John C. Wright's Blog, page 72
April 30, 2014
Reviewer Praise for AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND
Mr. Bruce Charlton has some kind comments about AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND.
I have thus far read the first section – some 50-70 pages?) of John C Wright’s new book Awake in the Night Land – and I can see and say that here is an original and unique and very high quality prose artist – quite aside from any other virtues or deficiencies he may have as a writer of fiction.
What strikes me is the flexibility, the long phrasing, the assured naturalness (as conveyed by euphony or lack of jarring elements) – it reminds me most of when I first encountered Saul Bellow thirty-something years ago; when I was entranced by his prose-writing.
(I have come to dislike, indeed be revolted by, Bellow’s world view and the pretentiousness of his content; but remain intoxicated by the actual quality of the prose.)
Wright’s prose stands-out by its fluency.
Read the whole thing:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-prose-artistry-of-john-c-wright.html
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 29, 2014
My Wife’s Would-Be Resignation from SFWA
Here is a link to Mrs. Wright, known to the world under the pen name (and her maiden name) L. Jagi Lamplighter. While she was not formally a member, she was the one who paid for us and took advantage of the membership benefits, read the Bulletin, and so on.
You or I perhaps could not resign from a guild of which we are not a member, but the amazing Mrs. Wright can do unlikely feats
I do not get to withdraw formally from SFWA because they did not realize I was a member…but I ran John’s membership for years (except for the voting. He did that.) And we both agreed to leave before John withdrew.
I am not like John, who doesn’t pay attention to worldly things and whose only regret about dropping out of SFWA will be that he can no longer write funny stories about visiting the secret SFWA mansion in Pennsylvania.
I loved SFWA.
I adored it. I dreamed of joining for years. I carefully waited and planned, striving to earn the right to be a member.
For over thirty years.
I admired those who were members and cherished my bulletin which I read religiously. (Mainly Laura Resnick, back when she wrote for it, and, after her, the due of her father and the other gentleman he wrote with. Their articles were the best part.)
The only reason I was not a member was that John joined first. For me to join would have been double the money for the same services. They have a joint membership now, I believe. I had been planning to ask to join this summer when his membership came due.
But now…I am abandoning that dream.
Here, simply, are my reasons
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2014/04/29/my-would-be-resignation-from-sfwa/
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 28, 2014
The Notorious Meat Robot Letters!
Being a group of philosophical dialogues on the topic of determinism and freewill, which, in a kindlier universe, could have been decided in a paragraph.
I post this here as a curiosity to show that even otherwise rational fellows like myself, can be lured into an obsessive behavior, answering the same few questions over and over against to an interlocutor with no interest whatsoever, and no ability to feign interest, in the topic being discussed.
Let this be a warning against the immoderate love of anything, even an immoderate love of philosophy, leads to squandering time better spent elsewhere. Whether these dialogs are utterly useless, or might inspire edifying thoughts in some readers on the topic, is for heads wiser than mine to decide.
It is also a warning to my fellow philosophers: when involved in a dialog with a woefully ignorant yet absurdly arrogant layman on a philosophical topic, you must discover whether he has the honesty, willingness or aptitude to think about philosophy, before you decide whether to continue. A willingness can make up for a lack of aptitude. With such men endless patience is rewarded. But nothing can make up for a lack of willingness.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Quote of the Day
From the pen of Brad R. Torgersen:
…but the little boy who cries wolf, and is himself a wolf in sheep’s clothing, doesn’t earn my respect or my ear…
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 27, 2014
An Open Letter to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
To whom it may concern,
It is with no regret whatsoever that I rescind and renounce my membership in SWFA. I wish nothing more to do with the organization and no more contact with it.
The cause which impels the separation is clear enough: over a period long enough to confirm that this is no mere passing phase, the SWFA leadership and a significant moiety of its membership has departed from the mission of the organization, and, indeed, betrayed it.
The mission of SWFA was to act as a professional organization, to enhance the prestige of writers in our genre, to deter fraud, and to give mutual aid and support to our professional dreams.
It was out of loyalty to this mission that I so eagerly joined SWFA immediately upon my first professional sales, and the reason why I was so proud to associate with the luminaries and bold trailblazers in a genre I thought we all loved.
When SWFA first departed from that mission, I continued for a time to hope the change was not permanent. Recent events have made it clear that there is not reasonable basis for that hope.
Instead of enhancing the prestige of the genre, the leadership seems bent on holding us up to the jeers of all fair-minded men by behaving as gossips, whiners, and petty totalitarians, and by supporting a political agenda irrelevant to science fiction.
Instead of men who treat each other with professionalism and respect, I find a mob of perpetually outraged gray-haired juveniles.
Instead of receiving aid to my writing career, I find organized attempts to harass my readers and hurt my sales figures.
Instead of finding an organization for the mutual support of Science Fiction writers, I find an organization for the support of Political Correctness.
Instead of friends, I find ideologues bent on jihad against all who do not meekly conform to their Orwellian and hellish philosophy.
Politics trumps Science Fiction in the modern SWFA.
I am willing and eager to work alongside anyone sharing an enthusiasm for fantasy and science fiction, and to put aside as irrelevant all discussion and inquisition and condemnation of personal opinions on matters religious, political, and social, which are no part of that business.
We are not a political party, or so I thought.
Too many members and leaders in SWFA are not willing to reciprocate. They are not even willing, out of common courtesy or common decency, to withhold their pens from libel and their tongues from slander.
To the devil with them.
To the rest, those honest writers in SWFA who remain members out of inertia or false hopes of reform, it is with sorrow and respect I say my farewell and take my leave,
John C. Wright.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 24, 2014
Pale Realms of Shade
1
It was not the being dead that I minded, it was the hours.
No one ever calls me up during the day, and most people decide to wait until after midnight, for some reason. I am a morning person, or was, so meetings in the still, dark hours lost between midnight and the dawn make me crabby.
This time, it was not some comfortable séance room or picturesque graveyard with moss-covered stone angels. I came to the surface of mortal time on a street corner of some American city, mid-Twentieth to early Twenty-First Century. You can tell from the height of the buildings that it is American, and from the fact that the road names are written on signs rather than walls. And Twenty-Second Century streets are not lit up at night, of course.
The main road was called Saint Street. The small alley was called Peter Way. Great. I was crossed by Saint and Peter.
I smelled her perfume before I saw her. I turned. There she was, outlined against the streetlamp beyond. I could not mistake her silhouette: slender, alluring, like a she-panther as she walked.
“Matthias,” she breathed in her low whisper. Her voice was throbbing music to me, despite everything that had happened. “You look well — ah — considering.”
“Lorelei,” I grunted. She was just wearing a blouse and skirt and a knee-length gray coat, but on her the outfit could have made the cover of a fashion magazine. Or a girly magazine. Her wild mass of gold-red hair was like a waterfall of bright fire tumbling past her shoulders to the small of her back. Atop, like a cherry on strawberry ice-cream, was perched brimless cap. My arms ached with the desire to take her and hold her. But I could never touch her, or, for that matter, anyone ever again.
She sighed and rolled her enormous emerald-green eyes. “Sweetheart, this time, you have to tell me if you were murdered. You have to!”
I took a puff of an imaginary cigarette, and watched the smoke, equally imaginary, drift off in a plume more solid than I was. “I ain’t saying.”
“But you must! I cannot rest until I know!”
Now I knew when and where I was. Because I died the day the Korean War ended. July 27. Mark the day on the calendar. That was the day I gave up smoking. This was only a a few months after, judging from the dry leaves scuttling across the sidewalk, the bare branches of the one tree, surrounded by concrete, across the street. Late October or early November.
“My heart stopped,” I said. “I died of natural causes.”
She pointed a slender finger at the holes in my trench coat. “You’re dripping!”
I looked down. The rest of my body was black and white like an old talkie, a thing of sable mist and silvery moonlight. Only the blood was red, bright as Lorelei’s lipstick.
It was not something I was deliberately imagining myself to look like. I guess it was part of my self-image, subconscious or something. That seemed unfair. I had had a tricky subconscious my whole life. It was one of the things I had thought I had gotten rid of, left behind.
“That’s natural,” I said. “When bullets pass through the lung cavity, they naturally make a large holes. One of them went through my heart, and caused it to stop, like I said.”
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
She Who Must Be Obeyed has Commanded Friday Postings
My beautiful and talented helpmeet, Mrs. John C. Wright, having noticed that I am overdue both for a fiction book and a non fiction book, has conspired with my Jesuit confessor, Father de Casuist that I limit my posting to Fridays.
I react with umbrage! How dare my meek and unassuming wife give me, John C. Wright, absolute lord and master of my own house, an order!
I will go talk with her this instant, and the matter will be drawn to a definite conclusion!
Like all well-domesticated husbands, I tremble and obey. Last time I was uppity, she almost had me thrown into the pit of doom conveniently placed before her throne of absolute power.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Pale Realms of Shade
1
It was not the being dead that I minded, it was the hours.
No one ever calls me up during the day, and most people decide to wait until after midnight, for some reason. I am a morning person, or was, so meetings in the still, dark hours lost between midnight and the dawn make me crabby.
This time, it was not some comfortable séance room or picturesque graveyard with moss-covered stone angels. I came to the surface of mortal time on a street corner of some American city, mid-Twentieth to early Twenty-First Century. You can tell from the height of the buildings that it is American, and from the fact that the road names are written on signs rather than walls. And Twenty-Second Century streets are not lit up at night, of course.
The main road was called Saint Street. The small alley was called Peter Way. Great. I was crossed by Saint and Peter.
I smelled her perfume before I saw her. I turned. There she was, outlined against the streetlamp beyond. I could not mistake her silhouette: slender, alluring, like a she-panther as she walked.
“Matthias,” she breathed in her low whisper. Her voice was throbbing music to me, despite everything that had happened. “You look well — ah — considering.”
“Lorelei,” I grunted. She was just wearing a blouse and skirt and a knee-length gray coat, but on her the outfit could have made the cover of a fashion magazine. Or a girly magazine. Her wild mass of gold-red hair was like a waterfall of bright fire tumbling past her shoulders to the small of her back. Atop, like a cherry on strawberry ice-cream, was perched brimless cap. My arms ached with the desire to take her and hold her. But I could never touch her, or, for that matter, anyone ever again.
She sighed and rolled her enormous emerald-green eyes. “Sweetheart, this time, you have to tell me if you were murdered. You have to!”
I took a puff of an imaginary cigarette, and watched the smoke, equally imaginary, drift off in a plume more solid than I was. “I ain’t saying.”
“But you must! I cannot rest until I know!”
Now I knew when and where I was. Because I died the day the Korean War ended. July 27. Mark the day on the calendar. That was the day I gave up smoking. This was only a a few months after, judging from the dry leaves scuttling across the sidewalk, the bare branches of the one tree, surrounded by concrete, across the street. Late October or early November.
“My heart stopped,” I said. “I died of natural causes.”
She pointed a slender finger at the holes in my trench coat. “You’re dripping!”
I looked down. The rest of my body was black and white like an old talkie, a thing of black mist and silvery moonlight. Only the blood was red, bright as Lorelei’s lipstick.
It was not something I was deliberately imagining myself to look like. I guess it was part of my self-image, subconscious or something. That seemed unfair. I had had a tricky subconscious my whole life. It was one of the things I had thought I had gotten rid of, left behind.
“That’s natural,” I said. “When bullets pass through the lung cavity, they naturally make a large holes. One of them went through my heart, and caused it to stop, like I said.”
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Wright’s Writing Corner: Heroines and Monsters
Today’s guest blog is an excerpt from an academic paper by a YA author
who, amazingly, quotes–of all people–me. 
Are Kick-Ass Heroines Always Also Monsters?
by Margo Bond Collins
One of the things that I’ve always loved about the use of the term “kick-ass” is that it indicates approval of heroines’ tendency to move from more traditionally feminine roles into behaviors more usually associated with the male heroes of action movies and literature; these women carry weapons and aren’t afraid to use them.
But the shift of heroines’ roles in urban fantasy from passive recipient of romantic love to active participants in violence and killing also carries a certain amount of anxiety in our culture. L. Jagi Lamplighter (my fabulous host today!) notes that “today’s audiences have welcomed this golden age of butt-kicking heroines with great relish,” but also claims that these heroines face a “fundamental conflict between modern culture and drama”:
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
April 23, 2014
Ma-ha-ha-ha-ha!
I have shanghaied this blog. You will have to read this post quickly, before the Master of the Blog returns and purges my post.
I did not feel John’s comments on the Sneerers covered the matter sufficiently. In particular:
-It is a classic bit of special pleading with extra sentiment and tearjerking self pity to boot. Since I’ve read some of Wright’s other blog posts I can assure you that if someone were to frighten him out of his new found religion and back into his old supposed logical atheism he wouldn’t become a worse person. He never altered his basic attitude towards other human beings which is contempt for them–especially for women who aren’t feminine by his standards. He simply transferred his contempt from believers to atheists. He remains, as he always was, an authoritarian personality in search of a group to oppress, and a stronger group to cling to for protection. C’est tout.
The problem with this is it suggests John became Christian and then turned on atheists. But it actually happened in the opposite order. He became disgusted with the illogic of his fellow atheists and, thus, became more friendly to Christians.
At the time, I thought this was foolish. After all…we Christians know that there are many strange and outlandish folks among the Christians whose arguments make no sense. But later, I realized that one of the reasons John was an atheist is that he thought atheists were reasonable and religious folk were not.
But even now, years later, John still is troubled when he hears bad atheist arguments. He begins twitching with the desire to go set things right and mutters under his breath, “They are a disgrace to the Powers of Evil!”
He will then turn to me and say, “I could put that across so much more clearly!”
To which I say….”True…but you aren’t supposed to be helping the Powers of Evil.”
To which he says, slightly deflated, “Oh…right.”
The biggest lesson I take from all this, however, is to be careful when I judge others. I can see how a person reading John’s work could easily draw the conclusions drawn above…but they would be totally wrong about the kind of guy he is and his motivations. Makes me think I should be slower to judge others based on their public statements.
Okay…back to our regularly-scheduled blogger!
Cheers,
Mrs. John C. Wright
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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