John C. Wright's Blog, page 165

You've Come a Long Way Down, Baby: Marvel Girl v the Stepford Wives

Part of an ongoing conversation. Italic text is Dr. A, whose comment is here. Orotund text is mine.

The argument concerned this: I say it is abnormal to react with contempt or embarrassment at the sight of Marvel Girl doing household chores. We call feminine those qualities by which females distinguish themselves from males, and also those qualities that attract males to females. Motherhood is feminine because it is the essential quality that distinguishes the sexes. Because Mothers can nurse babies without artifices, and also because they are suited by their spirit and instinct, society expects mothers to do the mothering. Because babies are inconvenient to tote around, mothering is usually done in the nursery, which is usually at the home. This frees up the father to earn the daily bread by whatever means, hunting, farming, factory or office work, he can find. The household chores must be done by someone, and it is more convenient for the mother to do them than otherwise. While there are exceptions, this is the general course of the division of labor for all human beings of all history, including the present.

Let me cover at least some of these points seriatim:

It seems clear that we were arguing past each other; some of what you label irrelevancies are quite relevant to what I was talking about.

Be that as it may, if you are talking about a different subject than I am, what is that to me? In a poem, or when relating a dream to a friend in a casual conversation, there is nothing amiss with stringing ideas together stream-of-consciousness style. In an argument, it is an informal logical error. Read more

Quote of the Day: Evasion Without the Bad Sense to Disguise Itself

This is from HERETICS by GK Chesterton, published in 1905. Allow me to quote the whole paragraph, merely to astonish the modern reader that modernity, and the central ideas of modernity, are actually Late Victorian, and even at that date were dismissed with deserved joviality by Chesterton, a man saved from accusations of being modern only because he speaks of eternal things. And eternal things, it must be remembered, are always up to date, even while modern things are alway behind the times and passing away.

There is, indeed, one class of modern writers and thinkers who cannot altogether be overlooked in this question, though there is no space here for a lengthy account of them, which, indeed, to confess the truth, would consist chiefly of abuse.

I mean those who get over all these abysses and reconcile all these wars by talking about “aspects of truth,” by saying that the art of Kipling represents one aspect of the truth, and the art of William Watson another; the art of Mr. Bernard Shaw one aspect of the truth, and the art of Mr. Cunningham Grahame another; the art of Mr. H. G. Wells one aspect, and the art of Mr. Coventry Patmore (say) another.

I will only say here that this seems to me an evasion which has not even bad the sense to disguise itself ingeniously in words.

If we talk of a certain thing being an aspect of truth, it is evident that we claim to know what is truth; just as, if we talk of the hind leg of a dog, we claim to know what is a dog.

Unfortunately, the philosopher who talks about aspects of truth generally also asks, “What is truth?” Frequently even he denies the existence of truth, or says it is inconceivable by the human intelligence.

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Bill Whittle Day!

Only posting a link, or, rather two videos.

Ash Wednesday is tomorrow. In honor of Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday, for you non-francophiles) we have a festival of Bill Whittle: End of the Beginning and Free Frontier.

END OF THE BEGINNING:

There is a rather nice science fiction story hidden somewhere in this analysis, which ties the form of government roughly to the surrounding social power structure, including the basic form of the economy, either husbandmen of the Agrarian Revolution, factory hand of the Industrial Revolution, or programmer of the Information Revolution.

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You've Come a Long Way Down, Baby: The Tao of Housework

There is an ongoing discussing on the comments thread of this piece You’ve Come a Long Way Down Baby! which I should like, for purposes of legibility, to move to its own topic.

For those of us who came in late, the beginnings of the debate was this:

The original post reprinted this panel from a comic, which, I submit, and no one has denied, the average modern reader finds mildly or acutely embarrassing (and the modern feminist reader finds outrageous and blasphemous) because it portrays a superhuman girl as a girl who does housework when not engaged in world-saving, a girl who voices no shame over this stereotypical feminine role.

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Quotes from DARKNESS AND LIGHT by Olaf Stapledon

First, a word of background. I was clearing out old files, and came across this oddity: my own annotations and comments on a manuscript.

DARKNESS AND LIGHT by Olaf Stapledon was a novel I enjoyed, at least somewhat, in my youth, and I was favorably impressed with Olaf Stapledon’s breadth of imagination.

Rereading it with adult eyes, I am appalled.

This book was written in 1942, during the Second World War. It consists of a tale with no characters and no plot: or, rather, all mankind is the character, and all future history to the end of man or the abolition of man is the plot. With his characteristic Stapledonian gigantism and grandeur, the author escorts us down immensities, centuries and millennia flying past in a paragraph.

This is instead a history book of two fictional histories of the future, two branches of the time stream, one leading to darkness, and the other to light. As best I know, it is the first science fictional presentation of the theme of parallel and alternate timelines.

To my mind, Olaf Stapledon is nearly as inventive as HG Wells: galactic empires, dirigible planets, cosmic evolution, superhumanity, artificial elements, disembodied brains, and other basic science fiction tropes are his inventions. And yet he is rarely brought to mind as one of the founding giants of science fiction: Perhaps that is because his ideas were rarely brought to the public through radio or motion picture. There is no Orson Wells or George Pal that dramatized LAST AND FIRST MEN, or ODD JOHN, or SIRIUS before the ears and eyes of the general public.

The Narrator is an unidentified man of our era perceiving these things in a vision, perhaps the same man who performs a similar ‘framing sequence’ function in STARMAKER by the same author.

For the purposes of savaging him in this commentary, I called him ‘Olaf.’ Whether the opinions of Olaf the Narrator are the same as those of Olaf Stapledon the Author, I leave to wiser heads than mine.

Second, a word of explanation:

Any reader taken aback by the venom of my comments must understand that mine is akin to the fury of a fanboy scorned, of whom it is said Hell hath no Fury. Olaf Stapledon, if I may use the embarrassing metaphor, was a childhood crush of mine, an author beloved of my imagination.

But when I read him back then, in the innocence of youth, the political references sailed lightly over my head. Now that I am taller, they slap me in the face.

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The Select Committee on Pedological Maturation Affairs

Robert J. Wizard writes in with this question, concerning this article discussed previously in this space:

Who decides what is “childish”? Is it confined to Star Wars, or science fiction in general? Comic books and Star Wars (leaving out the prequels) are meaningless tripe? Conversations about them are immature?

I think the current administration is appointing a committee whose rulings on what is childish and what is mature are definitive and binding. It will be a cabinet level position. Since the state is now our Nanny, who better to decide whether we are growing into adults at the correct rate?

No, no, just kidding. The committee on childishness is actually appointed by the Science Fiction Writers of America, under its President, Damon Knight.

By some odd coincidence, they decided all of Damon Knight’s works are mature and grown-up, whereas the work of AE van Vogt is childish tripe. Hmm.

The committee also ruled that Kyle Raynor is the real Green Lantern and Hal Jordan is a has-been; that Roger Moore is a better James Bond than Sean Connery; that Jar Jar Binks is a really cool character, and made Phantom Menace better than Empire Strikes Back; the Halle Berry is the best Catwoman; that Michael Moorcock and China Mieville count as grown-up and serious writers, whereas CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien are immature and trivial.

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Space Rubbish!

The esteemed Isaac Wilcott, who helped me with my research when I was writing NULL A CONTINUUM, has decided to venture onto the opinion and editorial pages of the Internet. He has begun his own blog at

http://spacerubbish.wordpress.com/

I suspect that he lacks that personality defect of shameless exhibitionism which makes men become actors, opinion-makers, pundits, science fiction writers and ax murderers, so it behooves us to click through and visit and leave a word of encouragement.

Wilcott is, after all, a fellow fan of A.E. van Vogt. Van is the writer of all writers who shaped my youthful imagination and persuaded me of the infinite potential of the human spirit. In the time of John W Campbell Jr., Van was as big as Robert Heinlein or Isaac Asimov, but while these two authors have withstood the test of time, or even grown to legendary stature as the year flee, poor Mr. Van Vogt lingers neglected and foresaken.

So anyone who does not forget Van Vogt has earns special and grateful admiration from me. (And that includes the midget monster Harlan Ellison, by the bye, who fought like a tiger to get Van his well-deserved Grandmaster award from the SF Writer’s guild.)

And, so far, Mr. Wilcott is the only person I’ve ever met who read more Van Vogt than I have, even coming into possession of unpublished (in English) van Vogt manuscripts, and rareties from his pre-SF sales to True Confession magazines, and so on.

In any case, if you are wondering why Mr. Wilcott named his journal after killer space screwdrivers or wandering debris, or if you like his Van Vogt Info pages, you owe yourself a visit.

Mental Activity, i.e. Decision-Making, Falls within Congress' Power?

There is a movie from the 1970′s called THE PAPER CHASE which all law students are practically required to see, or at least, so they were in my day. Here is the money quote. The toughest professor in the school is addressing the helpless gaggle of First Years.

Professor Kingsfield: You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.

The line is striking, especially if delivered with impeccable sarcasm by the immortal John Houseman, but let us not overlook that this line is a promise. We, the public, whose lives are ruled by a legal system run by those who think like lawyers, depend for our liberties and even our lives on the promise that our legal system will not be in the hands of those whose skulls are filled with mush.

I was reminded of this quote today.

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has held, as a matter of law, Congress has the power to regulate, through the Commerce Clause, any action or inaction, including mental activity or inactivity, including any decision or failure to decide by anyone in the jurisdiction of the United States, which may have an affect on reality.

The reason is that actions affect interstate commerce, including the action of deciding not to purchase a good or service in the amount and quality and under the conditions the state commands, and that mental activity, such as thought, affects actions, therefore mental activity falls under the Commerce Clause.

I kid you not.
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Tyche, the TENTH Planet

There is a rumor floating around that the WISE project data might discover an ice giant somewhere out in the Oort cloud

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/up-telescope-search-begins-for-giant-new-planet-2213119.html

The hunt is on for a gas giant up to four times the mass of Jupiter thought to be lurking in the outer Oort Cloud, the most remote region of the solar system. The orbit of Tyche, would be 15,000 times farther from the Sun than the Earth’s, and 375 times farther than Pluto’s, which is why it hasn’t been seen so far.

My comment: exciting news, but the newspapers keep referring to this as a NINTH planet, when Clyde Tombaugh discovered a ninth planet long ago, Yuggoth on the Rim, also called Dis, before he vanished under mysterious circumstances from his observatory at Arkham.

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Atlas Shrugged Film

At least one reviewer says they did the book exactly right.

http://www.verumserum.com/?p=21923

The story is really the star here. It’s a film on gleaming blue rails that carefully follow the curves of the landscape Ayn Rand created over 50 years ago. There won’t be any unpleasant surprises for devotees of the novel. No Jar-Jar moments to make you cringe.

My comment: I am actually shocked, pleasantly shocked, that this film could get made in the modern day, apparently true enough to the original to get the nod from (at least) one reviewer.

I am even more shocked that a film maker is bold enough to make a film in three parts: I sort of assumed LORD OF THE RINGS was a once-in-a-lifetime anomaly.