John C. Wright's Blog, page 170

Malthus and the Reverse Cassandra Effect

I have always been a little puzzled by overpopulation scares. They were a staple of science fiction in the 1950′s and 1960′s — one of Robert Heinlein’s personal bugbears, for example, showing up in TUNNEL IN THE SKY and FARMER IN THE SKY and it can be seen in Isaac Asimov’s CAVES OF STEEL and in STAND ON ZANZIBAR by Brunner, in the ‘Known Space’ universe of Larry Niven, and in the movie SOYLENT GREEN, and in many places besides.

It was an established staple of the science fiction background, so much so that if you wrote a story set in the future that did not have overpopulation, you had to explain to the readers some reaslistic reason why, in much the same way if you had a future where there was no interplanetary travel, you would have to mention a reason: Otherwise the readers would not find the tale believable.

Why is it so persistent a fear?

That is not hard to see: the writers in the 60′s and 50′s were born and raised in the 30′s and 20′s, and they lived through urbanization, industrialization, and the postwar Baby Boom. It also means that read stories and heard yarns from the previous generation of writers in the 1890′s and 1880′s. This includes the time when the open ranges of the West were still in the process of being fenced in an closed down — the frontier was filled up and closed, the manifest destiny was complete, and the frontier spirit was dying off. They saw highways and factories and parkinglots going up on land that used to be forest where their brothers and fathers had spent time hunting and fishing.

Nothing was more natural but that the science fiction writers would extrapolate from their current circumstances and foretell tales of Malthusian overpopulation.

Read more

Free Fiction!

The esteemed Mike Allen is the editor of the CLOCKWORK PHOENIX anthology series, where my work has been honored to appear more than once. Of all editors I’ve worked with, he is the one most adroit at keeping his writers informed of the various stages of the project, of distribution and good reviews and so on.

CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3 has been selected as part of the “Celebrate Reading in 2011″ Free Fiction Sampler hosted at the Underwords website. The link is here: http://emunderwood.com/2011/01/01/celebrate-reading-in-2011-with-the-free-fiction-sampler/

You can read free fiction from four the writers with whom I had the honor to appear in the anthology:

“The Gospel of Nachash” by Marie Brennan,
“Braiding the Ghosts” by C.S.E. Cooney,
“Surrogates” by Cat Rambo,
“Lineage” by Kenneth Schneyer.

Naturally, if you enjoy these stories, feel free to rush right out and buy a copy of CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3, and read my story, ‘Murder in Metachronopolis” as well. See here.

And if you like that story, rush right out and buy the previous volume, CLOCKWORK PHOENIX, where a story in the same background is also set, “Choosers of the Slain.” See here.

The Meaning of Life — as Told to me by an Inebriated Science Fiction Writer In New Jersey

I should mention that, as a science fiction writer, can comment authoritatively and finally on the true meaning of life.
Fifteen billion years ago an unexplained an inexplicable event created all the matter and energy, time and space in the universe apparently out of nothing and for no reason. However, the precise nature of this event allowed primordial plasma to expand, cool, and form the nebulae which one day would give rise to the galaxy, especially one rather small G-type star in the outer arm of an otherwise insignificant galaxy: by yet another coincidence — if coincidence it was — the third planet from that star had the exact chemical conditions to give rise, first to life, then to intelligent life, then to civilization, then to technical civilization.
Unbeknown to the dwellers on that small insignificant sphere, all galaxies, including this one, are teaming not merely with life, but with ultra-intelligent life, but this world is strictly quarantined for reasons that will soon become apparent.
You see, the first experiments in time travel have already taken place.
H.G. Wells is the first man to have crossed the time barrier, and beheld the grim and final destiny to which the race of homo sapiens is doomed, to devolve into subhuman Eloi and grisly cannibal Moorlocks.
Read more

Love Letter from a Catholic to an Objectivist

“One of the reasons I stay away from your materialist arguments here is I do not know the referents of the arguments. I recognize Christian man, I recognize Buddhist man, generic atheist man, etc, I do not recognize materialist man. Meaning I understand man as the Christians see him, I can grasp that; I do not know what a materialist is saying when he is talking about man. And I do have a enough pride to know that this is not due to a lack on my part – but that what they are talking about is not only not man, it does not even exist. It is more fantastical and arbitrary than they accuse your God of being.”

I agree without reservation. First, I admit my God is fantastical and, technically speaking, He is arbitrary, namely in that He created cosmos from nothingness by fiat. Christians do not believe the universe is inevitable — it was arbitrated into existence. A God who was not fantastical would pretty clearly be a human invention, and not worth admiring, much less worshiping.

Second, much as it might embarrass us both to admit it, a fanatic anti-selfishness Christian and a fanatic anti-selflessness Objectivist still agree on the fundamentals. St. Thomas Aquinas was a student of Aristotle and so was Ayn Rand. We agree that existence exists, that A is A, that life is worth living (a Christian is not a Buddhist, after all) and that there is an objective moral code which reason can discover without which a good and happy life cannot take place. You might scoff at the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity, and you and I both promote the cardinal virtues of Justice, Moderation, Temperance, and Fortitude.

Read more

The True Meaning of Christmas

As we all know, there are four holidays celebrated this time of year: Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Xmas and Christmas.

Read more

Have a Very Space Princess Christmas!

As we all know, Space Princesses come in two types: Good Girl Space Princesses like Princess Deja Thoris of Barsoom or Princess Leia, and Bad Girl Space Princesses like Princess Aura of Mongo.

For your holiday viewing pleasure, here is a video I discovered in the wilderness of the Internet celebrating the first Princess Aura, Priscilla Lawson.

Read more

Placeboes Work even on Informed Patients

An article from the LA Times. I reprint the whole thing without comment. Draw your own conclusions as to what this means about the mind-body relationship, or the ability of humans to get well merely by mental means, or, dare I say it, spiritual? (Or, if you are cynical, draw your own conclusions about the utility of scientific studies). Either way, the study hints that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Horatio’s philosophy.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/22/health/la-he-placebo-effect-20101223

Read more

Return of the Robot Zombie Slaves

Part of an ongoing discussion with a collection of molecules:

I said, “Under the materialistic model, there is no necessary reason to assume the universe is something human beings can understand. It may be the case that it is, but it may not be.”

You said, “Do humans in fact understand the universe? We have a bunch of useful tricks, certainly. …It may be that humans, in fact, can’t understand the universe, but can find some nice tricks that enable us to kill our enemies and get lots of bananas.”

Stripped of the condescending metaphor likening all human accomplishments to banana-getting, your statement in support of the materialistic model seems to confirm that what I said about the materialist model. The fact that the planets move according to a few, simple, elegant and beautiful laws is, for example, to the materialist, a lucky coincidence, or a mystery.
Read more

The Magic Darwin Fairies

Regarding the theory that religion is an inherited characteristic, shaped by Darwinian natural selection, a reader writes in with this just-so story:

“Let us consider a paleolithic woman, who is part of a band of people who are hunter/gatherers. Over the years, you recognize that sometimes, it seems as though plants themselves grow so they are easy to harvest, and other times, they do not. The men talk about how sometimes, the game seems to fall right into their laps, almost as though it were led by an external force; other times, nothing is to be found. They begin to discuss ‘the spirit of the hunt’. You are thankful when it rains; it is not a large step to move from being thankful to thanking whatever spirits seems to give to you or to take away from you. You may think those spirits to be angry with you; no rain has fallen, so you burn some of your food, in the hope that you may appease that which you have angered. The rains then fall. You imagine these spirits to be like people, much as people today discuss machines and weather like people. (Cynics would say it was invented for the purpose of power: “the rain god is angry, and says you must give me food, or there will be no rain”)

If you are asking what biological development is necessary in the brain, evolutionarily speaking, to move to the point where one can invent an external personality–wherein one can anthropomorphize the natural world…I am not enough of a biologist to say. I know that recently, they discovered a part of the brain that when stimulated with electromagnetic fields induced feelings of being connected with the “divine”.

My comment:

If I understand your point, I am not sure we disagree.

You are giving an account of how a reasoning creature, such as a woman of the paleolithic, would come to make a false-to-facts account of the plentiful food some seasons and the scarcity in others, and she would come to believe an intelligent agency was behind the appearances of things — and the nature of such a belief is that is it not easy to disprove, and so it would tend to be taught and passed along the generations. Do I understand your idea?

Read more

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The box office results do not bode well for a continuation of this fine series: we may never get to see THE SILVER CHAIR. To avert that unwelcome fate, let me do my small part by urging my friends to go see the film.

VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER is based on the beloved childrens’ book of CS Lewis of the same name, and follows the main outline of the story somewhat faithfully. We are not talking about some abomination where the two have nothing in common but the name, such as the flick STARSHIP TROOPERS, which was made for the sole purpose of insulting the fans of the novel. Nonetheless, purists like me will register at least a slight disappointment at the addition of an overarching quest plot not present in the book, and something of a flatness or “saltlessness” which comes from leaving out certain beloved scenes, lines, or themes.

The plot is that Edmund and Lucy return to the world of Narnia along with their frightfully selfish and priggish cousin Eustace Scrubb, a boy who almost deserves the name. They fall through a magic picture into the uncharted seas East of Narnia, to be rescued by Prince Caspian in his fair ship the Dawn Treader, seeking the edge of the world at the uttermost east, beyond which Aslan’s country is said to rest.
Read more