A tribute to John Piper

The Responsible Puppet writes a tribute to the old Calvinist:

On Easter Sunday John Piper preached his last sermon as pastor at my church, on April 21 we had a big Thanksgiving service for his retirement, and then last week the Gospel Coalition published an article that I wrote which expressed some of the reasons why I was glad he’d been my family’s pastor.  But closer to home for you, I thought I’d send my handy reference of areas where you and Pastor John disagree and agree: 

Six Things Vox and Pastor Piper Disagree On

  1. Calvinism: Is God a sparrow-slayer.
  2. Trinity: Is the historic definition Biblical.
  3. Race: Is Diversity good?
  4. Gentlemanliness: How should a woman be treated?
  5. Innerancy: Is the Bible we hold in our hand completely true?
  6. Harshness: What is good cause to be intentionally offensive 

Six Things Vox and Pastor Piper Agree About

  1. Abortion: Should it be legal? Is it always reprehensible?
  2. Male leadership in the church: Should women be pastors?
  3. Homosexuality: It is a sin?
  4. Rob Bell: Has he stepped away from the Gospel?
  5. Poetry: Is writing poems a worthwhile use of my time?
  6. Gospel: What is it?

I’ll just say that I’m in agreement with Pastor John on all twelve of these issues, which is a big reason why I’ve been at his church. But if you’re wondering if there’s anything that you and Pastor Piper are in agreement about, that I disagree with, it would be this:

  1. Cats: Are they worthwhile creatures, esp. as pets?

He refers, I believe, to my adherence to the one true apocrypha concerning the Creation of the Cat. Just to be clear, I have no doubt whatsoever that John Piper is a better man, and very little doubt that he is a better Christian, than I am.  This does not mean, however, that I am blind to what I see as his intellectual flaws or that I agree with what I view as his gibberingly mad positions on the murderous nature of God and the societal desirability of vibrancy.

I suppose we all have a tendency to attempt to remake God in our own image.  The difference between Piper’s harsh, judgmental vision of a red-handed god and my own more abstract, indifferent vision of a Creator who creates primarily for His own amusement much more likely reflects our personalities than an accurate portrait of God.  I suspect Piper himself would agree; I don’t think he is under any illusion concerning his ability to see through the glass that separates the material from the Divine more clearly than the Apostle Paul.

Since I don’t speak for God, I can’t say if John Piper was a faithful servant or even if he ran a good race. But what I can say, as an open and unrestrained critic of the man’s ideas, is that he did his best to be a faithful servant and to run the best race of which he was capable.  And if men are to be judged by their fruits, it would appear, at least to this very casual observer, that he has as little cause to fear as any man might hope to possess when facing judgment.


Mailvox: mea maxima culpa

Mudz isn’t terribly happy about one of my past blunders:

Does this mean what I think it means? I hope it doesn’t, because that means you have got a lot to answer for, and the questions ain’t pretty. I was scrolling through looking up some Stalin posts, and then I came across THIS:

“For example, was it the right thing to write The War in Heaven instead of Blizzard’s first Starcraft novel? Almost surely not.”

WANKER. That’s right, I said it.

Do you know how much I love Starcraft, and how much fail I credit Blizzard with, not just with the SC2 game, but with every single novel I’ve tried to read so far, despite the blood it tears from every pulsing artery to my brain?

For failing to inhibit such a great offense against the khala, I now charge you with the mission to at least tell those Blizzard goons not to fuck the Protoss up in LotV. No offense to them, but may they die in a thousand fires for what they did to Starcraft, Jim, Fenix, and all the others that got between them and their mad quest for money. And bullshit.

Just sayin’ man, you could have stopped a tragedy.

Yep. This is one of the many reasons why I laugh when people attempt to rub what they perceive as my failures in my face.  In every circumstance, the “failures” to which they point are so minor, so trivial, so miniscule in comparison with my more serious failures that it is simply amusing.

The Starcraft debacle was without question the worst judgment call of my writing career.  But the decision seemed sensible at the time.  What happened was that Pocket Books, who had successfully published Rebel Moon as a media tie-in novel and recently signed me to the two-book contract that resulted in The War in Heaven and The World in Shadow, called me up to see if I was interested in writing the first Starcraft novel.

I was, since I knew Allen Adham and Patrick Wyatt, both very good guys, and I was a fan of the Warcraft series.  I wasn’t quite as impressed with Starcraft, but there was enough there that I felt I could do something interesting with it.  For me, the Zerg presented the interesting challenge; what would affect a human woman like Kerrigan enough to cause her transformation into the Queen of Blades?  What would that transformation be like?  What was it like to be a member of the Zerg?

My angle, I decided, would be portraying the Zerg as existing in a sort of religious ecstasy, a joyous, quasi-sexual bonding with the Overmind that would serve as a counterpoint to the colder, more analytic element brought by the Protoss.  One thing that science fiction has never done well, in books, movies, or games, is to portray the experience of an element of a hive mind.  Mindless insects and a queen bee is the usual model, used by everyone from Orson Scott Card on down. I thought this would be a good opportunity to do something more intelligent and interesting.

My friend Scott at Pocket set up a call between me and the guy at Blizzard responsible for the books, and it was a disaster.  Not that we didn’t get along or anything, but the gulf between my ideas and his were, to put it mildly, vast.  After I explained what I was thinking, he yeah-yeah-yeahed the concept, and then added: “But you know what would be really cool?  If, at the end, Kerrigan reveals that she is the Queen of Blades and then, you know, vanishes with this really evil laugh!”

Right.  Now, these days, I know better.  These days, I would have said, “oh, that’s a great idea”, signed the contract, and proceeded to write what I was planning to write anyhow.  But back then, however, I was naive enough to take the opinion of mid-level functionaries without a creative bone in their bodies seriously.  I didn’t see any way to bridge the gap between what I wanted to do and the unrestrained cliched crap the Blizzard guy clearly wanted.

Also, at the time, I was aware that Pocket was in the running to nab the rights to the Star Wars books.  They already had Star Trek, and I was one of the writers slated to do one… but I couldn’t do my own books, the Starcraft book, and a Star Wars book at the same time.  And remember, back in the late 90’s, media tie-in novels were not the dominant force they are today.  They were really looked down upon; they were seen as a way to reach the point I had already reached.  So, the idea of putting my own books on hold in order to write both Starcraft and Star Wars never occurred to me, nor to Pocket, for that matter.

So, I turned down the Starcraft books with the expectation that I’d be doing a Star Wars novel or two instead.  Unfortunately, Pocket didn’t obtain the rights, so I didn’t get the chance to play in the Lucas universe.  I ended up writing the three Eternal Warriors novels for Pocket as well as providing an outline for Stalking the Beast, the first of two thrillers that one of their other novelists was to write.  But that is a story for another day.

Anyhow, I haven’t read the Starcraft novels.  But if they aren’t worthy of the game, it’s true, I do bear at least a modicum of responsibility for that.


Speaking of war

We can hardly have expected Japan’s post-WWII peacenik attitude to long survive the resurgence of Chinese military power.  The question is whether grass eater culture and demographic decline could potentially compete with the bushido tradition and the fear of an expansionary China.  From Zerohedge:

Reuters reports:  The draft [of the revised Constitution] deletes a guarantee of basic human rights and prescribes duties, such as submission to an undefined “public interest and public order.” The military would be empowered to maintain that “public order.”

This article will blow your mind.  Some key excerpts:

Shinzo Abe makes no secret of wanting to revise Japan’s constitution, which was drafted by the United States after World War Two, to formalize the country’s right to have a military – but critics say his plans go deeper and could return Japan to its socially conservative, authoritarian past.  Abe, 58, returned to office in December for a second term as prime minister and is enjoying sky-high support on the back of his “Abenomics” recipe for reviving the economy through hyper-easy monetary policy, big spending and structural reform. 

However, sweeping changes proposed by Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in a draft constitution would strike at the heart of the charter with an assault on basic civil rights that could muzzle the media, undermine gender equality and generally open the door to an authoritarian state, activists and scholars say.

The Japanese are distrustful of military authoritarianism, given what happened in the first half of the 20th century, but they are even more distrustful of China.  If they are faced with a choice between the two, they will choose authoritarianism every single time.  And if the LDP is openly attacking civil rights and muzzling the media, you can be certain there will soon be some sort of birthrate-boosting program in the works.
    


Israel bombs Syria

This news out of the Middle East doesn’t appear to bode terribly well for the supposedly nascent economic recovery, now in its fourth year:

The airstrike that Israeli warplanes carried out in Syria was directed at a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran that Israel believed was intended for Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese organization, American officials said Saturday.

It was the second time in four months that Israel had carried out an
attack in foreign territory intended to disrupt the pipeline of weapons
from Iran to Hezbollah, and the raid was a vivid example of how regional
adversaries are looking after their own interests as Syria becomes more
chaotic.

Apparently the Israelis share some of my skepticism about the so-called “Arab Spring”.  The problem with democracies is that although they do tend to wage less war, the wars they wage tend to be of the “total” variety.  Given that there are now democracies on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict, any war would be more likely to continue to unconditional surrender than in the bad old days of the Middle East strongmen.


The irony is thick indeed

Karl Denninger points to Attorney General Eric Holder’s deeply ironic posturing:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has told Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback that a new state law attempting to block federal regulation of some guns is unconstitutional and that the federal government is willing to go to court over the issue.

But Brownback replied in a letter Thursday that Kansans hold dear their right to bear arms and are protecting the state’s sovereignty. Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a former law professor who helped draft the law, accused the nation’s top law enforcement official of “blustering” over the issue.

“The people of Kansas have clearly expressed their sovereign will,” Brownback said at the conclusion of his letter. “It is my hope that upon further review, you will see their right to do so.”

To summarize:  The Executive Branch official responsible for upholding U.S. law is appealing to the U.S. Constitution in order to overturn a Kansas law meant to protect the people of Kansas from the federal government’s violation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

One can only conclude that the Red Americans aren’t merely lawless, they’re humorless and delusional


Science vs Science(TED)

Apparently science is not science unless it is approved by TED’s board:

After due diligence, including a survey of published scientific research and recommendations from our Science Board and our community, we have decided that Graham Hancock’s and Rupert Sheldrake’s talks from TEDxWhitechapel should be removed from distribution on the TEDx YouTube channel.

We’re not censoring the talks. Instead we’re placing them here, where they can be framed to highlight both their provocative ideas and the factual problems with their arguments. See both talks after the jump.

All talks on the TEDxTalks channel represent the opinion of the speaker, not of TED or TEDx, but we feel a responsibility not to provide a platform for talks which appear to have crossed the line into pseudoscience.

It is very difficult to try to consider the idea that most of the TED Talks are not pseudoscience with a straight face.  The entire purpose of the TED Talks is to make that which is not science look and feel like science for the benefit of the self-consciously mid-witted.  There is a reason the Ted Talks are eight-minute videos; it is a product targeted at people with short attention spans who are more inclined to watch television than read.

In the image on the left, Manolo the Shoe Blogger illustrates for whom these short, lightweight Talks are intended. TED Talks are really nothing more than video Cliff’s Notes. That is why the sort of people who specialize in dumbing things down for the wealthy, half-educated have to be very careful about what ideas they permit to be presented to their target audience.  They know perfectly well that their audience are the exact opposite of critical thinkers and therefore have a tendency to swallow everything presented to them as the pure truth of the sciencistic gospel.

The banned talk is below.  The fascinating thing is one of the reasons for the ban which is that Sheldrake “suggests that scientists reject the notion that animals have consciousness, despite the fact that it’s generally accepted that animals have some form of consciousness.” So, are we to understand that the scientific materialists now not only accept that consciousness exists, but regard it as the orthodox and enforceable scientific consensus?


The British vote for independence

UKIP is  slashing away at Tory support in the local elections, largely due to David Cameron’s treacherous refusal to hold the referendum he promised on the European Union:

Ukip has seen 117 councillors elected, of which 110 are gains,
with 4 councils to declare. It has 634 second place candidates and only 32
candidates polling under 10 per cent, according to a Ukip spokesman. 

Now that UKIP has won more than a quarter of the vote, the two major parties, and more importantly, the BBC, can no longer get away with pretending all the British people who are not interested in serfdom to the Lords of Brussels are “fruitcakes, loonies and closet
racists”.

One hopes that having been betrayed by Cameron once, the British people will not be foolish enough to fall for the blandishments of the stealth Europhile as he vows to “work really hard” to win back their vote by promising them the same referendum he already promised and denied them.


There is no point in supporting the Conservative Party in the UK, because there is nothing left to conserve. All the various political issues are secondary to the primary one of national independence, which makes UKIP the only reliable party and the only one worth supporting.


SFWA opts for the status quo

Five hundred sixteen (516) ballots were received by the deadline of April 26, 2013. This is up one hundred twenty-one ballots from last year.  Of these, twenty-three (23) ballots were discarded for lack of cover sheets as required by the instructions sent out with the ballots. This number is down eighty-seven invalid ballots from last year.The resulting four hundred ninety-three (493) ballots were tabulated as follows:

PRESIDENT:
    444: Steven Gould
    46: Theodore Beale
    1: Robert E. Waters
    1: John Scalzi

Congratulations to Steven Gould, who will be the next president of the SFWA. I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit surprised. That’s about thirty-one more votes than I anticipated receiving.  Ironically, it was a closer vote than those for VP (Rachel Swirsky) and Treasurer (Bud Sparhawk).  Anyhow, I certainly wish Steven Gould good fortune in piloting the organization, although given his support for the status quo and his stated opinion that SF/F is not in any trouble as an industry, my concern is that his victory will tend to increase the probability that the organization will founder upon the very shoals my platform was designed to avoid.

But that is Mr. Gould’s concern now, not mine.  I appreciate the support from the 46 members who voted for me; the campaign was certainly an eye-opening experience. And if nothing else, the membership is now aware of some of the changes to the industry that are around the corner, which was my primary purpose in running for the office.


Mailvox: #1 “bestseller”

THE WARDOG’S COIN
  
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#145 Free in Kindle Store 

#10 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Fantasy
 #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Fantasy > Epic 
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > War 

While a book can’t actually be called a best seller when it is being given away for free, it is still satisfying to see The Wardog’s Coin reach number one in Epic Fantasy in the free Kindle store. Thank you if you were a part of making that happen, whether by downloading the book or reviewing it. One of my objectives for next year is to see either A THRONE OF BONES or Book Two in the Arts of Dark and Light series reach #1 in Epic in the Kindle Store proper.  Also, if you haven’t scored a copy of Wardog yet, note that it is still free today.

And while The Last Witchking doesn’t appear to be threatening the bestseller lists – it only reached #37 in Epic on its first day out – I’m very pleased that most of those who have read it appear to find the three stories it contains to be worth reading. Given the semi-canonical and allegorical nature of “Hoblets”, the unrestrained darkness of the title novelette, and the complete lack of any action in “Opera”, I was half-expecting Selenoth fans to be disappointed in it. I should have known that those who already appreciate a relatively broad spectrum world would tend to enjoy seeing the scope of the world expanded.

Gecko asked: “what’s the recommended reading order for the first Selenoth run-through?”  That’s a good question, and one which I’ve never actually considered in light of how most of the series has only been published in the last five months.  But I suppose there is a considerable amount of text out there in comparison with the average series where only the first book has been published already. This is the order I suspect may be optimal for the average reader, but keep in mind that there is absolutely no authorial intent here.  And, as you will note, I am very skeptical of the value of authorial intent when it comes to these matters.

A Magic Broken
The Wardog’s Coin 
Qalabi Dawn
A THRONE OF BONES
Summa Elvetica
Master of Cats
Birth of an Order
The Last Witchking
Opera Vita Aeterna
The Hoblets of Wiccam Fensboro

Now, I think an advanced reader who prefers epic fantasy would be best advised to begin with A THRONE OF BONES from the start, but since it is a giant novel and one that begins slowly at that, it’s probably better for most readers to begin with a few of the smaller works.  I wrote the smaller works in the knowledge that many of them would be read prior to the central series; that’s why all of them are set in times prior to the events of Book I.

In answer to Gecko’s other question, “Nephew or Wardrobe?”, I can only say “Wardrobe” and declare that I am fully prepared to fight to the death anyone who would be so abysmally stupid to assert otherwise.  I have staunchly resisted buying a new set of Narnia novels, even though our old paperbacks are mostly in pieces now, because I don’t want to own a set that is ordered incorrectly.

NB: the free copies of Witchking went out to those who preordered the Summa Elvetica hardcover at 9:30 PM Mountain time.  If you didn’t receive it, first check your spam traps and if you still can’t find it, let me know.


Speaking out vs shooting

Sarah Hoyt is rightly concerned about what she sees as the growing prospects for Round II:

I’m hearing more and more “It’s going to come to shooting.”  I have a sinking feeling in my water that it might very well come to that.  I’d prefer not, though.  Look, I have sons.  Also, we do not live in a nice world.  If our world were really the black-and-white world the liberals believe in, where the USA is the big bad wolf and everyone else is a sweet little lamb who wouldn’t hurt anyone but for fear of the wolf, a civil war might not be a bad idea.

Of course if the world really were like that, we’d be dealing with a species other than human and perhaps communism would work.  Who knows?  May be worth an SF story.

But the world is not like that, and the US even if it is rapidly flushing generational wealth down the toilet is still much wealthier than most of the world, and is way wealthier than most of the Americas.  (This btw is taken by the communists as proof of malfeasance.  It’s a religious dogma.)

While we are involved in a civil war – and let’s assume it’s only half as bloody and half as long as our last one – do you think the other nations of the world will sit still?  Forget a Chinese invasion (though G-d knows you shouldn’t) or Russia getting involved on one side or another with a  view to ruling portions of our country when all is done (and if you dismiss that, you should study the roles of France and England on the past civil war) and just think about the people who hate us and who think (and our media has HELPED this perception) all their woes are our fault, and who  think they’re accumulating virgins in heaven – and prestige on Earth – by hitting us with acts of terrorism writ large.

How many cities do you think we’d lose to random acts of revenge?

What I mean is that it might very well come to that.  But do you want it?  Talk about setting us back generations.  Yes, I know you’re furious and I’ve heard the “we have all the guns” boast.  It’s not true, okay?  Yeah, we have most of them.  And sure, we probably could win in days.  Except that you forget how many third world armies would gladly fight on the other side, once it got started.  And would be promised everything they want if they do.

Oh, sure, they’d probably still lose – but I’m predicting we’d all be wading in blood to our ankles before it’s said and done, and parts of the country would be radioactive for a century.

Again, it might still come to that.  And I think the other side wants that – probably more than even the nuts on the “right” – because part of their religion (don’t fool yourself it’s not one) is the belief that history has favorites and that they’re it.  They think in the end they win.  (They might perhaps want to consult the Norse legends, to figure out which said was believed to win in the end.  Never mind.)

But before the shooting starts – in this moment in the heart of the storm – perhaps those of us to the right of Lenin should try something we haven’t tried before.  Perhaps we should try speaking out.

Look, I’m as cowardly as the rest of you.  I spent more than twenty years, between breaking in and finally losing my mind, listening to digs about “the rich” from people who could buy me and sell me outright; I spend years at parties and meetings listening to Marxist pap and not pointing out how stupid it was; listening to public figures on the right being denigrated as “stupid” when it was obvious they weren’t, etc.  And I shut up.  Because I wanted to make a living in my chosen profession.

I’m still not half as brave as I’d like to be, though I try to speak out if I’m present.  And yes, I know I’ll pay a monetary price.  But I don’t go out of my way to look for fights, because I’ll pay a monetary price.  And also because, frankly, I know many good people on their side.  I don’t want to upset them.

But consider….

Every time our silence gives consent, what we’re giving consent to is the inevitability of eventual shooting.

You know those massacres that have happened in every communist paradise?  Here the would-be victims are armed.  To quote the title of some Baen anthologies There WILL be War.

Unless we stop it now.  Unless we’re as brave with our words as we eventually will have to be with our guns, if we stay silent.

I understand her concerns. The problem is that words aren’t going to stop anything now. For every Sarah Hoyt who immigrated and successfully managed the transition to American traditions and values, there are ten or more who did not and five native Americans who have abandoned the ideals and traditions of their forefathers in favor of one flavor or another of secular progressivism.

There is a powerful correlation between economic contraction and war, although the causality is complicated. Even so, it is readily apparent that the relative peace of the last sixty years, and the civil peace inside America for the last 148, is largely a byproduct of the explosion of the economic growth that took place, first in the USA, then later in the world, followed by the post-WWII Pax Americana that ensued from the American industrial infrastructure being the only advanced one left standing.  But success invariably plants the seeds of its own destruction. Since the long moratorium on immigration ended in 1965, the post-1962 mass apostasy that followed Vatican II,  and the great Hispanic invasion began in the 1980s, the inevitable national fracturing is rapidly approaching and will likely become more evidence with the next phase of the current economic crisis.

There no longer is one American nation, there are at least four. There are the Reds of progressive, secular America, there are the Whites of traditional religious America, there are the Browns of third world America, and there are the Blacks of feral America.  These colors should be understood to be symbolic in the sense of the Russian Reds and Whites, not literal, as there are blacks whose allegiance is to White America and Hispanic immigrants who are far more Red than Brown.

Hoyt is primarily concerned about an eventual war between Red America and the giant government is both its inspiration and its weapon, and liberty-loving White America. But Brown America is the X factor; its political support for the Reds has been leased for the short term by state and federal largesse, but the Browns have little interest in either the progressive secular ideals of the Reds or the political and cultural traditions of the Whites.  And Brown America is perfectly capable of starting the fireworks by virtue of its own innate irredentism, which will only become stronger as Red America’s ability to transfer resources to it wanes.

Anyone who has followed the history of warfare knows that wars seldom begin directly between the two primary powers. There is usually the Archduke’s assassination, the invasion of Manchuria, or something similar on the margins before the war begins in earnest. This is why Sarah’s plea for speaking out in preference to shooting, however sensible, decent, and heartfelt, is, unfortunately,  largely irrelevant. I’m not saying it is not worth doing, quite to the contrary, I would similarly encourage others to speak out. I merely caution against putting any faith in its success.

There will be war, whether anyone truly desires it or not. There has always been war and there always will be war, the arrogant pretenses of the totalitarians and their self-serving promises of peace on Earth notwithstanding. As Vegetius wrote: Si vis pacem, para bellum.  The Union cannot be saved because it no longer exists in the hearts of men.

Twenty-nine percent of registered voters think that an armed revolution
might be necessary in the next few years in order to protect liberties,
according to a Public Mind poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University.”