John C. Wright's Blog, page 22
May 2, 2015
Reviewer Scorn for One Bright Star, Plural of Helen, etc
A reviewer is disappointed in my efforts:
http://secritcrush.livejournal.com/tag/pathetic%20puppies
In Wright’s hands Queequeeg remains firmly a noble savage with no depth of characterization at all. One person of color in the story and that’s what Wright goes for. That’s how the Pathetic puppies increase diversity.
Diversity, eh?
Discuss.
ADDENDUM: a reader brings to my attention links to a review site whose disappointment is markedly less. He asked whether both sites read the material, or only one?
http://superversivesf.com/2015/04/18/review-of-plural-of-helen-of-troy/
http://superversivesf.com/2015/04/17/one-bright-star-a-review/
Can you go back again? The warm spring dawn and summer days of childhood leave us behind, leaving memories of the fantastic and wondrous. In their wake the coming chill of autumn adulthood the world seems a stark and unfriendly place, a grim, gray world with no place for the fairy tales and wonder of childhood. Darker magics, things of greed and ambition lurk, and the answers that seemed so bright and simple to the young are denied the wizened eye.
“One Bright Star” the the tale of a man called back to duty to fight against supernatural evil: though not in the bright fairy-lands of his childhood, but in the gray streets of modern London. It contains hope, loss, wonder, despair and glory. It is the perfect fairy tale and I heartily recommend it.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Five Views of Man
This merits a long and involved column to explain this thought, but time does not permit. Allow me only to pose it as a gadfly question:
In my view, there are only five entirely logical political philosophies. Four of them are logical but untrue, since they are based on a false view of human nature.
1. Catholicism (based on the notion that men are sinners and Christ is sovereign) — several possible political systems, from Roman republicanism to imperialism to monarchy to constitutional and parliamentary government are possible under this view, but concentrating secular and spiritual powers in one head, Caesaropapism, is not possible. This view of man holds that man is a hopeless sinner yet somehow made in an divine image.
2. Classical liberalism, also called Libertarianism (based on the notion that men are sovereign, and are rational economic actors, motivated by self interest) — this is the default position of the Enlightenment, if carried to its logical John Galt extreme. This view holds that man is a rational animal, and, when virtuous, will follow reason to create a spontaneously self-organizing social order.
3. Marxism, also called Socialism or Naziism (based on the notion that men are helpless soldiers in a Darwinian war of survival, motivated by perfect altruism) — this is a corruption of the Enlightenment position, when economic as well as secular power is taken as the proper object of government, and men are regarded as patients, not citizens. This view holds that men are irrational animals, the byproducts of inhuman forces of biological and social evolution.
4. Confucianism, also called the Rule by Mandarins (based on the notion that reality itself ordains submission to a perfect social order, as perceived and interpreted by intellectuals.) This could also be called Spartanism — this is the default view of pre-Enlightenment and pre-Christian political thinking. Obedience to maat or me or dharma, that is, obedience to the divinely imposed social order, is the hallmark of ancient and postmodern thought on the topic.
5. Nihilism, also called Anarchy (based on the notion that men are not just sovereign over themselves, but over reality itself, as a god ergo bound by no law save willpower.) — this is the abrogation of political thinking.
I suggest that few or no thinkers have the stomach to carry out any of these five political philosophies to their logical extremes and that most political thought is a compromise or amelioration of each of these, held in suspension somewhere between two or three of them.
So, for example, Protestantism is somewhere between the Catholic view and the Libertarian view when it comes to the role of the Church in society: either the spiritual power is an adjunct of the state power, as it was in Reformation England, or spiritual power is private, outside the orbit of secular power altogether, as it was in the United States before the Obama Administration. Protestantism is compatible with several forms of government, from Monarchic to Parliamentarian to Democratic.
There is a sound reason to avoid taking any political philosophy all the way to one of these five logical extremes. Four of the five would make men into devils. The logical extreme of Anarchy would make men into devils of wrath; Mandarinism of pride, particularly intellectual pride; Socialism of avarice and envy; Libertarianism of gluttony, avarice and contempt for spiritual things.
The logical extreme of Catholicism would make men into saints. The sound reason to avoid this is because we love and adore our sins, and serve them as willing slaves.
A truly Christian society has not been tried and found wanting: it has never been tried.
Discuss!
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Reviewer Scorn for One Bright Star, Plural of Helen, etc
A reviewer is disappointed in my efforts:
http://secritcrush.livejournal.com/tag/pathetic%20puppies
In Wright’s hands Queequeeg remains firmly a noble savage with no depth of characterization at all. One person of color in the story and that’s what Wright goes for. That’s how the Pathetic puppies increase diversity.
Diversity, eh?
Discuss.
It will come as a shock to no reader of mine that professional authors do not include nor exclude characters based on trivial surface features such as skin color. Queequeeg was included because of his nobility regardless of his savagery, not because he was a noble savage, nor in order to mark off some checkbox on an affirmative action in fiction form postmodern writers have instead of muses. An alert reader would have noticed his contrast with Florin, which is not necessarily flattering to Florin.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
May 1, 2015
Spoileriffic Reviewer Praise for ARCHITECT OF AEONS
A review by Ben Wheeler: https://millennialking.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/architect-of-the-aeons-intelligence-unbound-and-unrestrained/
Mr Wheeler describes this discussion of my book as “A dark carnival of spoilers” and he gives away the surprise ending, the surprise middle, and the surprise opening, not to mention the surprise in Chapter Three, so I very strongly urge and recommend that no one read this review until he has read the book.
I am very pleased that a reader likes the self same scenes I liked in the book, and, to be frank, saw the same weaknesses and rough spots I saw. Better yet, he is asking the very questions your humble but subtle author wants him to ask, as a setup for the follow through in VINDICATION OF MAN, the next volume.
But his overall recommendation is this:
It was worth the read and the buy.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 30, 2015
I Hurl Down my Gauntlet at Thee
A man whose mouth, as it turns out, is larger than his head, rejoicing in the imperious name of HoR_Emperor makes the following fascinating statement in the comments here (http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/04/weekly-standard-on-sad-puppies/#comment-114323):
I do not think Beale is a racist because of “leftist accusations.” I think he is a racist because reading his site (and the recent interview with him that got posted on Larry and Brad’s Facebook pages) shows he clearly subscribes to crackpot pseudo-science racialist fantasies.
It can be tempting to fall into the fallacy of assuming that anyone who is accused by the Left is automatically therefore innocent and good. In the case of Mr Beale, however, this would be a mistake.
To which the following replied were penned, first by yours truly:
Excellent! I am glad to hear this! Please quote back to me, word for word, and with a link so that I can see the statement in its original context, even one statement by Mr Beale that can justly be called a crackpot pseudo-science racialist fantasy?
Since you speak in a breezy plural, I assume the task will not be difficult?
Since you are a gentleman, if you cannot satisfy this simple request that you support your accusation with proof, you will of course proffer a humble apology.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Statement from John Ringo: SJW is out; SJB is in
This was too good not to share. The original is here: https://www.facebook.com/john.ringo.90857/posts/10152765320275887
n 2004 or so there was an ‘incident’ at a convention in Virginia. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Virginia fandom is split. There are very outspoken liberals mixed with very quiet (by and large) conservatives. The ‘incident’ involved very outspoken conservatives.
The next morning I was more or less accosted about the situation and was polite to the accoster. The conversation ended something like this:
Accoster: I didn’t even know there WERE conservative science fiction fans! (The tone was clear. There SHOULD NOT BE conservative science fiction fans. Certainly not at HER convention.)
Myself: You know when you go to cons and there are a bunch of people who never talk with you? Those are the conservatives.
Which, alas, is true. Until very recently there were very few conservatives who were willing to be ‘out’ in most of fandom. (I don’t get that option.) Because you get continuously bombarded with ‘you’re a homophobic, xenophobic, racist, misogynist asshole!’ (Go look up my RavenCon AAR to see a very extreme example.. But I’ve been subjected to less extreme examples repeatedly. One of the reasons I rarely attend conventions anymore. And the description is, by the way, a very direct and public quote by an SJW NYT bestselling author about, well, me.)
Because as a conservative, that’s what you are to all the hardcore liberals. Purest evil. ISIS has nothing on being an American conservative. There is nothing worse than being a conservative white male. We are the ultimate super-villain and nothing can be anything like our equal. (Thus the humorously entitled ‘League of Evil Evil’ started by Sarah Hoyt of which I am a card-carrying member.)
* see footnote
Which is why there have arisen conventions that really avoid letting the CHORFs in at all. So the conservative SF fans can get together and let their hair down and talk about stuff they want to talk about (like books with actual plots and dialogue) and not be continuously insulted by the CHORFs. And even large cons that are ‘balanced’ tend to toss the SJW contingent the minute it starts to be a problem. Because nobody CARES about their issues. Not in the broad sense of what is marketable. (Just as at ‘balanced’ conventions conservatives who insist on being buttheads are tossed. I’ve seen both and I’m all for it. When it’s balanced.)
By the way, I prefer SJBs to CHORFs as a term. SJWs, social justice warriors, is not an insult as many articles have indicated. It’s the preferred term of the SJWs. And there are SJWs who are not SJBs. An SJB is a ‘Social Justice Bully.’ Because they are bullies. They are not even about social justice. They’re about being bullies.
So, yes, there are two different fandoms. And it’s very much a Political divide. And it’s not going away any time soon.
Oh. Ahem. The above convention later purged the conservative members of its con committee (who were the people who had been getting Baen authors to attend.) But they asked all the Baen authors to come back because we were their primary draw. We all declined. Some politely, some less than politely. Even Eric Flint who is anything BUT a conservative declined. Impolitely I might add.
That convention no longer exists. Nor does Trinicon which was solely focused on having only ‘literary’ guests. Nor do any number of other cons who allow themselves to be overtaken entirely by SJBs. Most of the ‘old guard’ conventions died for similar reasons. (‘We are a LITERARY convention and only LITERARY writers and award winning artists need attend!) ArchCon is going to have a very hard row to hoe in the next few years. (See also ‘Uncle TimmyGate’ which was the prequel to this kerfuffle.)
The SJBs, CHORFs, what have you are facing an uphill climb. Their ‘award winning authors’ are hardly popular in the mainstream (also frequently boring as shit on a panel) and every convention which has tried to stay entirely ‘SJW’ has found it has little or no market.
The CHORFs accuse the SPs of ‘fighting to retain white-male privilege.’ The reality is that the CHORFs are desperate to retain any sort of relevance at all. ‘Their’ conventions are failing. ‘Their’ books don’t sell as well as ‘pulp crap’. ‘Their’ magazines are losing circulation and closing. Lose control of the Hugos and they become irrelevant. And desperate regimes get crazier and crazier the more desperate they become.
So sad.
John Ringo
* footnote: For the record, Sarah Hoyt was the second member of the Evil League of Evil. I am the one who created it.
Here is where I announce the creation of he Evil League of Evil (Later changed to the Evil Legion of Evil) http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/06/the-evil-league-of-evil-is-given-pious-advice/
Here is my announcement of the formation of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors as a literary movement, initially called the United Underworld, later called the Sad Puppies. http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/06/united-underworld-literary-movement-manifesto/
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 29, 2015
Belloc Foresaw This All
Whenever I hear the one and sole argument ever leveled by the Left, that, namely, all who oppose the self defeating schemes of the Left are motivated by loathsome yet unadmitted hatred, ignorance, and phobia, ergo their opposition to unreason is ritually unclean and need not be entertained, then I see an insolent dismissal of truth.
Whenever I visit a modern art museum, and see literal crap and literal blasphemy, poop slung on canvasses or in tin cans, urinals hung on walls, scrap metal, a crucifix in urine, unspeakable degenerate graffito, then I see a neurotic hatred of beauty.
Whenever I hear Leftists crowing about how their moral superiority consists of their craving to destroy marriage, to destroy fatherhood, to unman boys and force girls into male roles, to celebrate those sick souls who want to castrate themselves and wear their mother’s dresses, to legalize not merely addictive drugs but every form of addiction, material and spiritual, to any and every vice, provided only it is loathsome and cheapens human life; and the ultimate pinnacle of their vaunted moral superiority is their nauseating celebration of prenatal infanticide, then I see a satanic hatred of virtue and goodness.
But Hillaire Belloc foresaw and foretold all this 85 years ago, with admirable prescience matched only by his compatriot GK Chesterton.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
After Inaction Report from Ravencon
A read with the unexpectedly commonplace yet giant-killing name of Jack writes and asks:
Mr Wright: no word on Ravencon? maybe I missed it. Were you barbequed on sight, or just smugly ignored? Or, was it really civilized? At this point I would imagine many of the detractors on the left are wary of confrontation with those of the Puppy and Ilk fame. If so, good. They need a nice dose of apprehension to temper their attack dog tendencies of attack, attack, then worry about truth and accuracy.
I am pleased to report that there were no incidents of which I was aware at Ravencon. Everything went swimmingly.
No, that is not quite true: I heard from one of the organizers, a friend of mine, that Brianna Wu sat on a panel on Gamergate on Friday (before I arrived), and asked for there to be no photographs. As far as I know, this is a perfectly reasonable request, and, as a matter of professional courtesy, it is usually honored. One fellow — I did not catch his name — took photos nonetheless, Brianna Wu raised an objection (whether reasonable or hysterical I cannot say, hearing of this only third hand) and the photographer was asked to step out of the room. He was not kicked out of the Con. He left a snarky comment on his social media page.
That makes a grand total of one almost-rude incident and one perhaps-illtempered comment. And it was not related to Sad Puppies as far as I know, merely the psychodrama of a seriously disturbed person.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 28, 2015
Kilgore on Old Man’s War
Mr Kenton Kilgore wrote a review of John Scalzi’s OLD MAN’S WAR which so exactly matches my judgment, what I liked, what I disliked, and what left me feeling Laodicean (neither hot nor cold) that it excuses me from the need to write a review myself:
http://kentonkilgore.com/blog/2015/04/27/a-new-look-at-old-mans-war/
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Monster Hunter Book Bomb!
Larry Correia on his blog has the following announcement and call to arms. He wants you to put your arm into your wallet or pocketbook and pull out cash to get your entertainment dollar’s worth:
BOOK BOMB! Residue by Steve Diamond
Posted on April 28, 2015
Residue (Jack Bishop Book 1)
Kindle Edition
by Steve Diamond
Today we are Book Bombing Steve Diamond’s debut novel Residue. I was one of the alpha readers, and this is a great read.
For those of you new to the Book Bombs, how it works is that we get as many people as possible to buy the book on the same day from Amazon. This will cause it to go up in the sales rankings. The higher it ends up, the more new people will see it and check it out. A good book Bomb will introduce an author to hundreds or even thousands of new readers. The more exposure the better. Success breeds success, a deserving author gets new fans, and most importantly the author GETS PAID.
So please tell your friends, share the link, spread the word, bother random strangers on public transportation, etc.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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