John C. Wright's Blog, page 199

Progress Report

4000 word today, and it is only Monday. Here is a free sample.

She sat down on the edge of the gelatin slab that served him for a bed. With soft fingers she ran a slender hand through his hair, across his brow. “I would ask you how you are feeling,” she said. Meaning that the medical read-outs probably told her more about him than he knew himself. The implication was that she wanted to know when he would be well enough to be moved, presumably to a safer location, where they could talk...

Tolkein on Divorce

While haunting the internet, trying to find writers who wrote on Tolkien and Catholicism, I found an interesting quote from a site called Singulare-Ingenium.

http://singulare-ingenium.blogspot.com/2010/01/sexual-morality.html

The writer there (He identifies himself as Patricius of Kent, a hobbit--I would condemn this as an odd conceit, but since my profile identifies me as a dark-cloaked vigilante of the Night who can cloud men's minds, and tireless fighter against gangland, I am in no positio...

A digression on the word subversive.

I overheard this quote as part of a conversation on another journal. A leftist was criticizing the Republicans for derailing the sovietization of the medical industry, and the words he used were: "The GOP has been as unreasonable and subversive of the spirit of the process as any dictator you should name, and the Democrats should stop pretending they have a good faith partner in government."

I will not discuss the pith of the comment, which is mere lunacy and hyperbole. Instead I will express ...

And now for some importent news

The Supreme Court (agreeing with me, thank you very much) strikes down certain provisions of the Orwellian-named 'Campaign Finance Reform Act' in the name of the First Amendment. Corporations and Union are now allowed to spend money to say what they want about candidates before elections.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

It is a pleasure when the confused, ideologically-corrupted mess of the American court system does something right. The last time I recall the courts ge...

Jim Crow and Cover Art

It is apparently the practice at some publishing houses, when the main character is Black or Brown skinned, to put a Caucasian on the cover. I had noticed this back in the 1970's, when I would see pictures of Sparrowhawk of Roke or Mr. Rico of the Mobile Infantry or even Podkayne of Mars (if her uncle is a Maori, she is at least a octoroon, right?) -- and they would be white, I thought it was because the cover artist hadn't read the book. When not one but two versions of Ursula K LeGuin's Ear...

Wright's Writing Corner

How to use a foil. Now with more Nausicaa!

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/104307.html

Clinton's Supporters Harassed by the Left.

From a site called HillBuzz. The whole thing is too long to quote. This leaped out at me:

The Massachusetts Senate race between Martha Coakley and Scott Brown has us thinking about J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Buffy the Vampire Slayer a lot today, oddly enough. Which, at least in terms of Buffy, isn’t an unusual thing for us to be doing on a random Tuesday, but this race, and the Left’s response to it, have given these thoughts a whole new meaning. [...:]

The party ...

Progress Report and free sample!

17800 words so far this week.

My favorite passage in this week's work. Montrose has just met (I kid you not) a space princess, and he blacks out and has another fit of momentary super-intelligence (which happens to him because he experimented on his own brain). He thinks he is possessed by another "self" that he calls "Mr. Hyde" who has him do things for reasons he cannot later recall. He comes to himself in the middle of a conversation with Princess Rania:
div

Progress Report

5600 words written so far this week.
Not bad.

Here is a paragraph I particularly liked. Copyright (c) 2010 John C. Wright. All rights reserved!

* * *                                                      * * *
Between times he read, or watched, or had fictional conversations with library figments, to learn a bit about the history of what had happened while he slumbered. He soon found he could not trust anything presented to him from a library cloth. The systems were more interlinked and more hea...

All Religions are Created Equal -- But Some are More Equal Than Others.

From the website of the US Coptic Association

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE WORLD OF ISLAM

With attention focused on the flagrant security breaches around Flight 253 on Christmas Day, too little has been made of the timing of the attack. Most readers will be surprised to learn that this was not the only Christmas attack on Christians. Here is a list of other holiday attacks which I found without extensive research:

1. On December 23, a bomb was detonated near the Syrian Orthodox church of St...