John C. Wright's Blog, page 222

Children's Science Fiction

What Science Fiction & Fantasy books would you read to children?

This is kind of a hard question to answer because the boundaries of the genre called Science Fiction simply does not apply to the kind of books children tend to like.

For example, is ON BEYOND ZEBRA by Dr. Seuss a science fiction story? It has a conceit more imaginative than anything I have read outside the pages of VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS by Lindsay: namely, what if there were an additional alphabet, an undiscovered alphabet, beyond the

Down the Slippery Slope to Sodom

Remember all those people of "alternate sexual orientation" who not only assured us that normalizing sodomy would not lead to normalization of other perversions, they grew rigid and white-faced with outrage at the suggestion that one perversion encouraged other perversions, and they took it as a deadly insult that their sexual malfunction would be called perversion at all?

They told us that slippery slope arguments are innately bogus. They told us that courts of law never operate by precedent.

Personal Appearance! -- and some Wedding Photos

I am going to Balticon -- the Baltimore Science Fiction convention with my lovely wife, world famous authoress L. Jagi Lamplighter, who in our house is called She Who Must Be Obeyed. To be held Memorial Day Weekend May 22-25, 2009 At Marriott's Hunt Valley Inn, Baltimore, MD.

World-Famous Authoress, the immortal, beautiful but evil L. Jagi Lamplighter:



Okay, so this is not what you would see if YOU looked at her, but my eyes can see past the normal electro-magnetic spectrum into the high-ener

Star Trek as good as Star Trek

The new Star Trek movie is not just good, it is excellent. I say this with the full authority of someone whose entirely life was based on Mr. Spock, a fictional character from an imaginary planet. I say this as a man who not only saw "The Questor Tapes" but also "Genesis II" and "Planet Earth". I am a Star Trek fan of the first caliber. I was prepared to dislike and over-react to every minor deviation from the established canon of Holy Saint Roddenberry.

No dislike and no overreaction is needed.

Alan Moore and G.K. Chesterton

From a review by Nialmor of the WATCHMAN funnybook, oops, I mean Graphic Novel  Read the whole thing here.

Moore also seems to imply that conventional heroism will not save humanity because in the end there is no moral difference between the so-called heroes and so-called villains. The Comedian and Rorschach are just as brutal and sadistic as their alleged enemies. The US government recruits The Comedian for all manner of despicable "black ops" missions that the government can later deny. The onl

Winsome

Mark Shea has written about some contemporary Catholic Science Fictioneers, and mentions yours truly.

The article is here. I like this paragraph.

Science fiction is a genre whose founding fathers and mothers tended very often (though not exclusively, of course) to be the sort of people who were hard-boiled atheists of the Arthur C. Clarke/Isaac Asimov mold — people who spoke the word “Science” either with a sort of religious reverence or with the sort of stentorian triumphalism of a Thomas Dolby

V FOR VOMET

While I was recovering from surgery, I had a chance to see V FOR VENDETTA, starring Hugo Weaving’s voice and Natalie Portman’s bald head. I must say that rarely have I hated a movie so much.

Usually when I say I “hate” a movie, it is in the half-serious half-pompous and utterly frivolous way that, for example, a fan of Green Lantern “hates” Kyle Ryner (who is not the real Green Lantern) or the way that fans of Spiderman “hated” the black costume (until it became a supervillain in its own right).

PC MUST DIE

This is a quote from an article by James Hudnall, found here . My comments below

PC is designed by German Marxists of the Frankfurt School to destroy Western culture.

It should come as no surprise the the destruction of the family is one of its goals. And as it gained in prominence, its goals have been realized. The polarization of racial groups, and even of
the sexes is another.

That’s plenty of reason to see it die a horrible death. Marxists have murdered many times more people than the Nazis

Prospero Lost

Most of you reading these words will probably never have a chance to play in a role playing game moderated by obscure midlist author John C. Wright, esq. But fume not! For now, all the characters I made up and never wrote up have been written up for me in their own adventure by L. Jagi Lamplighter, my lovely bride. There are also characters she took from some hack named Shakespeare, but he lived before Obama took charge of the planet, so who cares who that is?

Miranda Prospero, the willful and r

Axioms and Illative Reasoning

oscillon writes in and comments: 

"It makes us uncomfortable to need axioms at the bottom of the pile. They are different than everything that lies above them and they look suspiciously like a cheat. We naturally want to break them down and figure out what they're made of, to reason beyond them. Your solution (and Lewis's) is to posit God. Ok, I can't say you're wrong. But that solution is just as far outside the system of logic above it than directly accepting them on faith."
 
Ah, friend, this is