John C. Wright's Blog, page 18

Irene Gallo

Irene Gallo is the adroit, talented and able director of the Art Department at Tor Books. In many places and at many times, I have praised and thanked Irene Gallo for her wonderful work on the cover art for my books.

I thought she and I were members of the same team, partners in a joint endeavor to bring you high quality science fiction. I have always treated her with courtesy, and, indeed, loyalty. I would have expected the same in return.

She has decided to join other top brass at Tor Books in describing me and Kevin J Anderson, a small and a large Tor author currently up for Hugo Awards thanks to the effort of the Sad Puppies, in the following terms:

I am not making this up. The original link is here

https://www.facebook.com/igallo/posts...

And the link to the archived page is

https://archive.is/3Mtt1

I had no idea she had this opinion of me, or so much contempt for the books she adorned so skillfully.

My father in law, my he rest in peace, was a Jew serving in the US Military during World War Two in the European Theater. In fact, he won a Purple Heart medal for wounds to his hands he received while liberating a Nazi death camp. His unit was standing about idly, troopers on one side of the wall, ragged prisoners on the other, waiting for the carpenter to arrive with tools to tear down the planks, but in a fury of impatience he did it with his bear hands, like a superman. He turned down the award, thinking others whose wounds were from the enemy deserved it, not he. That is the kind of man he was, an odd mixture of towering ego and meek humility.

Irene Gallo should have been penning me polite notes of congratulation on receiving an historically unprecedented number of  awards for the prestigious Hugo Award, and rejoicing that any victory for me or for Mr Anderson (who would be receiving his first ever Hugo for his life’s work producing over 50 bestsellers) would reflect well on our main publisher whom we both loyally serve, Tor Books.

Instead, Irene Gallo just said I was a member of the barbaric and racist National Socialist totalitarian political movement that my family fought, suffered, and shed blood to expunge from the earth.

What is the honorable thing for me to do, dearest readers?

I am not asking what is in my short term fiscal interest, which is not my sole, nor even my primary, motive.

More to the point, what is the honorable thing for you to do?

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Finished!

The manuscript of the sixth and final volume of my Eschaton Sequence, COUNT TO INFINITY, is done. Well, it needs a reread and a spelling check, but I just wrote down, this very hour and minute, the curtain line I first put in my outline notes in May of 2005. Ten years and one month. Except for some polish and a spit-shine, all done.

Now who wants to find out what happens?

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Meet the Hugo Nominee!

From the Superversive site, a talk with Arlan Andrews, Sr:

http://superversivesf.com/2015/06/04/interview-with-hugo-nominee-arlan-andrews-sr/

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

From the Pen of Andy Robertson

In his last published essay, Mr Robertson speaks about his wife, his life, his website, and he writes a review and commentary on the stories I wrote for him.

The Superversive website reprints the article today. Below is an introduction. Please follow the link to read the essay.

http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2015/06/04/superversive-blog-guest-post-by-a-ghost/

I am reposting this essay because I love it so much. It was written by Andy Robertson, the man for whom John wrote his Night Land stories.

Mr. Robertson ran a website dedicated to William Hope Hodgeson’s book, The Night Land. Back when all the other magazines were paying 2 and 5 cent a word. Mr. Robertson paid 10…and John writes a lot of words! Furthermore, Mr. Robertson paid in British Pound Sterling, so by the time the check was converted, we had a nice chunk of change–more than enough to buy a major appliance.

At one point, our refrigerator, our stove, and our dishwasher had all been paid for by Mr. Robertson. (Our dishwasher has been replaced twice, but the others are still going strong.)

Last year, Castalia House gathered all John’s Night Lands stories into an anthology. A day before Awake in the Night Lands was published, just about two weeks after penning this essay, Mr. Robertson permanently rejoined his wife.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

You Got My Attention By Libeling Me and Desecrating What I Love

With a combination of pity and dismay, I read this

http://file770.com/?p=22824&cpage=3#comment-272798

I suspect the Rabids aren’t fans of SF so much as they are “members of the cult of Vox Day.” Partly, this is the only thing that truly seems to explain the works on the slate — the ones that aren’t published by Beale’s own press anyway — the point isn’t that they are any particular thing, the point is that he chose them, and there they are.

I don’t know what that implies for the future. Beale himself obviously believes in nursing a grudge to the end of time, so HE’S not going anywhere. But how many minions does he actually have? What’s their staying power? Are they really going to stay interested enough to do this again next year?

But to my infinite amusement, I read the reply: There are, as of last count, 367 vile, faceless minions of the Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/05/367.html

The International Lord of Hate has even more, and some of them are Mormons. Sarah Hoyt includes the Women’s Auxiliary of Evil, and as the Grand Inquisitor for the Congregation of the Evil Doctrine of the Evil Faith, I can grow additional followers from the noneuclidean spores transported here in brass jars from planet Yuggoth.

But the true treasure of the expressions were in Vox Day’s comment’s section, which I reprint here out of sheer delight. Go, minions!

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

The Brazen Author of the Book of Gold

I have written on this topic erenow, but it bears repeating.

A fine reader wrote it with a kind compliment. He was thanking me for his new scarf. He said I had dashed his hopes of being a writer by my undue excess of skill, that his writing was so inferior in comparison, so he had burned his computer, and now had free time to take up knitting.

I felt I had to write back. I know he was making a joke, but there was a serious point behind the joke, a willingness to surrender, which I hope, if I fed, I could also starve.

I know you mean it as a compliment, but my prose appeals, and is only meant to appeal, to a narrow audience.

If you are in that audience, I am very grateful.

But I will tell you my version of your story [about the scarf]. I was a bookish child, friendless, unhappy. In my youth, I read a book my David Lindsay.

If an adult read it, he would say that this book was written in an awkward, tin-eared fashion, with a main character who is a cipher without personality, on an adventure that makes no sense. There is no plot to the book: the hero travels through strange landscapes meeting stiff and highly symbolic figures, committing apparently pointless murders.

The book was not well regarded then or now. It sold less than 200 copies in its first printing. The writer Lindsay, who has been largely forgotten, died young in utter poverty of a disease caused by improper dentistry, that is, something that could have been easily prevented.

The book is A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS and it is one of the most important books in my life.

It shaped my youthful and hence my lifelong idea of what life was for and what reality was about.

It was magical to me, the very wine of the gods.

And yet, to everyone else, even perhaps to the man who wrote it, it is an incomprehensible, opaque, meandering, pointless book. In the eyes of the world, it is a worthless book.

Now, imagine that you are Lindsay and some child who will not be born for 40 years after your death is the only one who will read and understand and treasure your book — the book you think is lousy — is in my position.

Myself, I have more pity for that child, yet unborn, who will be your greatest fan, than I have for Lindsay, had he burned his computer, and decided not to write.

Do you understand? I cannot write the book that one child needs. You can.

And if there is more than one fan you can serve, all the better.

If you wish not to be a writer, then don’t write. If you wish to be a writer, don’t give up, don’t show weakness, and don’t compare yourself to other writers.

Writing is not like a beauty contest, with one winner, it is like a Shakespeare comedy, with five marriages at the end, and each swain swears his bride is his true love, for so she is.

Again, I thank you for the compliment. You do me honor I do not merit. But if you burn your computer, that means you do not understand the point of the four stories whose artistry you so admire.

No one in the Night Land burns his computer. They do not open the door and invite the dark things inside. They resist without hope. You, who have hope should not be less than they, even if you are saying it as a joke.

Who is going to write that terrible and untalented book for that unknown and unborn reader who will praise and remember it with lifelong gratitude if you do not?

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

The Phoenix never lays an Egg!

Message from Mike Allen:

CLOCKWORK PHOENIX is an anthology series devoted to publishing brave, beautiful, experimental work that is open to stories from everyone

anywhere. There’s only two days left to make it fly, and we open to submissions as soon as we are funded! Please check us out here:

http://tinyurl.com/CP5kick

My comment: The previous volumes of CLOCKWORK PHOENIX published my Metachronopolis stories which take place in the same background universe as ‘Plural of Helen of Troy’ which is up for a Hugo this year. He considered my strange time travel tales to be brave, beautiful and experimental enough to include in his volumes, and, unlike other editors with whom I have worked, he kept the writers informed at each stage of the process. Mike Allen is a good guy, and I’d like ask any reader who like what Mr Allen publishes — including some of my best work — should consider answering his plea.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Fire Gates

Please write to your local chapter of the Boy Scouts (whose contact information can be found here: http://www.scouting.org/LocalCouncilLocator.aspx) and ask for the public rebuke, repudiation and immediate discharge from service of the current BSA President, Mr Robert Gates.

The Catholic Church in America, in the 1960s and 1970s, welcomed homosexuals into their ranks, and, enamored by then current psychological theories about the origins of the sin, thought that to comfort and hide the offender was the most charitable policy. Consequently, once the homosexual lobby made entry into the Church and rose in the ranks, over the next decades they diligently sought out and welcomed each other to join seminaries and holy vocations, covered up each others crimes and abominations, and so on. Hence there was a plethora of homosexual activity with young men, some of them underage under the authority of gays in the priesthood and other positions of authority.

The resulting scandal humiliated the Church and continued to be flung in the face of the priesthood and laity as a curse to this day.  (It is ironic to note that the proportion of such scandals is far less than found among schoolteachers.) Why homosexual diddling with young and fair-faced boys is a horror and a scandal in the Church, but welcomed and cheered in society at large, and considered a constitutional right it is bigotry to oppose, I leave for someone more able to unwind the labyrinthine convulsions of modern non-binary logic than I to explain.

But if the Boy Scouts were wise they would learn the lesson from the error of the Catholic Church, and not allow into their leadership men who demonstrate a disdain for the very moral uprightness the Boy Scouts teach.

I assure you: the scandals will be thrown in your face for the next century, long ago the Boy Scouts have been sued and boycotted Janet-Reno’d out of existence as a nest of pederasts.

Since, at the moment, special rules are in place so that no adult is allowed to be alone with a child, but, like highborn Spanish maidens of the last century, a boy can go nowhere without an escort or duenna, lest he be the subject of unlawful sexual affection, it is mere insolent madness to welcome those who spread, laud, encourage, and are tempted by unlawful sexual affections toward the male, particularly youthful males, into the position of those escorts.

If the public outcry is long and fierce and loud enough, Mr Gates will either repudiate his remarks, or be forced from office.

If Gamergate and Sad Puppies serve any purpose in the culture war, it is to show that you, yes, you, my dear reader, can silence the shrill, evil, and tiny group of antichristian activists currently and rapidly dismantling our civilization.

Write your local Scout leadership. Write today, please. Express your contempt for this insolent treason coming from the sleeper agent and social justice warrior called Gates.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

No One Cares About Your Hooey

Someone with the socialist yet anarchic name of Bakunin writes in with a link to an anonymous accuser who is linked to a second anonymous accuser:

It’s not social justice. It’s basic human decency to speak out against a man who says:

“In any case, I have never heard of a group of women descended on a lesbian couple and beating them to death with axhandles and tire-irons, but that is the instinctive reaction of men towards f***” (http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2015/04/john-c-wright-tries-to-cover-up-that-hes-a-wannabe-gay-basher.html)

It is also basic human decency not to lie, not to libel, and not to make false accusations.

For the record, Mr Bakunin, the words you are repeating are the answer to a specific question of what I thought the writers of LEGEND OF KORRA were thinking when they decided to use lesbians rather than male homosexuals as the couple of choice in a children’s cartoon to lure innocent and trusting kids into believing homosexuality is right and normal and ergo Christianity is wrong and abnormal.

But, oddly enough, you are only the second person, out of all of them who commented on that quote, to ask me about it.

No one else did me the courtesy of addressing a question to me. Technically, you did not either, but one does not expect a raven to lay the eagle egg.

So you are ahead of your peers in courage, or, at least, courtesy.

But it seems as if you did not consider the possibility that this quote should be read in context. If you read the question to which this quote is an answer, a reader is asking me to speculate on the motivations and thought process of writers supporting your position.

Yes, your position.

You see, your side, not my side, thinks of rednecks and conservatives and Christians as being obsessed with a psycho-pathological phobia and hatred of gays. Your side coined an silly term for the alleged phobia because it did not exist until you invented it: homophobia.

My question to you is this: do you believe that some, even most, hetero men have a visceral and instinctive desire to beat homosexuals to death?

If so, why is it bigotry if I report that your side believes this?

Why is it bigotry if I speculate that this belief in homophobia, fairly common among your side, was perhaps the reason behind the writers’ decision to use Korra and Asami as their couple of choice rather than, say, Aang and Sokka?

Let us suppose I shared your belief. Why is it bigotry when I report that heteros have this barbaric and grotesque instinct and not when you report it?

Answer: it is not. Which is why the opening part of the quote where I made that clear is missing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

From the Pen of James May

As concise a depiction of the motives of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors, and our push for the Lame Uberleftist Message Fic Makes Puppies Sad, as I have yet seen. I applaud and condone these words:

The problem to me is pretty clear: the core community used to act as custodians of their art. They promoted and taught art appreciation and acted as curators. The Hugo Winners and SF Hall of Fame anthologies operated much like a museum. People said “This is what we think is good” and they made a case for it. They understood the evolution of their genre. Now Jack Vance dies and they say “Who was that?” They’ve never heard of Lord Dunsany.

Today that same community has replaced a curatorship with judging work by its value as a medium to achieve social justice. People are publicly stating they care more about who’s in the books than if they’re any good. Many more are openly promoting work merely by the identity of the authors. On top of that, at the same time they’re hanging “Not Welcome” signs to other identities. They’re on a crusade and with a lot of flat out racial and sexual hate speech to boot. Too many books are being laid open to whether they benefit this weird feminist ideology. They’re even attempting to mass boycott Game of Thrones.

Throw all that into any other arena, whether it’s engine design, architecture, whatever. It will be destroyed.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.