Tag: books

Correction

The LA Review of Books simply doesn’t know how to read and doesn’t know what it is talking about.

The Far Right believes that the future belongs to them. In much reactionary discourse, only white men have any meaningful ability to imagine the future. According to this worldview, white people possess a racially unique capacity for speculation, including rational planning, counterfactual imagination, and inspired innovation. At the same time, the Far Right claims that only white men have the discipline, intelligence, and foresight to realize this future. This ideology holds that whiteness is a potential for greatness, including the inborn ability to build a high-tech society. In other words, whiteness is speculative to the alt-right: it possesses a promissory value far in excess of any white men’s actual achievements. Some fascist thinkers have gone so far as to suggest that science fiction is an inherently white genre. For example, Theodore Beale (a.k.a. Vox Day), the leader of the Rabid Puppies fan group, claimed that increased racial diversity would ruin the genre because, in his view, people of color could not possibly understand the achievements of white science fiction authors. Despite the widespread success of speculative authors of color in recent decades, there are fascists who hold that nonwhite people are genetically incapable of imagining and inhabiting science-fictional futures.

  1. The future does belong to the so-called “Far Right”. The Left and the Center-Right subscribe to observably and objectively false beliefs, don’t have enough children to replace themselves, don’t have any lasting principles, and can’t even tell the difference between a man and a woman anymore. Their ideas and philosophies are not only bankrupt, they are literally dying out.
  2. The entire history of the world clearly demonstrates that only European people create and maintain European-style societies and civilizations. Any Post-European North American societies will bear as little resemblance to America as America did to the pre-European native tribal societies. This really isn’t that hard. That being said, the future is actually much more likely to be dominated by a Chinese “Far Right” than a white one given the military, industrial, and technological trends, mostly because China is not infected with either Enlightenment values or a satanic elite. The dirt is not, and has never been, magic.
  3. Science fiction is, and has always been, an inherently white male genre. There were virtually no female authors who qualified to join SFWA until the bylaws were changed to permit fantasy authors to join it. Diversity and inclusion have devastated the science fiction world, to the point that none of the current nominees for the various science fiction awards even qualifies as science fiction of any kind. There is nothing wrong with the fantasy romances that female authors prefer to write, but they aren’t science fiction even if Tor or some other former SF publisher attempts to market them as such.
  4. I claimed that increased racial diversity would ruin the genre and I have been proven absolutely correct. There is no objective metric by which it can be claimed that diversity and inclusion have improved it in any way. Fewer readers, lower average advances, fewer book sales, fewer authors published by publishers, fewer bestsellers, and so forth. Diversity and inclusion are not the only cause of the decline, but they have observably contributed to it.
  5. It is not my view that people of color could not possibly understand the achievements of white science fiction authors. Whether people of color can understand those achievements or not is irrelevant, the point is that they are not interested in replicating them. It is, however, my observation that N.K. Jemisin, the affirmative-action author donated multiple Hugo awards for Best Science Fiction novel for her remarkable feat of writing while black and female, declared “Speculative fiction is at its core syncretic; this stuff doesn’t come out of nowhere. And it certainly didn’t spring solely from the imaginations of a bunch of beardy old middle-class middle-American guys in the 1950s.” Perhaps, but science fiction definitely isn’t springing from the non-white, non-male, diverse authors of the 2020s because they prefer writing non-science fiction works. Are we seriously supposed to pretend this wasn’t obvious from the start?
  6. Also, I’m not a fascist. If I were, I very much doubt I would be a welcome guest on CGTN. I’m not a communist either, but one could at least produce a modicum of evidence for that.
  7. What widespread success? If all of these award-winning authors of color are so successful, why are they constantly crying about their lack of book sales on social media?

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Shots Fired! Shots Fired!

Much like the way the air grows still and the sky takes on a greenish tinge, one can almost feel the inevitable Facebook rant coming.

With Larry Correia announcing he would be launching a Kickstarter for his new Ark Press venture, a Baen Books insider reached out to Fandom Pulse to vent how similar the series seemed to their hit with him, Monster Hunter International. With Correia taking his own successful work and doing a spin on it for Ark Press, one has to wonder with AI writing becoming as good as it is, who can do MHI better: AI, or Larry Correia himself?

Artificial Intelligence has become increasingly good at writing with giant leaps up in the technological prowess over the last year, especially with the help of Claude Sonnet and Claude Opus 4.0 delivering prose levels many never thought possible.

Vox Day has been experimenting with AI to no small degree, making full albums out of music on Suno and testing the capabilities on short stories ranging from styles of Neil Gaiman, to John Scalzi, and even Larry Correia, pioneering the future in AI art.

Meanwhile, in traditional publishing, it appears as if Baen Books is in massive trouble as Correia sees the proverbial writing on the wall and has taken moves to diversify out of his long-time publisher and now announced he’s going to be kickstarting a series, American Paladin, that sounds very similar to Monster Hunter International, his long-time gun urban fantasy series that’s been a hit with Baen over the years.

Ark Press, his new publisher which is owned by mega-billionaire Peter Thiel, seemed to want an MHI-style story out of Correia to launch the press, and they’ve advertised its similarities as well.

Since Correia is taking his hit series and giving a new take on it, the question is, can AI build a better modern iteration of MHI than Larry Correia himself can given its new found prowess?

Vox Day has already been working on this with a serialized novel called Monster Control Inc. In this, he’s trained AI to write in Larry Correia’s style to provide a signature version that reads enough like Correia that if you didn’t know it was written by AI, you might think it’s Correia’s novels.

Just to be clear, Monster Control Incorporated utilizes a judicious blend of literary seasonings, one of which is Larry Correia’s. But because the objective was to utilize a Gamma protagonist, and since Larry is the most Delta author who ever wrote a Delta self-insert since Louis Lamour laid down his prolific pen, it was necessary to bring in other elements in order to capture that inimitable Gamma snark, passive-aggressiveness, and relentless obsession with unattainable women.

I also didn’t think that Larry’s signature gun porn was desirable in this case, although I certainly did utilize that in my non-AI Quantum Mortis novel, A Man Disrupted, and to such an extent that more than one review even asserted that I had outcorreia’d Correia himself, although I think that was not actually true and was merely an overenthusiastic response to my incorporation of orbital artillery into a police procedural.

It will be an interesting test, though. Can one of the leading critics of textual AI write a better pastiche of his own style than an AI can? Read Monster Control Incorporated and find out!

I’ve been walking my crush home since last week to protect her from all the creeps walking around. Next week I’m going to introduce myself to her.

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Baen Books is Dead

Larry Correia has finally embraced crowdfunding and independent publishing:

Larry Correia has made waves this year, breaking from Baen Books for his next releases with Ark Press and Aethon Books, diversifying away from a company that seems to be in trouble, and now he’s revealed he’s going to Kickstarter for his new book as well as revealing the name and cover.

While Larry Correia may have been one of the last traditional publishing authors in speculative fiction to make money, he’s now embraced the future of indie publishing in many ways. He’s moved his next releases to two different upstart presses who are making waves in modern fiction, and is now announcing he’s going to be Kickstarting his new book, as so many others have been doing to great success in recent years.

This comes soon after he announced he wouldn’t be working on new Monster Hunter International material anytime soon, the series that has kept both him and Baen Books afloat over the last several years. With Ark Press having poached several editors and Baen Books’ top talent in Larry Correia, it’s created a number of industry rumblings about the future of the company.

Now, Correia has fueled the flame, showing that independent releases and crowdfunding are the future of publishing, adopting the model that many have succeeded in.

It’s obviously not Larry’s intention to harm Baen. And he owes them absolutely nothing. I think he’s going to absolutely crush it, and well he should! But the indisputable fact is that aside from signing Larry, Baen did a terrible job of replacing the previous generation of authors; the authors that it should have pursued, it spurned for political and ideological reasons, while it signed a panoply of mediocrities who could never have even begun to replace the likes of Jerry Pournelle, John Ringo, and other Baen greats.

The usual suspects can posture and bluster all they like, but I would not expect Baen Books to survive as an operative concern for another 18 months.

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War in the Middle Ages

There are three different versions of Charles Oman’s THE ART OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES. The first is the 134-page essay which was published by Oxford University in 1885. The second is the expansion of that essay into a complete volume of 668 pages that was published by Methuen Press in 1898. And the third is the two-volume set, also published by Methuen in 1924 before being republished by Greenhill in 1991.

It is the single-volume edition that we will be publishing in a beautiful leatherbound edition for Castalia History Book 10. For more details, visit the Castalia Library substack.

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Cathedra Book 2

We’ve got books for all three subscription series to announce, so we’ll start with announcing Castalia Cathedra Book 2, which is PRAYER AND THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE by St. Thomas Aquinas. Translated by Hugh Pope.

For more information, an example of the interior layout, and an excerpt from the Introduction, visit the Castalia Library stack. Tomorrow, we’ll announce the next History book, and Wednesday, the next Library book.

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Last Day for Cathedra

\This is just a note to remind those who are interested in the Castalia Cathedra subscription that this is the final day to subscribe and get a copy of Book #1: THE EVERLASTING MAN by GK Chesterton.

Book #2 in the subscription will be announced tomorrow. I’m also pleased to be able to say that the initial print run will be in the 400 to 500 range, although we cannot calculate a precise number until the initial six-month period comes to an end. I can also say that we will be making use of the higher-quality pigskin leather for the Cathedra line.

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Yes, I Do Read Screencaps

Given the sad loss of great sports-related weekly columnists from the recent past, like Peter King, Dr. Z, and even Bill Simmons, who, though still alive and well, is more a media mogul than a writer now, the best column currently running is Screencaps on Outkick, which is amusingly eclectic and keeps regular tabs on everything from bikinis to books. I responded to Joe’s recent call for library pictures, which will look familiar to most Darkstream viewers, and he featured it along with one of Castalia Library’s upcoming books.

You just never know who’s reading Screencaps

— Vox writes: 

If it doesn’t have leather books, is it even a proper library?

The non-leather books include complete sets of The Cambridge Medieval History series, 1911 edition, and The Cambridge Ancient History series 1928 edition. There is also a set of the original Dispatches and Letters of Lord Nelson, published in 1845, and one of the 300 original copies of The Bibliography of Military Books up to 1612 published in 1900.

I run one of the world’s only leather book binderies, so we buy a lot of rare books in order to make perfect high-end reproductions of them, like the first edition of Pride and Prejudice and the first complete English
translation of The Tale of Genji. We do high-end books in cowhide and pigskin, and even higher-end ones in goatskin with real gold. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send you one. I’ve also included a
picture of the book we’re currently binding, part of a two-volume set for Cambridge University Press.

Speaking of the bindery, we hope to have some excellent news for everyone very soon, although unfortunately, it appears that we have become even more exclusive than we were last week when that note was sent, as the world’s number of leather book binderies just shrank by one with the closure of Maltby’s Bookbinders and the Green Street Bindery, an Oxford-based bindery originally established in 1834.

Tomorrow we’ll be announcing the new books for Library, History, and Cathedra. It also appears as many as FIVE books will be bound this month, but we’ll provide more details on that when I have confirmation.

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Hiromi Kawakami Book List

Relatively unknown in the West, Hiromi Kawakami is one of Japan’s best and most acclaimed contemporary authors. She has won all of the major Japanese literary prizes, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, and the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature. She is known for her delicate exploration of human relationships and the subtle magic that permeates everyday life, occasionally delving into what can only be described as deep science fiction. Somewhat reminiscent of Haruki Murakami, though far more deeply rooted in Japanese culture, Kawakami writes stories that feel both deeply personal and mysteriously otherworldly. Her work often focuses on the connections between people—romantic, familial, and neighborly—rendered with a gentle touch that reveals profound truths about loneliness, love, and belonging.

While three of her books are yet to be translated into English, I have read nine of the ten that are available, and this is how I would list them in order of personal preference and general literary quality.

This is one of my rare contributions to Fandom Pulse. You can read it there. Note that it does not include the three novels not yet translated into English, or the tenth book, Manazuru, which I am reading now.

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Retro Bindery Backers

As we’re rapidly approaching full operational status for the Death Star bindery, we’re going to need to figure out the print runs for THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY. So, sometime next month, we’re giving everyone the chance to back the bindery at the same price as the original backers who have made the whole thing possible.

We’ve set up a poll at the Castalia Library stack, so please feel free to let us know if a) you’re already a backer, b) you’re interested in becoming one, or c) not so much. You can also check out the first draft of the title page as well as what the interiors are going to look like.

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