John C. Wright's Blog, page 157

Farewell, Liberty

To arms, citizens.

INDIANAPOLIS | Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said.

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Pulp Cover Fiction

The Internet is a strange place. I was looking at youtube videos of pulp magazine covers, and little mini-essays on The Shadow, when I came across youtube where someone had put together a slideshow of magazine covers from the 1950′s. I recognized the first one, because I had used it in a humor piece I had written in 2008, where I (tongue in cheek) tried to define the genre of science fiction by seeing what elements appeared on the covers of pulp magazines.

“Well,” thought I, “Small world. That guy who made the slideshow found the same magazine as I!”

Then the slideshow displayed the second one, which, by coincidence, was the second cover I had used; and then the third — by the time the Old West covers I had used rolled around, I caught on.

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Love Letter to a Princess of Mars, Postcript

So Number Three Son and I have read to chapter XI of Princess of Mars, when we came across these words. John Carter is trying to explain his origins to Dejah Thoris.

She addresses him thus:

“I heard your challenge to the creature you call Tars Tarkas, and I think I understand your position among these people, but what I cannot fathom is your statement that you are not of Barsoom.”

“In the name of my first ancestor, then,” she continued, “where may you be from? You are like unto my people, and yet so unlike. You speak my language, and yet I heard you tell Tars Tarkas that you had but learned it recently. All Barsoomians speak the same tongue from the ice-clad south to the ice-clad north, though their written languages differ. Only in the valley Dor, where the river Iss empties into the lost sea of Korus, is there supposed to be a different language spoken, and, except in the legends of our ancestors, there is no record of a Barsoomian returning up the river Iss, from the shores of Korus in the valley of Dor. Do not tell me that you have thus returned! They would kill you horribly anywhere upon the surface of Barsoom if that were true; tell me it is not!”

Her eyes were filled with a strange, weird light; her voice was pleading, and her little hands, reached up upon my breast, were pressed against me as though to wring a denial from my very heart.

“I do not know your customs, Dejah Thoris, but in my own Virginia a gentleman does not lie to save himself; I am not of Dor; I have never seen the mysterious Iss; the lost sea of Korus is still lost, so far as I am concerned. Do you believe me?”

My son and I, both gentlemen of Virginia, immediately rose to our feet, sang the anthem of the commonwealth, and make the salute, and shouted Sic Semper Tyrannis.
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Rene Descartes and his Steam-Powered Robo-Dog!

Part of an ongoing conversation. A reader named Gian asks:

I meant to ask whether the motion of animals is completely describable by quantitative methods.

Dawkins said that animals are gene machines and I think Descartes had a not too dissimilar view.

I do think that the question of animals need to be clarified first before tacking the more difficult problem of man.

Mike Flynn, who is unforgivably and perhaps irrevocably Irish, and therefore not to be trusted nor underestimated, quips:

Surely, you would not put Descartes before the horse!

My answer is longer and less adroit:

I am not sure I understand the question.

Are you asking whether, if I throw a stick to a dog, whether or not a physicist, using the mental tools and deliberately limited abstractions of physics, INCLUDING the abstraction of deliberately ignoring questions of the intent and purpose of the motion, could predict the motion of the dog, without knowing whether or not the dog had been trained to fetch the stick, or saw the stick, or was in the mood to play, or was ill or blind?

I am a little taken aback that you ask the question. You seem to be asking whether a physicist who deliberately ignores the vital information needed to predict what the dog will do can predict what the dog will do? (The information the rules of physics requires the physicist to ignore include, namely, information concerning the dog’s intention, mood, perception, attitude, spirit.)
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Love Letter to a Princess of Mars

Well, that day which every science fiction Dad looks forward-to has finally arrived at the Wright Household.  For bedtime stories, I have previously read to my children such works as Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron (where the Mushrooms are the good guys) and The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall (where the Mushrooms are the bad guys) and, best of all, The Mad Scientists‘ Club by Bertrand R. Brinley (where the Mad Scientists are the good guys).

All this was merely to lay the groundwork. This day I started telling my youngest son, whom we have named Number Three Son Wright, all about A Princess of Mars. He became interested in the story, and so I pounced, and I read him the first five or so chapters last night. I don’t own a copy myself, but the work is pre-1929, and in the public domain, so I printed it off the Gutenberg Project site, may God bless their efforts.

I read my boy his first honest-to-Barsoom sci fi book. This day, he is one of us, no more to be counted among the muggles. KAOR!

He was so taken by the story that he insisted I draw for him the Thark and the Calot and the other Martian life described in the book, and he insisted that he would invent a game like D&D but where you are transported to other worlds to spelunk in the buried cities and encounter hostile monstrosities, starting with Mars.

I was also taken by the story, and this came as a surprise.

Well, let me tell you, I had forgotten how good this book is. We fancy-pantsy elitist intellectuals (and I include myself) who read Homer in Greek and Milton in, uh, English, tend to look down our supercilious noses at mere pulp writing, but we hard-working sciffy lowbrow hack-writers (and I include myself) should pause to admire the economy and craftsmanship of this seminal work of scientifiction.

I thought I liked this book. No. Upon rereading it, I realize I love it. Let me tell you, dear reader, why.

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Congrats

Mike Allen (hat tip) writes:

Congratulations to the following writers from Clockwork Phoenix 3: New Tales of Beauty and Strangeness who have received honorable mentions from Gardner Dozois in the newest edition of The Year’s Best Science Fiction.

• “Braiding the Ghosts,” C.S.E. Cooney
• “Hell Friend,” Gemma Files
• “Lucyna’s Gaze,” Gregory Frost
• “Where Shadows Go at Low Midnight,” John Grant
• “Surrogates,” Cat Rambo
• “Murder in Metachronopolis,” John C. Wright

Hey! That is I!

And another happy review:
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/science-fiction/l-jagi-lamplighter/prospero-regained/

Kirkus reviews has given my wife’s book, PROSPERO REGAINED, a coveted Starred Review.

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The Space Age has Ended

The final space shuttle has launched. Bid farewell to the Space Age.

As a science fiction reader, I was raised on tales which predicted a future where we first explore, then colonize, the planets.

Those confident predictions were made without factoring in the drag on the world economy and the human spirit of that grotesque philosophy which has no name, but which is sometimes called sometimes Statism, sometimes Antichristianity, sometimes Neo-Barbarism.

They call themselves by a number of flattering names, as Progressive and Liberal and Peace Movements and Liberators of this or that. All such names are lies, the reverse of the truth, because the nameless philosophy seeks neither progress, nor liberty, nor Peace, nor liberation.

Whatever the philosophy is called, it is a very expensive one.

It has finally eaten the seedcorn, and mortgaged our future, and now we cannot make the payments. We have been foreclosed.
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The Second Timeline to the Left and Straight On Till Morning

A reader with the soporific yet Hindenburgian name of Dirigible Trance writes the following in reference to a proposal to undo the American Revolution:

“Well, they would have let us go anyway, just a hundred years later like Canada or New Zealand or Australia. I don’t think that not-revolting would make alot of difference in the long run.

I like the idea of the Old West era happening but with everyone having British accents, though. Epic.”

We should consult someone like Harry Turtledove about what the likely alternative history is, but allow me to make this guess:

– without the American Revolution, the policy of the British Crown forbids westward expansion into the Indian controlled wilderness (this was one of the colonial grievances that gets less airplay than things like taxation without representation). After the French Revolution, Napoleon does not sell the Louisiana Purchase to the British Empire: instead the Napoleonic Wars spread to the New World, and the lands West of the Appalachian mountains, the Mississippi to Ohio, are all French-Speaking. Texas to California is settled by the Spanish Empire. Slavery in the Southern Colonies is abolished by the Lord Mansfield decision and other Victorian reforms, without a shot being fired.

American industry and trade is hindered for an additional century, and Henry Ford, Carnegie, Rockfeller and so on never become famous industrialists, because they lack pedigrees, and friends at court. The colonies of the eastern seaboard never develop a common culture, despite their common language, and their trade and industry remains on the same level as other British Colonies, such as Australia and South Africa.

There are no cowboys in that timeline. There are gauchos, and cavaliers, perhaps, but not English-speaking cowpokes in the great deserts of the West.

Mike Flynn and the Wreck of the Country of the River of the Blind Stars

The esteemed Mike Flynn (who has never written a book entitled Wreck of the Country of the River of the Blind Stars) has written an article entitled “Entitlement”, and yours truly as well as real science fiction authors such as Nancy Kress and Michael Swanwick were ask to contribute.

You can see the results here:

On LiveJournal
Part I. http://m-francis.livejournal.com/204595.html
Part II. http://m-francis.livejournal.com/205007.html

On Blogspot (the blog less traveled)
Part I. http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2011/07/entitlement-part-i.html
Part II. http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2011/07/entitlement-part-ii.html

Mike Flynn is also proffering the following contests:

Contests

Our favorite titles.
Okay, dear readers, if there are any. Your assignment is to share book or story titles that you found effective, memorable, or resonant, regardless of the quality of the story itself. That is, titles that lured you to buy the book or read the story, or which have stuck with you afterward. What about the title enticed you? What made it work. You don’t have to restrict yourself to SF titles, either.

Old wine in new bottles.
Pick a book or story you liked, and suggest an alternate title for it.

The best “Old Wine in New Bottles” entry mentioned in the article itself, was from a writer who complained of a certain over-meddling editor: He would have re-titled The Bible to War God of the Desert.

As a courtesy to my reader (hi, mom!) I will here reprint the questions Mike Flynn posed, and the text of my answers.

I will point out that (1) Mike Flynn co-authored the book FALLEN ANGELS with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (2) Mike Flynn co-authored the following interview with me, therefore (3) I am in the Big Time now! (This is known as the actuarial transitive property).

Henceforward, I stride the sidewalk no more with mincing step and lowered head, but instead shall venture grandly, yes, wagging my belly with a wobble of pride, taking large steps, and swinging my walking stick in circles of such an aggressive largesse of diameter that mere scribblers must cower and yield and leap aside into doorways and nooks, lest the vortex of my passage engulf them, inverting their umbrellas and tossing their tophats mudward! Henceforth I take snuff my the fistful when I wish to sneeze, and cower before no man! Has Gene Wolfe ever collaborated with Mike Flynn? Has Tim Powers?! I say thee, nay!

Of course, such a three way collaboration between Wolfe, Powers, and Flynn would be interesting. I suggest the working title: THE STRANGER TIDES OF THE JIM RIVER OF OLD SUNS OF CERBERUS AND OTHER STORIES.

I am hoping Mr. Flynn will seriously contemplate this project once he is done with his current sequel to THE JANUARY DANCER, tentatively titled THE FEBRUARY HOOFER.

In any case —

The answer was far more material than Mr. Flynn needed, but then again, when I sit down to write a short story, I end up with a three volume novel, so ending up with more material than needed is something of an endemic problem for authors in the Big Time (a title by Fritz Leiber).

Q&A below the cut.

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The Long Overdue Return of Wright's Writing Corner

A short piece this week on the Unexpected Assumptions of readers. Excerpt:

When I was young and arrogant, I used to criticize authors for not handling “obvious” issues in their books-issues which, in retrospect, were usually me jumping to some conclusion that the author could never have been expected to foresee.
Well, this particular phenomena has come back to haunt me, as now similar things are happening to my readers.

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/198360.html