sword.

I swear my chivalrous heart swelled with pride to bursting. For a moment, I was deceived into thinking the movie makers actually understood and even liked John Carter and what he stood for.

It was as if I heard trumpets blare, and a voice call out: And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods ? For you, my fair of royal crown, this sword high lifted, or this life laid down.

But, of course, it was a hoax, a joke.

Xena the Warrior princess, Amazon, the equal of any man with a blade, shoves the stoopid male chauvinist pig to the side, and with the same realism of a story in which a dainty female football player tackles the biggest professional linebackers in the NFL, makes mincemeat in short order of the baddies.

The line is repeated later in the movie, just to rub my nose into the fact that chivalry toward the gentler sex is stupid and ugly, and women are as tall, and strong and hairy and aggressive as men, and love bloodshed just as much.

And to emphasize the fact the Hollywood, and all right thinking people, mock and hate the notion that men want to protect our lady wives, mothers, sisters, and fair daughters from the misery and ghoulish slaughter of combat.

Don't get me wrong, DejahThoris in the book is no shrinking violet or fainting damsel. Barsoomian women always carry a dagger or a radium pistol, and are not afraid to use them, and there is at last one scene (it is Tara of Helium in CHESSMEN OF MARS) where a masher trying to impose upon the honor of the gorgeous half-unclad Martian princess ends up with the girl's  stiletto in his liver, dead in one stroke.

Martian women are not supposed to be weak sisters. But the Martian Men are supposed to be the most ferocious fighting men imaginable, training in arms from before they can walk, and none of them dying of old age in bed. If you want to show a Martian princess slaughter a room full of blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers from France, fine, I'd believe that. But not fighting warriors of Mars from the blood-colored planet of the war god.

But, being a modern movie, there were females in combat, the very persons no real race dying of loss of planetary water would expose to combat. They were in the background and foreground of several scenes, well displayed in their bosom-shaped chest plates and a full head shorter than the male soldiers around them. Every time my eye fell on one, I was jarred out of the movie.

There was even one scene where Anticarter during a melee backhands a girl soldier across her face to flip her out of his way. She falls out of the porthole of the airship to plunge to her miserable death.  She was shorter than him, and for all I knew she was wearing glasses.

Look, friendly reader, if you like the idea of women in combat, then you think heroic men should heroically smash evil soldier girls in their pretty little faces, stab and dynamite and defenestrate them, and that this is a proper, normal, and heroic behavior for grown men to teach to their boys. You should also teach little boys it is heroic to push a cripple in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs.

Now, hunters do not even treat dumb animals this way, because they spare does. So, if you like the idea of women in combat, you are on a lower moral plane than a hunter who kills beasts for sport.  I am just saying.

One reason why I so enjoyed reading these hundred year old books to my boys is because I want my boys to understand how women are supposed to be treated, which is the opposite of what the insane modern world with its insane pretense that any member of the distaff sex can be Xenia Warrior Princess merely by a decree of Congress.

Again, don't get me wrong: the Martial Maiden is a trusty, tried and true trope of the epic genre. From Camilla to Britomart to Supergirl, I have no objection to reading about or seeing cute little girls cutting limbs off of men bigger and bulkier than they are. All I ask is that there be some explanation to overcome my suspension of disbelief. Let the girl have been trained by the Ancient Masters of Tibet, or a blessing from Mars or from the Primordial Slayer,  or make her from planet Krypton (or Argo, if you insist) or give her a magical golden lance. Anything will do.

But if you make the Space Princess face a problem she can solve by herself, for what the hell reason do you need to bring a clean limbed fighting man all the way from Earth, across the abyss of space?

In the Movie, DejahWarrior Princess surrender calmly to the Tharks, entirely undercutting how ferocious and terrifying they are supposed to be.

There follows some scenes where DejahWarrior tries to get Anticarter to join up and fight for Helium, which I found pointless to the point of embarrassment.  In a proper Space Princess story, he takes up his arms for his love of her, as if driven by madness, for no other reason than that. It is not something you can talk someone into. She gives him no reason aside from 'Unknown city on alien planet Number One is good; Unknown city on alien planet Number Two is bad' — and then to cement the persuasion attempt, she tries to bring him to a mysterious spot where some clue about how to return to Earth might be found, and when, despite her skepticism, such a clue is found, she refuses to translate it for him.

The whole thing is appalling. Remember what I said about the second element of the Space Princess novel? The barbarians of the barbaric world can be worse than the Earthmen back home in every way but one. They have to be honor-bound. They have to be men who do not break their word. They have to be women who never lie.

Edgar Rice Burroughs understands this quite well, and emphasizes that the Martians, first, never fight dishonorably, and, second, never lie. To have the incomparable DejahThoris lying to an Anticarter who is not in love with her was painful to my eyeballs.

It was as bad as, in the film version of THE TWO TOWERS, making Faramir, who cannot be tempted by the ring, into the Antifaramir, who is.

Let me mention things that were awkward, but did not offend me.

Despite the healthy running length (over two hours) the movie did not actually show us the utterly necessary set up scenes: everyone from dog to princess to savage warrior chief acts as if John Carter is the very ideal of manly battle-hero and faithful friend, but he never is shown onstage being anything but a surly stranger with a pair of superleap legs.

Woola is entirely loyal, but Carter never wins his loyalty.

DejahThoris is convinced Carter can turn the tide of battle against the evil city of Zodanga, but there is no evidence that she is right about this, and she is not in love with him. He is not, in the film,  her rescuer from imprisonment, torture and rape, as he is in the book.

Tars Tarkas and Sola both feel loyalty and compassion for John Carter, but the scenes where he wins them over are missing.

The scene where the savage customs of raising eggs communally is missing; the scene where Sola risks her life by telling Carter her secret, that she knew family love, is missing, the motivation and triumph of Tars Tarkas is missing, and the scene where Carter wins the admiration and respect of Tars Tarkas is missing.

Ditto for the entire Thark horde. They cheer riotously when Carter offers to lead them to war, but, up until that point, he had not done the things he did in the book to show them that he was an honorable warrior.  Such as, for example, be willing to fight.

You see the paradox, I hope. The reluctant hero has to have some extraneous reason for the others in the tale to think he is the hero who has the power to save them. It can be anything from a prophecy, to, uh, another type of prophecy, but there has to be something to provide the belief in him the reluctant hero does not have in himself.

The other thing the movie was missing was the explanation from the book tying everything together: because Mars is a dying planet, his seas drying up, he is covered with dead sea bottoms and empty cities, and all the inhabitants must become as warlike as possible, fighting without pity or quarter over the every dwindling resources, because every fight is a fight for survival.

In all fairness, I cannot condemn the bad without praising the good. One or two things were very good. There are some decisions the movie makers make which, while deviating from the book, I thought were clever and necessary, and even brilliant.

The McGuffin in this film is the disintegration ray (I assume) taking from Phor Tak from A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS, here oddly enough called the Ninth Barsoomian Ray, which (in the book) is the one used to render the atmosphere breathable.  I am not a purist when it comes to such a point: having the big bad wolf possess an evil superweapon or Death Star is dandy with me, and gives the plot some drive missing from the book.

But then you need to explain why the big bad does not merely disintegrate the hero in the final scene, which explanation is missing from this film.

The Therns, which are, to be frank,  underexploited and inexplicable in the book, in the movie take on the role of an interplanetary conspiracy of super-scientific Illuminati, who can either change shape or cast perfect disguises on themselves, as well as being able to levitate, bind heroes in invisible chains, teleport across space both planetary and interplanetary. In the film, they are cosmic vultures, ageless without being immortal (they can be shot) exploiting the death throes of dying worlds for their own unguessed purposes.

I thought this was the way coolest notion I have ever seen in a film. I am sure to steal the idea for my next book.

The eerie opening of the book has John Carter die and wake up alive on Mars, knowing instantly where he is. Much as I like it, I like the movie version just as much, because it makes more sense: in the movie, Carter fleeing from Apaches, stumbles across one of the interplanetary way stations of the Therns, kills the operator, and accidentally activates the interplanetary-transmitter amulet, which he then loses upon arrival, and spends all of act one and act two trying to recover, as it is the key his trip home.

Another deviation from the book I heartily applaud was the use of Edgar Rice Burroughs as the framing character. There are quaint and eerie scenes at the opening, showing bowler-hatted men in the rain scurrying from steam trains to mansions filled with curios and artifacts, as the mystery surrounding Captain Carter's sudden death and eccentric burial instructions unfolds. We return to Burroughs in the final scene with a plot twist so well done I would not dream of revealing it.  The odd burial instructions are exactly those taken from the book: Carter is buried in an open coffin in a mausoleum which can be unlocked only from the inside.

Granted, there are no shapechanging Therns in the book, but the scene where Woola the super-dog rescues Carter from one of them, or where Carter is pursuing his Thern foe through several faces and shapes in the middle of a battle field crowded with friend and foe were brilliantly done.

What else did I like about this film?

I liked Woola the Martian calot. Nay, I loved Woola. In the movie he is faster than the Road Runner and as loyal as Woola from the book. I cheered every time he showed up.

I liked Kantos Kan. Nay, I loved Kantos Kan. Again, a scene not from the book where Kantos is trying to fool the Zodagan guards into thinking that Carter has taken him prisoner is playing for laughs, and played well.

Finally, despite all my bellyaching about this film, let me describe one scene, if I have the power, which I think not only worth the ticket price, but also worth paying the ticket price of your date who wanted to see a chick click, and the price of both your over-expensive coke and popcorn bucket, and hers.

During their escape by thoat, Cater, Dejah Thoris, and Sola are being overtaken by the ferocious horde of  Green Martians. Meanwhile, we have found the reason why John Carter is reluctant to fight: the perfectly understandable reason that his wife and daughter were killed only a few years ago. His conscience overcomes him, and his natural heroism, and so Carter dismounts, tells Sola to take Dejah Thoris to safety, and he faces the entire horde alone.

Alone, that is, except for Woola the monster dog, who will not leave him. Did I mention that I liked every scene with Woola? I wish they had called the film WAR DOG OF MARS.

As the painful images of Captain Carter of Virginia flash through the agonized memory of John Carter of Mars, we see him, at once, throwing himself headlong into the midst of his foes, making an unholy slaughter, and (in his memory) striking the earth to dig a grave, smashing a cross to mark the spot, roaring in pain. And, at the same time, with almost the same moves, as the music roars to a crescendo, and ichor of Martians flies across the screen, Carter goes berserk like a Viking, before falling to the super numbers of the foe.

I loved that scene. And it is not the last scene in the film. Carter does not die at that time. A superdreadnaught of the skies descends like an angry god, blasting the horde with radium-gun fire. It is Tardos Mors, grandfather of Dejah Thoris and jeddak of Helium, swooping to the rescue.

Then there follows a stupid scene where Dejah Thoris agrees to marry the Big Bad Wolf, and I guess that is the time to go to the lobby and refill your date's drink and popcorn bin.

But rush on back, because there is plenty of spectacle and action after than point, including a chase scene on flying machines, weaving under the monstrous mechanical legs of a walking city, and the spectacle of Dejah Thoris in her wedding gown, which she fills out nicely. There are battles and alarums and excursions.

I liked the look of the props and settings very much, and the description of the airships 'sailing on light' and the delight of Dejah Thoris hearing about the ships of Earth sailing on bodies of water called seas was a nice touch.

There is one other very tiny thing I liked. The author Burroughs mentions that the six limbed Green Men both walk upright and can run like centaurs, using their intermediary limbs as hands or feet as needed. There was a scene in the film where some of the Green, during a cavalry charge, dismount and barrel forward like apes on four and six limbs, which is something I never saw any cover artist ever put in an illustration of the books.  I thought it looked cool, and it is something I have been waiting for some illustrator to illustrate.

So, despite one or two annoying missteps, it is good but not great movie. It is just not A PRINCESS OF MARS, which is a great book, and well remembered and beloved for a reason.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Thought Police and the Poets

My objection to political correctness, as a Christian, is that it is diabolic; as a conservative, that it is Marxist; as a philosopher,  that it is not merely untruthful but openly nihilistic and irrational; as a practical man, that it makes rational conversation about any controversial topic all but impossible; as a gentleman that is substitutes political fashion for true courtesy; but as a writer my objection is that Political Correctness lacks drama.

To support this point, it would behoove us first to define the elements of drama, and second to define Political Correctness. But PC is a school of thought that is esoteric in the literal sense of the word, that it, a school of thought whose point not to be defined, and who go to great lengths, even to the denial of truth and reality, to undermine attempts to define it.

Despite this, it is not that hard to define. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism, that is, the Marxist analysis of all human history into a single factor: the Darwinian war between oppressor-class and oppressed-class. Everything is a power struggle; all human relations are power relations. In the case of Political Correctness, it is culture rather than economics which is said to be determined by power struggles.

(PC differs from classical Marxism by the introduction by Herbert Marcuse of Freudian ideas, claiming that civilization produced sexual neurosis, and that a culture of "polymorphous perversity" wherein all desires and lusts would be sated and all goods and services would be free and all work would be play would follow from the destruction of all traditions, codes, laws, and legal relationships. Few or no PCniks these days voice Marcuse's Utopian goals, but they steps they take and the effects that follow are the same.)

The idea that all cultural values and expressions, from literature to institutions to language to sacraments, are determined by power struggles means that anything, anything at all, can be accused of being a type of oppression.

A racial slur becomes not merely rudeness, but an act tantamount to thousands of years of violence against the oppressed. A cartoon showing a teenaged superheroine using her mutant powers to do housework becomes tantamount to forbidding the women from entering the workforce, backed with social and legal sanctions. Or, to use an example from the current headlines, Catholic charities and hospitals and radio stations who demur on religious grounds from paying for the contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs, or medical sterilization of their employees becomes tantamount to an attempt impose by force the laws of the Dark Ages upon women, when they were bought and sold like chattel.

The accusation is unanswerable, like the accusation of being a witch.

Dovetailing neatly with this is the dogma of deconstruction, which say, in brief, that the surface meaning of literature, or other cultural expressions, cannot possibly be determined, but the inner psychological motives can be determined with ease, and the motives are always the desire to oppress and control. So Shakespeare can be 'deconstructed' to be about nothing but homosexuality, or the Bible be 'deconstructed' to be about nothing but race relations, and so on.

Political Correctness is not merely false, it is moonbat-barkingly, outrageously, openly, in-your-face false.

It is so false that conservatives cannot understand why or how anyone believes it, even its supporters. As best I can tell, the supporters both believe it and do not believe it at the same time and in the same sense, with a hypocrisy that is breathtaking in its insouciant insolence. By no coincidence, hypocrisy is the main charge leveled by PC-niks against conservatives.

But it is deliberately, knowingly false. That is the significant fact to grasp.

Because it is false, it naturally lends itself to totalitarianism, that is, to the policing of every aspect of thought and life, and this for two reasons: first, normal people will not utter endless falsehood about everything and anything unless they are forced or pressured; second, normal people once they yield to the force or the pressure and utter lies they themselves know to be false, naturally tend to lack the will to resist further impositions, and lack the strength to repent of the practice.

A third factor which also plays a role is that once everyone in your environment is a liar, and repeats whatever lies the consensus demands, the bonds of faith between individuals are severed, and a man has no family, no Church, no brotherhood, no community to whom he can turn for support. He is alone and naked before the stark power of Big Brother.

Because it is false, it can be changed at will. The pious slogans repeated from yesterday become thoughtcrimes tomorrow. Yesterday, in the name of fighting sexism, the pious slogans denounced the hideous abuses of women under Sharia Law, because it was fashionable, but tomorrow, when the fashion changes, that same slogan is Islamophobia ergo a thoughtcrimes. Because a falsehood can be changed at will, anyone can be denounced at any time no matter how pure his PC credentials.

Why should anyone volunteer for this bizarre system of make believe? There are several reasons:

First,  the method of analysis sounds smart, and uses big words but does not require any brains to use, so a person adopting PC can pass himself off as a smart person while not having to do any thinking.

Second, and related, the answers are simple. The method of analysis always yields the desired result. The oppressor groups are simply devils and the oppressed groups are simply angels.

Third, the answers are actionable. The method of analysis cannot come to the conclusion that Man is Fallen, that his nature is utterly depraved, or that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. There are no necessarily evils or even opportunity costs. Every problem is soluble.

Fourth, the solution of problems is effortless. All we need do is change our language, and it will change our thinking; our thinking creates reality, and so politically correct language will create goodthink which will make all problems, economic and social and personal, vanish like magic.

Fifth, the motive is always benevolent.  The motive for the deeply committed PCnik is to end all human suffering and bring about utopia. No one aside from a villain of the blackest heart or dimmest brain would oppose paradise, unless he were afraid. Consequently, the PCnik regard all their opponents as brainless dupes, gutless cowards, conscienceless henchmen, or as heartless villains.

The motive for the average dupe swept up into PC is, again, merely benevolence. Since he would not use a racial slur to insult a Black man, the moment his teachers and entertainers and opinion-molders tell him that 'pervert' is tantamount to a racial slur, or the use of 'he' for the neuter pronoun, or the use of 'A.D.' for the reckoning of years, or the use of the word 'bastard' to refer to an illegitimate child, of the use of the world 'child' to refer to an unborn fetus, and so on and so on, the average man, conservative or not, will adopt the linguistic oddities and perversions of PC, thinking he is adhering to a standard of courtesy higher and nobler than all other standards. He will also revile Michelle Malkin as a whore chink bitch, because she is a conservative, which is tantamount to being Emmanuel Goldstein.

Sixth, the system is infinitely flexible. Because anything can be deconstructed at will to mean anything, asking someone to call 'marriage' a 'gay marriage ban' and to call support for marriage sexism, and heteronormalism, and homophobia, becomes tantamount to asking someone not to call a Black man by a racial slur. Better still, even a complimentary stereotype, such as saying Chinamen are hard-working or Jews are good at book-learning, becomes tantamount to a slur. Even better again, perfectly normal words that have never been meant nor taken as offensive, such as 'Oriental', or 'Native', or 'Indian' become tantamount to slurs. Even when the spokesmen for the group involved say that word in question does not offend them, once the PC accusation is made, there is no defense and no trial.

Finally, the system always allows the PC-nik to conclude that he is the moral and not just the mental superior to all other men, and grants him the palm of the martyr without the mess of martyrdom, the halo of sanctity without the effort of being saintly, or even decent. The Christians may have abolished slavery world-wide, but you refuse to use the word 'Eskimo' and refuse to condemn sadomasochism as a sexual perversion, and so this enables you to look down your nose at the moral teachings of Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, and Christ.

The secret of Political Correctness is that it is Gnostic. PC is a worldview that holds that society is radically evil and false, in the same way that Gnostic teach the material world is evil and false, and every cultural value is the reverse of the truth, in the same way the Gnostics teach that God is the Devil and the Devil is God and every divine commandment is the reverse of the truth.

While this Gnosticism of Politics has many complex side effects, it has one clear purpose. Any evil can be made to seem good by declaring it to be part of the struggle to overthrow the world-system, and, likewise, any good can be made to seem evil by declaring it to be supportive of the world system. Hence a man who fights against a degrading sexual vice or perversion is not virtuous in the PC universe, because such a man is trying to live up to an objective standard, and wishes not to demean himself or to betray his mate; but a man who approves of a degrading vice or perversion is not vicious but quite the opposite, because he is nonjudgmental, which is the sole virtue in their system.

This will serve as a definition of PC. What are the needs of drama?

Political Correctness has one and only one story to tell: the glorious revolution of the plucky rebels against wicked and evil Rich Uncle Pennybags, the mascot of Parker Brothers' Monopoly Game. Sometimes the rebels are against Elmer Gantry or Nehemiah Scudder or Simon Legree.

The problem is that, aside from this one rebel story, Political Correctness is only fit for satire. Anything else, and PC eliminates the tension, and the moral compass, needed for a satisfying tale. You cannot write a politically correct love story, because love stories require masculine men and feminine heroines. You cannot write a politically correct war story, unless the story is about corruption in the ranks, because masculine virtues of bravery or boldness or chivalry toward a fallen foe are all incorrect. You cannot even write a decent Cowboys-and-Indians story, not even if it is placed on Mars as a Cowboys-and-Martians story, because PC does not allow you to cheer for Cowboys. They are the wrong race. PC does not allow you to cheer for fighting men. They are the wrong 'gender.' And fighting is wrong (except when plucky rebels kill Rich Uncle Pennybags, etc.)

Envy is just not that dramatic. The one and only story Envy tells is about getting even with your betters. Aside from that, the world view is too narrow to tell a tale.

First, drama is dramatic when it is smart rather than simple, trite, or childish. The best dramas have plots and characters clear enough for a child to understand, but involve layers and levels of meaning scholars can study fruitfully. Political Correctness, by its very nature, is simplistic and preachy, hardly rising above allegory. It merely ruins a story to turn it into a sermon.

Second, in a real drama, no answers are simple. Even Darth Vader in a childish space opera movie reaches a moment of true drama when he is revealed to be the father of Luke Skywalker, because the possibility opens either for pagan tragedy or Christian redemption. Neither answer, if handled dramatically, would be simple.

Third, in a drama, in order to be drama, the boundary conditions or basic axioms of the plot have to be unchangeable. When Antigone faces the choice either to obey the gods and bury her traitorous brother, or to obey the King and leave her brother's corpse to rot, there is no drama if Antigone can simply ask the King to write her a waiver, or if the gods reveal that their laws are merely guidelines and suggestions. All drama with a moral conflict requires a moral code against which other desires and needs and demands, including moral demands, batter themselves.

Political Correctness, by its very nature, hold that there are no fixed standards. There is one and only one drama of moral conflict open to a PC dramatist: the foolish moralist disapproves of someone, and then learns his disapproval is evil, and so grows into becoming nonjudgmental.

Fourth, and related to the last point, a story where everyone is nonjudgmental and nature is forgiving of errors contains no room for conflict and hence no room for drama. If you put your characters in a world where changing the names of things changed reality, there is no room for conflict. Everything is accomplished at a word.

Fifth, the characters have to be stereotyped according to excruciatingly flat Politically Correct stereotypes. This is especially true of racial stereotypes. Suppose you are doing a King Arthur movie. In a non-PC version, everyone would be English, or at least Norman. In a PC version one must introduce a token Black without making him look like a token, and he cannot be the comedy relief, or the traitor, so he has to be the wise advisor. But if he talks with a British accent, he might be accused of being inauthentic, or trying to "sound white." Maybe he can play Sir Palamedes, the Saracen Knight, and be a Muslim from Ethiopia, but only if he does not convert to Christianity (as Palamedes does in the Arthur tales) and only if it is emphasized that the Muslim civilization was superior to the Christian.

This will not save the author from being savaged, however. If there is not the right mix of non-Christians, non-Whites, and non-Males on the Round Table, not to mention persons of alternate sexuality, then the accusation cannot be deflected.

But it is really hard to get drama out of flat characters. And Political Correctness makes it hard to differentiate members of the oppressor and oppressed class. Any member of the one or the other has to behave according to PC stereotypes. If you have a member of the designated evil class, white Christian males, act like a normal person, a mix of good and evil, his goodness will be denounced as that author's attempt to flatter or whitewash his class evils.

Likewise, if you have a member of the designated good class act like a normal person, a mix of good and evil, his evil will be denounced as that author's hatred and bigotry against (1) whatever class the character is a member of (2) whatever class the accuser is reminded of when he looks at the character.

Recall the tempest in a teapot when M Night Shyamalan cast Caucasians to represent the Fire Nation in the movie version of LAST AIRBENDER? The argument was made that having the arch-villain Uncle Iroh played by a Persian actor was insupportable racism. The accusers were unaware that Uncle Iroh was a hero, and that Persians are Caucasians (the Caucasus mountains from which the race gets its name runs through Persia).  But a witchhunter does not need to get his facts straight: the accusation is all that matters. The crowning irony was that the blue-eyed seal-fur wearing Water Tribe race was played by Caucasians, and the PCniks writhing in agonies because of the insult to whatever race it was that the Water Tribe was supposed to be, I assume Siberians. My point is that real people who are members of real races do not have to really be offended by whatever is accused to be racially insensitive: even cartoon people will serve in a pinch.

Sixth, since the standards change, and change arbitrarily, a politically correct drama must of its nature avoid any controversial material. But drama is controversy. In a good drama, even the villain has a moment to say his piece, give his side of the story, utter his justification. PC would not allow Rich Uncle Pennybags to make a speech extolling the benefits of capitalism because the writer dare not reveal that he understands the enemy's doctrines.

Drama requires a moral compass, and that political correctness lacks it.

It might seem shocking to say PC lacks a moral compass, because the PC-nik are so overwhelmingly self-righteous. You might think "Surely they have a very high moral standard? They cram it down our throats every chance they get, and indoctrinate our children in it, and infuse our laws and institutions to the point of implosion with it? To them, throwing out your garbage correctly is a morally significant act! Everything is a morally significant act!"

You would be right if, as the PC hold it to be, all morality were a political ploy. Yes, they are filled to the brim with red-faced teeth-clenching, protest-marching self-righteous indignation, they are as humorless as puritans and as over-sensitive as Victorians.

But — and this is the crucial but—but it is not moral indignation.

It is political indignation.

And it is not political the way you and I use the word politics, to refer to how best to arrange the necessary evils of the public agora for the common good, and leave each man to his own devices otherwise. Like the Christ of the Christians, the Big Brother of the PCniks demands the whole life of the whole man. There is no private sphere for the totalitarians, and no best arrangement for the utopians, no discussion of what necessary evils one must tolerate. All necessary evils are unnecessary. So the political attempt of the totalitarian utopians is how to arrange everything not just for the common good, but for the perfect good of each nook and corner of each man's soul. Your innermost thoughts are a political matter. Where and how you mate, or what ritual solemnizes the event, are political. Whether you burn your leaves is political; or whether your cow passes gas.

So, finally, PC drains drama out of dramas by being Gnostic. The Gnostic world view is merely he reverse of the normal world: whatever is evil is good and whatever is good is evil. But by the nature of the case, one cannot get a great deal of drama out of pro-evil propaganda. Once you tell someone that he is right to be selfish and self-indulgent and irrational, and that all the voices who say otherwise are trying to deceive him from absurdly wicked motives, then what else is there to say? The first time one read about a brave rebellion again heaven, the story has some zest and appeal. But in real life wickedness is crass and nasty and dull, and evil actually does bring bad consequences along with it, and selfishness is boring compared to saintliness.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Vote Early! Vote Often! Vote Prospero!

Book Spot Central just announced that Prospero Regained was selected for inclusion in the 6th annual Book Tournament which kicks off next week in conjunction with March Madness. Details about the brackets can be found here:

Full schedule will go up on Friday.

BSC is offering a month's ad on their site to the winner along with the more important bragging rights.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

We Hold These Truths to be Self Evident: the Soveriegn May Kill Subjects In Secret, Subject to No Re

Read the whole thing. No comment by me is needed.

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/06/attorney_general_holder_defends_execution_without_charges/

In a speech at Northwestern University yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder provided the most detailed explanation yet for why the Obama administration believes it has the authority to secretly target U.S. citizens for execution by the CIA without even charging them with a crime, notifying them of the accusations, or affording them an opportunity to respond, instead condemning them to death without a shred of transparency or judicial oversight. The administration continues to conceal the legal memorandum it obtained to justify these killings, and, as The New York Times' Charlie Savage noted, Holder's "speech contained no footnotes or specific legal citations, and it fell far short of the level of detail contained in the Office of Legal Counsel memo." But the crux of Holder's argument as set forth in yesterday's speech is this:

Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces. This is simply not accurate. "Due process" and "judicial process" are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.

When Obama officials (like Bush officials before them) refer to someone "who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces," what they mean is this: someone the President has accused and then decreed in secret to be a Terrorist without ever proving it with evidence. The "process" used by the Obama administration to target Americans for execution-by-CIA is, as reported last October by Reuters, as follows:

American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions . . . There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council . . . Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

As Leon Panetta recently confirmed, the President makes the ultimate decision as to whether the American will be killed: "[The] President of the United States obviously reviews these cases, reviews the legal justification, and in the end says, go or no go."

So that is the "process" which Eric Holder yesterday argued constitutes "due process" as required by the Fifth Amendment before the government can deprive of someone of their life: the President and his underlings are your accuser, your judge, your jury and your executioner all wrapped up in one, acting in total secrecy and without your even knowing that he's accused you and sentenced you to death, and you have no opportunity even to know about, let alone confront and address, his accusations; is that not enough due process for you? At Esquire, Charles Pierce, writing about Holder's speech, described this best: "a monumental pile of crap that should embarrass every Democrat who ever said an unkind word about John Yoo."

 

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

University declares Christianity not a Religion

A press release from the Alliance Defense Fund. I give the whole thing here, unedited, with no other comment than to say the world has gone mad.

UNC-Greensboro: Christian club isn't religious

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The University of North Carolina-Greensboro is saying a Christian student club isn't religious and therefore must allow students of other religions and belief systems to become leaders and members as a condition to being a recognized group. Alliance Defense Fund attorneys are representing the club in a federal lawsuitfiled Wednesday.

"Saying that a Christian club isn't religious is flatly absurd," said ADF Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco, "especially when the university has granted its belief-based exception to numerous other clubs. The First Amendment forbids the government from determining what is and what is not 'religious,' yet the university is doing exactly this by telling a Christian group that it is not religious. The Constitution protects the right of all student groups to employ belief-based criteria in selecting their members and leaders."

UNC-Greensboro's nondiscrimination policy contains an exemption for student groups that select their members based on a shared set of beliefs. The exemption states, "Student groups that select their members on the basis of commitment to a set of beliefs (e.g., religious or political beliefs) may limit membership and participation in the group to students who, upon individual inquiry, affirm that they support the group's goals and agree with its beliefs."

The "Make Up Your Own Mind" club at UNC-Greensboro applied for recognition under this exemption, but university officials denied the request, saying that the club is not religious even though the club has a clear religious mission and purpose and requires its members and leaders to agree with its statement of faith and beliefs about the value of innocent human life.

The university argued that the club is "not affiliated with a church but rather a local non-profit organization"; however, being affiliated with a church is not a requirement for qualifying as a religious organization. In addition, the university recognizes many other religious organizations that are not affiliated with a church.

After the university thwarted the club's efforts to obtain recognition for months, the club resubmitted its request, pointing out the many statements in its constitution showing that it is a religious group. Despite this, the university failed to act on the new request, prompting the club to file suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.

High Point attorney Lisa Stewart, one of nearly 2,100 attorneys in the ADF alliance, is serving as local counsel in the lawsuit, Make Up Your Own Mind v. The Members of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Review of STAR WARS ON TRIAL

A fine little book to which I made a fine little contribution is reviewed over at I Can Stay, as well as a mention of my one movie in which I appear for one second, speaking half a line of monologue.

Here is an except. The words in italics are from the intro to the book:

Star Wars on Trial edited by David Brin and Matthew Woodring Stover

In any event, there is one conclusive answer to "it's only a movie."

That answer is: You've already bought a book whose whole purpose is to discuss meaning and consequence in the Star Wars Universe! Everybody who contributed, from accuser to defender, believes there is something worth arguing about. We'll do it because the topic matters, or because it's fun to argue, or because we're being paid to argue. Most likely, all three.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking to Alexandre O. Philippe, director of The People Vs George Lucas (interview for Filmink magazine here). The film itself is well worth checking out, as it perfectly captures the – to outsiders – seemingly inexplicable fanrage of Star Wars devotees. However, even if the rantings and ravings on camera are not something viewers can relate to, a person would be very hard-pressed to claim they had no idea what Star Wars was, or who George Lucas is, or even – what is the Force? So from that point of view, it is difficult to write off the science fiction franchise as being 'just for kids', although on the opposite extreme it is equally hard to insist that it is actually a twentieth century monomyth with a straight face.

Confusingly Lucas himself has made both claims. That is just a hint of how contradictory the man's relationship with Star Wars is.

Star Wars on Trial amusingly sticks to a court-room cross examination of the franchise itself, its strengths and failings, and the effect it has had upon the various industries swallowed up by Lucas' empire. David Brin, following on from his evisceration of The Phantom Menace in 1999 for Salon, argues for the prosecution. Matthew Woodring Stover, also a science fiction writer, is our plucky court-appointed defence lawyer.

[...]

The witnesses are themselves writers or cultural theorists, who present their evidence and are then questioned by Brin or Stover. Amusingly a 'Droid Judge' presides over these interactions. The topics argued include the political subtext of the series, its status as science fiction – Brin argues that it is fantasy literature in drag, the would-be mythic significance of Lucas' work, alleged plot-holes, mischaracterisation of women within the franchise and finally its legacy for the film industry.

This book has one undeniable highlight for me, a moment of pure 'gotcha' brilliance. For years I have heard that the Force draws upon Buddhism, Taoism, y'know that whole 'Eastern' lark, to pad out its pseudo-religious significance. Witness for the prosecution John C. Wright disabuses Stover of that notion quite brilliantly during the cross-examination. Robert A. Metzger mounts an especially, uh, interesting defence, arguing that Lucas has actually created a work of Gnostic significance. I found that quite fun, but hardly convincing.

Read the whole review here.

I should mention this is the only book for which I receive a tip in person from a customer. I was in a gaming store, buying models of orcs or warhammer 40K wardroids or something equally absurd for my kids, and the young clerk and I fell into a conversation about the religion in Star Wars. It turned out he had read STAR WARS ON TRIAL, but hadn't bought it, partly because he was so angry at some of the articles and their points of view. Sensing nerdrage, I cautiously asked about the one article on how and why the Force is not Taoism, but is instead Way Cool Mind Powers of a sort you need for fun and kinetic cinema. He said he adored that article! Throwing aside my cloak, I revealed I was the author thereof. Realizing that by not buying the book, he had deprived me of my cut of the cover price, roughly twelve cents, the bold young man immediately yanked a fiver out of his billfold and bestowed it with a blessing upon me. Hoo hah!

You may read more about the book on my boast page http://www.sff.net/people/john-c-wright/Contrib_Star_Wars_on_Trial.htm

Han shot first.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Nostreculsus Writes

This letter was in the comments thread. I thought it worth emphasis:

Unlike Mr Wright, who is at home in the world of abstract thought, I am so constituted that I must rely on examples. And his article reveals an example that rivals "The Picture of Dorian Grey" for imaginative horror.

There are two women. They both are involved in modern medical care. The first is named Francesca Minerva. She is a medical ethicist, pursuing postdoctoral studies in philosophy. Medical ethics is a growing field, as governments assume control of medical decision-making. Even her critics admit that Francesca looks nice and has a nice smile.

The other woman involved in medical care is Amie Osborn. Amie is a physician in Houston, treating children. Amie also has a nice smile, but Amie herself admits she does not look "normal". But let me quote Amie's blog.

In most every way, I am your typical, garden-variety human being. I'm married with two cats. I am a physician…

I have Treacher Collins syndrome. Treacher Collins syndrome is a genetic, craniofacial birth defect that is characterized by a range of distinctive facial anomalies. The main characteristics of TCS are downward slanting eyes, small lower jaw, and malformed or missing ears. These anomalies can cause hearing, breathing, and eating problems.

Treacher Collins syndrome is a lot more than a pile of statistics and facts. It is about the person below the surface. People tend to give wide berth to the things and people that they perceive as a threat to them – those people who are "different" or who they don't understand. In some situations, this defense mechanism can be good. In excess, however, it breeds ignorance and heartache and leads society to shun those that aren't "normal." Thus, society does not take the time to see what lies beneath the outer shell of a person and never sees that below the surface these "different" people are just as "normal" as anyone else. It is part of my goal as a doctor-in-training to educate people about Treacher Collins syndrome and to prove to them that looks can be very deceiving. I hope to start a new trend in society where society reads the book before discarding it because the cover looks a little odd.

Ah, you say, two women working in the field of medicine. Amie is quite odd looking on the outside, but seems quite nice. And Francesca looks nice in all the externals, but, inside, something is…not quite right. Because Francesca, the ethics expert, wants to kill Amie. Or rather, she wants someone else to have killed Amie as a child. But, let's quote Francesca's own words.

A serious philosophical problem arises when the same conditions that would have justified abortion become known after birth…One example is the case of Treacher-Collins syndrome (TCS)…Usually those affected by TCS are not mentally impaired and they are therefore fully aware of their condition, of being different from other people and of all the problems their pathology entails. Many parents would choose to have an abortion if they find out, through genetic prenatal testing, that their fetus is affected by TCS.

Well that seems quite definitive. Amie, how ever do you cope with the painful awareness that you can never look as nice as nice Francesca? What say you?

Given the chance to live my life over again without Treacher Collins, I would have to politely decline. I believe that the experiences in my life as a result of Treacher Collins have molded me into the person that I am today. Like anyone else, I've had many ups and downs, and to give up the lessons I've learned on the roller-coaster ride of life would be to give up part of myself. Having Treacher Collins syndrome, or any other medical condition, does not make someone "abnormal," it only makes him human.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.