John C. Wright's Blog, page 33

Reviewer Praise for ONE BRIGHT STAR

This happens to be my favorite tale, for personal reasons, of anything I have written. Russell Newquist publishes a favorable review, which I here share in part.

http://russellnewquist.com/2015/02/one-bright-star-guide/

John C. Wright is one of – if not the – best voices of our generation in science fiction and fantasy. And last year was a banner year for him – a quick search on Amazon reveals seven works he published in 2014:

The Judge of Ages (Count to a Trillion Book 3)
The Book of Feasts & Seasons
Awake in the Night Land
City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis
Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth
Awake in the Night

One Bright Star to Guide Them is an homage and love letter to the works of CS Lewis. Bittersweet – but, importantly, never cynical – it shows the child heroes after they’ve won, returned home, and “grown up” – only to find that the evil they fought as children has returned, to the “real world” this time, and they must fight it again.

It’s a strong story, with a lot to say about the modern world. Yet it never becomes preachy or lets the message get in the way of an enjoyable story. John C. Wright has a wondrously insane (in the best possible way) imagination, and one of the most enjoyable things about reading any of his stories is just seeing where that imagination will take you next.

If you enjoyed The Chronicles of Narnia, then One Bright Star to Guide Them is a must read story.

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

Who is the muggle and who is the slan?

UPDATE NOTICE: http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/02/18/book-bomb-novellas-from-the-sad-puppies-slate/

One of the Happy Kittens (as I hereby officially christen the self-declared foes of Sad Puppies) has decreed, speaking ex-cathedra from his bung hole, that we Evil Legionnaires of Evil who support the Sad Puppies ballot are not true, real, authentic fans of science fiction.

The esteemed Patrick Richardson expresses an opinion to the contrary, which is to say, the truth of the matter (https://otherwheregazette.wordpress.com/2015/02/15/not-a-real-fan/):

Not a real fan
Posted by Patrick Richardson

I started loving science fiction when I was all of three or four, watching the Apollo/Soyuz link-up with my parents on TV. It’s one of my earliest memories. I remember playing in the semi-finished basement of our home in Colby, Kansas, listening to Walter Cronkite as little lights showed the orbits converging.

I was hooked.

For forty years I’ve read or watched every scrap of SFF I could get my hands on.

But, according to the Anti Sad Puppy crowd, I’m not a real fan.

I read the Hobbit for the first time in Kindergarten.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

I chased the Delikon off Earth in fourth grade and followed Alice down the rabbit hole.

But I’m not a real fan.

I devoured the Chronicles of Prydain and watched the Dark rise in 5th grade.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

By sixth grade I was on my fifth run through of the Lord of the Rings.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

I discovered Col. Falkenberg and met the Moties in 7th grade.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

In the last 40 years I have read hundreds of SFF books, watched hundreds of movies, dreamed of flying on Serenity and riding Sue with Harry Dresden.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

You see, according to the Anti crowd I can’t be a real fan because I don’t go to cons. I’ve only been to one you see, not out of lack of desire, but lack of funds.

So I’m not a Real Fan.

See, to be a Real Fan, you have to agree with the liberal orthodoxy. You have to believe that SF is all about teaching us lessons, not about having fun. You also, apparently, have to go to cons and beat your breast about “privilege” and “diversity” and apparently apologize for having testicles.

The problem I see with this point of view is simple.

It’s bullshit.

Bravo, and Read the whole thing.

* * *

Keith Glass of the Otherwhere Gazette chimes in likewise:

https://otherwheregazette.wordpress.c...

…Our Betters have declared, that there IS a class structure in Fandom. Ask Mike Glyer or Kevin Standlee. Apparently we need to read fanzines, be a member of a formal club, be a collector, filk, and do cosplay.

And that you are a fan “in proportion to the effort you make to attach yourself to fandom”

Well, thank you very much for laying out the requirements, that was mighty Privileged of you to do so.

And so I say in return: Check your everlovin’ Fandom Privilege. You’re a Fan if you say you’re a fan. Period. Full Stop. No check off the boxes, no “attaching yourself to fandom”. No Secret handshakes. Not even any Propeller Beanies. . .

My comment: Who dares to tell me who is and is not a fan? By what standards? By what logic?

Is this groundworm who does not know the difference between rishathra and grokking frelling telling ME that I am am not a fan?

Has he even read one story by AE van Vogt, while I wrote a NOVEL by him? Can he name, in order, the Eighteen races of Man from Olaf Stapledon? Does he know who Arthur C Clarke is, or the real name of Cordwainer Smith? Ye gods!

May the great white apes of barsoom bugger him and the thoat he rode in on.

(Answers below)

* * *

For those of you who came in late, the Hugo Awards since roughly the mid-90s have been dominated by Leftwingery, literary twitterings, and dreck instead of stories containing science fiction elements.

To use the example most ready to hand, the winning short story was a prose poem about the wife of a paleontologist indulging an a daydream of revenge against oddly gin-drinking bar patrons who beat her bridegroom into a coma: the vignette takes place apparently in the present day, and contains nothing science fictional at all. It is not a bad piece, but neither is it the best science fiction short story of the year by any measure. It is amateurish, even lazy.  For example, the authoress, instead of inventing real invectives that might erupt in a real bar fight, merely selected a grab-bag of what Leftist know-nothings dimly and risibly imagine the Rightwing boogieman hate, with the unintended consequence that the author has made the victim of the beating into a transgendered homosexual Mohammedan Mexican sissy.

Lest anyone accuse me of criticizing where I cannot do better, in one afternoon, I penned a tale using the same theme, but added a science fictional element.

If you were  a Dinosaur, My Love by Rachel Swirsky
Queen of the Tyrant Lizards, by John C Wright

Miss Swirsky’s tale, whatever its other merits, is a simplistic revenge fantasy against a Leftwing caricature  of Rightwingers, here portrayed as violent and drunken bigots. This is one example of a dozen works selected for their political orientation but not for their merit.

Likewise, ANCILLARY JUSTICE by Ann Leckie — as best I can tell — won the award not for the merit of the work but for the use by one character of a female pronoun as the default pronoun. I say “as best I can tell” on the evidence that three times I have challenged fans of this book to name one thing inventive or entertaining about it, aside from the book’s loyalty to feminist piety.

In each of the three cases, the response from three different fans of the book was the same: first, the fan hotly denied that the books only merit was its loyalty to feminist piety; second, the fan mentioned one or two ideas I had already handled in more depth in my own book THE GOLDEN AGE, not to mention the works other authors lack to Sterling and Gibson who wrote in the 1980s; third, the fan praised the book’s loyalty to feminist piety.

One fan not only fulsomely praised the book’s loyalty to feminist piety, but then went into a frothing spasm of outrage, telling me that I must and should like and love the book, because to fail to do so would be to display my lack of loyalty to feminist piety. In other words, the reader is not the judge the book on its entertainment value, but instead bow as if to the holy book of some dark idol, and praise the book unread, lest he be found guilty of disloyalty to the idol. This fan owes an apology to Miss Leckie, because there is no insult more cutting to an author than to say the readers must force themselves to like it out of a sense of duty.

Let me be not misunderstood: I level no criticism of this novel, which I have not read and about which I form no opinion. I level a criticism at the voters who elevated this novel to the status of an award winner falsely, and under false pretenses. Whether or not Miss Leckie is a leftwing nubag or not, the sad fact is that leftwing nutbags heaped false praises on her novel not because it was praiseworthy, but only because they wanted to exploit her novel as a billboard for their pet political agenda.

Likewise again, works by women and minorities are nominated because of the skin color of the author, or sex, or victimhood status, not the merit of the work.

Like all affirmative action schemes, the attempt is counterproductive. Instead of elevating the minority, by showing the minority can compete equally on a level playing field with the majority and win on his own merit, affirmative action tilts the playing field in favor of the minority, robbing any win of any meaning, and merely demeans the merit of the award. Any minority who does win on merit now is lost in a crowd of poseurs who won not on merit but on some trivial surface feature of the author of concern only to Leftists.

I am not the only one disheartened and disgusted by the Leftification of the Science Fiction field, and its hostile take-over by literati.

The honorable Larry Correia, wishing to re-introduce the Hugo Award to the fans who read real science fiction, half in jest, proposed a slate of popular works a year or two back, and, as a jest, said that science fiction awards going to undeserving authors was the leading cause of sadness in puppies. To fight against sadness in puppies, readers were urged to join WorldCon, and vote for stories based on the merit of the story, not the political leanings of the author.

For his rather mild and common sense observation that science fiction awards should go to, you know, science fiction stories only when they are stories and contain science fiction, Mr Correia’s character was slandered, mocked, derided, impugned, insulted, slurred, slimed, and villified. He was denounced as a transgendered homosexual Mohammedan Mexican sissy. So uncouth and over-the-top were the insane rantings of the Left, that he took upon himself the title and dignity of the International Lord of Hate.

Myself, using my dread and dreaded authority which derives from the King in Yellow, the Voorish Sign and the Living Fungi of Yuggoth, I decreed into existence the Evil Legion of Evil, the literary version of the World Crime League, and published our official manifesto (http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/06/united-underworld-literary-movement-manifesto/) to which Vox Day and Sarah Hoyt added their pens mightier than swords, and to which since has rallied a dozen other names, including Brad R. Torgersen and Lieutenant Colonel Tom Kratman.

* * *

Here is the updated sample ballot, with links:

Remember: only YOU can fight puppy sadness!

Best Novel

The Dark Between the Stars – Kevin J. Anderson – TOR

Trial by Fire – Charles E. Gannon – BAEN

Skin Game – Jim Butcher – ROC

Monster Hunter Nemesis – Larry Correia – BAEN

Lines of Departure – Marko Kloos – 47 North (Amazon)

Best Novella

“Flow” – Arlan Andrews Sr. – Analog magazine November 2014

One Bright Star to Guide Them – John C. Wright – Castalia House

Big Boys Don’t Cry – Tom Kratman – Castalia House

Best Novelette

“The Journeyman: In the Stone House” – Michael F. Flynn – Analog magazine June 2014

“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” – Rajnar Vajra – Analog magazine July/Aug 2014

“Championship B’tok” – Edward M. Lerner – Analog magazine Sept 2014

“Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” – Gray Rinehart – Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show

Best Short Story

“Goodnight Stars” – Annie Bellet – The Apocalypse Triptych

“Tuesdays With Molakesh the Destroyer” – Megan Grey – Fireside Fiction

“Totaled” – Kary English – Galaxy’s Edge magazine, July 2014

“On A Spiritual Plain” – Lou Antonelli – Sci Phi Journal #2

“A Single Samurai” – Steve Diamond – Baen Big Book of Monsters

Best Related Work

Letters from Gardner – Lou Antonelli – Merry Blacksmith Press

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth – John C. Wright – Castalia House

“THE HOT EQUATIONS: THERMODYNAMICS AND MILITARY SF” – Ken Burnside – Riding the Red Horse

Wisdom From My Internet – Michael Z. Williamson

“Why Science is Never Settled” Part 1, Part 2 – Tedd Roberts – BAEN

Best Graphic Story

Reduce Reuse Reanimate (Zombie Nation book #2) – Carter Reid – (independent)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

“The Lego Movie” – Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

“Guardians of the Galaxy” – James Gunn

“Interstellar” – Christopher Nolan

“The Maze Runner” – Wes Ball

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

Grimm – ” Once We Were Gods” – NBC

The Flash – “The Flash (pilot)” – The CW

Adventure Time – “The Prince Who Wanted Everything” – Cartoon Network

Regular Show – “Saving Time” – Cartoon Network

Best Editor (Long Form)

Toni Weisskopf – BAEN

Jim Minz – BAEN

Anne Sowards – ACE/ROC

Sheila Gilbert – DAW

Best Editor (Short Form)

Mike Resnick – Galaxy’s Edge magazine

Edmund R. Schubert – Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show

Jennifer Brozek (for Shattered Shields)

Bryan Thomas Schmidt (for Shattered Shields)

Best Professional Artist

Carter Reid

Jon Eno

Alan Pollack

Nick Greenwood

Best Semiprozine

Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show

Abyss & Apex

Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine

Best Fanzine

Tangent SF On-line – Dave Truesdale

Elitist Book Reviews – Steve Diamond

The Revenge of Hump Day – Tim Bolgeo

Best Fancast

“The Sci Phi Show” – Jason Rennie

Dungeon Crawlers Radio

Adventures in SF Publishing

Best Fan Writer

Matthew David Surridge (Black Gate)

Jeffro Johnson

Amanda Green

Cedar Sanderson

Dave Freer

The John W. Campbell Award

Jason Cordova

Kary English

Eric S. Raymond

* * *

Answers: Cordwainer Smith’s real name is Paul Anthony Linebarger. It is abnormally easy to name all the races of man in Olaf Stapledon, since they are numbered: The First Men, the Second Men, the Third Men, and so on.

 * * *

UPDATE NOTICE: http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/02/18/book-bomb-novellas-from-the-sad-puppies-slate/ :Larry Correia is holding an official BOOK BOMB to show the naysayers what’s what. Click through, and buy like crazy. Spend the rent money. Be unthrifty — because science fictional goodness like this is sadly hard to come by these days.

If you’ve already bought the book, post a review.

The International Lord of Hate says:

How a Book Bomb works is that we try to get as many people to buy them off of Amazon in the same day. Because they have a rolling average best seller list that updates hourly, this causes the book to move up the list. The higher it gets, the more people outside the Book Bomb see it, and check it out too. Success breeds success, and best of all, the author GETS PAID.

And all authors should have GET PAID on their mission statement.

Please tell your friends. Repost, reblog, tweet, whatever it is you are into. The key to Book Bombs is spreading the word. Thank you

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

Why DID the Wicked Witch Melt?

It has long been assumed that the reason why the Wicked Witch of the West melted when splashed by a bucket of water was due to the particular nature of the Witch. It is that conclusion I wish now to dispute.

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

Ex Opere Operato, or, On Repelling Vampires

A reader with the Celtic name of Deiseach writes:

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with that [nb: the concept that faith-based weapons depend on the faith of the wielder], possibly because I seem to incline to the Orthodox view on this, rather than the formal Catholic view (but I yield in filial obedience to Holy Mother Church and accept her teachings).

My problem with this is that it is too easily turned around to “Any symbol, if believed in fervently enough, will do” – as in an episode of Doctor Who with the Seventh Doctor and the Haemovores (that series’ version of vampires) who were repulsed by a Soviet soldier’s Red Star cap badge (he being a fervent believer in the ideals of the USSR and Mother Russia). Now, that was a very touching scene, but it (and similar ones in novels and movies and TV shows) enables the reduction of the crucifix or the Host (and often they have not the faintest clue what the Host is or means) to merely ‘it works because you believe in it and it just as well be a baseball trading card if you believed in it’. That is, it makes the faith, and not what is believed in, the important element. So I would prefer (and this is only personal preference) that a crucifix would turn aside a vampire or demon no matter who grabs it up, and that a copy of “The Origin of Species” would not do the same. And that a crucifix will work on a vampire out of any tradition, Christian or pagan. YMMV on whether you are writing a world where Buddhist red threads, or Taoist spells, are equally effective in their traditions.

The kind of attitude that is dismissive about “Pshaw, Christianity was only invented three hundred years ago but our Mystic Native Pagan Traditions have been around since the creation of the world and actually really work because they’re true”.

On the other hand, I would fully expect sacramental to work regardless of who used them. The most Dawkinsesque atheist who grabbed a bottle of holy water and splashed it on an attacking vampire should have it reduce the monster to a bubbling, shrieking, melting mess without any beating around the bush about “Ah, but do you really believe in it?”

And when it comes to the sacraments themselves, e.g. the Blessed Sacrament, I think even P.Z. Myers could flee for protection to the tabernacle even after all his shenanigans.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Rating Wright for Christ-friendliness

Hmm. I do not score very well on this suggested Christian Rating Scale, parents. My wife told me sternly that I have to write a juvenile next. In my defense, let me say that half the books I wrote, I wrote when I was an atheist, and, second, I wrote them for grownups.

Vox Day was asked how books might be rated according to Christian content, to be used by parents who work two jobs hence lack the time or resources to read the two books a day their bookish teenagers are inhaling during their omnivorous reading phase.

His reply is here, which I reprint in part below the cut:

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

Cliometric Predictions as to the Plot in ARCHITECT OF AEONS

Few authors in days past could indulge in one of our favorite pasttimes, which is overhearing what readers think is going to happen next. A reader with the nautical yet leonine name of HMSLion offers what I consider a harsh but fair criticism, and, using the six-million variable calculus of predictive extrapolation, also called Psychohistory, is willing to share his Visualization of the Cosmic All, and guess what might come next in the next three volumes. The next words are his.

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

In a World….

Coming Soon!

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

A Review from Kirkus

The review is almost yet not exactly flattering, but almost yet not exactly accurate either:

KIRKUS REVIEW

Fourth of a projected six-volume series (The Judge of Ages, 2014, etc.) charting the future history of an Earth threatened by almost inconceivably advanced alien invaders.

Two rival post-human supergeniuses, boorish libertarian Menelaus Montrose and supercilious totalitarian Ximen del Azarchel, laid plans against the Hyades and then retired into suspended animation to await the result. They awaken, eager to learn whether humanity defeated the Hyades, as Montrose hoped, or were found worthy of being slaves, as was del Azarchel’s intent. The truth, when they finally learn it—after what seems like hundreds of pages of tedious bickering—proves disastrous for both, since whatever they do, they seem constrained to carry out the Hyades’ designs. Worse, another invasion threatens, this time by the Hyades’ bosses, the Cahetel. Montrose prepares an elaborate fleet to combat them, while del Azarchel begins a process to transform the planet Jupiter into an intelligence 250 million times smarter than a baseline human. Montrose and del Azarchel will fight yet another duel. And at the end of it all, 17,000 years remain before a third post-human, Princess Rania, over whom they are fighting, returns from the remote globular star cluster where she has gone to confront the Hyades’ bosses’ bosses’ bosses. Once again Wright provides plenty of intellectual food for thought, with a useful chronology as an appendix, the intent being to emulate such works as Olaf Stapledon’s classic Last and First Men. Inevitably, what plot there is deteriorates into a series of revelations that test the characters—and challenge those readers tenacious enough to stick with it, especially knowing they’ll wait two more books before finding out what happens and who gets the girl.

Impressive, with dull intervals, but for the committed only.

 

Now, writers are not supposed to bellyache about bad reviews, but I think I have the right to point out that the reviewer is not playing straight with his readers here. If anyone else had read the story, he could speak up for me, but since it is not released yet, the task falls to me.

Of factual errors in a one paragraph review, I can see a few. The first volume in the series is called COUNT TO A TRILLION, not JUDGE OF AGES, which is the third. Ximen del Azarchel is not a totalitarian, but a monarchist, but this is a trivial error, a nuance. Cahetel is a servant of Hyades, not its superior. Again, someone reading hastily might not catch that.

The two main characters learn the truth in Chapter Two, which starts around page 30, and the two do indeed bicker. Chapter One is divided into eight subsections with subheadings, of which Montrose and Del Azarchel exchange barbed remarks in first and in the eighth, so, technically, there is bickering in those page, albeit they are not one hundred, and it is not continuous.

In Chapter Two they learn the truth, but this chapter is also crowded with events like them seeing a war, watching a world go blind, discovering an eerie mystery about the missing aliens, finding they have a mother, meeting the winged posthuman whose gaze stuns them, them hearing the entire history of the aliens and the terrible truth about their past deeds. That brings us up to page 80.

There is no bickering in Chapter Three, where the two men commit an act of piracy, meet a giant, and end up being threatened by the baleful moon, who is a person, and able to boil the ocean from stations in Tycho Crater. She orders, or invites, them to bring their mother to the moon, and they must sneak aboard a posthuman lifting vessel after a horrid sacrifice. That brings us up to page 95, which is not yet one hundred pages.

So, your mileage may differ, but if this seems like hundreds of boring pages of bickering rather than 95 pages of idea-jammed and action-crammed story with some bickering as comedy relief, that is a legitimate difference of opinion, and the reviewer should indeed warn people that the writer put too much salt in the soup. So, this is not an error, but neither is it an accurate statement.

Montrose and del Azarchel do not fight a duel in this volume. Montrose fights a somewhat more massive individual related to del Azarchel — very massive — but, again, that might be hard to distinguish, since I have clones and downloaded copies of people running around in this book. Maybe the reviewer forgot who was who. On the other hand, only someone who did not read the last third of the book would not know who Montrose duels.

And we find out who gets the girl at the beginning of the next book, but the reviewer could not know that.

Montrose is a boorish libertarian, however. The reviewer got that right.

I am not going to say the reviewer merely read the jacket copy and the first three chapters, but I will say a reviewer who did could give about a review as clear, insightful, and error free as this.

A straightforward review would have said: “Too much bickering between the hero and the villain was tedious. Thin on plot. Too many revelations and plot twists. Too much background detail. Wright goes overboard in creating a fully-realized world. I could not follow what was going on because I read it quickly, while I was drunk …” or whatever the actual complaint actually was.

Instead, the reviewer here is performing verbal contortions in order to create the following effect: he describes what is actually in the first half of the book, which he cannot (however reluctantly) portray admit large-scale in scope and contains astonishing revelations that challenge the characters, while making it sound as if he had already made a withering and devastating complaint, a complaint which, if you reread the paragraph, is never actually stated.

And ‘for the committed only’? What, if I may borrow and expression from my hero, the plaguing pox does that mean?

Now, please note that there are some complimentary comments sprinkled here and there, for which I am grateful. I assume a careful reader would see that the book actually is written on the scale of LAST AND FIRST MEN, and that the effect is, as it was apparently so difficult for the reviewer here to note, impressive. Or impressive only to the truly committed — which denotes nothing, but, like his other remarks, has a negative connotation.

We should imagine him saying such complimentary comments as if through clenched teeth, his eyes narrowed with hate, and tears on his cheeks. Impressive, with dull intervals, but for the committed only…

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

This is why I am Catholic

I can make no comment here, except to say, note the reaction of the mother when the father decided not to fling his child into an orphange; my Church does not allow for divorce.

http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/dad-refuses-give-newborn-son-syndrome/story?id=28756025&cid=fb_gma

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

This is why I like Mr May

Writing as ‘Fail Burton’ Mr May leaves this comment over on the Breitbart website:

Back in the real world, Ann Leckie’s supposedly great SF novel got whipped at Goodreads by The Martian 30,000 to 3,000. That’s what happens outside their racist blogs and Twitter feeds and echo chambers. By that standard, The Martian is then the greatest SF novel of all time times 10 since Leckie’s swept almost every award for the first time in SFF history. The Martian never had to stand in front of a Central Committee and be judged as white or male.

Amen, and preach the good news, brother!

Meanwhile, in other news, the Social Justice Lunatics are frothing and hallucinating in typical fashion in the comments section of the same article. I suggest any reader with a strong stomach and time to kill heat up a bag of popcorn in the futuristic microwave-radition ovens we have here in the future, and read some of the antics. See here: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/05/the-hugo-wars-how-sci-fis-most-prestigious-awards-became-a-political-battleground/

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