TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN

Castalia House is deeply honored to announce the publication of what we believe is the most important book about science fiction in years, TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright. The 369-page book is comprised of sixteen essays originally written by Mr. Wright for his journal, which have been edited, and in a number of cases, collated from more than one journal posting, by Mr. Wright.

The essays are brilliant and thought-provoking. They inspire, they inform, they educate, they entertain, and they will more than likely enrage a few readers. They provide fascinating insight into the mind and methods of one of science fiction’s greatest living masters. From beginning to end, Mr. Wright shows himself to be as able an essayist as he is a novelist.

Following an introduction by science fiction author Michael Flynn, Mr. Wright addresses everything from technological transhumanity to theological Gnosticism. He examines SF authors from H.G. Wells to Ted Chiang, and explains why it is A.E. van Vogt, and not Arthur C. Clarke or Ray Bradbury, who is the third of the Big Three of science fiction. And he explains why science fiction is fundamentally more important to humanity than what presently passes itself off as mainstream literature.

In “Science Fiction: What is it Good For?” Wright writes:  

“Stories serve several quotidian purposes. I listed them above: they are fables to instruct the young and epics to preserve the memory of the great, and ghost stories to tell about campfires to give us all a sense of proportion and remind us (like the charioteers of Caesars during their triumphs and ovations) that all men are mortal. But there is something more that they serve, a purpose which is utterly unworldly, and utterly inexplicable to the Morlocks, who have no imagination, and need none.
 
“We sons of Adam are exiles here on this world. It does not suit us. We are not comfortable here, and those who say they are comfortable in this world of injustice and disease and death are not more sane and more well adapted to the environment than we who dream; they are merely inert in their souls, too dull to hear the horns of Elfland softly blowing.”

To read TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN is to not only hear the horns of Elfland blowing, but to understand why they must be blown.

In the company with TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN, we are also announcing the publication of a second ebook by Mr. Wright. AWAKE IN THE NIGHT is the first novella that is contained in the anthology-novel AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND. We are publishing it separately in order to be able to periodically give it away via Kindle Select and thereby introduce unsuspecting individuals to the epic horrors and forlorn hopes of the Night Land. It is also an attempt to address the surprising price elasticity of ebooks, as we have noticed that more than a few people prefer to take a chance on a $2.99 ebook that they will not take on a much longer $4.99 ebook. Since we are but humble servants of the market, we are happy to accommodate those economic preferences.

Exploding orthodoxy

Charles Murray anticipates that “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History” by Nicholas Wade, is going to explode more equalitarian minds than his own landmark work did:

The orthodoxy’s equivalent of the Nicene Creed has two scientific
tenets. The first, promulgated by geneticist Richard Lewontin in “The
Apportionment of Human Diversity” (1972), is that the races are so close
to genetically identical that “racial classification is now seen to be
of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance.” The second,
popularized by the late paleontologist
Stephen Jay Gould,
is that human evolution in everything but cosmetic differences
stopped before humans left Africa, meaning that “human equality is a
contingent fact of history,” as he put it in an essay of that title in
1984.

Since the sequencing of the human genome in 2003, what is known by geneticists has increasingly diverged from this orthodoxy, even as social scientists and the mainstream press have steadfastly ignored the new research. Nicholas Wade, for more than 20 years a highly regarded science writer at the New York Times, has written a book that pulls back the curtain….

At the heart of the book, stated quietly but with
command of the technical literature, is a bombshell. It is now known
with a high level of scientific confidence that both tenets of the
orthodoxy are wrong.

Mr. Lewontin turns out to have been mistaken
on several counts, but the most obvious is this: If he had been right,
then genetic variations among humans would not naturally sort people
into races and ethnicities. But, as Mr. Wade reports, that’s exactly
what happens. A computer given a random sampling of bits of DNA that are
known to vary among humans—from among the millions of them—will cluster
them into groups that correspond to the self-identified race or
ethnicity of the subjects. This is not because the software assigns the
computer that objective but because those are the clusters that provide
the best statistical fit. If the subjects’ ancestors came from all over
the inhabited world, the clusters that first emerge will identify the
five major races: Asians, Caucasians, sub-Saharan Africans, Native
Americans and the original inhabitants of Australia and Papua New
Guinea. If the subjects all come from European ancestry, the clusters
will instead correspond to Italians, Germans, French and the rest of
Europe’s many ethnicities. Mr. Lewontin was not only wrong but
spectacularly wrong. It appears that the most natural of all ways to
classify humans genetically is by the racial and ethnic groups that
humans have identified from time out of mind.

Stephen Jay Gould’s
assurance that significant evolution had stopped before humans left
Africa has also proved to be wrong—not surprisingly, since it was so
counterintuitive to begin with.

Those who still stubbornly cling to their antiscientific belief in human equality are the Flat Earth Society of our day. There is truly nothing surprising here except the name of the author; for a New York Times columnist to abjure liberal race orthodoxy is like a sitting cardinal of the Catholic Church publishing a book declaring that God does not exist.

All the dogma goodthink with which we were raised, all the statements about “race is only skin deep” and “it’s not genetics, its the culture” and “deep inside we’re all the same” are nothing more than children’s tale meant to obscure the frightening truth. Science is gradually peeling away the orthodox falsehoods; soon it will be impossible to conceal the important and necessary discussions about reality under nonsensical accusations of racism.

It will be interesting to see how science-loving equalitarians react to the discovery that they will have to choose between science and their faith. I expect that most of them will react as they did when economics made incontrovertibly clear the intrinsic contradictions of socialism and stubbornly cling to their antiscientific beliefs without admitting that they have openly rejected science.

Criticism

I found this pair of tweets by government-funded wannabe Damien Walter to be more than a little amusing:

You should feel a little pity for Vox Day. He will never have the self-awareness to admit he can’t write, and so he’ll never learn.

I stayed in bed TWO WHOLE DAYS to read the 5th and final volume of The Malloreon. Felt grief, like all my friends had died, when I finished.

It’s always fascinating to see this sort of supercilious superiority from people who aren’t able to publish and sell books themselves. About the only way I could be less concerned about the opinion of someone who considers David Eddings to be the crème de la crème of literature would be if he also turned out to be a particular admirer of Dan Brown.

It would be bad enough if it was The Belgariad that Walter had so admired. My first thought after reading The Malloreon was: “I liked it better when it was called The Belgariad.” My second thought was: “How did he talk his publisher into paying him twice for writing the same thing?”

And then, there is this:

As far as fantasy novels go, I think Pratchett is a better role model for new writers than Tolkien.

The Colour of Magic vs The Hobbit. Ye cats. You have to feel sorry for the poor would-be writers being taught by this poseur. In any event, there is only one real answer to these anklebiters, and that is to simply keep doing what you’re doing. That’s the beauty of writing and publishing these days. You don’t need anyone’s permission anymore.

In any event, since I have the very good fortune to read some of John C. Wright’s work fresh from the pen, it’s not as if I’m under any illusions with regards to my own writing.

If you don’t mind

We are going to be announcing a pair of John C. Wright books this week, although only one of them is going to be of interest to the many of you who have already had the good fortune to read his previous release. As you may have noticed on the sidebar, Castalia is releasing AWAKE IN THE NIGHT as a stand-alone novella for the purpose of raising awareness of the excellent AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND via the KDP Select program.

However, since it is a different listing with a different ASIN, AWAKE IN THE NIGHT presently lacks reviews. So, I’d like to ask those of you who reviewed the complete collection to copy the relevant aspects of your review to the listing for the single novella as well, if you don’t mind. The sooner the better, if you happen to have the time.

Weaponizing girls

It astonishes me that liberals such as Nicholas Kristof can’t seem to understand that they are metaphorically painting targets on the very young women they wish to proclaim off-bounds when they openly advocate female education as the most effective means of destroying rival cultures.

DOZENS
of heavily armed terrorists rolled into the sleepy little town one
night in a convoy of trucks, buses and vans. They made their way to the
girls’ boarding school. The
high school girls, asleep in their dormitory, awoke to gunfire. The
attackers stormed the school, set it on fire, and, residents said, then
herded several hundred terrified girls into the vehicles — and drove off
and vanished.

That
was April 15 in northern Nigeria. The girls were kidnapped by an
extremist Muslim group called Boko Haram, whose name in the Hausa
language means “Western education is a sin.”

The attack in Nigeria is part of a global backlash against girls’ education by extremists. The Pakistani Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai in the head at age 15 because she advocated for girls’ education. Extremists threw acid in the faces of girls walking to school in Afghanistan. And in Nigeria, militants destroyed 50 schools last year alone.

If the girls aren’t rescued, “no parent will allow their female child to go to school,” Hadiza Bala Usman, who has led protests in Nigeria on behalf of the missing girls, warned in a telephone interview….

The
best tool to fight extremism is education, especially of girls — and
that means ensuring that it is safe to study. The greatest threat to
militancy in the long run comes not from drones but from girls with
schoolbooks.

“These
abducted schoolgirls are my sisters,” Malala told me in an email from
Britain, where she is recovering from the Taliban attack, “and I call on
the international community and the government of Nigeria to take
action and save my sisters.” She added: “It should be our duty to speak
up for our brothers and sisters in Nigeria who are in a very difficult
situation.”

It is apparent that the cunning plan of Western liberals to destroy the Dar al-Islam  by pushing secularized Western education on Islamic women has been comprehended by the strategists of the global Caliphate. The jihadists are responding in two ways, by infiltrating and taking over educational facilities in the West and by destroying Western educational facilities in the South and East. The very name of the Nigerian group illustrates that they grasp the Western tactic.

Now liberals like Kristof are aghast at the fact that the very young women they intentionally turned into cultural weapons on behalf of their secular ideals are being targeted for enslavement and destruction. But what else did they expect? It would appear they were misled by the widespread failure of the Christians of the West to respond to the successful capture of their daughters by the secular establishment into thinking that the Muslims of the South and East would be similarly complacent.

If Western secularists actually gave a damn about women, (and the tens of millions of aborted young girls around the world strongly suggests they don’t), then they should have thought twice before weaponizing young women and turning them into legitimate targets in the violent clash of rival cultures.

Some of my dimmer critics have been foolish enough to claim that I support the actions of the Islamic militants in targeting young women. I do not. In fact, I am a far more staunch opponent of the militants’ objectives than those secular would-be dimmis will ever be. Unlike them, I will never submit. Unlike them, I have a rational perspective on strategy. I understand that if you make something a weapon, your enemy will have to be cowardly, self-defeating, or a fool to refrain from destroying it.

And Islam was weakening its enemies by capturing its youth long before Western secularists had the bright idea of taking over the school systems. But at least the equalitarians should be pleased to know that it is not only boys who are now able to pursue a career as a janissary catamite.

Once broken, the rules are a dead letter

The illegitimate US-backed government of Ukraine doesn’t seem to grasp that it can’t appeal to a nonexistent government authority:

Separatists, many of them of Russian descent, believe that the government in Kiev is illegitimate since it formed after what they call the illegal ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych in February. They have demanded that no one in Kiev should control their territory, saying that power and responsibility should rest with them or their Russian ally.

Officials in Kiev have the opposite view. They accuse Moscow of meddling, in its support of separatists and more, trying to break up Ukraine and, perhaps, take over parts or all of it. The government explains their military and security actions in the east and south are aimed at a common goal: to keep their Eastern European nation whole and united.

Referring to his call with Lavrov on Saturday, Kerry said he stressed the United States and allies’ desire “for Russia to withdraw support from the separatists, … assist in removing people from the buildings (and begin) to de-escalate the situation.”

Now, if the West backed the Ukrainian coup because it wants a war with Russia for one reason or another, their actions make sense. But if they simply wanted to pull Ukraine out of the Russian orbit while avoiding military action, they appear to have badly miscalculated.

No one, in Eastern or Western Ukraine, views the current government as legitimate, for the very good reason that it is not. The separatists are in the legal right, and Russia has as much right to govern their territory as the officials in Kiev do. Since they prefer the Russians, under the right of self-determination, the USA should, by rights, be backing Russian intervention.

It is not, obviously, because it supported the coup in the first place, and that’s giving the USA the benefit of the doubt, and assuming, contra some indications, that it was not primarily responsible for the coup in the first place. But regardless, making a public appeal to a nonexistent government authority that no one recognizes isn’t fooling anyone and it isn’t clever, it simply makes US diplomacy look as if it is being run by low-IQ amateurs.

Perhaps that is the idea and there are much larger plans within plans being played out here. I’m not privy to such lofty discussions. But if I lived in Taiwan, I’d be leaving right around now. And if I lived in Japan, I’d be looking to move to the countryside. Trusting these masters of geopolitics to provide protection from China, even if war in Ukraine is somehow avoided, seems like a bad idea.

UPDATE: The Russian warning could not be much more overt:

Speaking in Moscow yesterday, Mr Peskov said: “People are calling in despair, asking for help. The overwhelming majority demand Russian help. All these calls are reported to [President] Vladimir Putin.” He made clear that the Russian government blamed the West for the worsening situation, while stressing the need for “dialogue” towards a peaceful resolution. “Kiev and its Western sponsors are practically provoking the bloodshed and bear direct responsibility for it. Those who recognise this junta as a legal power become an accomplice to this crime.”

The Ukraine “government” in Kiev isn’t legitimate by any standard of which I am aware, and those supporting it are, as the Russians have correctly pointed out, going to be seen as responsible for provoking the ongoing bloodshed.

UPDATE 2: This bodes well:

Citing unnamed German security sources, Bild am Sonntag said the CIA
and FBI agents were helping Kiev end the rebellion in the east of
Ukraine and set up a functioning security structure. It said the agents were not directly involved in fighting with
pro-Russian militants. “Their activity is limited to the capital Kiev,”
the paper said.

I imagine the White House doesn’t want to see CIA and FBI agents captured and paraded before the global media. They had better hope the Russians don’t have anyone in Kiev.

Secrets under the sea

Keep this historical justification for American involvement in WWI in mind when you are tempted to buy into the Official Story of 9/11, the use of gas weapons by the Syrian government, and the perfidious behavior of the Russians in Ukraine:

It became a symbol of brutal German aggression – an unprovoked torpedo attack on a passenger cruise liner during the First World War.

The infamous sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, killing more than 1,000 innocent victims, sparked outrage in Britain and America. Public opinion in the States swung against the Kaiser – eventually helping President Woodrow Wilson take the country into the war in 1917.

But 70 years after the ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat eight miles off the coast of Ireland, British Government officials feared the secret of the tragedy would ‘blow up on us’ when a group of divers planned to search the wreck.

The German high command always maintained the steam liner, traveling between New York and Liverpool, was carrying explosives destined for the Western Front concealed as cheese or casks of beef. But ministers at the time rejected the claim and used the attack to whip up public anger against the Germans….

In a secret memo, Noel Marshall, from the Foreign Office’s North American department, said: ‘Successive British governments have always maintained that there was no munitions on board the Lusitania (and that the Germans were therefore in the wrong to claim to the contrary as an excuse for sinking the ship).

‘The facts are that there is a large amount of ammunition in the wreck, some of which is highly dangerous.’ He added: ‘I am left with the uneasy feeling that this subject may yet – literally – blow up on us.’

The more that history reveals, the more it becomes clear that there has likely never been a foreign intervention that can be justified by its historical justification. Not the Spanish-American War, not World War I, not World War II, and not whatever inventive justification will be served up for World War III.

A tale of four reviews

It’s as expected as it is informative that “Opera Vita Aeterna” is meeting with entirely different receptions depending upon the reader.  For example, here is a review of the Hugo-nominated novelette from one Nerdvanel:

Apparently “Opera Vita Aeterna” is totally ungrammatical in Latin. I didn’t notice any spelling errors in the story itself, but really, having errors like that in the title is bad enough. People who know anything about Latin should know that it’s an inflected language and therefore those inflections should be paid attention to if a grammatical result is desired. I don’t know if Vox is really that ignorant or if he just doesn’t care.

Then to the epub file… Opera Vita Aeterna has a cover page. On it is a 3d-render of an ominous castle, probably meant to be the good guy monastery in the story. When you look closely, several interesting features appear. For one thing, the castle seems to have been carved from rock as a single piece. They should have used a stone texture that had cracks in it to simulate the castle having been constructed from hewn blocks, assuming that was what had happened. Then, the castle itself is terribly designed. The architect must have been incompetent beyond belief. The castle is incredibly impractical while at the same time being really ugly. I don’t know how those side towers in particular got okayed or whether the explanation for the disparate window sizes is that the perspective is all off or if those lower windows are just unreasonably huge. Also, it looks like the designers had heard that castles have crenelated fortifications but don’t know what they’re for or what they should look like.

The lighting is really weird too. It looks like the inhabitants of the castle like to point multiple searchlights (not pictured) at the clouds. They also have other light sources (also not pictured) pointed at the castle. The light looks cold and artificial, so the universe in which the castle is situated must have at least 20th Century technology or else magic to spare on frivolous things. Neither is exactly consistent with the story.

But enough about the cover. What comes next is a series of praise blurbs for another book by Vox, A Throne of Bones.

The esteemed sources providing the blurbs:
– Two self-published authors I had never heard of, giving faint praise
– Three unpopular blogs ideologically close to Vox, one of which currently has a post on the front page talking about how Vox’s racist statements totally aren’t racist
– Two anonymous Amazon reviews that could have been written by just anyone

Some of the more notable contents in the blurbs:
– Putting Vox on a level with Tolkien (x1)
– Putting Vox on a level with Martin (x2)
– Saying that Vox is better than Martin (x2)

You can judge for yourself how accurate those are.

This was pretty long, so let’s call this post an introduction and move to the novella itself in the next post.

The story begins in what in this world is called “853 Anno Salutis Humanae”, “in the Year of the Human(e) Salvation” according to my research. The term should probably be “Anno Salutis Hominum”, “in the Year of the Salvation of Humans”, but apparently looking that up was too difficult. “Humanus” is an adjective, not a noun. Well, trying to be gracious here, perhaps the author was trying to imply that some unspecified but important salvation had been a humane thing to do or done by humans or that Not-Jesus had been all man and zero God. I think there’s no chance of that though.

You see, Vox Day is a Christian apologist. It would be heretical to have his Not-Jesus not be fully man and fully God as the real-world doctrine has it. Also, now that I pay attention to it, I see that the story has a lot of questionable Latin in it.

And by the way, speaking of potential heresy, I think it’s worth mentioning that Vox Day’s name can be translated as “Voice of Godde”. Vox Day is in English pronounced the same as “Vox Dei”, which is Latin for “Voice of God”. That sounds just a tad arrogant. I wonder what the Inquisition would have thought of it. It’s like Vox is implying that all of his opinions are God’s opinions. But more than that, Vox is making it sound like he is channeling God and Vox’s writings are holy scripture. I thought humility was an important Christian virtue.

We finally get to the first paragraph, and it contains some really “good” material.

Quote : The pallid sun was descending, its ineffective rays no longer sufficient to hold it up in the sky or to penetrate the northern winds that gathered strength with the whispered promises of the incipient dark.

Apparently in this world suns are held up by radiation pressure. It also sounds like it should be dark. Electromagnetic radiation being unable to somehow get through thin air should have that effect, at least in a logical world.

Also, I wonder if the winds whisper different things during different times of the day or if the winds’ verbal communication is limited to always repeating things like “Daaaark… Whooooosh… Daaaark…” Winds shouldn’t have a brain, after all.

Quote : The first of the two moons was already visible high above the mountains. Soon Arbhadis, Night’s Mistress, would unveil herself as well.

Apparently moon rays are more effectual than sun rays.

I don’t know if Arbhadis is the second moon or what. We’re never told. In case it is, I wonder what the first moon is called. Is it Night’s Wife, Night’s Other Mistress, or what? Anyway, apparently Arbhadis is already on the scene, just hidden by clouds, unless you think those mountains qualify as a metaphorical, overly thick veil. Any of this is however doesn’t matter one little bit as far as the story goes. We’ll never hear of Arbhadis again. After this point the author largely stops his efforts to write in an evocative language. Too bad for the lost humor value.

There is more, but you can read it there. So, that’s one perspective. I will merely note that the castle on the cover is not the monastery, it is Raknarborg, the castle in which the events of “The Last Witchking”, the title story of collection in which “Opera Vita Aeterna” was published, take place. I would think that the difference between a castle-fortress and a small rural abbey were obvious, but then, I would also have thought the difference between Latina and italiano are obvious too. In ogni caso, here is a second review, from Chris Gerrib:

Overall, the story is not as bad as I feared, which is small praise
indeed for a Hugo-nominated work. I found the world-building a bit
jarring. How much of that is my dislike for bog-standard Dark Ages
European fantasy I can’t really tell you. I do think the payoff – elf
finishes book – was too light for the story. I had no emotional
attachment to any character, so that didn’t help matters. I also
thought the elf’s response to the slaughter of his friends was weak – no
guilt at not being there to help or blaming himself for putting them at
risk, for example.

And for a different perspective, here is a third review:

It is absolutely brilliant, one of the best short stories I have read in
years. This is why, no matter how much I might disagree with Vox Day
(or, you know, agree with people who think he can be an asshole), I
can’t help but respect the man. He understands pathos, tragedy, and
redemption in a way few modern authors do, and “Opera Vita Aeterna” is a
short piece of great beauty. The pacing was spot on and the emotional
beats hit perfectly.

Finally, a fourth review, which goes into a similar level of detail to the first review, only to reach very different conclusions.

In today’s bloodthirsty fantasy genre, all too often “guy rapes his sister next to the corpse of their murdered child” (and sadly, I’m not exaggerating) is considered the epitome of high-brow artistic sophistication. I find it encouraging and refreshing to encounter an author like Vox Day, who can craft a subtle, complex, and powerful story through the old-fashioned method of plot and character development, rather than falling back on the shock value of depravity to stimulate his readers. Vox Day has helped restore my faith in the possibility of quality contemporary fantasy.

To that end, I’ve signed up as a supporter of LONCON3. For $43, I will be a member of the group that gets to vote on the Hugo award. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to review the other nominated short stories to see if they can exceed the high bar set by Vox Day. I’m also looking forward to reviewing the nominees in the other
categories. Fans and readers who have been turned off by the state of
contemporary science fiction and fantasy may wish to reconsider their
decision. A brash crew of insurgents, like Vox Day, working largely
outside the mainstream publishing industry, are in the process of
reinventing the genre.

What explains the difference between these extraordinarily different reviews of exactly the same literary work? Is it all down to politics? I don’t think that is entirely the case. Certainly politics plays a part in it; it is obvious that the first reviewer is actively hunting for things to criticize. A brief mention of the world’s two moons is hardly the equivalent of Chekov’s Gun. What did he expect to see, Arbhadis colliding spectacularly with the first moon and a chunk of the resulting rubble plunging to earth just in time to kill the evil, hypocritical abbot before he could murder the elf in reaction to his self-loathing over having succumbed to the temptation of elven beauty?

I think the main reason for the fear and loathing seen here is that having amputated themselves from the source from which all love, awe, and wonder spring, they have no basis upon which to judge anything but mechanics and adherence to their ever-mutating principles of the moment. If you’re looking for  literary pyrotechnics or the message that [insert minority of choice] can do anything that straight white men can do, only better, you’re bound to be disappointed. Although I will say that if you don’t see any humor in an overly literal concept of solar supports in a medievalesque story, well, I can’t help you there.

Nerdvanel says he is content to let others judge for themselves whether A THRONE OF BONES is better than A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. I concur, and I’m likewise content to leave it to others to judge for themselves which of these four reviews is the most accurate.

Takes one to know one

It’s a bit ironic and more than a little morbidly amusing to see the descendents of the secular activists that successfully infiltrated and overturned Christian education across the West wringing their hands over Islamic activists doing precisely the same thing:

Headteachers are warning that schools across Britain have been targeted in an alleged Islamist plot to take over classrooms. The National Association of Head Teachers said it had ‘serious concerns’ about attempts to ‘alter the character’ of at least six schools.

It also warned that efforts to infiltrate classrooms were not limited to Birmingham and were likely to be affecting other major towns and cities. The union said ‘concerted efforts’ had been made to infiltrate state schools and run them according to strict Islamic principles. While the body did not name the additional areas affected, there are concerns over schools in Bradford, Manchester and parts of East London, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Russell Hobby, NAHT general secretary, said some teachers were being appointed because of their Muslim faith rather than their skills. There was also evidence of ‘pressure’ being brought to bear on heads to adopt ‘certain philosophies and approaches’…. Meanwhile, it has been claimed that dozens of teachers pushed out of schools by an alleged Islamist takeover plot are too afraid to speak out because of gagging orders.

Meanwhile, in the USA, people are being pushed out of their public and private sector jobs by politically correct equalitarians for a failure to obediently submit to the currently dictated goodthink.

Perhaps it the time is approaching for Christians to adopt the same strategy. After all, we can do inquisitions and crusades a damn sight better than they can.

Transhumanity draws near

We’re very close to releasing TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright. You can, if you are so inclined, have an early look at the cover along with the Introduction by Michael Flynn at Mr. Wright’s site. It is a selection of the very best of Mr. Wright’s reliably brilliant essays.