Tag: books

A Tale of Two Conans

The Essential Malady compares Chuck Dixon’s Conan, which is based on Robert E. Howard’s public domain Conan, with Tor’s Conan, which is presumably licensed from the Swedes holding the rights to the later portrayals of Conan the Barbarian.

Last month I reviewed The Siege of the Black Citadel by “The Legend” Chuck Dixon. I mentioned in the review that it was the first I had read that wasn’t written by Robert E. Howard (excepting comics). I expressed that I was reluctant to read stories by other authors because I didn’t believe they could live up to Howard’s work but that Dixon came very close which is high praise.

Late last year, the first new Conan novel since 2011 was published by Titan Books some months before Dixon’s new story was out. This is written by S.M. Stirling who has been a published author since the 1980s though I hadn’t heard of him until now. Blood of the Serpent is written as a prequel to what is probably Howard’s most recognised story, “Red Nails” and indeed, the events are so closely tied that it is included at the back. When I noticed my library had a copy, I thought it would be worth reading to compare with both Howard and Dixon.

It wasn’t but read on as I elaborate.

S.M. Stirling is a competent enough writer and he has made use of plot details provided in “Red Nails” to construct his narrative. What is wrong with this has little to do with his writing and more to do with what is revealed in the Afterword:

“Red Nails” is pure Howard… Raw and powerful, it’s also very much of its time— written almost a century ago, when our culture could be less socially aware and genre fiction in particular often exhibited rough edges some of today’s readers may find jarring.

From this alone we can establish that both the publisher and the author are embarrassed by (or dislike) the source material. It is not clear who wrote the Afterword so I will assume this is a shared opinion. It would have been more honest to put this in the Foreword so a potential reader could have saved themselves the hassle of finding out. As opposed to “some” of today’s readers, the main reason Howard is seeing a resurgence in popularity is because readers are looking for exactly what they find within Howard. Far from “jarring”, they find his stories refreshing and exciting.

The other problem is if you think Howard had “rough edges”, then why write a new story so closely related instead of one that can stand on its own? Blood of the Serpent is completely dependent on “Red Nails”. The ending is the beginning of the latter and so the ending to Blood of the Serpent isn’t really an ending at all without knowledge of what it is leading up to. What makes this even worse is that it is over three times the length and establishes nothing that wasn’t done more efficiently and eloquently in the opening pages of “Red Nails”. So on these points alone it is pointless but it gets worse still.

Read the whole thing. Apparently it does get worse, and the comparison is considerably in The Legend’s favor. And this explains why Castalia is beginning to delve into revivals of public domain icons, because if we don’t provide correct continuations that respect and hold true to those icons, the Zero History crowd will provide false continuations that invert and betray them.

DISCUSS ON SG

Even, I Can’t

It would be difficult for me to disagree more strongly with anyone than I do with this literary heretic spewing textual heresy on SocialGalactic:

One book I’ve really come to hate is Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Doesn’t get more reddit than that. The author thinks he is much more clever than he is. I read it in high school, and was underwhelmed. Based on the hype, I was expecting something epic, but all I got was nonsense humor that wasn’t even funny.

First, Douglas Adams is one of the funniest authors to ever write a novel. I place the top five in this order:

  • PG Wodehouse
  • Douglas Adams
  • Owen Stanley
  • Bruce Bethke
  • Terry Pratchett

Wodehouse remains the greatest of the humor writers, not merely due to the very high standard he set, but the size of his ouevre and its reliability across a broad spectrum of topics and characters. Whether he was utilizing Hollywood actresses or agriculturally-inclined aristocrats and pigs, he could always find the humor in the situation.

Stanley is one of the funniest novelists ever and the fact that I convinced him to write The Promethean is my single greatest literary triumph. With regards to his first novel, The Missionaries, an SJW reporter once asked me what was the best book Castalia House had published, read it, and later told me: “It’s the most racist and offensive book I have ever read, and I just couldn’t stop laughing. Now I hate myself.”

The fact that Bruce Bethke essentially stopped writing fiction after Head Crash is one of the great literary tragedies of our age.

And while Terry Pratchett’s earliest work and later work can be forgotten, his middle period, when he matured as a writer, brought in an element of social commentary, and learned how to actually write humor instead of telling the reader what he was supposed to find funny, was very, very good.

Adams had more than a few tricks at his disposal, but his patented subdued punch line never ceased to be effective. My two favorites:

  • “Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled “My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles” when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth.
  • The bathroom was not large. The walls were panelled in old oak linenfold which, given the age and nature of the building, was quite probably priceless, but otherwise the fittings were stark and institutional. There was old, scuffed, black-and-white checked linoleum on the floor, a small basic bath, well cleaned but with very elderly stains and chips in the enamel, and also a small basic basin with a toothbrush and toothpaste in a Duralex beaker standing next to the taps. Screwed into the probably priceless panelling above the basin was a tin mirror-fronted bathroom cabinet. It looked as if it had been repainted many times, and the mirror was stained round the edges with condensation. The lavatory had an old-fashioned cast-iron chain-pull cistern. There was an old cream-painted wooden cupboard standing in the corner, with an old brown bentwood chair next to it, on which lay some neatly folded but threadbare small towels. There was also a large horse in the room, taking up most of it.

DISCUSS ON SG

History for Europe

Residents of the European Union can now subscribe to Castalia History using the (EU) subscription. There is also the option for an annual (EU) subscription. You will see there is an additional charge to cover the higher cost of shipping to and within Europe, which is why the separate subscription is necessary, but even with the additional charge the price is favorable in comparison with Easton and Folio. European subscriptions will require one catchup payment to bring them up to date, as will regular History subscriptions begun in May.

While we won’t announce the books until the appropriate three-month period begins, the second, third, and fourth History books have been selected and two of them are already being scanned. We’re hoping our new production methods will help speed things up considerably while continuing to improve the overall quality.

On the general shipping front, please remain patient. We are actively working on providing a reliable alternative for our presently incapacitated partner and we will keep you posted accordingly. Once we get Europe established and the shipping situation resolved, we will turn our attention to Australia and Asia.

DISCUSS ON SG

Project Castaliaberg

Okay, so we’re definitely going to need a better name. Anyhow, my recent research into history books has taught me how inaccessible even some fairly basic public domain history books published in the 19th century already are, in that they’re not on Gutenberg, they’re not on Unz, they’re not actually on Google Books, and they’re not available to anyone who isn’t capable of compiling and utilizing a custom Hathi Trust scraper that won’t always work anyhow.

We have a relationship with a professional scanning service that will scan and OCR books for a reasonable price, and I was thinking about making use of them for three old books I recently acquired which are not readily available in ebook. Initially, we’ll make these high-quality ebooks available to History, Library, UATV, and Arkhaven subscribers, with the idea that if there is sufficient interest and popularity, we can set the project up in its own right with full access for the public down the road.

What do you think? Is this of any interest to you? Do you think it is a worthwhile endeavor? The idea is not to replace Gutenberg or the other digital book repositories, but rather to fill in the blanks that they are missing for one reason or another even in the event they don’t become too converged to be useful.

DISCUSS ON SG

Raising Our Game

While Castalia House has repeatedly demonstrated excellence with regards to the content and manufacturing quality of our books, our customer service has been essentially nonexistent. What people may not understand is that this was not simply the result of indifference, but was more to the fact that we had absolutely no control over when a book was shipped out to a buyer.

One of the reasons I have been so reluctant to provide dates, and why I have been so unapologetic about missing those dates that we did provide, is because until now, there was never anything at all that we could do about them. For example, I was told by the bindery that THE JUNGLE BOOKS would be shipped to our newly-established shipping center on March first. However, we did not receive them until April 7th.

Fortunately, we are now in physical possession of our entire stock of leather books, and future books will be shipped from the bindery to the shipping center as soon as they are bound and boxed. We also will not consider any books “ready to ship” until we have received them and are ready to send them out. We have a new email address that anyone who has not received a book of any kind can contact (1), as well as an email address (2) for those who want to check on the status of their Library/Libraria/History subscription.

  • (1) shipping-at-castaliahouse-dot-com
  • (2) library-at-castaliahouse-dot-com

We have also recently discovered a bug in the WooCommerce system that has permitted a few people to order books that were officially out of stock, but still had books listed in the inventory. Apparently, it’s not enough to declare a book out of stock, but the inventory also has to be set to zero or the system overrides the out-of-stock status. So, for example, eleven customers have not yet received their leather Junior Classics set because we did not realize they’d been able to buy them since we’d declared the set to be out-of-stock more than a year ago.

Fortunately, we always keep a reserve to cover shipments that go awry, so we have enough books to send everyone. But in at least some cases, if you haven’t received a leather book yet, it may be because we didn’t know you’d bought it due to this WooCommerce bug. Now that we know about it, we will get the books sent out to the appropriate addresses.

And yes, we will permit new orders of the Junior Classics leather sets once books 7 through 10 are printed and being bound. We printed 500 copies of Vols 1 through 6, but only bound 250, so we can produce another 250 sets whenever we decide to pull the trigger.

DISCUSS ON SG

Blocking the Bowdlerizers

An English playwright who is already experiencing requests for revisions by SJWs plans to protect his work from his literary heirs in his will:

Martin McDonagh has revealed he may use his will to ensure there are no Roald Dahl-style posthumous edits to his work.

The acclaimed playwright, 53, told how some theatre companies have refused to put on productions of his plays because he refused language changes to make the performances more ‘palatable’. The filmmaker, who wrote and directed The Banshees of Inisherin, described the practice of writers being asked to change what they have written for sensitivity-related reasons ‘problematic’.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Martin said: ‘That’s why I’ve got to make sure in my will, the wording of that is very, very specific too. A theatre has got every right not to put a play on. The major problem is that they ask you or another writer to change it to make it more palatable to them or what they think their audience is.’

The playwright’s words come after it emerged that Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s books are being rewritten by sensitivity gurus to remove language they deem offensive. Publisher Puffin hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the author’s text to make sure the books ‘can continue to be enjoyed by all today’, resulting in extensive changes across Dahl’s work.

It’s a good idea. My initial thought is to include a codicil stating that if the heirs sell any of the rights associated with the work or publish the work with any posthumous edits, the work immediately reverts to the public domain.

Obviously, this requires some careful thinking and precise language, as one does not want to harm an honest literary heir like Christopher Tolkien who did a remarkable job preserving and even extending his father’s literary legacy. But no self-respecting author wants to see what is happening to the work of Road Dahl and other deceased authors happen to his work.

DISCUSS ON SG

They May Not Be There

Amazon follows up its closure of Book Depository by announcing that it is shutting down Digital Photography Review as well. Given the observable pattern here, it’s really not looking good for GoodReads.

The demise of Digital Photography Review: I have written this column for over 20 continuous years and this is the saddest news I have ever had to report. Digital Photography Review is closing down and as of April 10, 2023 the site will be locked and no new content will be added. More ominously, the site states “The site will be available in read-only mode for a limited period afterwards.” That is a businesslike way of saying the site and all its content will soon disappear for good.

Amazon is responsible for this. They purchased the site in 2007 and now that it does not fit in their business plans, they are going to erase it. This is despicable given the cost of keeping the site available in static form is infinitesimal to a company Amazon’s size.

Surely Amazon can be a good corporate citizen and keep the site up in read-only mode, for the good of everyone? It would be wonderful if a white knight came in and saved DPReview, but that is looking less and less likely. Online commentators are calling the upcoming site deletion “cultural vandalism” and “book burning.” I am with them and in terms of book burning, in the realm of photography it is like burning The Library of Alexandria. The significance of dpreview.com to the industry and photographers everywhere cannot be overstated. There are in-depth camera reviews going back to 1998 along with a comparator that allows you to compare test scene images from almost every camera they have ever tested. There are also forums with sample images and discussions containing millions of pages of content. Despite only being around 25 years old it is probably the most important and comprehensive photographic resource that ever existed.

If these is a takeaway from all of this, it is about big companies taking things away. That is a lot easier for them to do today than in years past when we relied on physical books, magazines and packaged media for reading and entertainment. While I enjoy streaming and it has a place and a purpose for those who enjoys television, movies and music, I have long been a proponent of physical media for the image and sound quality as well as its immutable nature. I have more to say about this and will continue the discussion in a future column. In the meantime, be warned and if there are movies, TV shows, and music that is near and dear to your heart, get yourself a hard copy. It may not be there for you tomorrow.

This is precisely why it is so important to subscribe to Castalia Library and Castalia History. Remember, I’m not the one pointing this out, this is some random audio expert to whom I have no connection who is observing Amazon’s recent actions and reaching the same conclusions I reached when Amazon first launched Kindle Unlimited and I did the math concerning the huge reduction of ebook compensation for the authors and publishers.

The observation that this is about the corpocracy “taking things away” is very astute. This is the complete erasure of a knowledge base, and if the author’s opinion about the importance of the site is correct, the erasure of a significant one. While Amazon has apparently backtracked from its original intention of erasing the site due to the backlash and now intends to archive it, there cannot be much doubt that the company will eventually eliminate the archive as soon as it feels that it can get away with doing so.

This is why the new Castalia Library site upon which we are now working is intended to include a free digital library that will be funded by the Library operations, beginning with the Library and History books we are publishing, rights-permitting. Look for more announcements on that front in future Castalia newsletters.

I anticipate that we will eventually need to launch a book review site to which only subscribers will be permitted to contribute, similar to the design concept I produced for a hypothetical book award that was subsequently proved necessary by the convergence of the Dragon Awards. While it may be too soon for the West to need physical monasteries to preserve the knowledge of the past, it is not too soon to begin building them.

DISCUSS ON SG

Right Place, Right Time

Even 15 years ago, people would have had a hard time believing Richard Gallagher’s contention that demons, and demonic possession, are real and observable. These days, when literal demons are directly controlling many of the human elite of the West and wealthy men like George Soros and Peter Thiel are aggressively chasing every form of quasi-immortality, it’s not at all difficult to take him seriously.

“In my experience, the idea of demonic possession is so controversial and so often misunderstood that I want at the outset to establish some scholarly plausibility to the notion along with my bona fides,” the board-certified psychiatrist, who serves as professor of psychiatry at New York Medical and a psychoanalyst on the faculty of Columbia University, begins in the introduction of his book.

“Typical reactions to the topic reflect our nation’s polarization. Despite widespread belief in evil spirits in the United States and around the world, some people find the subject farfetched, even moronic. Yet others spot the devil everywhere. And so, here I detail my personal story and highlight the credibility of possessions while simultaneously offering some sober reflections on various exaggerations and abuses.”

The book is an elaboration of the psychiatrist’s 2016 op-ed on the subject published in The Washington Post, titled “As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. Also, I help spot demonic possession.”

Gallagher, who is Catholic, is the longest-standing American member of the International Association of Exorcists which meet every two years in Italy.

He begins his narrative with the story of a troubled devil-worshiper named Julia who he concluded was possessed after an exorcist in the Catholic Church brought her to him for evaluation before attempting an exorcism.

“Before I encountered Julia, I had already seen about eight or nine cases of what I regarded as full possessions. I define those as cases where the evil spirit completely takes control of someone, such that the victim has periods when he or she has no remembrance of such episodes,” Gallagher writes. “I have since seen scores more such possessions and a much higher number of cases of oppression, which are far more common than possessions. Because of my involvement with the International Association of Exorcists, I have heard reports of hundreds more of each type, but that hardly implies they are anything but rare conditions, as I still know them to be.”

It might be easier to accept the reality of “unclean spirits” and understand its relationship to Clown World if one views it from the transhumanist perspective. Demonism is merely the occult form of transhumanism, utilizing rituals that are spiritual in nature rather than technological to separate the spirit from the body and preserve its existence on the material plane. The means are different, but the objectives are precisely the same.

DISCUSS ON SG

Amazon Kills Book Depository

The outcome was inevitable, of course, as soon as Amazon acquired its much-smaller competitor twelve years ago:

The online shop Book Depository is due to close at the end of April, vendors and publishing partners have been told. This comes after the bookseller’s parent company Amazon announced it had decided to “eliminate” a number of positions across its Devices and Books businesses.

The Gloucester-based bookseller was founded in 2004 by Stuart Felton and Andrew Crawford, a former Amazon employee, with the mantra of “selling ‘less of more’ rather than ‘more of less’”. It aimed to sell 6m titles covering a wide variety of genres and topics, as opposed to focusing solely on bestsellers. While originally a rival to Amazon, it was acquired by the retail giant in 2011, causing some in the publishing industry to worry about the tightening of the American company’s “stranglehold” on the UK book trade.

According to the trade magazine the Bookseller, an email sent out to vendors and publishing partners explained that Book Depository will be closing, and that the last date customers will be able to place orders is 26 April.

Fortunately, you can buy one of our thirteen – count them, 13 – titles that are available directly from Castalia. And not only is the shipping free, but you’ll also receive a free ebook edition.

DISCUSS ON SG

Mailvox: Day One Interest

A Libraria subscriber inquires as to the reception of the new Castalia History series.

What has the day 1 interest been? Lots of subscribers?

I would say the first-day interest has been very encouraging. We are currently at 108 subscribers, which is very good because we estimate that the series will need least 120 on an ongoing basis in order to support itself going forward. This number is relatively small because we are piggybacking on the infrastructure necessary for operating the Library, but it’s good that the series will be able to support itself, and eventually, become a net contributor toward building the infrastructure for future projects.

I have learned that Easton acquired two of the other Landmark books besides The Landmark Caesar, which is a pity, but I have already acquired several works that are strong candidates for books 2, 3, and 4. One important question that requires contemplation is when the right time to introduce the first two-book series will be, because some of the better and more important works I have in mind will require two, or in some cases, even three books. It’s just not practical – or even possible – to publish Gibbon in a single volume, for example.

But those longer works can wait. We already have a plethora of historical riches from which to choose, and we’re fortunate to be able to begin the series with such an excellent edition of Thucydides.

DISCUSS ON SG