John C. Wright's Blog, page 80
February 27, 2014
Why the Rats Conquer Empires
It is darker than you think. Perhaps you have heard about speech codes on campus, about the intolerance of the Left, about their mob tactics, their fetid hypocrisy, and you thought we who complain about it were exaggerating.
You perhaps thought that, at least here in America, certain ideals and values were so much a part of our way of life, so deeply embedded into the hearts of the people, that there was no real threat to our beloved freedoms.
Those ideals and values are not a part of our way of life any longer. They have not been for twenty or thirty years. We are past the tipping point, and it will be a very, very difficult struggle to get back up the pebbly slope to the brink of the cliff down which we fell.
I could list any number of examples from my own field, starting with the expulsion of Theodore Beale from SWFA based on a false accusation by a leftist, going through my editor at Tor books having his child taken from him based on a false accusation, and ending with my agent at Tor books being fired due to a false accusation by a leftist.
I will content myself with a single item of evidence; you can find countless additional items from sources as wide ranging as the monstrous Peter Singer to the absurd Pajama Boy Ethan Krupp.
A creature named Korn writing in the Harvard Crimson calls for an end to Academic freedom.
I am not kidding, I am not exaggerating, and I am not making this up. Here is the link:
Allow me to quote at length, lest I be accused of misrepresenting the true sewer depth of evil being promoted here, the bland banality of the call for chains and gags.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
February 26, 2014
Thou Know’st Us Happy
Is there sex in heaven? A reader asks:
On this earth, we’re never going to run away from the problem of fidelity, whether sexual or emotional, and it may be prudent to err on the side of caution in terms of forming friendships with members of the opposite sex especially after one is married. So, for example, even if I begin to form a friendship with another woman, I imagine it would be prudent to limit interaction with the other person to situations where the wife is around, and to also avoid disclosing information I may freely disclose to my male friends.
What do you imagine this would look like in heaven? Will there still be the sexual tension that requires this sort of caution? Or will we be able to share our lives with each other freely without getting ourselves into the kind of emotional messes that plague us down here? Or will we just be as prudent in heaven without feeling like we’re being denied something – that is, the situation in heaven will be much like what it is here except that we will just think that having ‘restricted’ relationships is the normal thing to do and accept it with contentment?
A word of warning: for earthly men to speculate of heavenly things is like seven-year-olds debating what their parent’s wedding night was like, dealing with concepts hidden from them, or not understood. We can only grope with metaphors and strained analogies, while yet we know all metaphors are false, and all analogies are incomplete.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Announcing the Call for Beta Readers!
UPDATE: For better or worse, a dozen readers have written me and asked to be beta readers. I think that is enough, and I thank you all for your attention. If you are someone in the field, like a technical writer or a professional editor, and you want to get in on the action, you can write me.
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Dear Friends and Loyal Customer (Hi, Nick!) It occurs to me that if any of you have free time and a kind heart, you could help me with my current project. As anyone not dyslexic can tell, my essays are riddled with spelling and grammatical errors which I never seem to catch.
The new collection of essays, TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN will consist of nothing other than the essays that have appeared here on this blog, but I need someone to help me copy edit them, and catch mistakes my defective brain seems never to see. I could pay you nothing but a hearty thankyou and put your name in the Dedication page.
Drop me a line here or at john-c-wright@sff.net, and I will send you the manuscript electronically, or give you access to a Box folder where it is kept.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
ANNOUNCING THE ESSAY COLLECTION!
Here is the announcement from the fine fellows at Castalia House:
http://www.castaliahouse.com/john-c-wright-collection/
We are very pleased to announce that we will be publishing a select collection of John C. Wright’s insightful essays, entitled TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth. Mr. Wright was a finalist for the 2005 Nebula Award for Best Novel and was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “this fledgling century’s most important new SF talent”.
The essays are a compelling series of John C. Wright’s always-insightful observations concerning faith, philosophy, and the field in which he is an acknowledged master, science fiction. TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN is scheduled to be released in April 2014.
Ignite the skyrockets! Let sound the trumpets their brassy blast! Bring on the Dancing Maidens! Light the Pyre! Release the Kragen! Summon the Tornado! Collide the Worlds! Shoot LIGHT from your Mouth! Let the Hysteria of Frantic Rejoicing begin!
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Wright’s Writing Corner: Long Live Exposition
The beautiful and talented Mrs Wright wishes to share her tragic and joyful writing experiences, and describe a rather good idea on how to decide where to put one’s inevitable blocks of discursive information or exposition:
Last week, I had to move a large chuck of exposition. It was stuck in the middle of a rather active scene and more than one reader had complained it was awkward and dull.
I realized tat it had to be moved. But where? Ideally, I wanted it in a place where it would increase the readers interest, rather than bore them. But how to find such a place? I thought it was fascinating.
How could I tell when readers would agree with me, and when they would groan and pull out their hair?
In the end, I divided it into four pieces, putting each part into a place where it added to the scene rather than subtracting from it.
I wish I could tell you I did it gracefully.
But I can’t.
I dissolved into a puddle.
When I recovered from puddlehood, I had an insight that will, God willing, help me avoid the puddle fate in the future. It was about how to evaluate a passage to decide if a given piece of exposition would increase or decrease the reader’s interest. This insight revolved around the Japanese girls video game: Long Live the Queen.
For the rest of the exposition on exposition, click the link:
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
February 24, 2014
The Orcs and the Books
One Lynn Shepherd (in a Huffington Post article to which I will not link) writes that J.K. Rowling should stop writing novels outside children’s fare on the grounds that it unfairly leave no bookshelf space in the bookstores for talented new writers unfairly squeezed out, like herself, the unfairly treated Lynn Shepherd. And this is unfair.
The luminous Sarah Hoyt has a guest post by Amanda Green, who has of this day won my eternal admiration, for she dares to speak Truth to Whiny:
http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/02/24/you-are-not-entitled-a-guest-post-by-amanda-green/
The doughty Larry Correia addresses the same evil nonsense, laying on with hard-handed and heavy swordstrokes.
Okay, aspiring and new writers, nobody owes you shit. Deal with it. You are an entertainer. Nothing more. If you get really good at entertaining people they will pay you money for your work, so then you need to go find the people who will give you money for your work. If you want more fans, you better keep on improving. As the number of fans grows, you will make more money and sell more books. How you accomplish this is irrelevant, because no matter what, the burden of success is on you and you alone.
JK Rowling making a dollar does not take a dollar out of your pocket. That is loser talk. Quite the contrary, she has grown our market, and brought more readers into genre fiction, so she’s actually put dollars IN your pocket.
It is difficult for me to type these next words, because I hurt my hands with the enthusiasm of my applause for this sound and righteous common sense. Against such towering eloquence, no great contribution by me is needed. I will contribute a lesser word, and say only two things.
First, of the seven deadly sins, six give or promise to give some sort of short term pleasure to the sinner: for with pride we are inflated, with gluttony we are fattened, with lust we slake selfish passions; wrath promises pain to enemies, avarice promises lucre in many glittering forms; sloth lures us with the promise of sleepy indifference to all high things.
Envy is sorrow at the good enjoyed by another. Only envy, of all the filthy and demeaning things one can do to oneself to damage the mind and damn the soul, only envy gives nothing whatever to the sinner. It is like swallowing a porcupine.
I cannot generate an atom of envy for the success of better writers than I. As my very wise friend David B Coe once observed when he overheard snobs mocking Robert Jordon: that writer makes enough money for my publisher so that my publisher can pay me.
To which I must add: that writer, along with a long line of writers from Howard to Burroughs to Tolkien to Morris, that all the right-thinking snobs disdain and mock, that writer also created my audience, yea, created my field. For writers like me, to feel envy of my betters is use the well in the dry wasteland as a latrine. If I befoul it, wherefrom shall I drink?
Second, some readers might wonder why a loyal Catholic zealot like myself has such affection for a adulterous heretic like Ayn Rand, the Apostle of the Sin of Pride. Our philosophies are opposite. I say that the greatest evil in the world is to turn away from that self-sacrificing love which is like God and which is God. She says the greatest evil in the world is to live for another or to allow another to live for you.
Well, despite all differences, here is why I like her: Every time I am tempting to think the bizarre and grotesque portrayals of the collectivist villains in her novels are exaggerations, or are simplistic, or are unrealistic, real life sharply checks me.
Every time I think that the jeering gargoyles she portrays in her books could not possibly exist in real life, a Gothic rainspout shakes itself awake and speaks.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
February 21, 2014
Winter’s Tale
This is a difficult review to write, perhaps impossible, because the very act of saying anything about this movie runs the risk of decreasing your odds of enjoying it as it was meant to be enjoyed.
Even praising it as it merits being praised will ruin it for some; because many a man is disappointed by expectations raised too high. I had no such curse, because I walked into the theater with no notion whatsoever what kind of film it was, or how good or bad, my heart was like snow on which no footprint has fallen, and everything happened just as it was meant to be.
It is as if every movie has a miracle meant for one, only one, who sits in the audience to watch and be carried away. This may be that movie for you. It may be your golden story. It was mine.
It is called WINTER’S TALE.
For everyone there is one story, one precious story, that lives in the heart forever like a golden lamp, the living source of warmth when the imagination is filled with shapes of frost, but also the light in whose gleam all other stories are judged. The golden story is usually encountered in first youth, and never at my age, unless heaven opens a particular gift for you, just for you.
Such movies are rare as gems, as strange and wondrous as white magic, as heartrending as new love.
So, if you are willing to take me on faith, completely on faith, without reading another word, and go out this evening with your best gal and see this film, you will enjoy it more than if you read the rest of this article, where I discuss the film, and try to persuade you to go. It is that rich and that deep and that poignant, and I assure you that if I even tell you what genre this movie is, it will ruin part of the surprise, perhaps a crucial part.
Trust me: I speak in sober judgment. Go now, quickly, to the theater, without even returning first to your house for your coat. You will thank me. I would wager the price of a ticket, and offer to repay any man who takes me at my word and finds himself disappointed, and so remove the element of risk from your decision, but, alas, I am a poor man, and no gambler. But I will risk my word, which is more precious to me.
For those of you who are unconvinced, read on! But the diminution of your pleasure should I persuade you to go is now no longer on my conscience.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
February 19, 2014
Why it is a Good Time to be a Writer
A guest post on the website of my lovely and talented wife penned by Mr Michael J Sullivan.
At any given time there are plenty of Chicken Little wannabes proclaiming how the sky is falling when it comes to the business of books. I’m sure the scribes of Guttenberg’s days weren’t too happy about the disruptive technology of movable type. And despite much gnashing of teeth about the introduction of e-readers, ebooks are proving to be a boon for authors and publishers alike. Both of these technologies are making it easier for readers to obtain books, and significantly increasing the number of titles available. When the environment is good for the reader, ultimately writers and publishers thrive, but that’s just one of the reasons why now is such a good time for authors. Let’s look at some others.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
The Era of False Witness
The latest case in Boston is just one example.
Justina Pelletier is a young teenage girl with mitochondrial disease. The doctors at Tufts Medical Center diagnosed her with the condition a few years ago. They put her on a series of medications and vitamins, and her condition seemed to improve.
Back in February of 2013, Justina came down with a bad case of the flu. She was taken by ambulance to Boston Children’s Hospital. The folks at BCH did a work up on Justina and came to a conclusion that conflicts with the doctors at Tufts; they said that she doesn’t have a physical condition at all. They said that she has a psychological problem — in other words, it’s all in her head. It’s a psychosomatic issue. They recommended that her medication regimen should be “simplified” and that she should be treated for the mental problem that causes her to think she’s in pain.
Her parents disagreed. Strongly. They attempted to remove her from the hospital and take her back to her doctors at Tufts. But Boston Children’s Hospital would not tolerate such defiance. They refused to release her, called the cops, and accused the parents of “abusing” their child by “overmedicating” her.
Child Protective Services — or “the Department of Children and Families” — seized custody of Justina. She was locked in a psychiatric ward at the hospital, taken off most of her medications, and her parents were only allowed supervised visits once a week. A gag order was placed on her family, but her father has gone against it.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
February 18, 2014
The Sense of Wonder
Someone asked me what was the sense of wonder of which so many science fiction readers speak and so many science fiction writers attempt to capture. Its a question that requires a long essay to answer adequately, so I will be able to give only an inadequate answer:
The years of the Industrial and Scientific Revolution ushered in a new view of the universe remarkably different from the universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy. The Earth was no longer the center. In a dizzying swoop, Copernicus swept it to the side and placed the sun at the center. Then, with a jar, Kepler announced that the orbit was not an epicycle riding a circle, but an oval. Next, the division between the mundane world of change and decay and the superlunary world of everlasting and divine aether was shattered by Newton like the ceiling of a cathedral collapsing. The Blessed Father Nicolas Steno ushered in the era of modern geography, and the age of the world suddenly stretched backward to remote eons like the famous scene in Hitchcock’s VERTIGO where the grounds seems to swoop away from the dangling feet of Jimmy Stewart.
The first thing to notice about this, is that nearly all these men were Churchmen in Catholic orders. So much for the war between Faith and Science.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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