Category: Uncategorized

Mailvox: Wallpaper request

Because the THERE WILL BE WAR covers by Lars – with a typology assist from JartStar and Chris – are awesome, we’ve had several requests for wallpapers based on them. So, without further ado, here they are at 1600×1000 resolution; just click on the smaller image to load the full one. I have to confess that while Vol. II is my favorite of the four anthologies we’ve released so far, Vol. IV is my favorite cover.

And, of course, you’ll no doubt want to pick up copies of the newly released Volume III and Volume IV too.

The EU doubles down

It’s not a huge surprise. They have never had any respect for democracy anyhow:

The European Central Bank has tightened liquidity conditions for the Greek banking system following the landslide victory for the Leftist government in Sunday’s referendum.

The central bank continued its freeze on emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) after Germany issued a humiliating ultimatum to Greece, warning that the country would be cast adrift and left to go bankrupt unless it agreed to much deeper concessions than anything offered so far.

Sigmar Gabriel, the German vice-chancellor, said the landslide rejection of EU austerity demands in the Greek referendum changed nothing, demanding that the Left-wing Syriza government must accept further belt-tightening without any prospect of debt relief if it wishes to remain in the eurozone.

“The final bankruptcy now appears imminent,” he said. The Greek leaders have been told that they have a deadline of Tuesday afternoon to come up with far-reaching proposals.

And before any morons pop up and start blathering about “those lazy Greeks should pay their debts”, understand that it is mathematically impossible for them to do so. Not difficult, not hard, impossible. It is never going to happen. And note that the IMF, which has been continuing to loan them money, has known this since 2011.

Keep in mind that the USA was actually more indebted than Greece until just a few years ago. The difference is that the USA can always print more credit dollars. The Greeks cannot, not until they get rid of the Euro and go back to the drachma. The core problem is not that the Greeks were profligate, although they were, but that they chose to join the EU and the Euro.

Don’t forget that wherever there are large sums of money involved, there is always quite a bit going on behind the scenes:

“the European Central Bank said it can’t release files showing how Greece may have used derivatives to hide its borrowings because disclosure could still inflame the crisis threatening the future of the single currency.”

Considering the crisis of the (not so) single currency is very much “inflamed” right now as it is about to be proven it was never “irreversible”, perhaps it is time for at least one aspiring, true journalist, unafraid of disturbing the status quo of wealthy oligarchs and central planners, to at least bring some closure to the Greek people as they are swept out of the Eurozone which has so greatly benefited the very same Goldman Sachs whose former lackey is currently deciding the immediate fate of over €100 billion in Greek savings.

Because something tells us the reason why Mario Draghi personally blocked Bloomberg’s FOIA into the circumstances surrounding Goldman’s structuring, and hiding, of Greek debt that allowed not only Goldman to receive a substantial fee on the transaction, but permitted Greece to enter the Eurozone when it should never have been allowed there in the first place, is that the person who oversaw and personally endorsed the perpetuation of the Greek lie is none other than Goldman’s Vice Chairman and Managing Director at Goldman Sachs International from 2002 to 2005. The man who is also now in charge of the ECB.

Mario Draghi.

There Will Be War Vols III and IV

Created by the bestselling SF novelist Jerry Pournelle, THERE WILL BE
WAR is a landmark science fiction anthology series that combines
top-notch military science fiction with factual essays by various
generals and military experts on everything from High Frontier and the
Strategic Defense Initiative to the aftermath of the Vietnam War. It
features some of the greatest military science fiction ever published,
such Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” in Volume I and Joel Rosenberg’s
“Cincinnatus” in Volume II. Many science fiction greats were featured in
the original nine-volume series, which ran from 1982 to 1990, including
Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Gordon Dickson, Poul
Anderson, Jack Vance, John Brunner, Gregory Benford, Robert Silverberg,
Harry Turtledove, and Ben Bova.

THERE WILL BE WAR Volume IIII is edited by Jerry Pournelle and John
F. Carr, and features 16 stories, articles, and poems. Of particular
note are “Hide and Seek” by Arthur C. Clarke, “The Spectre General” by
Theodore Cogswell, “The Myth of a Liberation” by Truong Nhu Tang, and
“Silent Leges” by Jerry Pournelle.

382 pages, no DRM. It is available at Amazon and Castalia House.

 THERE WILL BE WAR Volume IV is edited by Jerry Pournelle and John F.
Carr, and features 21 stories, articles, and poems. Of particular note
are “The Cloak and the Staff” by Gordon R. Dickson, “Interim Justice” by
William F. Wu, “Psyops” by Stefan Possony, and “No Truce with Kings” by
Poul Anderson.

378 pages, no DRM. It is available at Amazon and Castalia House.

An expert on overhyped failure

Sees similar problems on the horizon for Star Citizen:

The problem that RSI is now faced with is something that us vets all saw coming a mile away. This level of exposure, all the press, the promises, the hype, the glorious anti-establishment chanting and rhetoric etc.: all of it has a very bad downside.

And it’s not like the rumblings haven’t been there. Every time there is new press about a funding milestone or yet another ship concept cash grab, there is some derogatory rhetoric associated with it because most backers are fed up and just want the game they were promised back in 2012.

Others are just waiting for the day when it all comes crashing down, so they can point, chuckle, and say they saw it coming.

And last I checked, some people had spent over $5,000 on this game. Even if you don’t want to believe that, believe this: they’ve raised about $85 million from 918,806 backers. That is an average of $92 per gamer.

A couple of weeks ago last month, when there was news about the FTC going after failed promises made by someone who crowdfunded a game, there were various discussions about the terrible precedent which would be set if this game failed to deliver and if a bunch of people reported it. And that’s no joke. We’re talking $85 million. That’s a lot of cash. Other people’s money.

If you spend $30 and get a generic game, you’ll post a bad review, tell all your friends etc. Eventually, you will move on. It happens. But in this instance, given all what has transpired, and all this money, gamers aren’t going to let it slide. Even if they lost $19.

No; they’re going to ask WTF happened to “all that money?“ because now it’s their money, not some faceless investor’s, or even a publisher.

And they’re going to be pissed because they expected more than a hangar and a largely buggy Arena Commander module which isn’t representative of the game they were pitched back in 2012, and which has to have been delivered two years later in Nov 2014.

As I’ve said before, I want this game to succeed for a lot of selfish reasons, least of all being that I funded it. I mostly want it to succeed because we don’t have any games like this in the genre, and not even my games can fill that void because they are super complex, pretty old, don’t look as pretty etc. You know, different budgets, different production values etc. And I really don’t care who makes it. All I know is that before I die, I want to play it. Is that too much to ask?

I also want it to succeed in whatever form because if it doesn’t,
it’s going to be another massive gamedev and videogame crowdfunding
black eye. I know people who are already rumbling that if this fails
that it is going to be more epic than the collapse of 38 Studios in the Summer of 2012. And that $75 million was mostly tax-payer money.  And almost three years now, that one is still playing out in the courts.

What I mean by this comparison is related to the following, all of
which happened to 38 Studios, it’s creators, primary execs, politicians
etc. and how the media handled it:

  • The amount of public money raised is not something to ignore. Like
    that studio’s sudden implosion in 2012, it’s a lot of money. The kind of
    money that makes every lawyer, politician, analyst etc., perk up their
    ears and try to get involved in the fray.
  • Given the number of studios working on this project worldwide, the
    sudden loss of jobs would be catastrophic for some people, most of whom
    had to relocate to get their jobs.
  • The hype surrounding this project since its 2012 inception is going
    to guarantee that every media outlet is going to want a piece of the
    action, and most of that is going to be based on sheer speculation,
    wanton conjecture, bullshit anonymous “sources” etc., because the focus
    would be on vilifying Chris and crew, rather than focusing on what
    mistakes were made.

And I need not even mention APB as another example.

To add to the noise, there are reports that people (Travis Day, a
senior producer left recently) at RSI have been leaving, the executive
producer (!) (UPDATE. It has been confirmed to me that Alex Mayberry, the Exec Producer, hired a year ago, is no longer at the company) is on his way out, and they’re spending more than they’re bringing in because crowdfunding has peaked etc.

The understated economics of game development is quite simple. For as
long as I’ve been around, and seen so many projects fail because they
ran out of funds, you’d think that by now this is something every
developer and publisher would be aware of, and plan for it:

  • If you’re spending $2 and bringing in $1, you’re in trouble.
  • If your studio is burning through $2 million a month, then you need
    $24 million a year in funding. If you’re selling less than $2 million a
    month, you’re in trouble.
  • If your studio has $24 million to make a game over a period of two
    years, and you’re burning more than $1 million per month, you’re in
    trouble.
  • If your budget is down to the wire, in that you don’t have a buffer
    of at least 15% of your funds in reserve, and which you can use for
    unforeseen expenses during development, you’re asking for trouble.

None of the departures, delays etc. should necessarily be regarded as
a sign of trouble for the project. When you start to scale back or
hunker down, people leaving, delays, stuff getting cut etc. is all par
for the course. What you can expect though, for something of this scope,
is that it’s going to get scaled back. That’s assuming that it ever
sees the light of day.

And if they scale it back, that’s going back on promises. And when
that happens, it’s going to be a complete disaster. Guaranteed.

So to those of you who don’t know how this works, it doesn’t make any
sense to scream “failure” when you have no clue just what (a lot) goes into developing these games.

It may succeed, it may fail; but for now, all we can do is watch how it plays out. But given the fiasco surrounding Freelancer—the
other very ambitious game that Chris tried to make, and the
disappointment that was the final game as delivered versus what was
promised, after which Chris left the industry—we should all be worried.
Especially this time around, there’s no Electronic Arts and no Microsoft
to act as a tether, or for us to point the finger at and to hold
accountable.

For me, I already know—for a fact—that they can’t build this game they’ve pitched, and which I was looking forward to someone making.

I’m concerned about this one too. I had a number of extensive conversations with Chris about this back when he had permission to use the Wing Commander license for it – we even discussed the possibility of using one of my AI designs for the wingmen – and I would really, really, really like to see it be successful too. Wing Commander is one of my all-time favorite games and I have very fond memories of it and of the man himself.

But the potential problem, as I see it, is that RSI got distracted by the unexpected level of success of their fund-raising efforts, and like many a charity before them, lost sight of their primary objective due to that success. This is understandable, of course, because fund-raising for a game this size is an absolute bitch for an independent, even one as well-regarded as Chris is. It takes an incredible amount of time and nineteen out of every twenty alleys eventually lead to a brick wall.

The positive side of limited resources is that it forces you to make the hard choices, you simply have no other option because you can’t do everything. I thought it was fantastic that Star Citizen managed to raise even more money than they were looking for to do Wing Commander, thinking that this was the dawn of a new funding model, but ironically enough, the very success of Star Citizen may lead to it being deemed a failure even if Chris manages to produce what would have been a very successful version of the $20 million project he originally envisioned, if it takes him $85 million to do it no one is going to be happy.

Because, as Derek Smart observes, everyone’s expectations have been raised. If it’s not the greatest game ever, if it doesn’t blow people away the way the original Wing Commander and Grand Theft Auto 5 did, it could end up having a crushing effect on game-related crowdfunding in the future.

For those of you who are too young, or too unfamiliar with the game industry, Battlecruiser 3000 AD was one of the most anticipated games of its day, but Derek never managed to deliver on its considerable promise, it had zero chance of ever living up to all the hype, and it is still, somewhat unfairly considering its relatively modest budget, (it’s rather shocking to discover that the budget was less than $650k) considered to be one of the great flops of the industry.

That being said, Derek is a smart guy and he would know about something being overhyped and unable to deliver on that hype.

Omniscience

It’s official. I have seen EVERYTHING. A GAY JEWISH WEDDING WHERE THEY RODE IN ON A HORSE DRESSED AS A UNICORN 

Or rather, proof of the lack thereof. But nevertheless, I think it’s an exaggeration to say that America has reached the depths of Roman depravity. Only when one of these drama queens is the elected President and the marriage-parody is consummated in public, on the horse, can we reasonably say it has reached that level.

A man of honor

It would be remarkable if the USA had a single political leader who cared as much about his nation and as little about his career as Greece’s newly ex-finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, who resigned after successfully leading Greece’s campaign to reject the Eurogroup’s ultimatum:

The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage.

Like all struggles for democratic rights, so too this historic rejection of the Eurogroup’s 25th June ultimatum comes with a large price tag attached. It is, therefore, essential that the great capital bestowed upon our government by the splendid NO vote be invested immediately into a YES to a proper resolution – to an agreement that involves debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favour of the needy, and real reforms.

Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.

I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum.

And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.

We of the Left know how to act collectively with no care for the privileges of office. I shall support fully Prime Minister Tsipras, the new Minister of Finance, and our government.

The superhuman effort to honour the brave people of Greece, and the famous OXI (NO) that they granted to democrats the world over, is just beginning.

I don’t agree with Mr. Varoufakis on much, but his defense of Greece’s national sovereignty in the face of tremendous pressure from the banks and the European political class was as magnificent as it was astonishing. I hope that he soon realizes that Greece no more needs the European Union or the Euro weighing it down than it needed to pay the odious debts demanded by the Eurogroup.

Being the First Part of A Tale of The Unwithering Realm

We are very pleased to announce that Mr. John C. Wright has published SOMEWHITHER, The Unwithering Realm, Book One, with Castalia House:

SOMEWHITHER is the first part of A TALE OF THE UNWITHERING REALM, a new science fantasy series from science fiction master John C. Wright. It is an adventure, it is a romance, and it is a coming of age story of a young man who is not a man, in a world that is only one among many. It is a tale of a greater and darker evil with longer reach than anything Man can imagine, of despair without bounds, of pain beyond measure, and of the faith required to surmount all three. It is a story of inexorable destiny written in the stars and the stubborn courage that is required to defy it.

Ilya Muromets is a big, ugly, motherless boy who does not look like anyone else in his Oregon town. His father is often absent on mysterious Church missionary work that involves silver bullets, sacred lances, and black helicopters. Ilya works as a janitor for Professor Achitophel Dreadful of the Cryptozoological Museum of Scientific Curiosities, and he has a hopeless crush on the Professor’s daughter, Penelope, who pays him little attention and appears to be under the impression that his name is Marmoset.

One night, when Professor Dreadful escapes from the asylum to which he has been temporarily committed, he sends a warning to Ilya that not only is his Many Worlds theory correct, but those many worlds are dominated by an unthinkably powerful enemy determined to destroy anyone who opens the Moebius Ring between the worlds. And, as it happens, prior to his involuntary absence, the Professor left his transdimensional equipment in the basement of the Museum plugged-in and running….

So it is that Ilya, as he has secretly dreamed, is called upon to save the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter. With his squirrel gun, his grandfather’s sword, and his father’s crucifix, Ilya races to save the girl, and, incidentally, the world.

590 pages. No DRM. Available at Amazon and Castalia House. From the reviews:

  • “I had stopped reading SF and fantasy when Stephen Donaldson got longwinded and boring (make your own jokes here) and had turned to detective fiction. But the pendulum swings. The fact that you enthused about him compelled me to give him a try, since I love your work. I can confidently say I haven`t read anything I loved this much since Lewìs` space trilogy.”
  • “It is at once Star Wars, the Chronicles of Narnia, Asimov’s Robot worlds, and CS Lewis somehow rolled into one.”

I will give the gentle reader fair warning. SOMEWHITHER is crazy. The reader who described it as a “Bronzepunk Bildungsroman” wasn’t kidding. It is massive and over the top in every single way. It defines “kitchen-sink book” and there is probably not another science fiction writer alive today who could reasonably attempt a book like this. You may love it. You may find it bewildering. You may wonder if Mr. Wright should join Professor Achitophel Dreadful as an involuntary guest at the asylum. But you will definitely marvel at it.

The only way I can describe it is to imagine that Dan Brown dropped acid and was pumped full of sodium pentathol and caffeine after reading about Our Lady of Fátima. And that doesn’t even do it justice. Mr. Wright provides his own description here.

So how would I classify SOMEWHITHER? Is is high fantasy, sword and sorcery, scientific fantasy, space opera, or elf opera, or what?

It might be called an urban fantasy, in that the the tale stars a modern American boy, indeed, a Boy Scout, son of a secret agent of the parallel-world traveling Knights Templar secretly working for the Pope, who pops through a rabbit hole or Moebius wormhole, and ends up in a parallel world ruled by the Tower of Babel. Except he is from Tillimook, Oregon, which is rural rather than urban.

It might be called sword and sorcery, on the grounds that he is armed with his grandfather’s katana, a prize brought back from Japan after World War Two, so there is a sword involved, and there is definitely enough sorcery to choke a horse.

It could be called high fantasy, if we meant it reads like something inspired by a muse who had ingested a hallucinogenic drug. It is high in that sense.

SOMEWHITHER is a Christian Rock Opera, like JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, but not so blasphemous, but just as stupid.

So think of SOMEWHITHER as more like GODSPELL, but if they decided to use ninjas and vampire-hunters to portray Our Lord and His apostles instead of clowns in makeup.

The Eurofascists lost

Live updates here:

BREAKING: Greek interior ministry projection says ‘no’ camp will get more than 61 percent of vote.

17 25 31 40 50 percent reported, 61 percent NO, 39 percent YES. Now, the bankers will double-down, threaten, and promise economic apocalypse if they aren’t bailed-out. Or bailed-in. They always do. But the people are finally beginning to realize that the bankers are serving only themselves.

But how is that possible? After all, we were told that the Greeks are desperate to stay in the EU and in the Euro. June 28: In a poll conducted by Alco for the Greek newspaper ‘Proto Thema’, 57%
of the participants said they would vote yes in the upcoming referendum,
favoring a deal.

What an amazing 18-point turnaround in only one week! Or, you know, perhaps the media is not to be trusted.

UPDATE: Heh. Glenn Reynolds is the master of pith:

TIME.com @TIME
‘No’ campaign likely to win tight referendum vote in Greece

Instapundit.com ‏@instapundit
Not that tight.

Not all writers are created equal

And let’s face it, Martin van Creveld is damn near the top of the list of thinking writers these days. I think I may have posted this link before, but since Instapundit has a decent discussion going in the comments, I thought I’d post Ann Sterzinger’s review of Martin van Creveld’s EQUALITY: THE IMPOSSIBLE QUEST again in case anyone happened to miss it the first time:

Equality: The Impossible Quest is—by the by—one of a spate of solid but genuinely daring recent releases from Castalia House, a small press led by Vox Day.

If you haven’t spent all your money on my publisher, Nine-Banded Books, do yourself a favor and give Castalia House a look.

Day is, at the moment, my favorite fantasy novelist, despite the gulf between his version of theology—from reading his blog he seems pretty sure that in this reality there’s a single, just God up there—and mine, if you can call mine such.

Or likely my enjoyment grows from that gulf. Yeah, I know, you’ve blocked everybody you disagree with from your Facebubble, and the wrong cat meme triggers your cis-clawed stress syndrome. You poor, chicken-shit things; in fearing you might become what you detest, have you forgotten what a pleasure it is to escape the cage of your own brainham once in a while? Stretch your legs, fella!

(Cough.) Anyhow, Day’s work, both on his own writing and in co-curating Castalia House, is a beacon in the dull word blizzard. (I’ve written about Riding the Red Horse, a unique collection of military essays and military science fiction that Day and Kratman put out in December, but I can’t keep up. They’re killin’ it.)

And van Creveld’s Equality is one of Castalia’s most absorbing releases, if you’re interested in history anyway—past history, not the historical destiny of your marching-drum ideology—the sort of history that’s not only full of holes where the victors and the monks wrote over chunks of the evidence, but the sort of history that, as far as we can tell, indeed has been repeating itself rather drearily.

As van Creveld says in his preface, the histories of our other two unattainable ideals, liberty and justice, have been written before—or, rather, attempted; there’s too much to read on all three of these subjects for one guy to do it at a go. But van Creveld does his best to describe all our tragic, failed attempts at equality.

A descriptive model

Keeping in mind, of course, that Rao is not talking about literal sociopathy here, it’s merely the term he’s chosen for his Gervais Principle model. Here he provides a useful distinction between the two types of Sociopaths:

[E]ffective Sociopaths stick with steadfast discipline to the letter of
the law, internal and external, because the stupidest way to trip
yourself up is in the realm of rules where the Clueless and Losers get
to be judges and jury members. What they violate is its spirit, by
taking advantage of its ambiguities. Whether this makes them evil or
good depends on the situation. That’s a story for another day. Good
Sociopaths operate by what they personally choose as a higher
morality, in reaction to what they see as the dangers, insanities and
stupidities of mob morality. Evil Sociopaths are merely looking for a
quick, safe buck. Losers and the Clueless, of course, avoid individual moral decisions altogether.

This is why I find the Clueless of the SF world to be so mind-bogglingly stupid. While they correctly recognize me as a Sociopath who is dangerous to the system, they don’t understand that I am the proverbial Good Sociopath. And because they are so Clueless, they completely fail to recognize the Evil Sociopaths already well-ensconced within their midst.

I mean, how hard can it possibly be for anyone conversant with this model to identify a specific Evil Sociopath who has repeatedly taken advantage of ambiguities in the science fiction world’s rules in order to make a quick, safe buck? You’d think Rao was describing that individual.