Interview with the SDL

Fandom Pulse interviewed me about Castalia House’s new translation program that has already translated 18 works from Japanese, Spanish, and Italian:

In the book world, some of the most interesting things happening are coming out of the Castalia Library. Over the last year, the company has brought some of the highest quality leatherbound books to market ever printed, doing a mix of classics and interesting modern, overlooked works that many may not have had a chance to read.

Now, the publishing company is expanding and translating works of classic Japanese fiction that have never been read in English before. These classic works have created a new interest in Japanese culture, spearheaded by publisher and editor Vox Day, who has interviewed with us about the work they’re doing.

Castalia Library is doing something no major publisher is doing: systematically translating Japanese classics that have never appeared in English. What was the moment you decided this was worth building an institution around, rather than just releasing one or two titles?

It started when I realized that neither of the translations I preferred for the leather Library edition of Genji Monogatari was readily available for our use. Not that there was anything wrong with the Arthur Waley translation, it’s what I read while studying Japanese literature at university, but it’s woefully outdated and it was already used by Easton Press. As an experiment, I tried a blind comparision of my translation of the first chapter with the six other translations, and out of 120 readers, nearly 50 percent preferred my new translation. This was a tremendous surprise, but after getting good reviews from native Japanese readers and academics as well, I realized that a whole new world of global literature had opened up to us.

So, while I worked on Genji, I asked Kenji to start with a shorter classic that only had one or two older and outdated translations, Kokoro by Natsume Soseki. The results were very good, and the reviews of the released novel reflect that. Since then, he’s translated Botchan and Sanshiro; the latter was particularly challenging since there is already an excellent translation by Jay Rubin, who has translated an amount of Haruki Murakami’s work into English. That one took him longer, because he really wanted to hit a similarly high bar.

You’re releasing a new translation essentially every week through the Castalia Library Substack that subscribers get for free before they hit Amazon. That’s a production pace that would strain a traditional publishing house. How did you build the infrastructure to sustain that?

We have a rigorous and highly detailed system that involves multiple AIs as well as some talented multilingual writers working to a well-defined scale of existing translations. It allows us to produce the translations quickly, but at a much higher standard than most English translations, especially from that period from the 1950s through the 1990s when academics were doing most of them. Academic translations tend to be accurate, but excessively dry. One of the reasons I wanted to see Kokoro translated again is because the McClellan translation I’d originally read tended to leave the English reader wondering how it had ever been so popular in Japan.

Read the whole thing at Fandom Pulse.

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Winchester

It appears the inevitable has already arrived. Second-hand from a military source in a much-discussed region of the world.

From a contact at [redacted], after a month of living in bunkers, basically Winchester on all ADA worth a damn: Hundreds of soldiers are locked out of computer access due to expired cyber awareness certificates. Cyber awareness is retarded annual cyber training that is handicapping our flaccid response. Google it to see how mocked it is, yet like diversity and tolerance, it’s become more important than war fighting.

So much for Mr. Hegseth’s new model army. No interceptors, no air defenses, no computers, and a strategic reliance upon an outdated, oft-disproven Italian doctrine to win the war. How very 20th Century! Anyone who knows anything about military history should know to be extremely skeptical the moment “victory through a bombing campaign” is mentioned.

The sooner Trump waves the white flag, or declares victory, and orders everyone from Berlin to the UAE home, the better it will be for Americans and for the world in general. Let Israel and Ukraine fight their own wars, if they can.

Why would they have ever imagined that signing up to play the role of South Vietnam was going to end well for them?

UPDATE: Speaking of Winchester…

According to Haaretz, the success rate of Iranian missiles in Israel has reached 80%, and the missiles are not being intercepted.

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THE KAMIGATA SCROLL

The weekly translation is THE KAMIGATA SCROLL by Eiji Yoshikawa. It is available on Kindle, KU, and audiobook or through a paid subscription to the Library substack. And since we find that Gemini tends to be a little too enthusiastic about everything to rely on what it had to say, here is how Grok rated the new translation by your favorite dark lord.

This is an outstanding literary translation of what appears to be an obscure or previously untranslated Yoshikawa Eiji historical novel. It fully deserves publication as a standalone volume and ranks among the strongest English renderings of mid-20th-century Japanese historical fiction I have encountered—comparable in quality to the best work of translators like Charles Terry or William Scott Wilson, though with a noticeably more cinematic, propulsive voice that suits Yoshikawa’s storytelling instincts.

What the translation does exceptionally well

1. Voice and atmosphere (the single strongest element) Yoshikawa’s originals are famous for their moody, almost cinematic Edo-period evocation—night rivers, lantern light, the tension of back alleys and daimyō intrigue. The translation reproduces this with remarkable fidelity. Lines such as

“Against the black sky, one point of lamplight: the fire tower on the Dōjima reclaimed ground, blinking like the last waking eye in the world.”

The extended night-watchman and riverbank sequences feel exactly like Yoshikawa at his best: spare, atmospheric, and quietly ominous. The prose is never purple, yet it is consistently vivid. You have preserved the original’s distinctive blend of lyricism and hard-edged realism.

2. Dialogue Period-appropriate without becoming stilted or “thee-and-thou” fake-archaic. The banter between Gingorō and Taichi, the flirtatious menace of Mikaeri no Otsuna, the terse exchanges among the smugglers, and the courtly-yet-lethal conversations in the Hachisuka villa all ring true to their social stations. The pickpocket Otsuna’s rough-and-ready Edo speech is especially well handled—she sounds dangerous, alluring, and unmistakably Edo, never generic.

3. Action choreography The sword fights, the test-cutting scene, the chaotic rescue at Sumiyoshi, and the final jetty confrontation are all crystal-clear and kinetically satisfying. The translator avoids the common trap of over-describing every cut while still conveying the technical differences between schools (Tanseki, Araki, etc.). The revelation at the climax is perfectly timed and lands with real weight.

4. Cultural and historical texture Terms like harashi, hitoyogiri, komusō, Dutch cards, the sealed Awa domain, the carrier-pigeon network, the spy-prison at Tsurugi-yama, etc., are integrated naturally. The translation never lectures the reader; the world simply is. The political undercurrents are conveyed with subtlety and menace—exactly as Yoshikawa intended.

5. Pacing and structure The chapters breathe when they need to and accelerate when they should (the raid, the river escape, the final duel). What is here is complete, self-contained, and ends on a perfect “to be continued” hook.

Final verdict

This is not merely a competent translation; it is a loving one that respects both the source and the English reader. It captures Yoshikawa’s signature blend of swashbuckling adventure, political intrigue, and melancholy romantic fatalism better than the more famous translations of his better-known works. If the rest of the series maintains this standard, Castalia House will have a genuine classic on its hands.

94/100 — Excellent.

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Truly Hard Science Fiction

A review of SPACE FLEET ACADEMY: YEAR 1 understands the core question being asked by the books:

Space Fleet Academy: Year 1 forces the reader to ask an uncomfortable question: at what point does ensuring humanity’s survival mean we stop being human? The book may be the hardest sci fi I’ve ever read. It is definitely the hardest sci fi I’ve read in a while. Hard sci fi differs from softer sci fi in that it deals with, well, harder science instead of flashy toys. Let me explain the difference in the two.

Soft/Light sci fi asks “what if we had this cool technology?” Star Trek is the most popular example, and it is one that I love (up until the end of Enterprise, and skip the last episode, please). It then explores the adventure and drama that unfolds from faster than light travel and instantaneous transport. But with Star Trek, the driving force has been the story and adventure of meeting alien species and having moral conflict instead of exploring how the warp drive works. Yes, they explain it in places, but there’s a lot of hand waving and techno babble because the point is not that humanity can travel faster than light but the interactions with aliens now that we have faster than light. I write light sci fi along with the fantasy works. I didn’t even work out how the FTL drives work in High Frontier until the third installment! But Year 1 doesn’t hand wave the science. It asks the hard question: what happens when we apply what population genetics teaches us?

Hard sci fi explores the technology, engineering, and, in this case, genetics and takes that to the logical conclusion. Andy Weir, Larry Niven, and Arthur C. Clarke are good examples. Year 1 works with population genetics and says, “Okay. This is how populations evolve. This is how genetic drift works. What happens to a society when it stops drifting? When the genome becomes frozen, what will the powers that be decide to do about it?” Most importantly, how does implementing those policies affect our humanity?

That’s where Year 1 takes us. The cascade drive has given humanity the stars. Dozens of colonies have spread the genome across light years. It is expected for those colonies to have significant losses of life prior to and during the reproductive years of the individuals so that natural selection can select the fittest. In fact, when the childhood mortality rates drop below a certain threshold, the powers that be are disappointed. Read that again.

If you think SFA is hard science fiction, definitely check out the fourth book in the Biostellar series. The Cruel Equations of the book’s title are downright merciless, and they are not only enforced by the

The science is real. The math is remorseless. The choices are impossible.

When Federation inspectors walk through a children’s hospital on the colony world of Verlaine and frown at the survival rates, Deputy Health Minister Jean-Marc Bergeron knows what’s coming. The numbers are too positive. Too many children are surviving to adulthood. And the Human Genome Mandate, the iron law that has governed humanity’s expansion across the stars for four centuries, demands change.

The Federation’s demand: raise Verlaine’s mortality rate from 2 percent to 15 percent. Let two and a half million people die every year. Dismantle the advanced medical system that three generations of colonists bled to build. All of this must be done to satisfy a statistical coefficient on a spreadsheet in an office on Earth.

The reason is non-negotiable: the human genome is degenerating. Natural selection stopped operating over five hundred years ago, and every generation since has accumulated mutations that cannot be purged. The math is not speculation. It is not a theory. It is a measured, validated, ticking time bomb of extinction, and the only proven solution demands that someone’s children pay the price.

The people of Verlaine say no.

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Out of Missiles, Out of Men

Netanyahu appears to have badly miscalculated his long-sought war on Iran:

The IDF could soon collapse if there is no solution to the shortage of manpower, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir warned in remarks during a security cabinet meeting held on Wednesday.

“I am raising 10 red flags before the IDF collapses into itself,” Zamir said during the cabinet meeting, The Jerusalem Post confirmed. IDF sources also told the Post that there is tremendous concern due to the severe manpower shortage, especially amid the ongoing war…

Israel has begun limiting its use of its most advanced missile interceptors as ongoing Iranian barrages strain stockpiles, forcing the military to increasingly rely on upgraded but less capable systems, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Friday.

This isn’t from dubious Iranian sources. This is from the Jerusalem Post. The Houthis have now entered the war, not, in my opinion, to forestall Saudi Arabia and the UAE from entering the war on the side of the Epstein Alliance, but because the Israeli missile defense system is now exhausted.

The closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in addition to the Strait of Hormuz would ratchet up the pressure on the global economy, and thus force the USA to withdraw from the region, while the inability to restock missile interceptors means that the Houthis are now able to strike Israel with their less-advanced missile systems. Each step reinforces the next.

I was wondering why neither Hezbollah nor the Houthis participated in the early stages of the war, and now the answer is becoming apparent. Both the US and the Israeli defenses needed to be weakened before their attacks could produce much damage. The more time goes on, the more it becomes apparent that the Iranians and their allies are operating at a higher strategic level than either Israel or the USA, which indicates that they have either Chinese or Russian advisors providing them with direction.

Israel has a highly competent military and the USA has the most formidable military on the planet. But 3GW militaries have limited staying power and are at a serious disadvantage in industrial 5GW.

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Sad!

How does anyone read this wall of text and imagine it is the same individual who was a master of rhetoric prior to 2021?

Many in the CORRUPT, LYING FAKE NEWS MEDIA, who should be sued and JAILED for spreading ideas clearly intended to harm America, have said that this war was unnecessary. WRONG! I DID NOT START THIS WAR! This is a war that has lasted 47 years, and its current phase was escalated by OBAMA and his Iran nuclear deal, the worst deal ever made, that gave Iran billions upon billions to build their nuclear program, which they also used to build nuclear weapons. I left this terrible deal in my first term, but the damage was already done. Then, after Democrats stole the 2020 election, BIDEN re-entered the deal, giving Iran, which was bankrupt at the time, all the money they ever needed to continue their nuclear weapons development. It was left to me to clean up his mess, so I had no choice in the matter. We gave Iran every possible chance to negotiate. We waited until the last possible moment, trying to find a diplomatic solution, but every time, Iran refused to give up their nuclear enrichment. I warned them repeatedly what would happen if they refused. Iran made their choice, and now they suffer the consequnces.lf we didn’t do this, Iran would have had a nuclear weapon in 2 WEEKS, and they would have used it on ISRAEL. Anyone who would have been okay with that, is not a true American, but rather a TRAITOR. My supporters are very smart people, they agree and know that it had to be done. Everyone knows I am the PRESIDENT OF PEACE. I ENDED 8 WARS IN 1 YEAR! But after the norwegian government foolishly decided not to give me the nobel peace price, which I deserved much more than Obama ever did, I am no longer committed to think solely about peace. We will still have peace, but it will be PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and OVERWHELMING STRENGTH at that. Finally, it must be pointed out, We WE HAVE ALREADY WON THE WAR. Iran’s Navy, airforce, missiles, leaders have all been destroyed, all well ahead of schedule. IRAN SURRENDERED AND BEGGED FOR A CEASEFIRE! They asked ME to run the country! I said NO, we want a better deal, regarding their oil! We have to control it to make sure Iran can’t threaten the world again! We are currently in the clean-up phase of the combat operation, and when the last remaining members of Iran’s terrorist regime have been eliminated, Iran will be GREAT AGAIN! MIGA! Thank you for your attention to this matter! -President DJT

I don’t know who that short guy playing the president is, but it is obviously not Donald Trump. And while it’s true that he didn’t start this war, because Israel did, he did tell the US military to get involved in what increasingly appears to be the empire’s Sicilian Expedition.

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An Inauspicious Start

As everyone suspected, all of Short Fake Trump’s posturing about a ceasefire and positive negotiations appear to be nothing more than yet another attempt to catch Iran with its guard down. If the IRGC reports are anywhere close to accurate, he appears to have gone to that particular well one too many times.

The IRGC, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, they said that they carried out a composite attack or complex attack targeting the Zionist and American terrorists in al-Kabir port as well as the coast of Port Dubai where American soldiers and their tactical equipment were precisely struck within wave 84.

The operation was executed using ballistic and cruise missiles of the 380 type. Six American combat landing craft of the LCU type were targeted in the al-Kabir port. Three of them sank after being hit while the rest are ablaze. We targeted the gathering centers of the US Army drone unit officers on the coast and one of Dubai’s hotels with loitering drones and they were precisely struck. The operation resulted in the sinking of the tactical boats and killing a large number of Americans.

That is officially coming now from Iran. That means Trump already made the deployment. Okay, they’re talking about extension. They’re trying to play this game. Iran is aware of this whole game and it’s already happening. The United States is deploying secretly. Well, they said they might, but they’re they sent some troops clearly already.

And now it’s happening. They’re actually sending troops. The United States and Marco Rubio of course talking about deescalation but they are you know pathological liars.

Now, this may or may not be true. But keep in mind that Iran is not Iraq. We actually have more reason to believe the daily Iranian reports than either the US or the Israeli accounts, because we know the latter two to be absolutely false given the continued scale of the Iranian missile and drone strikes. Whereas Iran has not falsely reported any attack waves that were not actually launched; keep in mind that damage assessments are always wildly exaggerated by everyone on every side.

LCUs are not ships, they’re landing craft designed to bring the Marines from ship to shore. However, the fact that they’re already in the region and being targeted by Iran tends to indicate that the deployment of the Marine Expeditionary Units has already moved ahead of the schedule reported by the mainstream media.

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Literary Relevance is Not Guaranteed

The Dark Herald explains how the modern exploitation of the Tolkien legendarium is likely to reduce the chances of JRR Tolkien’s future literary relevance, and provides a rather devastating example of how that decline in relevance takes place:

In his prime, Roger Zelazny wasn’t some niche cult figure, he was one of the biggest names in speculative fiction, standing shoulder to shoulder with the New Wave heavyweights of the 1960s and 70s. His novel Lord of Light is often remembered as his breakout, and it was certainly his most decorated, winning the Hugo (when it meant something) and cementing his reputation, but Zelazny’s real impact was broader and more sustained. He was a constant presence in the major magazines, a multiple Hugo and Nebula winner, and one of the few writers equally comfortable blending myth, science fiction, and fantasy into something distinctly his own. By the time The Chronicles of Amber hit in the 1970s, he wasn’t emerging… He was already established, and Amber became the work that proved he could translate that critical acclaim into lasting popular success.

Except it didn’t last.

Roger Zelzney’s old hard covers frequently go for three digit figures and I’m not talking Easton Press editions either. But his works are mostly published directly by his estate on Kindle.

Roger Zelzny is moving from the thing everyone knew about to the guy who is studied by writers. Most of his works have six figure sales ranks on Amazon.

And when Gen X is gone, he’ll be forgotten.

Zelazny, at his best, was very good. He wasn’t a first-rank SF/F author, but he was at the top of the second rank. And it’s true, he has been largely forgotten today, which is deeply unfortunate.

As an author, I’m aware of this phenomenon, which is why it has been my intention to release my books into the public domain upon my demise. The advent of AI and the lowering of barriers to entry in the video market may inspire me to rethink that, but at present, the way in which copyright guarantees that all literary properties are eventually acquired and controlled by corporate interests inimical to the long-term interests of an author’s literary legacy means that the best way to combat that is to put one’s works into the public domain immediately upon one’s death.

The problem isn’t that the corporate interests can alter the original works, but rather, the way in which they alter the common perception of the author’s works. How does the average Gen Alpha individual distinguish between The Hobbit and The Rings of Power, or between The Two Towers and whatever abomination Stephen Colbert and Peter Jackson end up concocting?

The only way to level the playing field between the community that loves the literary creation and the corporate interests is the public domain. Indeed, the public domain is the only reason that classic, but hitherto unknown works from the likes of Yoshikawa Eiji and Benito Pérez Galdós are able to be published in English, which is a project you can support via the Castalia Library. We’ve already translated nine works by these two authors, in addition to other amazing novels by Ozaki Koro, Oguri Mushitaro, Naoki Sanjūgo, and Luigi Capuano.

Who are they, you ask?

Exactly…

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The Next Event

There won’t necessarily be one. One certainly hopes there won’t. But as things in the Middle East appear to be getting a) increasingly difficult for Israel and b) Trump appears to be desperately seeking an off-ramp before committing the US military to ground combat, the stage is set for an event designed to provide some additional motivation for Americans to support the Israeli war on Iran.

Based on various dark hints in the media, to say nothing of Laura Loomer’s mysterious and inexplicable sensory-based prediction, it would appear to be something happening on the West Coast, presumably in California, involving an iconic building a major city. So, I’d stay away from both U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles and the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. Especially since it turns out that the building in LA just happens to be owned by the same company that owned the World Trade Center in 2001.

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Yeah, It’s Going Great

The inevitable blame game for what appears to be a historic US-Israeli military defeat in the making heats up.

JD Vance confronted Benjamin Netanyahu in a tense phone call, accusing the Israeli leader of being overly optimistic about the chances of regime change in Iran. The Vice President told the Israeli leader on Monday that many of his predictions about the war which he had sold to Donald Trump had not materialized. Despite the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hardline factions have tightened their grip on power and the regime remains firmly in control.

‘Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the President as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was. And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements,’ a source told Axios.

Vance, who reportedly advised Trump against going to war with Iran, was appointed by the President to help lead negotiations to end the conflict.

A day after Vance’s call with Netanyahu, a Right-wing Israeli news outlet owned by GOP donor Miriam Adelson reported that the Vice President had yelled at Netanyahu over Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. White House officials, who described the story as false, began suspecting that Israelis planted it to try to smear Vance. An Israeli official denied that Netanyahu had planted the story and said his office issued a full denial when approached by reporters.

JD Vance was never likely to become president in the first place. But being second-in-command in an administration that has lost a totally unnecessary war in humiliating fashion to a third-rate power should suffice to ensure that he never wins a presidential election, even though the blame quite rightly falls on Netanyahu. The Israeli leader has been lying for decades, so it’s not really much of an excuse to claim that you took him at his word.

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