John C. Wright's Blog, page 16
June 29, 2015
The Feast of Sts Peter and Paul
A reader writes and asks:
John, convince me not to turn to Islam after what just happened earlier today with the Supreme Court ruling, because right now, I’m trying to think of ways to commit something that I know is heinous while minimizing my digital fingerprint.
Sir, I cannot convince you, but I can tell you what convinced me. Here is the tale:
I was in Chattanooga, visiting a science fiction convention, when, on the Christian Sabbath, I went to a basilica which was all of four blocks away.
The nave was decorated with solemn beauty, and was sublime. Thanks to the miracle of the Information Age, I can find and show you a picture. Imagine you have just stepped off of a hot street in a warehouse district whose wealth and beauty sagged and departed around the turn of the century, and you see this:
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Reviewer Praise for THE GOLDEN AGE
A rather favorable review:
http://www.rachelneumeier.com/2015/06/23/recent-reading-the-golden-age-trilogy-by-john-c-wright/
Here is one remark about the ideal reader which I thought worthy of note:
The ideal reader: In order to be engaged by this trilogy, I think the reader has to enjoy complicated, ornate, nonstandard settings; technological extrapolation; and exposition. I think plot readers are going to like it better than character readers.
I think that readers who particularly enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson should give The Golden Age trilogy a try. Robinson is the better writer – in particularly, a lot of his description and exposition reads like poetry – but then, Robinson is an outstanding writer who’s been at it a lot longer.
This trilogy also makes me think of stories like Ringworld by Larry Niven and the Gaian trilogy by John Varley. I would also actually be very curious to know what readers who love Ancillary Justice would make of The Golden Age trilogy, because despite the differences between the two works, in some ways I think they are doing similar things.
If you’ve read The Golden Age, what else would you consider similar?
Now I need to read The Player of Games to compare that utopia with this one …
My comment:
Ironically, the first review I ever received as a professional writer was from someone who vehemently and viscerally disliked the very same passage this reviewer mentions as the one that engaged her sympathy and attention, namely, the gentle bickering of man and (almost) wife.
I have not had the pleasure of reading ANCILLARY JUSTICE, but I have read PLAYER OF GAMES, and did see some of the parallels and polar opposites with that most imaginative of works. The approach toward what constitutes a utopia is very different indeed.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
June 24, 2015
Tor and the Volunteer Thought Police Department
As noted before, a conflict of interest requires I recuse myself from expressing either support or opposition to the boycott of Tor, my publisher, urged on by my readers. Obviously I would prefer to retain the goodwill of both.
Also obviously, I would prefer the matter be solved in a civil and professional fashion.
To some readers this might seem logically to imply that the solution requires that the uncivil and unprofessional persons whose extracurricular activities led to this debacle depart from Tor, and let the rest of us, the professionals, simply get on with the business of writing and selling books.
I allow myself to express no opinion on that point, but I do note that Tor cannot prosper without the goodwill of readers whereas the readers certainly can prosper without the illwill of Tor.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
June 23, 2015
Quotha: The Fully Christian Society
From Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis:
… the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one’s work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no ‘swank’ or ‘side’, no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience—obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls ‘busybodies’.
If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, ‘advanced’, but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old fashioned—perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself. You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian: every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Left, Right, Texan
As my latest six-book trilogy stars a futuristic Texan, I thought I had to pass along this observation.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
June 22, 2015
Laudato Si
Someone asked me my opinion of the Pope’s recent encyclical letter,
Laudato Si which the Leftstream Press reported as being in support of the theory of Man-caused Global Flooding/Drought and Warming/Cooling.
I have not had the opportunity to read the encyclical, but friends of mine brought quotes from it to my attention. Hence this column is merely my flippant first impression, unmingled with any serious purpose of close study.
Without reading it I can say two things.
First, I am a loyal son of the Church and believe and follow everything she teaches authoritatively. No Catholic can dissent from the teachings of theology contained within the letter.
Sorry, halfcatholics and latitudinarians and Laodiceans. You knew what you were signing up for when you got baptized, abjured the devil and his angels, and the world and its false glamour, and vowed fidelity instead to the world’s creator. The World’s dark prince and the World’s bright maker are at odds, and you chose a side.
Second, these remarks I see here quoted out of context do not seem to fit the Leftfoot, sorry, the Leftwing narrative. It reads like what every orthodox Catholic theologian has said since Saint John was assumed to heaven, differing only in nuance and emphasis. That gives me pause for thought, and an excuse for mockery. Maybe the Pope is Catholic after all, and not Progressive? Hmm….
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
June 21, 2015
The Three Laws of Morlocktics
Below is a comment I simply had to share:
39. Jack Aubrey
They are as predictable as Asimov’s robots, whose three laws were programmed into them.
1. An SJW may not tell the Truth or, through inaction, allow the Truth to be told.
2. An SJW must obey orders given it by the Hive Mind, and double down except where doing so would conflict with the First Law.
3. An SJW must protect its own existence by projecting its behavior on the Enemy and acting accordingly, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Tomorrowland
Tomorrowland.
This is a movie about jetpacks.
I almost did not go to see this film because a film reviewer I trusted panned it, criticized it, said it was a mess. But since I have been burned by reviewers I trusted before, I trusted my instinct, and let my daughter take me as a Father’s Day gift.
Never trust reviewers. Never. This movie made me feel like flying.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
June 20, 2015
And now back to the real world
Let us not forget that, outside the little teapot in which the latest hysterical tempest is swirling, that there is a real world outside, with real battles to occupy our attention, real lives being lost.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Moshe Feder Speaks for Himself
Tor Books editor Moshe Feder is my wife’s editor. Hence, her customers, her readers, the people who are delighted with her novels, are his customers as well, the people who pay him to do his job so that he can make a living.
He has decided publicly to rebuff those customers Mr Feder calls our customers unhappy with the recent unprofessional antics at Tor Books by the charming epithet “idiots”:
As you may have heard, certain scoundrels have declared a boycott of Tor, starting today, to protest the efforts of some Tor employees to defend the Hugo Awards from attack. In response, some of our friends have declared today “Buy A Tor Book Day.”
I wouldn’t have the temerity to ask you to buy a book just because some idiots have declared war on us. But if there _is_ a Tor Book you’ve been meaning to get anyway, buying it today would be a a gesture I’d appreciate.
[As always here on Facebook, I’m speaking for myself and not the company.]
Ah… Well, thank you for your help mollifying our customers, Mr Feder. I am sure that being told they are idiots will make them eager to spend their hard earned book-buying dollars the product you and I are working together to produce for them.
The honorable and upright man being referred to so colorfully as a scoundrel is, of course, Mr Peter Grant. Mr Grant expresses a strong doubts about Mr Feder’s veracity:
Read his first sentence.
Now, read it again.
It’s a lie. It’s a bare-faced, out-and-out falsehood. He’s lying in public, and he appears to believe he’ll be allowed to get away with it.
The boycott of Tor has nothing whatsoever to do with “the efforts of some Tor employees to defend the Hugo Awards from attack”. It has everything to do with some Tor employees (including Mr. Feder) deliberately, repeatedly and publicly lying about the ‘Puppies’ campaigns, those behind them, and anything and anyone else they regard as ideologically impure and/or unfit to associate with SF/F fandom as approved by them. I’ve already described in detail Ms. Gallo’s contribution, which sparked the boycott. Mr. Feder’s latest lie merely confirms and reinforces her mendacity (and my position).
He states that he’s speaking for himself and not the company . . . but I haven’t seen Tor repudiate any of his earlier lies, some of them issued on company time using company equipment, so I’ll give this latest assurance the same credibility I’ve given his earlier ones.
My comment:
Since I have a conflict of interest, I must remain neutral. Loyalty to my publisher demands I not take sides. Loyalty to my beloved customers demands I not take sides.
Mr Feder has taken sides. Loyalty to his political correctness outweighs, for him, loyalty to publisher. And he just called you, my dear readers and customers, idiots and scoundrels.
This has nothing to do with the Sad Puppies. We are only here for the Hugo Awards.
This particular fight is between, on the one hand, those at Tor Books who think political correctness outweighs all professional and personal loyalties, all standards of decency, all need to be truthful, and who damn their own customers; and, on the other, those who are thankful to the customers and who think the purpose of a business is business.
One side consists of those calling for the resignations that any professional worthy of the name would long ago have proffered for the damage they have done to the company name and public goodwill.
The other side consists of people at Tor who regard Tor as an instrument of social engineering, an arm of the Democrat Party’s press department, or a weapon in the war for social justice.
Without expressing any personal opinion, I can say that there is an easy compromise which our free and robust capitalistic system allows: we can all wish the best to Miss Gallo and Mr Feder when they day comes when they decide to take their interests and obsessions elsewhere, and leave the company in the hands of those of us who merely want to write, publish, and read science fiction told from any and every point of view, political or otherwise, provided the story is well crafted.
If you are a customer and have an opinion, please make your voice heard.
tom.dohertyATtor.com
andrew.weberATmacmillan.com
rhonda.brownATmacmillan.com
Substitute the at sign where I have written AT.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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