Category: Uncategorized

The Narrative shifts

Let us all share a moment of silence for the previous “the Alt-Right is a small group of irrelevant teenagers in their parent’s basements” Narrative. Hillary Clinton is running as the American Angela Merkel.

Hillary Clinton will deliver a speech Thursday linking Donald Trump to the “extremism” of the “alt-right” movement. Clinton’s campaign announced Tuesday morning that her Reno, Nev., speech would focus on Trump and his aides’ “embrace of the disturbing ‘alt-right’ political philosophy.”

“This ‘alt-right’ brand is embracing extremism and presenting a divisive and dystopian view of America which should concern all Americans, regardless of party,” her campaign said.

The alternative right, or so-called alt-right, movement has generally been comprised as those opposed to multiculturalism and immigration, according to The Washington Post, and has gained mainstream attention during this year’s presidential campaign as Trump seeks to maximize support among white voters.

Notice how, in nine months, the Alt-Right has scared the Democrats more than the entire conservative movement has since Ronald Reagan left office. This is for several reasons:

  1. The Alt-Right is already a potent force embedded in rising political parties in Europe.
  2. Multiculturalism and immigration are winning issues for the first party to embrace white American identity politics. Throw in gun rights, tax cuts, debt write-offs, and a credible anti-war stance, and you’ve suddenly got a party that is playing for keeps on the national stage. 
  3. The Alt-Right does not consist of professional politicians more interested in their Washington careers than their nations.
  4. The Alt-Right is not a Potemkin opposition, it is a genuine one.

Souldancer is free

The Campbell- and Dragon Award-nominated author Brian Niemeier has made the second book in his Soul Cycle series, Souldancer, free this week. That means you can pick up both books in the series, which is described as “Space Pirates in Hell”, for less than $4, as the first book, Nethereal, is only $3.99.

I should probably also mention that Brian is a Castalia-author-to-be, as we will be introducing a new science fiction series with him in 2017. And by new, I mean “mind-blowing”.

How PACs murdered the Tea Party

Keep the demise of the Tea Party in mind as the Alt-Right grows in popularity. Many, if not most, of these PACs are little more than scams with a political brand.

The Tea Party movement is pretty much dead now, but it didn’t die a natural death. It was murdered—and it was an inside job. In a half decade, the spontaneous uprising that shook official Washington degenerated into a form of pyramid scheme that transferred tens of millions of dollars from rural, poorer Southerners and Midwesterners to bicoastal political operatives.

What began as an organic, policy-driven grass-roots movement was drained of its vitality and resources by national political action committees that dunned the movement’s true believers endlessly for money to support its candidates and causes. The PACs used that money first to enrich themselves and their vendors and then deployed most of the rest to search for more “prospects.” In Tea Party world, that meant mostly older, technologically unsavvy people willing to divulge personal information through “petitions”—which only made them prey to further attempts to lighten their wallets for what they believed was a good cause. While the solicitations continue, the audience has greatly diminished because of a lack of policy results and changing political winds.

I was an employee at one of the firms that ran these operations. But nothing that follows is proprietary or gleaned directly from my employment. The evidence of the scheming is all there in the public record, available for anyone willing to look…. According to Federal Election Commission reports between 80 to 90 percent, and sometimes all the money these PACs get is swallowed in fees and poured into more prospecting. For example, conservative activist Larry Ward created Constitutional Rights PAC. He also runs Political Media, a communications firm. The New York Times reviewed Constitutional Rights’ filings and found: “Mr. Ward’s PAC spends every dollar it gets on consultants, mailings and fund-raising—making no donations to candidates.” Ward justified the arrangement by saying Political Media discounts solicitations on behalf of Constitutional Rights.

Let that sink in. Ward takes his PAC’s money and redistributes it to his company and other vendors for more messaging and solicitations, but suggests critics should rest easy since the PAC gets a discount on Political Media’s normal rate. Constitutional Rights PAC may be extreme but it’s hardly an outlier.

POLITICO last year reviewed the activity of 33 conservative PACs for the 2014 cycle. Combined, they raked in $43 million dollars, according to the POLITICO report. Of that, $39.5 million went to overhead including $6 million to entities owned by PAC operators; candidates got $3 million. Another report analyzed 17 conservative PACs from the 2014 midterm. It came up with different numbers than POLITICO, finding that the bottom 10 PACs in terms of the ratio of spending to actual candidate support received $54,318,498 and spent only $3,621,896 supporting candidates.

Don’t even think about supporting any big-money Alt-Right PACs that come into being in the next 2-5 years. If the real Alt-Right figures want your support, we’ll not only request it directly, but we’ll do so for specific purposes and projects whose progress you can track for yourself. We don’t play the “overhead” game.

Why Worldcon changed the rules

Year: votes (nominations)
2012: 1922 (1101)
2013: 1848 (1343)
2014: 3587 (1923)
2015: 5950 (2112)
2016: 3130 (4032)

The number of nominations rose in 2014 and 2015 due to the appearance of Sad Puppies, then Rabid Puppies. The big influx of Supporting Members began in 2014, when the SJWs, alarmed, gathered the herd to No Award Larry Correia and the rest of the Puppy finalists. They made an even bigger effort in 2015 in response to the Rabid Puppies.

However, their morale suffered a terrible blow when, despite there being nearly four times as many nominations cast in 2016 than in 2012, the Rabid Puppies selected more finalists than the Sad Puppies ever did. While most RP’s didn’t bother getting MidAmericaCon memberships in order to vote, what’s interesting is that over 2,000 SJWs didn’t either.

Anyhow, the first stage is now over. The new award has been established and the Hugo rules have been modified and complicated, as anticipated. Now we’re onto the second stage, which will last longer and promises to be more interesting than the first. RPs, be sure to keep your voting/nomination emails from Sasquan and MidAmericaCon, as you may need them next year if you are neither Brainstorm nor VFM.

We got here one year faster than I thought, as apparently a) we scared them worse than I’d expected and b) it turns out they care a lot more about me than they do about quality science fiction or science fiction history.

I wasn’t surprised that Toni Weisskopf didn’t win last year, but I was surprised that they voted her below No Award. This year, it doesn’t even surprise me a little bit that they would No Award an objectively high-quality work such as Between Light and Shadow or accomplished, highly respected individuals in the field such as Larry Elmore and Jerry Pournelle, who reportedly had the longest book-signing line at Worldcon.

I wonder how many SJWs who were begging for Dr. Pournelle’s signature had previously claimed that he did not merit a Best Editor award with their vote? Do tell us more about how the Hugo Awards concern quality and standing in the field, not SJW-driven politics.

951 No Award
766 Jerry Pournelle

893 No Award
497 Larry Elmore

That says it all about how seriously the awards deserve to be taken by science fiction readers these days. John Scalzi summed up the SF-SJW position rather well in a long diatribe yesterday. It’s rather remarkable how he devotes nearly 1,500 1,887 words to informing the world that absolutely none of it is about me, and somehow manages to do so while giving absolutely zero fucks.

  • What [the man whose blog traffic is now 6x that of the erstwhile “most popular blog in science fiction”] is really doing at this point is trying to mitigate his own inability to have the status and influence he assumed would be his, by pathetically attempting to shoehorn himself into the history of others who have done more, and better, than he has.
  • An active association with [the man who exposed Scalzi as a fraud] is, bluntly, death for your Hugo award chances. I mean, it takes a lot for someone as esteemed in the field as Jerry Pournelle to finish below “No Award” in Hugo voting, and yet, there he is, sixth in a field of five in the category of Best Editor, Short Form.

Translation: Vox Day is totally irrelevant and pathetic and doesn’t matter at all, so don’t you dare to associate with him in any way, shape, or form, or it will kill your career, no one will ever give you a Hugo Award, and everyone will hate you. Please, please, don’t do it!

What a masterpiece of its kind. As it is written, SJWs always lie. Just wait until Mr. ZFG learns what names are risking SJW disapproval to actively associate with Castalia House in 2017. But if an author doesn’t want to associate with the publishing house that is the fastest-growing in the field and pays such high royalties that the much larger publisher who inquired about acquiring it begged me to consider reducing them, that’s certainly their right. We don’t publish SJWs anyhow.

I particularly enjoyed McRapey’s attempt to cling to the original Narrative he’d tried to spin about the nomination of “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” being a devastating mistake on my part.

Rather than being appalled that Tingle had been nominated, the Worldcon community largely embraced him (or whoever Tingle is; no one is really sure). Here was someone who was nominated by a bigot to antagonize other people, who instead allied himself with those folks and was appreciated by them in return.

1508 No Award
659 “Space Raptor Butt Invasion”

Apparently those folks appreciate Mr. Tingle just about as much as they appreciate me. Did I not tell you that would happen despite the SJW’s feigned joy over how terribly funny and brilliant they found Mr. Tingle’s work?

Because, as we know, SJW’s always lie.

UPDATE: Dr. Pournelle is quite clearly crushed, and duly penitent, in consequence of his well-merited rebuke at the hands of Worldcon’s SJWs.

UPDATE: The Reverend 3.0 considers his failed prediction concerning “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” winning Best Short Story:

I was incorrect. And while I’m ready to tuck in and eat my words, it’s interesting to look at where my logic broke down.

My logic was the following:
-Puppies will vote for it because they think it is hilarious, embarrasses the Hugos, and Chuck is one of them.
-Puppy Kickers will vote for it because they think it is hilarious, embarrasses the Puppies, and Chuck is one of them.
-If the two largest blocks vote for it, it can’t lose.

But lo and behold, one of these two voting blocks failed to vote for SRBI and instead propelled Cat Pictures to victory and Noah Ward to second place. One of these two blocks was either lying to itself or lying through its teeth.

My prediction failed, and it failed because one of these two groups said one thing and then did another. So which group is the group of dirty liars? The Puppies? The Kickers? I’m sure the ballot numbers will tell.

Either way, learn from my mistake. Take that group’s tendency to lie into account in the future.

Now, I wonder who might have been lying and putting forth a false Narrative? 

10 best Murakami books

Publishers Weekly provides a list:

1. A Wild Sheep Chase – The original title of this novel is “An adventure concerning sheep,” and it lives up to that title. In it, the Murakami hero takes on a political-business-industry syndicate with apparently limitless money and power, and he does it on his own terms. Some of the most interesting parts of the novel take place in the rural wilds of Hokkaido, which has been interpreted alternately as the hero’s inner mind, or as a mythological land of the dead. At its heart, like many Murakami novels, this is a tale of conflict between the will of the individual and the demands of an impersonal State. Oh, and there is a really cool, all-empowering sheep, too.

2. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – This is another novel that features an “other world,” this time taking the form of a labyrinthine hotel, in which the hero’s wife, Kumiko, is held prisoner by her evil brother, Wataya Noboru. The hero, a mild-manner, unemployed house-husband named Okada Tōru, must find his way into this metaphysical labyrinth, confront Noboru, and rescue Kumiko. Meanwhile, he must also deal with those awkward moments when the coiled springs of time run down, and different historical epochs slam into one another. The work is a study of sex, violence, and collective memories lost and regained.

3. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World – If Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and H.G. Wells has gotten together to write a novel, it might have looked like this. Its dual narratives portray, alternately, the mean streets of a slightly futuristic Tokyo embroiled in an information war with real casualties, and a bucolic fantasy world in the form of a Town, surrounded by a massive, perfect wall, populated by people without shadows, a fearsome Gatekeeper, and unicorns. The hero, finally, must choose between the two worlds for his permanent home.

4. 1Q84 – This is the first novel in which Murakami takes up the risky topic of fringe religious groups—a sore spot in Japan since the Aum Shinrikyō terrorist attack of 1995. As the work’s fictitious cult, Sakigake, attempts to re-establish its connection with earth spirits known as the Little People, the novel pursues a central plot of bringing together its two soul-mate heroes: a fitness instructor who moonlights as an assassin of abusive men, and a math genius who moonlights as a copywriter. As with other Murakami novels, this one looks hard at the tension between political and religious ideology and the inner soul of the individual.

5. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage – Tsukuru Tazaki spends much of this story trying to understand why his circle of friends in high school expelled him from their group shortly after he left Nagoya to attend college in Tokyo. His quest for understanding takes him al the way to Finland, where he confronts some hard truths about his own inner self. It is a novel of betrayal and forgiveness, but above all, it is about growing up.

While they get the #1 book right, that’s not how I see it. This is my top 10 Murakami list, keeping in mind that they specified “books”, not “novels”, which thereby permits the inclusion of both non-fiction and collections of short stories.

  1. A Wild Sheep Chase
  2. Kafka on the Shore
  3. Underground
  4. 1Q84
  5. The Elephant Vanishes and Other Stories
  6. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
  7. Hear the Wind Sing
  8. Dance Dance Dance
  9. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
  10. Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami is, without question, one of the greatest living writers, if not the greatest one now that Umberto Eco is dead. While he lacks any sense of spirituality, particularly in the Christian sense, and his grasp of human socio-sexuality is marginal, he more than makes up for these flaws by his observational skills, his intellectual curiosity, and his penetrating insights into human behavior.

Kafka on the Shore is this week’s book of the week.

The third or fourth book on my list of books to write is a literary novel written in a style that is chiefly influenced by a) Murakami and b) Banks. I’ve already started it, and I’m hoping to be able to get back to it in the second half of next year.

The Worldcon audio

Dave Truesdale has posted the audio of his panel at Worldcon that led to his expulsion.

I had originally planned to post this unedited audio recording of the panel in conjunction with an article I wanted to have posted at Tangent Online the same day as the panel, and the text transcription of the audio. I now feel it is in the best interests of all parties to post the audio now, with the article and text transcription to follow as soon as I can get to it.

I had made notes for the article I wanted to have posted here, so brought them to the panel in their rough state, crossouts, arrows moving pieces around, written in thoughts in pen, the usual rough draft of any document. I did not intend to use anywhere near all of them but knew from experience that having too much material is better than having too little. As it turned out, the only item I used directly from these notes was the quote from David Hartwell.

It’s easy to see understand why they kicked him out. They really had no choice after he began singing “Horst Wessel Lied”, then threatened to whip NK Jemisin until she agreed to pick his cotton. Outrageous!

The panicked reaction to Truesdale’s recording illustrates why you must always record SJWs. When you’ve got a recording, they can’t convincingly lie about what they said or what you said. Keep in mind, as you listen to this, that Truesdale is accused of having caused “excessive discomfort” with his words, which was the grounds for his expulsion.

And SJWs ALWAYS lie.

Consider the obvious alternative

I think it was extremely foolish for Andrew Stroehlein to criticize the use of human masks and pigs’ heads to dissuade immigrants from seeking to invade Hungary:

Hungarian politician Gyorgy Schopflin, of the nation’s ruling Fidesz party, made the incendiary comments in response to criticism of his country’s attitude towards refugees by a prominent human rights campaigner.

Human Rights Watch director Andrew Stroehlein slammed Hungary’s use of eerie masks fashioned from vegetables to ward off migrants at the border in a tweet on Friday.

Hungarian officials have placed the masks across the nation’s vast border fence in an attempt to impede the movement of refugees seeking passage to countries in Western Europe. While it appeared to work for a time, many refugees still attempt the dangerous journey.

Mr Stroehlein tweeted: “Refugees are fleeing war & torture, Hungary. Your root vegetable heads will not deter them.”

Mr Schopflin replied: “Might do so. Human images are haram. But agree, pig’s head would deter more effectively.”

After all, if the masks and pigs’ heads don’t work, the Vlad Dracula method is historically known for its efficacy in this regard.

An advantage, squandered

The West won the Cold War, and thanks to arrogance and a dedication to diversity, appears to already be losing the peace:

A report leaked to The Times newspaper says that the British army would be “vulnerable” in the battlefield against Russia and that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have a “significant capability edge” in state-on-state warfare.

The Times revealed the report, which was produced by the British army, on Wednesday. It warns that the UK and its NATO allies are “scrambling to catch up” with Russia, which enjoys significant advantages in pretty much every key aspect of warfare.

Specifically, the report explains how Russia’s arsenal of weapons — which includes rocket launchers and advanced air-defence systems — are much more powerful than what Britain’s military has at its disposal.

Even major developments Britain has planned will not match up to Russia’s firepower. A planned £3.5 million ($4.6 million) fleet of lightly armoured vehicles will be “disproportionately vulnerable” to Russian rocket fire in a warfare scenario.

It is not just physical warfare in which Moscow has a clear edge, the report says. Russian intelligence has mastered the art of hacking and disturbing radar signals, meaning the effectiveness of British and NATO weaponry and aircraft operated using GPS navigation is under serious threat.

Of course, given the way in which Russia is now the defender of white Christians and the USA and the United Kingdom are the champions of secular diversity, these developments are considerably less worrisome than they would have been back in the 1980s.

It turns out that Sting was wrong. The Russians not only love their children too, they observably love their children, their heritage, and their nation considerably more than the English or the Americans do.

America was never “a nation of immigrants”

Consider the words of one Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, on the subject of the intrinsic dangers of immigration:

Resuming the subject of our last paper we proceed to trace still farther, the consequences that must result from a too unqualified admission of foreigners, to an equal participation in our civil, and political rights.

The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.

The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived, or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism? There may as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule. The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.

The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass; it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils, by promoting in different classes different predilections in favor of particular foreign nations, and antipathies against others. It has been often likely to compromit the interests of our own country in favor of another.

As it happens, the ruination of the United States is the result of the “contributions” of two groups of immigrants, Irish and Jewish.

For those who talk about how immigrants assimilate within a generation or two, it would be wise to note the generational status of the three men chiefly responsible for that ruination, Philip Hart, Emanuel Celler, and Edward Kennedy.

Philip Hart – Third-generation Irish immigrant
Emanuel Celler – Third-generation Jewish immigrant
Edward Kennedy – Fourth-generation Irish immigrant

It is clear that even to the fourth generation, immigrants are prone to maintaining their primary loyalty to their ethnic group, if not their nation of origin, rather than to the nation to which they have nominally grafted themselves. They are guided by the principle of “what is good for the Irish” or “what is good for the Jews” rather than “what is good for the Americans” or even “what is good for the USA”.

No immigrant, or child, grandchild, or great-grandchild of immigrants, should have been permitted to vote or hold any office. Had the USA instituted such a policy, it might still be America instead of a multi-ethnic, white-minority idiocracy on the verge of crumbling into violent conflict and ethnic partition, as the ignorant public entertains itself by pretending to believe that Hamilton was either black or Hispanic.

There is no such thing as a HYPHEN-AMERICAN. What comes before the hyphen indicates identity. What comes after the hyphen indicates residence.

McRapey opines

On the state of science fiction in 2016:

1. I’ll write more about the Hugo tomorrow at home, but the general takeaway of this year’s awards are as follows:

2. The winners this year were generally fantastic and point to the health and quality of the field. Some of the best SF/F ever is here now.

3. Once again, we see that quality wins out over slating for obtuse political purposes.

4. In the case of slating, Hugo voters are not stupid and can discern human shields and cynical attempts to ride on others’ popularity.

5. The “puppies” in 2016 are the useful idiots of a minor racist who uses the Hugos as cheap advertising for his publishing house.

6. The Hugos and administrators should recognize point five and stop pretending this minor racist deserves being treated seriously.

As it is written, SJWs always lie.

More importantly, as per the Third Law of SJW, they always project. Think about point 5 in that regard. Now, whereever would a Tor Books author, particularly one notorious for having introduced public “award pimpage” to the various science fiction awards, have gotten the idea that someone, somewhere, might be using the Hugos as cheap advertising?

I’m certainly not. Castalia House is not making any attempt whatsoever to sell books to the decrepit denizens of Worldcon. We see no point in casting literary pearls before shoggoths.

It’s also amusing to see that McRapey, who built his career on the false pretense of having the most popular blog in science fiction, should declare that the author of the most popular blog in science fiction and the lead editor of the fastest growing publisher in science fiction does not merit being treated seriously. For some reason, that matters to him. Very much.

And yet, it doesn’t matter to me. It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever whether they take me seriously or not. My only concern is to continue finding very good authors and helping them publish excellent, best-selling books. Castalia House will succeed or fail on that basis, and barring a complete collapse of the global economy, on that basis alone.