The insanity of Pink SF

Imagine, if you will, the idea of “species-neutral” fiction. And in that school of writing, it was decided by those who adhere to it that true literary quality was determined by how closely the author managed to eliminate all signs of what species an animal belonged to. The more difficult it was to determine whether an animal was a cat or a dog, the harder it was to distinguish between a horse and a cow, or a rabbit and fox, the better the writing was considered to be.

Do you think that this new school of writing might have an effect if books like Watership Down or Misty of Chincoteague or even Mr. Popper’s Penguins were rewritten? Do you think this species-neutrality would it change them for the better or for the worse?

Because, you see, that is much the same effect that the race-neutrality and sex-neutrality have on Pink SF books and short stories. And yet, that is precisely their objective! McCreepy, otherwise known as Tor Books author Jim C. Hines, explains the ideal way for a Pink SF writer duly devoted to race- and sex-neutrality to improve her writing.

I would, of course, have written “his writing” according to the rules of English grammar, but I am interested in improving my literary style and I am reliably informed that “gender-swapping” is the way to do it.

Jim C. Hines
Years ago, I went back and rewrote a story, changing from a male PoV protagonist to female. It was educational and eye-opening, and made me see a lot of unconscious and ingrained assumptions I’d been carrying.

Samizdat
I did that with my WIP, swapped the male lead to female, then had the same people read what I had so far. The women loved it, the men hated it, whereas before the men loved it, and the women were just sorta meh about it. Made me decide to leave it as a female lead. I figured, if it was making the men so uncomfortable, then I was doing something right.

John L. Payton
You’ve demonstrated an excellent exercise here, one that any writers’ group would do well to adopt. If the piece sounds unrealistic when gender-swapped, then it needs more work. I intend to keep this in mind. Thank you.

Jim C. Hines
Masculinity can be toxic as hell. We could do whole books about the physical and emotional rigidity, the brutal punishment for men who stray too far from the narrowly-defined idea of what a man “should” be, the obsession with power and control and the damage that does to men and the people around them, and so much more. Getting rid of sexism and creating a more aware and accepting culture when it comes to gender would benefit everyone involved, not just women.

What is astonishing, and all too telling, is Samizdat’s reaction to the men hating her protagonist. Instead of deciding that it is a terrible idea to intentionally pursue a strategy that her readers hate, she decides that cramming it down their throats is “doing something right”. And then these people are surprised and dismayed when they discover that no one is interested in buying or reading their books.

Just remember, if there are any observable differences in the behavior of male and female characters in your writing, they must be eradicated. Also, please try to avoid using the terms “cat” and “dog”, as they, too, are offensive. The preferred term is “companion animal of indeterminate species”.

They really believe this nonsense. Sarah Hoyt’s term, “grey goo”, is apt indeed. I’ve written before about how their moralblindness renders their works devoid of color to their artistic detriment, but now they have thrown out perspective and are intentionally blurring the monochromatic lines as well. They are intentionally doing their best to render their works flat, unrealistic, and devoid of life, so it should come as no surprise that they have succeeded so well in doing so.

The prison of peoples

Marine Le Pen writes a powerful argument for nationalism and the end of the EU in the New York Times:

The European Union has become a prison of peoples. Each of the 28 countries that constitute it has slowly lost its democratic prerogatives to commissions and councils with no popular mandate. Every nation in the union has had to apply laws it did not want for itself. Member nations no longer determine their own budgets. They are called upon to open their borders against their will.

Countries in the eurozone face an even less enviable situation. In the name of ideology, different economies are forced to adopt the same currency, even if doing so bleeds them dry. It’s a modern version of the Procrustean bed, and the people no longer have a say.

And what about the European Parliament? It’s democratic in appearance only, because it’s based on a lie: the pretense that there is a homogeneous European people, and that a Polish member of the European Parliament has the legitimacy to make law for the Spanish. We have tried to deny the existence of sovereign nations. It’s only natural that they would not allow being denied.

Brexit wasn’t the European people’s first cry of revolt. In 2005, France and the Netherlands held referendums about the proposed European Union constitution. In both countries, opposition was massive, and other governments decided on the spot to halt the experiment for fear the contagion might spread. A few years later, the European Union constitution was forced on the people of Europe anyway, under the guise of the Lisbon Treaty. In 2008, Ireland, also by way of referendum, refused to apply that treaty. And once again, a popular decision was brushed aside.

When in 2015 Greece decided by referendum to reject Brussels’ austerity plans, the European Union’s antidemocratic response took no one by surprise: To deny the people’s will had become a habit. In a flash of honesty, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, unabashedly declared, “There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties.”

Brexit may not have been the first cry of hope, but it may be the people’s first real victory.

With eloquent nationalist leaders like her, Viktor Orban, and Matteo Salvini, among others there is reason to believe it will not be the last one. The EU is immoral, unnatural, anti-democratic, and evil. The sooner it collapses, the better off everyone will be.

The globalists are the Nazis of the 30s and 40s and the Communists of the Cold War. They are the enemy of Man. As Le Pen aptly notes, “more and more, the destiny of the European Union resembles the destiny of the Soviet Union, which died from its own contradictions.”

Another day, another bomb

We’re beginning to learn what life was like during the anarchist bombings of the late 19th and early 20th century:

Turkish newspaper Hurriyet is reporting that two explosions have occurred at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport. The mayor of Istanbul has confirmed 28 deaths and 50 injuries.

Officials have confirmed that three attackers orchestrated the attack. At least one opened fire with an AK-47 firearm before detonating a suicide bomb he was wearing. Two other attackers committed suicide attacks on other areas of the airport.

Update 6:25PM EST: Authorities are now placing the death toll at closer to 50, according to the Associated Press. The AP also notes that senior Turkish officials are leaning toward the Islamic State as the possible culprits of the attack.

Imagine what it will be like if the EU grants the free movement of peoples to Turkey. Britain was wise to vote out when they did.

Declaring economic independence

Think what you will of Trump, the man has great rhetoric:

Trump, in his speech, portrayed Clinton as an agent of a status quo “that worships globalism over Americanism” and criticized her past support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he described as “the deathblow for American manufacturing.”

He said the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed by Bill Clinton, was a “disaster” and pointed to the Clintons support for normalizing trade relations with China.

He said that, as president, he would dramatically overhaul the way the country approaches trade, threatening to wield new tariffs and taxes to push his way.

“Ladies and gentlemen, It’s time to declare our economic independence once again,” he said.

He vowed to renegotiate North American Free Trade Agreement to get a better deal “by a lot, not just a little,” for American workers – and threatened to withdraw the U.S. from the deal if his proposals aren’t agreed.

“We already have a trade war. And were losing badly,” Trump said.

Trump understands, as the globalists do not, that only one side is required to fight for a state of war to exist.

Make America Great Again.

UPDATE: in light of his attacks on Mr. Trump’s economic policies, I have challenged Ben Shapiro to a debate on free trade.

Ben Shapiro ‏@benshapiro
Trumponomics is garbage stacked on other garbage stacked on flaming piles of dog crap 

Trump’s entire plan to create jobs relies on trade protectionism – the single most debunked economic fallacy of the last two centuries, an idea so bad that it has largely reduced Latin America, which bought into “dependency theory,” to poverty and food riots. Trump’s theory seems to be that if we increase the price of imports, make it more difficult for American companies to export, and punish American companies for locating overseas, this ridiculous combination of counterproductive policies will result in alchemist economic gold.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday  Ben, Trump’s economics are superior to Ricardian neo-classical economics, Chicago School monetarism, and Marxian free trade.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday 
I wrote a #1 bestseller on free trade with Dr. Miller.

Now I’m challenging you to a debate on free trade. Are you up to it?

Of Byzantium and the #AltRight

Caleb Q. Washington observes a certain synchronicity:

The history of the Byzantines hit a number of issues that are held closely by the Alt-Right. First of all, the fall of the Roman Empire is an area of historical significance that draws anyone who seeks to understand patterns of massive political change and upheaval of civilizations. The Byzantines are naturally a part of that story. They continued on from their weakened position for almost a millennium, accounting for about half of the days between the Rome’s foundation by Romulus and the fall of Constantinople. Understanding this civilization is one source from which the Alt-Right seeks knowledge about what might happen to our own Western Civilization and what it might take to preserve it.

One thing that is very important to the Alt-Right is tradition. The Byzantines were a civilization that maintained ancient traditions in a world that changed drastically around them. Their work, both culturally and militarily, has ensured that the great love of the Alt-Right, Western Civilization, survived long enough to thrive. The good done for the world by the Byzantines does not go unrecognized by those who have learned the story.

If any experience defines young people who have joined the Alt-Right, it is the notion of: “The Red Pill”. At some point, we all came to realize that some piece of the dominant cultural narrative is an inaccurate portrayal of the world, paralleling the experience of the protagonist in The Matrix. This is the intellectual equivalent of crossing the Rubicon, to use a relevant metaphor. Once one lie is unmasked, the entire tapestry of the cultural narrative is under suspicion. Part of the journey we find ourselves on is learning about the parts of history which go untaught.

The story of Byzantium is a story that will go untold to anyone who doesn’t actively seek it. It is the greatest civilization that is not mentioned in school. Learning the history of Byzantium means learning about a subject which is entirely absent from common historical narratives, which generally skip the years between 476 and 1066.

I don’t actually have an opinion on this, but I did find it amusing in light of how one of my favorite histories is John Julius Norwich’s three-volume History of the Byzantine Empire. Indeed, if you look closely on the videos of my appearances with Stefan Molyneux, you can see the spines in their pride of place next to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.

It is fascinating, however, to see how the atheist wing of the #AltRight is moving towards Christianity even as the evangelical wing is moving towards orthodoxy and race realism.

Brings the Lightning now in paperback

As numerous people have been asking me the same question, let me be perfectly clear: ALL CASTALIA HOUSE BOOKS WILL APPEAR IN PRINT, SOONER OR LATER. As various facts on the ground have changed, we have modified our original ebook-mostly strategy accordingly and will now be publishing print editions of all our books.

To be specific, most books will appear in both hardcover and paperback in our standard size, 8.5 x 5.5. They will generally run from 12.99 to 16.99 for paperbacks and 19.99 to 24.99 for hardcovers, depending upon the pagecount. We will NOT be doing the Amazon matchbook thing because our ebooks come out first. Nor will we provide any information about when any given print edition will come out because there are too many factors to make any prediction meaningful.

Larger books, such as the There Will Be War omnibuses and the Selenoth books, will appear in both hardcover and paperback in our large size, 9.2 x 6.1. All hardcovers in both sizes will be casebound. Smaller books, like Mutiny in Space, will be paperback only, but will be collected in three-volume 8.5 x 5.5 hardcover omnibuses.

We are ramping up our print production capabilities thanks to our indefatigable Production Editor and a number of volunteers. As noted in the title, Brings the Lightning is now available in paperback for $12.99. The next books to appear in print editions will be:


Iron Chamber of Memory, John C. Wright (HC,PB)
Mutiny in Space, Rod Walker (PB)
CTRL ALT REVOLT!, Nick Cole (HC,PB)
The End of the World as We Knew It, Nick Cole (HC,PB)

All four of these books are expected to be available in July. At our current rate of production, we anticipate releasing two ebooks and four print books for a total of ten editions every month.

Fun with atheists

It’s really remarkable to see how many atheists fail to understand what their “assume the other person is lying if he does not immediately present documentary evidence upon demand, which will of course be immediately dismissed for failing to meet the unexpressed demand for peer-reviewed and published scientific evidence” says about their personal integrity, or as is more precisely the case, their lack of it:

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
The reason most atheists trust fellow atheists less than anyone else is because they recognize their own lack of integrity and morality.

Paul D ‏@Lost_in_Formosa
Any evidence for that?

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Yes. Look it up.

Paul D ‏@Lost_in_Formosa
in other words, you just made it up, right?

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
No. You guys are so predictable. You assume lies. Why? Because you are an atheist and you readily lie.

Paul D ‏@Lost_in_Formosa
Why are you slandering a huge group of your fellow human beings?

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
You are lying. Truth cannot be slander by definition. You’re really not helping the case for atheist integrity here.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Vox: Atheists don’t trust other atheists because projection.

Atheist: Show me the evidence!

Vox: No.

Atheist: You lie!

Vox: Voila….

The amusing thing is that they still absolutely believe that they are the smart ones, the “bright” ones, because godless. It’s now gotten to the point that when I hear someone is an atheist, rather than an agnostic, I now assume aggressive midwittery.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And a refusal to provide freely available, readily accessible evidence on demand is not a reliable indication that the other party is lying. It could mean that, or it could simply indicate that the other party is aware that you are an intellectually overmatched and lazy little bastard who is going to quibble in a dishonest and self-serving manner about any evidence that is provided to you, no matter how reliable the sources.

UPDATE: Someone else linked the article to which I was referring. The good faith atheist’s response to incontrovertible proof that I was not, as he claimed, lying, slandering, and making things up?

Paul D ‏@Lost_in_Formosa
Read the comments to see how stupid the “research”. There are more believers in jail than atheists! How come?

Seriously, at this point, how do you still manage to doubt me? He didn’t even hesitate before trying to move the goal posts!

The problem of peer review

Peer review simply isn’t what it is advertised to be; it is not only little more than editing, most of the time it is not even competent editing:

As a scientist with a 15 year career behind me so far, I am afraid that my experiences reflect this. Peer review is excellent in theory but not in practice. Much of the time, the only vetting the papers get are two relatively junior people in a field (often grad students or postdocs) giving it a thumbs up or thumbs down. That is absolutely it. In theory, the editors should make the decisions with the recommendations of the reviewers, but the editors rarely have the time or the expertise to judge the papers and often automatically defer to reviewers. Also, the papers should be reviewed by luminaries of the field, but these folks rarely have the time, and either decline invitations or bounce the work to a student or another trainee. It’s not just bad papers that get through, but also good, rigorous, papers that are bounced by this system.

Many if not most of the people in academic science today, at least in biology (my field), are overwhelmed with the need to publish in such high volumes, few people with the needed expertise can afford the time to go over the results in detail. All this while, at the same time and for the same reason, the volume of papers that needs to be reviewed goes up. I’ve heard of (and had myself) papers havve lingered for 4+ months before they even went out for review.

And, in our rush to publish, we often don’t read this literature carefully ourselves but start citing papers anyway, which weaves these potentially weak or erroneous papers even more tightly into the fabric of their field.

It’s difficult to care a lot about the quality of your work when you know the extra effort often doesn’t help something go through this fickle review process, and when you know people will cite it without really reading it closely. There is little incentive to spend longer on a paper to make sure everything is right and the results are reproducible because there is very little accountability for errors and huge rewards for being prolific.

The ironic thing is that True Believers and the I Fucking Love Science crowd genuinely believe that “peer reviewed science” is the gold standard for evidence. But there is a reason scientific evidence is not automatically allowed in a court of law, let alone considered conclusive, and the more we learn about the defects of peer review, the better we understand that science’s credibility is limited.

We have a word for science that is trustworthy, and that word is engineering. Until science can be applied, it cannot be fully trusted to be correct.

All peer review is really designed to do is to reassure the reader that the information presented fits safely within the confines of the consensus status quo.

The price of speaking out

SJWs will always try to force you to pay for standing up to the Narrative and speaking out against it, lest others do likewise.

Never go full racist. A Tennessee congressional candidate learned that lesson this week after his campaign took out a billboard ad exhorting voters to “Make America white again.” From local ABC affiliate WTVC:

Rick Tyler told WTVC he owns Whitewater Grill in Ocoee, but in the coming months will transition to campaigning to represent Tennessee’s 3rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Tyler says his “Make America White Again” sign, which plays off of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, was taken down on Tuesday evening.

The decision to take the billboard down came after Tyler’s business became the target of a boycott.

As if his submission will be sufficient to permit him to be forgiven for the sin of speaking out against the New “America”. Is it not remarkable that those who claim to love America are so determined to wipe out literally every last vestige of it?

Whatever this multiracial empire is, it is not the same nation that for its first 130 years required all new citizens to be “of good character” and “white”. And it is remarkable how many people who lament the fall away from the U.S. Constitution, designed to benefit the Founders and their posterity, don’t make the connection between the abandonment of all three things.

The reality is that the only way to Make America Great Again is to Make America White Again. The two slogans are synonymous. The SJWs know it, which is why both slogans terrify them.

The Missionaries: a Marine’s review

The Dark Herald reviews Owen Stanley’s debut novel, The Missionaries:

This is a book that touched me more then I thought it would.  For most of my career in the Marine Corps, I was fighting nasty little low level insurgencies.  Honestly most of these had been going on before we showed up and continued after we left.  They were just run of the mill tribal conflicts that flared up and died down again of their accord when the world wasn’t looking.

But when the world was looking it was time to send in the Marines “Hoo-Rah!”  I didn’t mind overmuch.  It was a life of adventure and I was young enough and dumb enough to enjoy it.  It was why I joined the Corps in the first place.  And I am reasonably certain we did more good than harm.  The people we were dealing with understood, respected and even honored a warrior ethic.  We were comprehensible to them, even if the motives for our arrival looked pretty hazy to them

We made some effort to get to the know locals and listen to their problems and grievances.  Occasionally we would dig wells for them, which was usually appreciated.  Although they always wondered what it would cost them in the end.

Sadly what it would usually cost them was becoming a UN protectorate. 

The UN assessment teams that would follow on our heels…after we had settled things down naturally…were an inexplicable plague, the likes of which the poor bastards had never known. 

The best of the UN Poo-bahs had but one purpose and that was to make sure the UN got the credit for what we were doing.  The average ones would try to put us in UN Baby Blues, constantly lecture us on how to do our jobs and saddle us with insane Rules of Engagement, (bottom line don’t do anything gross like shoot back).  The worst of them would have had the colonial government of Leopold II reeling in horror.

The infuriating thing was sitting helplessly by and watching the UN get away with doing these things.  I have no idea why the United Nations still enjoys the kind of prestige that it does at that point.  It ranks as equal members first world democracies and third world kleptocrats.  It’s Human Rights Council is a by word for farce.  It’s a dumping ground for diplomats that couldn’t make it in their own countries diplomatic corps.  This is an oligarchy of bureaucrats with no one to answer to and yet, it pretends it’s the best that humanity has to offer.

As you may have guessed a book about United Nations high commissioners getting what they deserve is little short of porn to me…. I highly recommend it.

This is a particularly interesting review, because both the reviewer and the author definitely know very well whereof they write. And while it may strike those who have not yet read The Missionaries that I am perhaps overreacting to it or praising it too highly, all I can say is that you will simply have to read the book before reaching any such conclusion.

To put it plainly, no one writes books like this anymore. They don’t because they simply can’t; virtually none of today’s authors possess the necessary inside experience of the NGO world combined with an intrinsically skeptical outsider’s perspective on it. This is a unique snapshot of a specific point in time; just as Catch-22 could not have been written without Joseph Heller’s experience of war and all the madness of the military bureaucracy that goes with it, there is no one, besides Owen Stanley, who could have written this satirical take on the UN’s quixotic attempt to bring the modern world to the natives of Elephant Island.

UPDATE: Thank you all again, for making The Missionaries #1 in Satire. Not bad, considering that we are reliably informed that the editor doesn’t even know what it is. It is also #1 in Humor, and, I suspect those who have read it will agree, deservedly so.

 Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #509 Paid in Kindle Store
    #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Satire
    #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Satire
    #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Satire