The dramatic limits of Pink SF/F

I’ve been finding the reading of Scott Lynch’s first two “Gentlemen Bastard” books to be more than a little educational because they are such a strange combination of competent writing with flawed and shallow story-telling. As such, they provide a useful perspective on precisely where and how Pink SF/F goes awry as literature.

Take the following quote from Red Seas Under Red Skies, which shows how a desired concept could have been handled well while simultaneously fumbling the execution:

“When you go to sea, there’s two necessities, for luck. First, you’re courting an awful fate if you take a ship to sea without at least one woman officer. It’s the law of the Lord of the Grasping Waters. His mandate. He’s got a fixation for the daughters of the land; he’ll smash any ship that puts to sea without at least one aboard. Plus, it’s plain common sense. They’re good officers. Decent plain sailors, but finer officers than you or I. Just the way the gods made ’em.

“Second, it’s powerful bad luck to put out without cats on board. Not only as they kill the rats, but as they’re the proudest creatures anywhere, wet or dry. Iono admires the little fuckers. Got a ship with women and cats aboard, you’ll have the finest luck you can hope for. Now, our little boat’s so small I reckon we’re fine without no woman. Fishers and harbor boats go out all the time, no worries. But with the pair of you aboard, I’ll be damned if I’m not bringing a cat. A little one suits a little vessel.”

Now, this is a subversion of the urban legend that women were historically considered bad luck on sailing ships. Fair enough, although it doesn’t address the real reason women were not permitted to serve on ships in the past, the fact that they tend to destroy ship morale and provide a major distraction for the male crew in addition to getting pregnant and rendering themselves unfit for service.

Changing the superstition works. But simply declaring, contra literally everything shown in both books before or after the statement, that women are intrinsically better military officers than men, is absurd and indicates either PC preaching or catering to a specific market that enjoys that particular fantasy. The book would have been much more coherent had Lynch simply ended the first necessity before adding the four sentences about “plain common sense”. Instead of getting on with the story, we find ourselves wondering about the mystery of the general absence of these superior female officers. Indeed, how did it come to pass that the Stragos, the naval commander who is a central character in the plot of the second book, is a man?

The ease with which a single throwaway dog-whistle can render the plot nonsensical points to an inevitable problem with SF/F that is both a) derivative of traditional genre works and b) politically correct. It is fractured by the intrinsic conflict of two contradictory logics, and thus forces the resolution of those contradictions by predictable and usually unsatisfactory means. For example, the preponderance of rape and child murder in modern SF/F is not the result of modern SF/F writers being particularly prone to either sexual assault or violence, indeed, the male writers are probably among the least likely men on the planet to have either had sex with a woman or raised a hand in violence to anyone.

But the ubiquity of rape and attempted rape is the result of the forced marriage of the traditional “rescue the woman’s virtue” trope with the PC “a woman has a right to rut like a mink in heat without being criticized for it” concept. When there is no virtue to be lost or saved, there is no shame or drama in it. All that is left is the lesser shame and drama of the potential violation of a woman’s consent.

In the same way, the relentless Herodianism of Pink SF/F is the result of the forced marriage of the traditional “protect the helpless” trope with the PC “women are equal to men” belief. This means that children now make up the entirety of the classes to be protected in Pink SF/F, thereby requiring them to become the only victims who are capable of generating any sympathy in the reader. Unless, of course, a character is victimized solely due to his race or sexual preference.

And those are the restrictions imposed upon the competent Pink SF/F writers, who attempt to intelligently resolve the logical contradictions. The incompetent ones, (and I note that the failed resolution above stuck out precisely because Lynch is an otherwise competent writer), simply lurch from one leap of illogic to the next, never realizing that they are contradicting themselves and presenting the reader with an incoherent imaginary world.

On a tangential note, it’s not hard at all to understand why Lynch’s books are popular among the Pink SF/F-reading crowd, and at least in the case of the first book, beyond. Despite the fact that the books are repetitively circular from a plot perspective, are subject to the aforementioned logical constraints, contain no drama or pathos, and go absolutely nowhere in any deeper sense, they do provide very well indeed for the wish fulfillment of a certain psychology that bastes itself in its belief in its own cleverness.

A woman surprised

This review of QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted is unusual, since it is written by an avowed anti-fan, (and not merely an anti-fan of me), who, unlike some, elected to read the book and review it instead of merely reacting to the name of one of the authors:

I went into this book fully expecting to hate it. I was in fact
gleefully awaiting it to turn into a giant pile of shit that I could
tear apart with glee. One of the co-writers of this book was Vox “Throw
acid in women’s faces for the greater good” Day and the only endorsement
in the back of the book was Tom Kratman.

I was not prepared to give this book even a single chance, but by the
end I was furiously swiping through pages with pure glee. Its basically
the anti-Oathbound for me, a book I went in expecting to love and hated
it.

The plot in the general sense is your standard Noir in Space setup:
Investigator starts work on a simple case that turns out to be much
bigger than it looks and spirals into one that could decide the fate of
the entire planet and the main character is a grizzled hardass bigot.
What makes it work is that the characters are actually fantastic and
Steve Rzasa’s writing saves Vox Day’s and turns the book into an
utterly enjoyable piece of pulp fiction that’s so stupid it wraps around
to utterly fucking brilliant….

The book also subverts the hell out of a lot of the usual cliches as
well. The villain is actually a gigantic threat to the point that they
confront them with a Kill Team, a regiment of Marines and a Battleship in orbit
and Tower puts their odds of survival at “low”. AIs are also treated as
actual beings capable of independent thought, emotion and sacrifice and the book laughs off the idea of “Kill all Humans” or “God Complex” AIs.

The book also treats people who can kill with glee while making one liners as being total psychopaths
who freak the main character the fuck out while treating the guy puking
his guts out and crying while mowing enemies down as being far more
normal and perfectly respectable.

The first draft of the second QUANTUM MORTIS novel is now complete, so there is a good chance it will be out in July. Tower and Baby are back, and they find themselves facing a threat that is even more gigantic and intergalactically dangerous than the one posed in QM:AMD. But Tower has a new gun….

Smirkings and quirkings

If I could only give a single piece of advice to a SF/F writer it would be this: excise the verbs “to smirk” and “to quirk” from your literary arsenal. At some point in the last 10-15 years, they mutually invaded the genre and have become all but ubiquitous.

First, note that quirk is not even a verb! It is a bloody NOUN. Seriously. It even says so in the dictionary and everything!

QUIRK noun
1. a peculiarity of action, behavior, or personality; mannerism: He is full of strange quirks.
2. a shift, subterfuge, or evasion; quibble.
3. a sudden twist or turn: He lost his money by a quirk of fate.
4.a flourish or showy stroke, as in writing.
5.Architecture.
a.an acute angle or channel, as one dividing two parts of a molding or one dividing a flush bead from the adjoining surfaces.
b.an area taken from a larger area, as a room or a plot of ground.
c.an enclosure for this area.

How, pray tell, does one “quirk a smile”. How is a sentence “quirked” rather than “said”? I’m not sure who is responsible, but I have the vague sense that David Weber may be the chiefly culpable party. In any event, quirking is the twerking of science fiction and fantasy genre; it is annoying, vulgar, and fundamentally stupid.

Weber’s On Basilisk Station contains 4 quirks.

  1. Honor stood motionless, watching through the armorplast, feeling Nimitz rise straight and tall on her shoulder to join her perusal, and an eyebrow quirked.
  2.  The numeral on her maneuvering display changed to “1,” and she turned to Webster and quirked an eyebrow, waiting out the seconds until he nodded.
  3. Her lips quirked at the thought, and she worked her way more briskly through the traffic.
  4. She paused, eyebrow quirked as if to ask if Honor was with her, and Honor nodded.

Now, at least the smirk addicts use an actual verb as a verb. But they still, for the most part, use it ineptly, even when it isn’t being used improperly. Let’s go to the definition again:

SMIRK verb
1. to smile in an affected, smug, or offensively familiar way.
2. to smile in a manner expressing expressing scorn, smugness, etc, rather than pleasure

Like “quirked”, “smirked” is frequently used as a said-bookism, and an improper said-bookism at that. It is a manner of smiling, not a manner of speaking.

Scott Lynch serves as a good example. He’s considered one of the better “new” writers, and as a pure wordsmith, he’s quite competent. In his first book, The Lies of Locke Lamora, while there are no quirks, there are no less than 11 smirks.

  1. Calo had dark liquor-colored skin and hair like an inky slice of night; the tautness of the flesh around his dark eyes was broken only by a fine network of laugh-lines (though anyone who knew the Sanza twins would more readily describe them as smirk-lines)
  2. “Incomparable.” He coughed, and then, with quick jerky motions, he loosened his black neck-cloths just the slightest bit; the Salvaras smirked charmingly together. “I’m reminded again why I have such success selling gentler liquors to you people.”
  3. Capa Barsavi reached out with his right hand and turned Locke’s head slightly upward by the chin, staring down into Locke’s eyes as he spoke. “How old are you, Locke Lamora? Six? Seven? Already responsible for a breach of the Peace, a burnt-down tavern, and six or seven deaths.” The Capa smirked. “I have assassins five times your age who should be so bold. Has Chains told you the way it is, with my city and my laws?”
  4.  “Consider it my challenge to you, to go hand in hand with my blessing.” Barsavi smirked.
  5.  “The threat of an empty stomach soon rekindles wisdom.” Chains smirked.
  6.  “I shall return very shortly,” said Locke, and he spun on his heel and made for the door. As he left the receiving room, he allowed himself a brief smirk of pleasure; the guards pinning Benjavier now looked almost as frightened of him as the waiter did.
  7.  The sun was pouring down light and heat with its usual intensity, and Locke was sweating hard inside his fine new clothes, but for a few moments he let a satisfied smirk creep onto his face.
  8.  “She is knitting, my lady,” said Reynart, with a smirk that told of some private joke.
  9.  “Now,” said Doña Sofia with a smirk, “it will either be Doña Vorchenza, or it will be a pair of young people doing something they should not….”
  10.  The Falconer stood in the center of the little room, smirking at Locke, his hand folded before him.
  11. “Oh no, Master Lamora.” Now the sorcerer positively smirked.

The disease apparently progresses with time. Red Seas Under Red Skies contains 14 smirks, while The Republic of Thieves features 19 for the reader’s edification and enjoyment.

I have a theory about why pinkshirts are so prone to having their characters not only smirking often, but smirking improperly. The former because it serves as a signpost to the reader that a cleverness has been committed, and the latter because it is the writer speaking through the character, communicating his sense of self-satisfaction with the character’s behavior in the scene.

It should surprise no one to discover there are no smirkings and quirkings to be found in Tolkien.

Geno-cultural eucivicism

The “culture is not genetic” crowd is finished, they simply don’t realize it yet because they a) have never thought logically through their position, and, b) are not up on the relevant science. This study of differing Han cognitive styles is but one of the many examples that is putting the coup de grace into the blank slate myth:

It has long been suggested that China’s reliance on rice fostered collectivist attitudes, and the Confucian emphasis on group allegiance and conformity. Such attitudes are even cited as explaining why Europe, rather than China, was the home of the industrial revolution: the revolution was based on scientific thinking, which is held to rely on individualism and openness to innovation. But the idea that growing rice promotes a group mentality remained speculation.

Talhelm and his colleagues in China decided to test it. They gave standard tests for cognitive style, individualism, and in-group loyalty to 1162 students in six cities across China, in wheat or rice-growing areas. All were Han Chinese, China’s dominant ethnic group, so other differences were hopefully minimal.

Nevertheless, they found many differences in cognitive style. For instance, students from all-wheat areas were 56 per cent more likely to think analytically than students from all-rice areas. For example, when asked to match the two closest of sheep, dog and grass, they grouped sheep and dog, which appear most similar. Students from rice-growing areas grouped sheep and grass, as these have the closest relationship to each other in real life, and to them this relationship mattered more than physical resemblance.

I read Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance yesterday, and while it was not without flaws, it does make for a useful roundup of the current state of genetic science as it presently relates to race, culture, and civilization. It is very nearly a restatement of my time-to-civilization hypothesis, and even provides some evidence in support of this.

Due to the intertwining of genetic microevolution, culture, and individual behavior, it is very likely that the differences in cognitive style observed are the result of genetic microevolution in the divergent Han populations brought about by the different growing cultures. It might be useful to think of these “cultural selections” as inadvertent genetic programming which tends to have either eucivic or dyscivic consequences over time.

I will get into this in considerably more detail over the next week, but after reading Wade’s book, it is apparent to me that geno-cultural eucivicism is likely to become one of the more important concepts of the 21st century.

Faith first

We need more Christian men willing to stand up and say the same:

With all of the grotesque things that can be seen and heard on
television today you would think there would be room for two twin
brothers who are faithful to our families, committed to biblical
principles, and dedicated professionals. If our faith costs us a
television show then so be it.

It’s not much of a loss. Let the wicked immerse themselves in their own fetid stew.

Bridgewater

I can live with the pick. While I’m dubious that Bridgewater is true starting material, it’s worth a shot and it’s not as if they threw away their top 10 pick; the Vikes badly need a linebacker. And Mike Mayock did have him as the best QB prospect, which isn’t nothing.

This is your NFL Draft discussion post.

Mailvox: making the choice

In response to yesterday’s column about it being time to choose your side, I heard from a reader who is interested in creating a short fiction companion site to Castalia House. While I don’t have the bandwidth to do much more than offer advice and perhaps some branding, I’m interested in finding out if there is anyone here interested in being involved in some way, shape, or form, be it editing, contributing short fiction, or helping with the site.

If so, mention it here, and if there are enough people that are interested, I’ll see about gathering the names and sending them to the individual concerned. There are a number of possibilities here I can imagine, from amping up Stupefying Stories to creating an entirely new short fiction brand. But the initial path will be determined by how many volunteers are willing to get involved.

As I told the guy, there is no money in short fiction these days. It has to be a mission and an objective to be pursued as an end in itself. I’d like to see it happen, as I can easily envision it being the NCAA to Castalia’s NFL, where writers can develop their storytelling and writing skills in the process of becoming publishable authors. But it has to be done right or there is no point in doing it at all.

The key to making things happen, of course, is simply jumping in and doing it. At Castalia, we had no plan. We had 10 ebooks, a name, a URL, and the support of the Dread Ilk. Three months later, we’ve sold or given away more than 15,000 books. So, I have no doubt that if the people here want to make it happen, we can collectively make it happen.

It would surprise me terribly if in five years, we have a fledgling Internet TV channel and production studio going. Or perhaps we will be petty warlords battling for local supremacy in various zombie-strewn post-civilization wastelands instead. But regardless, we have the advantage of knowing that even two men joined by their mutual allegiance to a certain Name can accomplish more than most people can imagine.

Postchristianity and pagan meat

It’s remarkable how fast Britain is sliding down the tube in its postchristian era.

Supermarkets were facing a backlash last night after claiming it was ‘unnecessary’ to spell out on labels whether meat comes from animals killed by religious slaughter. Religious groups from all faiths, vets and animal welfare groups joined calls for new labels to identify halal or kosher meat. But retailers claimed that shoppers do not care – and even argued that there is not enough room on packs for new labels.

Demands for improved labels follow widespread outrage over the disclosure in yesterday’s Daily Mail that millions of people are being sold halal and kosher meat without being told.

All the major supermarkets are selling New Zealand lamb killed according to halal ritual without providing labels. Separately, many restaurants such as Pizza Express, KFC and Subway are selling halal meat – mainly chicken – without printing the information on menus.

The retailers are full of it, of course. The reason they didn’t tell anyone in the first place is because most shoppers will not buy halal or kosher meat for one reason or another.

The anti-racists are reeling in shock and denial before the revelations of genetic science that have completely demolished their “blank slate” concept of race and culture. It won’t be long before the secularists will join them, as postchristianity underlines the fact that Western civilization depends entirely upon Christianity combined with the Graeco-Roman inheritance and not “Enlightenment values”, whatever they are supposed to be.

I’d be curious to know how many non-Christians here would genuinely prefer the collapse of Western civilization if that is the price that will have to be paid for ending the dominance of Christianity throughout Europe and America.

The Lizard Queen DQs herself

And CNN knows it:

On May 7th CNN’s John King played a video of Hillary Clinton saying, “We have to rein in what has become [an] almost article of faith, that anybody can have a gun anywhere, [at] any time.” King quickly added, “She’s talking in the context of mental health,” but then he expressed obvious concern that this soundbite is going to make a great anti-Hillary commercial in southern Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and North Carolina, among other places.

Notice how the mainstream media will SHAMELESSLY lie on behalf of its favored candidates. Clinton wasn’t just “talking in the context of mental health”, she was talking about the expansion of concealed carry laws. While she did begin her answer in response to a question about suicide, her answer was a more broadly expansive one. But you can bet that we’re going to here the false “context” excuse when she gets nailed with her own words on the campaign trail.

Never, ever, trust a single word out of a leftist’s mouth at face value. I cannot stress this enough. They don’t believe in objective truth and they certainly feel no obligation to tell it.

The choosing time

With the quasi-completion of the Left’s long march through the media institutions, everything traditional, Christian, or moral is now effectively banned from mainstream publication and broadcast. We have two choices. Abandon our standards in order to get along or begin developing our own distribution channels and refuse to participate in the mainstream’s headlong dive into utter depravity and appeal to the lowest possible denominator:

After the group Right Wing Watch reported the twins who star in HGTV’s recently greenlit reality series Flip It Forward are anti-gay activists, the network said this morning it had given the hook to the series, which was set to debut in October.

This is why we need to develop our own content. This is why we need to develop our own distribution channels. This is why we need to do what the Left has done, which is to choose our side and relentlessly reject everything about the enemy. Because they are not merely the opposition, they are the self-declared enemy.

Don’t pride yourself on your tolerance of them because tolerance is not a virtue and tolerance of the wicked is a sin. Don’t try to separate yourself from others on your side in the hopes that they will spare you, because that separation is exactly what they require in order to divide and conquer.

Stop kidding yourself. You’re not disarming any of your foes with the disclaimer “I don’t agree with everything X says”. All that amounts to is a futile plea to not be damned by the only association that matters to them: do you not understand that by the lights of the pointing-and-shrieking pack, if you are not pointing and shrieking with them you are against them?

I don’t agree with everything that anyone says. For that matter, I don’t even agree with everything I have ever said. But I know who is on the side of light, truth, and reason and who is on the side of darkness, lies, and madness. Compromise with the latter at your peril.