John C. Wright's Blog, page 58
August 6, 2014
The Wright Perspective: The Seven Bad Ideas of Leftism
My Latest is up at Every Joe, written in my normal balanced, calm, dispassionate, Spocklike — er –
– oh, no, wait, here I am in full-throated full-bore bellowing Jeremiad mode, a frantic image in my camel hair coat, hair floating, eyes glittering with hellfire and heavenly lightingbolts, words like lamps of flame escaping the portcullis of my teeth, the locusts and wild honey from my last meal staining my erratic cloud of a beard:
http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/08/06/politics/seven-bad-ideas-leftism/
The cult of darkness variously known as Leftists, Liberals, Progressives, Brights, Socialists, Pinkos, Late Moderns, Collectivists, Traitors, Blame-America-Firsters, Political Correction Zombies, Statists and Shriekbunnies – but which I call the Morlocks, because they have the courtesy and dignity of devolved cannibal troglodytes – is controlled by a Seven Bad Ideas around which their various emotions and interjections orbit.
The Seven Bad Ideas are:
Solipsism — the paradox that asserts that truth is personal, hence optional: “It is not true that truth is true.”
Relativism — the paradox that asserts that virtue is subjective, situational, relative: “It is wrong for you to judge right and wrong.”
Subjectivism — the paradox that asserts that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As if putting a urinal in an Art Museum, and betraying the standard somehow proves the standard wrong, not the betrayal.
Irrationalism — the paradox that asserts reason is untrustworthy. Each man’s reason is too biased by upbringing, class self interest, sex, race, and background such that no one, aside from members of a given race and sex and victim group, can be expected to understand or advise other members of the victim group. Of course, reaching this conclusion from that premise is itself an act of reasoning, requiring the reasoner to trust his reason, despite the background and race and sex of the reasoner.
Pervertarianism — the paradox that asserts it to be licit to seek the gratifications of sexual union of the reproductive act without the union, without the reproduction, and, in the case of sodomites, without the act. The same insane paradox asserts that females should be feminists rather than feminine; and that sexual predation is more romantic than romance.
Totalitarianism — the paradox that asserts that freedom is slavery, war is peace, ignorance is strength. The Constitution is a living, breathing document, ergo it must be smothered and killed.
Nihilism — the paradox of that the meaning of life is that it has no innate meaning.No proof is being offered here that Leftists believe these ideas or make these assertions. The reader can discover that for himself, merely by listening to them talk, reading their works, and reaching his own conclusion. If you cannot see it by reading what they say, you will not see it by my repeating what they say. Look for yourself.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
August 5, 2014
Let the Joyous News be Spread! Count to a Trillion to be Completed!
Yes, loyal fan and true believer! I heard just this week from my agent and editor that, despite declining sales, Tor Books has agreed to published the penultimate and ultimate volume in the sexilogy (not what it sounds like; get your mind out of the gutter!) of the nonaward-winning Count to the Eschaton Sequence!
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
An Open Letter to Any Prospective Writers
A reader just wrote and asked me some advice about breaking into the field. He seemed despondent over comments I had made recently about the state of the Nebula Awards and such. As a public service to any other readers with questions like his but too shy to write me, allow me to share my thoughts on this matter:
Dear Hopeful Writer-to-be,
Don’t be deceived. What I wrote was a complaint about SFWA, the Science Fiction Writers of America, a professional organization that has been taken over by the gray goo of Political Correctness, which I quit in disgust. This is because I do not need this organization. In the 1950s, they served a purpose to protect writers from unscrupulous magazine and book publishers. Now, they serve no purpose.
Don’t let anything I wrote dampen your spirits or your hope. My complaint was very narrow. I said nothing against the industry as a whole.
We live in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. There are more readers, more books, more comics, more movies, more computer games in the science fiction genre than ever before. You have more markets and more opportunity than ever before in history. There are fewer barriers and boundaries to overcome than ever before.
That, precisely that, was why I could leave SFWA without a blink of regret, and also (come to think of it) why they could afford to abandon their mission and become an ersatz political organization.
The publishing business right now is poised between two models, the classical model of mainstream New York publishers distributing books as physical objects to bookstores, and the new model of selling electronic files directly to customers through Amazon or some other Internet distribution. The impact is as great as the invention of the Printing Press.
I have a foot in both camps.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
August 3, 2014
Wright’s Six Word Review of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
Did everything right. Go see it. Loads of Fun.
I realize, technically, that is nine words, but if you slur you speech and say it rapidly, and cannot count, it’s the same as six.
Loved the Raccoon.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
August 1, 2014
Contest!
The United Underworld Evil League of Evil needs to come up with an emblem or heraldry or image to put on tee shirts and mugs to wear or carry (wear the mugs and carry the tee-shirts, I mean, of course) to science fiction conventions to provoke the Pinko Pink SF Social Justice League of Unamerica so that their heads explode.
I have a fair hand at illustration, but I am not sure what it should look like.
Once we have a proper emblem to go on our standards, we will consider Dr Horrible for membership.
Suggestions will remain open for an arbitrary period of time, and then I will take a vote with myself and pick one. Or not. Then Larry Correia will make money selling it. Or something else will happen. These rules are final, subject to change without notice, and binding in all 48 states, including East Virginia and Reunified Dakota, and Guam.
——————————————————————
I will enter the first candidate myself:
Our heraldic symbol is a three headed vulture displayed propre, chief sable, lightningbolt in left claw, orb topped by cross in right claw, with the eight-pointed arrow of Chaos in the crown, on field sable and or lozengy. The motto is ‘Facias Malum, ut Inde Fiat Malum‘.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
FW &SF, or, On Faith and Works in Science Fiction
The fine folks at First Peter Five web journal (or 1P5 to you) asked me to contribute an essay explaining if and how and why my faith influences my science fiction writing. The editor asked to to answer in a thousand words or less, but we all know that was not going to happen.
The short answer is that I am eager and willing to make Christ the core of my art for two simple reasons: first, readers have asked, demanded, and begged that I do so; and second, Christianity is innately more dramatic that other worldviews, and Catholicism in particular is more mystical, magical and more-visually oriented than our iconoclastic brethren from heretical denominations. Rome invented Romance; Rome invented Science; and so the Scientific Romance is natural to us.
You may read it in it native environs here, or just click below the link.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
July 31, 2014
Literary Envy and the Last Redoubt
Over at Armed and Dangerous, a topic very near and dear to my heart is being debated. The author, Eric Raymond, begins thus:
I’ve been aware for some time of a culture war simmering in the SF world. And trying to ignore it, as I believed it was largely irrelevant to any of my concerns and I have friends on both sides of the divide. Recently, for a number of reasons I may go into in a later post, I’ve been forced to take a closer look at it. And now I’m going to have to weigh in, because it seems to me that the side I might otherwise be most sympathetic to has made a rather basic error in its analysis. That error bears on something I do very much care about, which is the health of the SF genre as a whole.
Both sides in this war believe they’re fighting about politics. I consider this evaluation a serious mistake by at least one of the sides.
He then identifies the two sides
On the one hand, you have a faction that is broadly left-wing in its politics and believes it has a mission to purge SF of authors who are reactionary, racist, sexist et weary cetera. This faction now includes the editors at every major SF publishing imprint except Baen and all of the magazines except Analog and controls the Science Fiction Writers of America (as demonstrated by their recent political purging of Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day). This group is generally frightened of and hostile to indie publishing. Notable figures include Patrick & Theresa Nielsen Hayden and John Scalzi. I’ll call this faction the Rabbits, after Scalzi’s “Gamma Rabbit” T-shirt and Vox Day’s extended metaphor about rabbits and rabbit warrens.
On the other hand, you have a faction that is broadly conservative or libertarian in its politics. Its members deny, mostly truthfully, being the bad things the Rabbits accuse them of. It counteraccuses the Rabbits of being Gramscian-damaged cod-Marxists who are throwing away SF’s future by churning out politically-correct message fiction that, judging by Amazon rankings and other sales measures, fans don’t actually want to read. This group tends to either fort up around Baen Books or be gung-ho for indie- and self-publishing. Notable figures include Larry Correia, Sarah Hoyt, Tom Kratman, John C. Wright, and Vox Day. I’ll call this group the Evil League of Evil, because Correia suggested it and other leading figures have adopted the label with snarky glee.
I can speak authoritatively for the United Underworld of the Evil League of Evil, since I (with some help from Batman and Dr Horrible) coined the term. We do not believe we are fighting about politics.
Politics is the least part of the struggle. None of my stories mention it, nor do those of our dishonorable and craven opposition.
We of the United Underworld have said what we are fighting about. Larry Correia wrote our manifesto: We believe story comes before message.
We are entertainers first and crusaders second.
Our opponents are crusaders first, or, to be precise, anticrusaders, because instead of fighting for the holiness and righteousness as the crusaders did of old, these creatures fight against everything holy and right and instead fight for socialism, totalitarianism, feminism, perversions sexual and otherwise, atheism, nihilism, irrationalism, Ismism, and every other ism one can name.
We say you can put a message in your story if you insist, but story comes first. Space Princesses come second, at least for me. I think way cool guns come second for Larry Correia. Message comes third for both of us.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
July 30, 2014
The Wright Perspective: Seven Right Ideas (Faith)
My latest is up at EveryJoe: This is the last in my series on the Seven Right Ideas on which Conservativism is founded, and it is the more difficult idea because it is a mystery.
Faith is as impossible to define in fullness as love, but it includes the idea that you owe a personal loyalty to truth, virtue and beauty, and that the mysterious source of truth, virtue and beauty will reward that loyalty and faithfully reciprocate.
Faith is the opposite of nihilism, which is the idea that there are no metaphysical truths, no supernatural reality, no innate purpose to life.
The point of faith is often misunderstood, and, frankly, often lied about. Matters of faith are neither illogical nor do they lack evidence.
The confusion comes because no other decision in life (even such all-embracing decisions as the decision to marry or to join the army) requires loyalty from every part of your soul and every nook of your psychology; including the part that decides.
All other decisions but this one allow you a place to stand, a neutral ground, a judge’s bench, where you can weigh the arguments for and against and make the decision according to rules that are themselves not part of the decision. But in this case, whether you become a Christian or become a Political Correction Cultist, there is no neutral ground.
You cannot make the decision based on the truth of the claims, because Political Correctness rejects the concept of truth whereas Christianity says Christ is truth.
You cannot make the decision based on the virtue of the claims, because Political Correctness rejects the concept of virtue, and says that all moral good or evil is a human invention, or the imposition of mindless genetic processes.
You cannot make a decision based on the beauty of the claims, because Political Correctness rejects the concept of beauty as trivial and trite, and rejects the concept that beauty reflects truth.
You cannot make the decision based on the rationality of the claim, because Political Correctness rejects the idea of objective reason whereas Christianity says Christ is Logos, a Greek term which means, among other things, reason, account or logic. We worship a rational God who created a rational universe in which he placed men to whom he granted the gift of reason.
You cannot even use your free will to make the decision because Political Correctness casts grave doubt on the freedom of the will, or denies it altogether.
Between the Christian universe and the anti-Christian universe, there is no way to be objective and dispassionate between the two universes. There is no third universe in which to stand while you make the choice. Either you are a member of one or a member of the other.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Hugo voting ends Tomorrow
Reminder from Larry Correia:
The Hugo voting ends shortly, so if you joined the crusade to combat the scourge of Puppy Related Sadness don’t forget to get your votes in.
Related — Vox Day posts his suggested sample ballot:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/07/2014-hugo-award-recommendations.html
Myself I have no opinion on the current voting, but on the retro-Hugos, allow me to suggest:
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
July 28, 2014
Architect of Aeons Cover
My next volume of my Count to the Eschaton Sequence is scheduled to go on sale, according to one source, in April of 2015. This is not the official announcement from the publisher, so it is possible someone is jumping the gun.
Cover below the cut. Personally, I think this is great cover art:
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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