The very special victim of #GamerGate

They have really dragged out this Sarkeesian thing considerably further than I ever would have imagined. It’s beyond parody at this point.

It’s a long-established tradition for TV shows to draw inspiration from real-life events. NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” is no different, and Wednesday, February 11, sees the crime drama series tackle Gamergate in an episode entitled “Intimidation Game.” The plot centers on the online harassment and kidnapping of a game developer, Raina Punjabi, modelled on controversial feminist game critic Anita Sarkeesian.

NBC’s trailer opens with Punjabi discussing the threats she’s received with police. She is set to attend an important game launch but has become the victim of an online harassment campaign. Punjabi insists that she will attend the launch, however, because not only is it a massive international event but also she refuses to give in to online hordes of anonymous, misogynistic trolls. During the conversation, terms like “swatting,” “doxxing,” and “dark net” are referenced, with one detective pointing out that online threats are “not covered by free speech.” The dialogue is embarrassingly clumsy, written for an audience not familiar with Gamergate or the more complex workings of the internet.

This is so ludicrously absurd. What is next, NCIS featuring a three-part episode that involves the murder of a neurotic transvestite who calls himself Brianna Who? An epic fantasy HBO series entitled “The Saga of Yamanamama”?

Anyhow, I hope the bad guys are a team that involves a guy in a wheelchair, a television actor, and a handsome, athletic, forty-something game developer and novelist. That would be amusing.

Mailvox: the anti-Puritans

SJ emails and makes what I consider to be an all-too-common mistake among Christians with regards to the rating system I created upon request yesterday:

Read your post on a Christian Ratings System. As the father of two young boys, there is a lot I like about this. And I laugh at how similar my experiences are with other Christian fathers. But I think it is important to think through one aspect of this sort of effort: Christians have self-selected towards being at the bottom of the food chain, often the victims, in our modern society.

That isn’t necessarily meant as a defense of modern society, other than being a reminder of the reality we live in. Regardless, I am sick and tired of Christians coming up on the short end, and I am concerned that the lesson that our churches and families are teaching our young men. With my own boys, I have taken the tack of raising Christian men in a Fallen and potentially violent world. I see no disparity between Christianity, being strong, and being realistic. In, not of.

Thus, I don’t necessarily argue with the idea of scores per se, but of the thresholds. For example, I am not sure that I wouldn’t let my boys read something more than a 15, and I balk at saying that a book that contains openly atheist characters scores a +3. What about the atheist characters being contrasted with Christian characters? What about setting up an atheist for a religious awakening?

My point is really not to pick nits, or to argue line items, but to try to argue for:

a) a more granular system that allows for more insight into the “Christians” of the book
b) in support of (a) but more tangentially, possibly having categories of scores
c) somehow trying to allow for books and material that encourages a realistic approach to Christianity

It’s really this latter point that makes me write this email because by making such a scoring system seems likely to help the self-same self-selecting Christians to self-select into ever more naive, victim-filled categories. I think this is especially true if the system is more or less linear and additive, as you have suggested. Ultimately, you are on to a great idea here, but it shouldn’t abide by the standards and metrics that a Fallen world has seen fit to place on Christianity. For example, some Christians swear, dammit, and the Song of Solomon is ostensibly about Sex. Perhaps with a little more granularity and possibly with some helpful Categories, this becomes a tool to teach rather than a grading system for my 4th grade Sunday School teacher.

I think we may need a word to describe the modern Christian anti-Puritan, the sort of Christian who fears that somewhere, somehow, there might be another Christian out there who is insufficiently exposed to the world. But is there truly a Christian in the world of 2015 who is insufficiently exposed to the material existence of godlessness, obscenity, sex, and sin? And what shall we call these advocates of being sufficiently engulfed by the world, though not of it? Soilitans? Filthians? Those Who Wallow? Edified Mudrollers?

My more literate response is to quote Aslan: “Child…I am telling your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”

It is no more SJ’s business to concern himself with how these self-selecting Christians self-select into ever more naive, victim-filled categories than it is for them to determine the precise threshold that will determine what books his young boys are permitted to read. And notice that all of his concerns are about influence and interpretation; he is bothered by the idea of simply permitting other Christians to acquire accurate information about the books and make their own judgments concerning them. In answer to his questions and points:

  1. What about the atheist characters being contrasted with Christian characters?
  2. What about setting up an atheist for a religious awakening?
  3. a more granular system that allows for more insight into the “Christians” of the book
  4. in support of (3) but more tangentially, possibly having categories of scores
  5. somehow trying to allow for books and material that encourages a realistic approach to Christianity 

1. What about them? Whether they are contrasted with Christian characters or not, the either exist in the book or they don’t. Why should parents who don’t want their children to be prematurely exposed to atheism be intentionally kept in the dark from knowing that there is a godless character in a book?

2. What about it? I’d rather like a system that would warn me: LAME AND UTTERLY CONVENTIONAL CONVERSION STORY AHEAD so I could avoid ever reading the book. “And then he became a Christian and lived happily ever after” is not the sort of thing I’m interested in supporting even if that was within the scope of the rating system. Which it isn’t. Regardless of what happens to the atheist over the course of the book, he is still there. How can any Christian rationally oppose parents simply being informed of godlessness in their children’s books?

I am perhaps uniquely qualified to comment on this. Does anyone seriously think I am even remotely afraid of exposing my children to atheist arguments, let alone fictional atheist characters presenting dumbed-down versions of those arguments? I throw Plato and Cicero and William S. Lind at my kids, does anyone seriously doubt that they can chew up arguments presented by the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins without even blinking? At the same time, I’d still like to know that they are being tested in this way when it is taking place.

3. No. That goes well beyond the purpose of the rating system, which is to simply inform parents what is in the book. It doesn’t involve insight into anyone, for any reason. It describes, it doesn’t interpret.

4. The more complicated the system, the less useful it is and the less anyone will use it. Again, this is an attempt to sneak interpretation and influence in through the back door.

5. And who is to define “a realistic approach to Christianity”? I doubt anyone wants me doing that. Here the attempt to influence is overt, which is in absolute contradiction to the intention of the ratings system, which is simply to inform parents of what specific elements are present within works of fiction.

The rating system is a tool for people to use, not a tool for using people. Try to keep that in mind if you’re looking to improve it.

The Lord of Hate engages

This may explain why the pinkshirts are so remarkably shy about engaging with the Evil Legion of Evil:

Dude, please. You’ve got 45 fucking Hugo nominations. Disqualify would be saying your opinion doesn’t count because you are a white male and have privilege. Shit. Looking at that picture you’ve got Santa Privilege.

Instead the fact that one dude has 45 nominations is a pretty damned good indicator that your little pond has gone stagnant. That isn’t disqualification. That is stating the obvious. I said you guys were a tiny little clique, but I didn’t realize it was that inbred. That is something so absurd that when I learned your blog had 28 it blew my mind. It was so ridiculous that when somebody else pointed out that you actually have FORTY FIVE in total, I didn’t believe them. I scoffed at first. Even me, the guy who started this big open public conversation we’re finally having about the Hugos being broken, thought to myself, naw, that’s impossible. There’s no freaking way they’d give some individual 45 nominations and 9 Hugos.

Nope.

So, then when a guy with 45 Hugo noms writes about me, what… What are you up to now? Six? Eight articles about Sad Puppies? And in said articles misconstrues damn near everything, and repeatedly assures his readers, don’t worry, comrades, the system is fine, system is our friend, and only bad people work outside of system… Well, that’s just fishy.

It isn’t disqualification to note that somebody benefiting directly from a broken system might be in favor of said system. In your case it is just extra pathetic and kind of sad. It also explains why you seem to actually believe that I’m driven by a desire to get a trophy. I really don’t want your people’s approval and I truly don’t give a shit about me winning (and don’t worry, if I’m nominated again, I will prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt).

“No wonder you won’t engage”

Engage what? You specifically? Your bullshit is no different than the other narrative bullshit, so I respond to them in mass. Honestly Glyer 45 Hugos, internet arguing is a spectator sport, frankly your 28 Hugo Fanzine doesn’t have enough traffic for me to justify the time responding there (Which is why, I’m going to cut and paste this response over to Facebook when I’m done).

I’m kind of busy engaging the entire SJW internet to spend much time worrying about your bad Shakespeare. But it shows what an interesting selective memory you’ve got there. I’ve written in depth and rather openly about what I’m doing. You write about it and make shit up to explain to your clique what their narrative should be. I’ve repeatedly written since clarifying things, but you just ignore, and make more shit up about what I *really* meant.

And I didn’t bother with your last one, because I don’t think Dogberry was compiling links to actual quotes of his opponents being assholes.

But while I’m thinking about it, here is an interesting thought on “engaging”. Do you realize that in all this time, and all this controversy, not a single one of my opponents has actually taken the time to contact me to speak about this directly? I’ve been contacted by a bunch of people who are secretly on my side, and I’ve been contacted by many moderate fence sitters and people genuinely concerned for the future of the Hugos. But the side opposed to what I’m doing? None. None of the interview places, none of the award winning fanzines, none of the SJW bloggers with their fingers on the pulse of fandom. Zip. Zero. No engagement, just ignore what I actually say and do, and make up bullshit instead.

Now, I’ve talked to Mike Glyer via email and he actually strikes me as being on the saner and more reasonable side of Pink SF. I may not share his taste in authors, but he does a credible job of keeping fandom informed of what is going on in the science fiction world. Nothing wrong with that. He doesn’t have 45 Hugo nominations because he lobbied for them, but because people in fandom liked what he was doing. Unlike the Scalziettes, he clearly recognizes that Brad wants to save the Hugo Awards from themselves and that I could not be any less interested in winning approval from the SF rabbits.

And therein lies the problem. If even the more reasonable and clear-sighted people on the other side, even those among the very few willing to communicate directly with us, are unable to see what we, and a considerable number of science fiction and fantasy readers, very clearly see as a genre-killing cancer at work, then there isn’t any form of rational compromise possible.

Which, of course, may well be the case. If so, time and technology are on our side. It’s not going to be us eradicating them, but rather, the fact that the gatekeepers who formerly enabled them are going out of business. We’ll know the game is over when those who attacked us as vile and so forth come crawling to us, hat in hand, begging for the opportunities that they denied us when they were in power.

Not that it is all about revenge. I’ve never cared about cons and fandom. It’s not my scene. And perhaps that is what many of them hate most about us. We legitimately don’t care what they do, what they think, or what they say.

UPDATE: We have detente! Larry has come out firmly in favor of reading books for which one votes and Mike concurs:

I don’t have to say this but I think he means it. If the rest of the people behind Sad Puppies 3 take his statement to heart, and don’t just treat it as some kind of dogwhistle, they will end up enriching the award’s representation instead of merely doing a hack on it.

How fortunate that everyone supporting Rabid Puppies has read Tom Kratman, Steve Rzasa, and John C. Wright. And anyone who hasn’t, the situation is easily rectified given the links provided.

Desperately seeking the steady state

For some strange reason, some scientists intensely dislike the idea of the universe having a discrete beginning point. I can’t imagine why….

The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a “Big Bang” did the universe officially begin.

Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.

“The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there,” Ahmed Farag Ali at Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Phys.org.

Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end.

The physicists emphasize that their quantum correction terms are not applied ad hoc in an attempt to specifically eliminate the Big Bang singularity.

Let’s see. The evidence suggests that “the law of physics appear to break down”. That would be non-natural, perhaps one might say, “supernatural”. So obviously, logic and evidence must be ruled out of bounds in favor of math that adds up correctly!

The mere fact that the physicists are “emphasizing” that they are not doing what they are observably doing tends to cast more than a little doubt on their theory. Perhaps the math will hold up, perhaps it won’t. But it won’t surprise me to see this turn out to be about as credible as historical South American temperature data revisions.

Using the quantum-corrected Raychaudhuri equation, Ali and
Das derived quantum-corrected Friedmann equations, which describe the
expansion and evolution of universe (including the Big Bang) within the
context of general relativity.

Corrected, revised… we sure seem to see scientists using those words a lot these days.

Of course they folded

The EU has never been anything except one giant bluff coupled with constant appeals to Ragnarok:

Did Europe just fold?

Moments ago Bloomberg blasted a headline which has to be validated by other members of the European Commission as well as Merkel and the other Germans (and may well be refuted, considering this is Europe), which said that:

    COMMISSION TO PROPOSE 6 MONTH EXTENSION FOR GREECE – SOURCES.

So did Greece just win the first round of its stand off with Brussels? It remains to be confirmed, but congratulations to Greece if indeed it caused Merkel and the ECB to fold.

Once Greece leaves, the EU is a walking corpse. So they will do absolutely anything that will be less immediately destructive than a nation leaving the Euro, or more significantly, the EU.

Mailvox: Christian book ratings

CM asks if we can put together a rating system for Christian books. I think this is a good idea, although I think it bears some discussion on the best way to do that.

We are an ultra-conservative homeschool family with 8 children. Two of my older sons and I love SF books, table top games, and movies. My 12 year old is reading through the Monster Hunter series of books now. I do not mind the occasional curse word or sexual innuendo here and there. But if it gets any racier than Correia’s works I will not let them read it until they are a little older. We’ve enjoyed some of your novellas, too. Keep up the good work.

Anyway, I do not have time to keep up and read new SF works to screen them for my sons (12 year old blasted through the first Monster Hunter in one day). Is there a possibility in the future that your blog and/or Castalia House could have a sort of SF book rating or review site that would inform Christian families like mine? Just FYI, the Hollywood movie rating would be inadequate. Many PG-13 rated movies are considered nearly XXX to us.

My thought is something similar to the SJW review of games system might be useful, with zero being the perfect score of containing nothing that would be objectionable to the Christian AND containing genuine and explicit Christian elements. There is a difference, after all, as Misty of Chincoteague is entirely unobjectionable, but it has no Christian content per se.

Let’s consider some possible point factors, beginning with those that would likely be more or less acceptable to most Christian parents, but are potentially indicative of religious or ideological problems:

  • contains no genuine and explicit Christian element +1
  • exhibits unconventional Christian theology +1
  • characters demonstrate disrespect for peers or parents +1
  • an animal or major character dies +1
  • contains suggestions of physical violence +1
  • features strong independent female +1
  • contains squishy Disney-style “moral” messages +1
  • Features fairies, unicorns, or creatures from classical mythology +1
  • Features the open use of magic by the characters +1

Then there are the elements that will be objectionable to the more conservative families:

  • contains direct descriptions of physical violence +2
  • features indirect sexual themes +2
  • contains egregious or saintly minority characters +2
  • features aggressively “pro-science” themes +2
  • contains euphemistic swearing +2

Followed by those elements to which most parents will not want to expose their children:

  • contains openly atheist characters +3
  • contains detailed portrayals of physical violence +3
  • features PG-13 sex scenes +3
  • advocates left-liberal political or ideological positions +3
  • contains light and occasional swearing +3
  • Features emotionally devastating scene +3
  • Features demonic aliens or magic-based societies +3

And then the completely unacceptable:

  • contains openly atheist or anti-theist messages +5
  • mocks Christianity +5
  • sadistic horror and physical violence +5
  • features pornographic sex scenes or romanticizes adultery +5
  • features homosexual and other sexually deviant characters +5
  • contains a considerable quantity of vulgarities and obscenities +5 
  • contains openly occultic elements indicative of actual practices +5

Now, it is important to keep in mind that a novel can contain absolutely every element here and still be a Christian novel. What makes a novel Christian or not depends upon its intrinsic recognition that Jesus Christ (or some fictional facsimile therein), is the Lord and Savior of Mankind.

A Throne of Bones scores a lot of points, Book Two will score even more. But they are not books for children; I haven’t let my own children read them. Every parent has to draw their own line, but it would certainly be useful to have a large database at Castalia House where books could be rated. For example, The Lord of the Rings would rate about a 8 of 75. A Throne of Bones would rate 40. A Game of Thrones would rate 65. I think anything over 15 should be considered unacceptable to most parents.

There is considerable room for improving the system, and I would welcome suggestions as well as the rating of various books.

Stealing honor

Now, I’m not privy to the details of either Captain Matt Golsteyn or the investigation of him, but this revoking of a Silver Star stinks of perfumed princes and their aversion to public criticism as well as the Obama administration’s hatred of the US military:

In 2011, shortly after a book by author and Marine Bing West came out that detailed Golsteyn’s heroism and quoted him making critical remarks about the American strategy in Afghanistan, I learned that the Army had launched a criminal investigation into his actions during the battle. (Again, full disclosure: I was also interviewed for that book, The Wrong War, and make a brief appearance in it.)

The investigation, apparently, had nothing to do with the acts of bravery that earned Golsteyn his medal. Instead, according to the Washington Post, which cited officials familiar with the case, it concerned “an undisclosed violation of the military’s rules of engagement in combat for killing a known enemy fighter and bomb maker.” The investigation stretched on for nearly two years, during which time the Army effectively put Golsteyn’s career on ice. In 2014, Golsteyn and his lawyer were informed that the investigation was finally complete. No charges were filed, but Golsteyn still wasn’t released from administrative limbo.

Alerted about the controversy by another Army officer, Captain Will Swenson, Congressman Duncan Hunter wrote last year to John McHugh, the secretary of the Army, asking about the status of Golsteyn’s seemingly endless career freeze. Apparently the secretary did not take kindly to the inquiry, as he responded in a letter last November that not only would he not be upgrading Golsteyn’s Silver Star to a Distinguished Service Cross, but would be revoking Golsteyn’s Silver Star entirely, a fact that Hunter revealed publicly in an article for the Daily Beast published on Tuesday.

The revocation of an award such as the Silver Star is extraordinarily rare, and typically would happen in the case of the recipient being convicted of a serious crime that in some way dishonored his service. But not only has Golsteyn not been convicted of a crime—he hasn’t even been charged with one.

McHugh would not reveal to Hunter specifically why he was taking his action beyond submitting the innuendo that he was privy to “derogatory information” regarding Golsteyn’s record. What could this information be? Who knows? Having, according to Hunter, spent years threatening Golsteyn’s men, searching for and failing “to find one piece of evidence to corroborate the allegation” that launched the investigation, the Army clearly decided to punish Golsteyn anyway, through publicly dishonoring him in a manner that allows him effectively no recourse or due process.

 It is remarkable that the US military can still find anyone willing to serve under the recent Commanders-in-Chief.

The biggest science scandal ever

And yes, as we AGW/CC skeptics have been saying since the beginning, the world is not getting warmer and you cannot trust corrupt scientists anymore than you can trust corrupt bankers or corrupt politicians. Global warming is a fraud and a scandal of global proportions:

When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.

Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world – one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.

Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.

Homewood has now turned his attention to the weather stations across much of the Arctic, between Canada (51 degrees W) and the heart of Siberia (87 degrees E). Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded.

There has been some discussion about the discrepancy between the post-1979 satellite data and the surface-temperature record, as the former shows no sign of global warming while the latter has recently begun to do so. Now we have the answer explaining that discrepancy; the surface-temperature record has been corrupted and is false.

Notice that intrepid scientists went to the trouble of falsifying the data in places where it would be relatively difficult to check what they were reporting. This is genuinely a massive scandal, and if scientists don’t quickly denounce what has taken place, all scientists are soon going to lose even more credibility with the public once people see what a tremendous scam has been perpetrated by scientists operating on the public dime.

Brain-hacking the rabbits

It’s really rather remarkable how much rabbit behavior is explained by the r/K model. It puts into perspective so much of what looks completely inexplicable to the sane and more conservative mind that is neither ruled by rhetoric nor dependent upon social status.

The Anonymous Conservative has cogitated upon the matter and thinks he may have come up with a means of helping the poor, frightened rodents escape the limits of their failed ideology through hacking their brains.

When John Scalzi claimed 50K unique visitors per day on his blog, it
didn’t matter whether he had that accomplishment or not. What mattered
from the rabbit perspective is if he could create that impression. As in
all of rabbitry, the reality flows from the impression, which itself
need not flow from any tangible reality. Scalzi claimed it, it was
parroted in an article, people got the impression that he had social
status, and as a result, social status flowed from the impression.

This offers the prospect of creating interesting brain hacks, if the
K-strategist can train themselves to operate within the liberal
cognitive framework. Presently Conservatives concern themselves with
reality, and ignore social status. We assume that success is Thomas
Edison, and not Kim Kardashian, and our arguments are formed around that
assumption.

Instead, the Conservative should focus more on creating memes which
socially diminish and denigrate liberals, making them appear impotent
and inferior. Since to the leftist, reality flows from impression, and
social dominance is all important, you must create memes which tie an
anchor of inferiority and impotence to leftists, and let the reality
flow from that.

As an example, what the rabbit meme Vox created does at its core is
create an impression of inherent inability, unfitness, weakness, and
social inferiority, and attach it cleverly to those who embrace the
r-strategy of liberalism. Once those circumstances are created, and the
meme’s permeation is great enough that the rabbit cannot escape it, it
will prove amazingly unsettling to the rabbits, for whom impression is
reality, and reality is impression. Here is a popular impression saying
liberals are weak and impotent. Since to the rabbit truth is what other
people think, if they self-identify as a liberal, then they will be
accepting that people will think they are weak and impotent, and this
will make them weak and impotent. (In many ways the rabbit’s perception
is actually an accurate read of the reality in a r-selected world.)

At that point, a liberal brain will have only one pathway to
alleviate the amygdala angst generated by the social damage it sees
flowing from that meme – the rabbit can only tell itself that it isn’t a
rabbit. To divorce itself from rabbitry, it must abandon every issue
that is a part of the rabbit’s r-selected reproductive strategy, and
then turn its back on the rest of the warren of rabbits.

No wonder they so hate being called rabbits. What I find remarkable about what AC is doing here is the way he is articulating and putting into practice some of the principles that Aristotle first elucidated in his Rhetoric. After all, of whom do you think Aristotle was writing when he described those whose minds cannot be changed by information?

Speaking of rhetorically limited minds where reality flows from the impression, I found this comment by a rabbit to be all too typical”:

David W. on February 6, 2015 at 7:16 am said:
Sorry, but a DNA test result doesn’t make one a “Native American”, but
the writers of this horsecrap couldn’t care less about fact, obviously.

Fascinating. One wonders what would suffice to make one a “Native American” if not DNA, particularly when it says “Native American” on the DNA results and the Bureau of Indian Affairs issues Certificates of Indian Blood.

Hyperspace Demons

In space, the demons can hear you scream.

Space travel has always come with risks. But hyperspace travel comes with one particularly frightening hazard, namely, the non-corporeal dark energy-based macrobiotic entities that inhabit the void and are insensibly drawn to the presence of human minds. Once penetrated by a macrobe, the infected human mind rapidly devolves into raving insanity, which usually presents in a homicidal manner. Fortunately, hyperspace-capable ships are protected by a dark energy resonator that keeps the macrobes away and thereby permits safe interstellar travel.

But what happens when a ship’s resonator is sabotaged while it is traveling through hyperspace? And who would be so insane as to unleash a demonic infection of mutating madness on an entire ship’s crew?

Hyperspace Demons is a novella by Jonathan Moeller, one of the most prolific self-published authors of science fiction and fantasy today. Featuring a cover by JartStar, Hyperspace Demons is his first publication with Castalia House. And in respect of Anonymous Conservative’s newly announced free days (about which more after the jump), we’re extending the New Release newsletter offer for two more days, which means that if you buy Hyperspace Demons from Castalia House today or tomorrow, you will also receive a free copy of Jonathan’s Frostborn: The Gray Knight. If you would like to sign up for the New Release newsletter to take advantage of similar offers in the future, you can do so here.

I’m also looking for ten volunteers to review Hyperspace Demons. If you’re interested, please email me with HYPER in the subject and specify MOBI or EPUB.

Now about those free books. Anonymous Conservative writes:

For those interested, The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics,
How to Deal with Narcissists, and The Altar of Hate by Vox Day will all
be free in ebook form at Castalia House on Monday and Tuesday.  The Altar of Hate is a compilation of ten great stories ranging from fantasy to military fcience fiction. As one reviewer wrote, “Each
offering contained in The Altar of Hate tickles or provokes the mind
with salacious ‘what ifs’ and glances behind the veil of reality. The
stories move along, but one feels the uneasy eyes of the abyss staring
back as you progress, as it were, through a darkened ancient forest.
Only an author of the first rank could achieve this.” While I don’t have that big of a readership compared to Vox, I’m
hoping those here who haven’t yet stopped by Castalia’s website and
partaken of their incredible titles will maybe find a great new source
for all their high quality
sci-fi/fantasy/military-theory/educational/non-fiction needs, and in so
doing help establish our foothold on this great new beachhead in the
publishing world. If we can get Castalia to the point it is the new
Simon and Schuster, we will have helped alter the very terrain on which
our future battles will be fought. It is an exciting time in Conservatism. The theories beneath
political science are shifting, the cultural tides in publishing are
changing, and maybe the very natures of our citizens are becoming more
K-selected. It feels like we are approaching a turning point rapidly,
and just at the right time. Until the turning point comes, take some free books, then tell your
friends about r/K, and rave to your friends about how awesome Castalia House is. We are making a difference with every person we tell.

In other words, if you buy Hyperspace Demons today, you can pick up as many as four free books for $2.99. Not a bad deal. And speaking of “how awesome Castalia House is”, if you have any interest in fantasy and science fiction and haven’t already bookmarked the Castalia House blog, you are really missing out on some excellent and intelligent content. One of our newest bloggers, Morgan, is rapidly demonstrating that he’s capable of hanging with Jeffro, Daniel, and Scooter with his detailed anthology reviews; you’ll want to read his post on The Sword & Sorcery Anthology, with an introduction by David Drake, complete with a comment by David Drake himself:

A couple of years back, if you searched for Tachyon Publications’ The Secret History of Fantasy on Google Books, this is what would come up:

“Tired of the same old fantasy? Here are nineteen much-needed antidotes to cliched tales of swords and sorcery. Fantasy is back, and it’s better than ever!”

The lure of filthy lucre must have proven to be too much as Tachyon published The Sword & Sorcery Anthology in 2012…. The 1970s entries are dependable. Karl Edward Wagner’s “Undertow” is
one of the most memorable Kane stories. The Ramsey Campbell story has
never been reprinted to my knowledge.

Some of the seven post 1980 stories get dodgy. There was sword and sorcery in the 1980s in Fantasy Book and Space & Time. The 1990s were lean and grim but still you had Shadow Sword and Adventures in Sword and Sorcery. The editors did no deep excavation.

I never thought of Jane Yolen as a sword and sorcery writer. I used to read her stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
decades back and liked them. Her story is good if not a bit clichéd.
Does anyone find it disturbing there was an anthology entitled Warrior Princesses? That is where “Become a Warrior” originally appeared.

Two stories are from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress
anthologies. My view is Bradley’s anthology series quickly created a
new category that can be called femizon fantasy that is distinct from
sword and sorcery. The Charles Saunders story was a highlight of the
original Sword and Sorceress and the highlight of the chronological later stories. Why was Rachel Pollack’s “The Red Guild” included (Sword and Sorceress #2)? You can stamp generic femizon story on this one.