Tag: books

Various and sundry

  1. We have need of a research intern for a one-time job tracking down authors. If you’re seriously interested, email with RESEARCH in the subject. DONE
  2. We want to hire someone who is very knowledgeable about a) computer and video games, and b) role-playing games to write questions for our trivia games. We want about 1,000 of the former and 2,500 of the latter. If you’re seriously interested in one or the other, email with Q:VG or Q:RPG in the subject. We already have a lot of (a) thanks to the volunteers, but I just don’t have the time to finish off the list. For more information, reference this post. A word of warning: it’s more work that it looks like, so if you’re not borderline OCD, it’s probably not for you.
  3. A slightly longer excerpt from THE CORRODING EMPIRE, now on preorder at Amazon, has been posted at Castalia House.

The first number produced by the extrapolated algorithm was off by one-ten billionth. There were nine zeros behind the decimal point. It was a tiny error, all but impossible to detect unless one was looking specifically for it.

The second number was off by twice that. Two in ten billion. Or, rather, one in five billion. One might more reasonably fear being struck by lightning. On a cloudless day. Indoors.

And yet, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t the size of the error that mattered so much as the fact that it existed at all. Somehow, Geist concluded, even though it was impossible, the data set must have become garbled. Garbage in, garbage out. He had run the extrap-algo more than a million times in the past month, using it to check and and re-check Orland’s agro-surveys. But there was no denying it. Somewhere, somehow, something had introduced an unknown variability into the process, but whether it was to be found in the data or the equations, he did not know.

He spoke in the direction of the softly glowing pseudo-door.

“Dr. Orland,” he said, “Got a minute?”

The door evaporated, revealing an attractive young woman in custom blue-green shimmering Chrysoletts, sitting with her feet up on her multi-tiered desk. She was reading something which, judged by the guilty expression that flashed across her face, had nothing to do with biogenics.

On a related note, this Amazon search may amuse you. And on a completely different note:



Amazon rejects Pink SF

A first start at it, anyhow. Amazon tells Romance authors – and publishers – to stop inflicting their romances on the readers of other genres, starting with Science Fiction & Fantasy:

Do not add books from any Romance category to these categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Children’s.

PRAISES BE TO THE GODS! Unfortunately, it is too little, too late. I’ve been complaining about this sort of thing ever since Twilight got crammed into my horror genre.  :'(

Romance is a separate genre from sci-fi and fantasy. And I don’t care how much authors argue otherwise, no, your book cannot be both. You can’t serve two (or three) masters.

A romance, at its root, specifically focuses on romantic love between two people, with an emotionally satisfying ending (usually, happily ever after, or HEA). In a romance, the relationship itself is the most important and driving motivator of the plot.

A fantasy, at its root, specifically focuses on magic and the supernatural as the primary motivators of the plot, presented within a self-contained world. In a fantasy, the presence of magic and the supernatural is the driving motivator of the plot.

A sci-fi, at its root, specifically focuses on fantastic but logically plausible creatures and technological developments while looking at the consequences of such developments. It is generally defined as writing rationally about alternative possibilities.

The fundamental problem is that too many authors neither understand nor respect the meaning and function of genre categories. Genres exist to help READERS find the type of stories they want. As others have said, I can’t use Amazon to search for fantasy or sci-fi anymore because half the search results come up as romances.  Your romance might be set in a futuristic setting, but that doesn’t mean you are serving the needs of the science fiction genre. Just because the hero in your romance is a werewolf doesn’t mean it is a fantasy. It just means you took your romance and gave it a paranormal cosmetic makeover.

This is particularly frustrating since Amazon DOES, in fact, have rather substantial sub-categories that can call out your fantasy-leaning or futuristic leaning romances. There is zero reason to take a romance novel and shove it into a non-romance category.

Of course, the romance authors trying to game the system by putting their wereseal erotica in science fiction are whining up a storm. But the fact is, it is a massive turnoff to readers of military science fiction to see their bestseller lists infested by My Secret SpecOps Lover and whatnot.

Bullshit like The Quantum Rose isn’t science fiction any more than Taken by the T-Rex is. It’s just romance in space. Amazon should have done this a long time ago. It would be good to see them add this restriction to Western and Military categories as well.

Now, there is nothing wrong with writing, or reading, romance in space if that’s what floats your boat. But stop pretending it is science fiction! And stop pretending elf erotica is high fantasy! As one author, Edwin M. Grant, commented, Taken by the Alien Alpha Barbarian is not Military SF just because it’s set in space and the barbarian beats up a few people.

And as for those books that cross both genres, the obvious answer is to throw them in Romance. The Romance readers won’t mind, since they’re happy as long as there is a female protagonist pursued by two alpha males between whom she must choose. They don’t care if the alpha males are men, vampires, wereseals, elves, angels, or artificial intelligences. Most of the SF readers will mind.

It’s rather amusing. All the authors who understand what Amazon is doing and support it have a wide variety of book covers indicating various genres beneath their posts. All the authors who can’t understand it and think it is unfair and wrong have book covers that feature either a) women in poofy dresses or b) headless male torsos with abs underneath theirs.

You’re fucking romance writers. Now shut up and go away.

The fall of the house of Tor

It begins….

Now, obviously I am not going to reveal my sources, but I believe I can safely observe that one result of last year’s anti-PNH campaign is that I happened to make a few contacts in the publishing world aside from the obvious ones at Simon & Schuster and Random House. Some of you have probably noticed that we were among the first independent publishers to make use of Pronoun, which may have surprised those who were under the impression that we were anti-Macmillan, but that was never the case.

Anyhow, I understand that we can look forward to hearing that a number of Tor authors are going to suddenly develop newfound respect for the art of self-publishing. And, moreover, this harrowing of the authors is, at least in part, the result of the failure of a major new book from a top author upon whom the publisher was counting to produce significant revenue in a timely manner.

You see, when a Castalia author is late, it doesn’t harm us in the slightest. But when a big book from Tor Books slips, or worse, doesn’t produce, or even worse, slips and then doesn’t produce, that inflicts serious harm on their financial flows. And, contrary to the impression created by their sizable revenues, the big publishing houses tend to get by on relatively small margins, so even a moderate financial shortfall often has to be addressed by slashing books and contracts and authors.

So, keep your eyes open. We should learn exactly where the cuts have been made in the relatively near future.

Tor delenda est.

So, it’s tomorrow…

Indigo March 06, 2017 4:00 PM
Check back tomorrow for a more accurate ranking comparison.

The Corroding Empire
#30 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera


The Collapsing Empire
#166 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera

A tale of two preorders

The Corroding Empire
#15 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera

The Collapsing Empire
#151 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera

And to think that we didn’t even have to pay seven digits for the right to publish the former! A collapsing empire indeed.

Many thanks to Alexandra Erin for the inspiration!

THE CORRODING EMPIRE – preorder now!

Galactic society is ruled by algorithms. From interstellar travel and planetary terraforming to artificial intelligence and agriculture, every human endeavor has become completely dependent upon the hypercomplex equations that optimize the activities making life possible across hundreds of inhabited worlds. Throughout the galaxy, Man has become dependent upon the reliable operation of ten million different automated systems.


And when things begin to go wrong and mysterious accidents begin to happen, no one has any idea what is happening, except for a sentient medical drone and the First Technocrat of Continox. But the challenge of fixing the unthinkably complicated problem of galaxy-wide algorithmic decay is made considerably more difficult by the fact the former is an outlaw and the latter is facing a death sentence.


THE CORRODING EMPIRE marks the English-language debut of Johan Kalsi, Finland’s hottest science fiction author. An accomplished geneticist as well as a 6’3″ ex-Finnish Marine, in THE CORRODING EMPIRE, Kalsi shows himself to be more Asimovian than Isaac Asimov himself!

THE CORRODING EMPIRE is now available for preorder on Amazon with a retail price of $4.99. It will be released on March 20, 2017. And speaking of corroding empires, one can’t help but note that Tor Books has slashed the preorder price of John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire from $25.99 to $13.68, presumably due to insufferably good, think-y prose such as this:

Kiva Lagos was busily fucking the brains out of the assistant purser she’d been after for the last six weeks of the Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby’s trip from Lankaran to End when Second Officer Waylov Brennir entered her stateroom, unannounced. “You’re needed,” he said.


“I’m a little busy at the moment,” Kiva said. She’d just finally gotten herself into a groove, so fuck Waylov (not literally, he was awful) if she was going to get out of the groove just because he walked into it. 

The Third Edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says: “If anyone stands at the core of the American science fiction tradition at the moment, it is Scalzi.” That explains a great deal about the precipitous decline of American science fiction, does it not? The award-winning McRapey is, we are frequently informed, the very best that 29-time Best Publisher Tor Books and mainstream science fiction has to offer. That may be true. Nevertheless, from concept to cover, from title to text, THE CORRODING EMPIRE  is a very clear and public demonstration that the Castalia House team can do what they do, and do it better, even as an in-house joke in our copious spare time.

After all, what would be more amusing than for THE CORRODING EMPIRE to outsell and outrank The Collapsing Empire? This isn’t a lame Bored of the Rings-style parody, it is, quite to the contrary, a legitimate Foundation-style novel that effectively demonstrates how hapless Tor’s latest imitative mediocrity is by comparison.

The first number produced by the extrapolated algorithm was off by one-ten billionth. There were nine zeros behind the decimal point. It was a tiny error, all but impossible to detect unless one was looking specifically for it.


The second number was off by twice that. Two in ten billion. Or, rather, one in five billion. One might more reasonably fear being struck by lightning. On a cloudless day. Indoors.


And yet, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t the size of the error that was relevant so much as the fact that it existed at all. Somehow, he concluded, even though it was impossible, the data set must have become garbled. Garbage in, garbage out. Geist had run the extrap-algo more than a million times in the past month, using it to check and and recheck Orland’s agro-surveys. But there was no denying it. Somewhere, somehow, something had introduced an unknown variability into the process, but whether it was to be found in the data or the equations, he did not know. 

CLIO & ME in audiobook

Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Dr. van Creveld is one of the world’s leading writers on military history and strategy, with a special interest in the future of war. He is fluent in Hebrew, German, Dutch, and English, and has authored more than twenty books, including the influential Technology and War: 2000 BC to the Present (1988), The Transformation of War (1991), and The Culture of War (2010). He is known for his development of the concept of “nontrinitarian” warfare as well as contributing two books to the 4GW canon, and he is deeply respected by military officers and professional strategists around the world.

CLIO & ME is Dr. van Creveld’s most personal book, an honest, heartfelt account of his lifelong love affair with the Muse of History. It is an autobiography, not of the life, but of the mind, and as such, will be of great interest to historians and students of history alike. This “intellectual autobiography” reveals one of the great historical minds of the 21st Century to be eternally curious, endlessly inquisitive, and possessed of an unexpected charm.

Narrated by Jon Mollison, CLIO & ME is 8 hours and 48 minutes.

From the reviews:

  • Those who are – or wish to become – writers, professors, or historians will certainly want to read it. He shows exactly what it is like to be a professor and a historian; principally, very lonely and requiring an extremely high degree of self-motivation!
  • Van Creveld presents us with an intellectual tour de force. What a mind! This book just stuns me… I can give it no higher recommendation than that it is also must-read for the true student of history, of war, for war is the history of human kind.
  • The explanation of how a successful author works and develops his ideas has been helpful to me by getting me thinking of ways to improve my own thought process/exploration of the past.
  • A fascinating look at an unusual and influential mind… The book is of interest to anyone who is interested in military history, a life in academia or the processes that a great writer uses to get in touch with his muse and craft a book

SIX EXPRESSIONS OF DEATH

When an unknown man is shot, then stabbed to death on the road between Morijuku and the village of Iwagi, it is natural to assume that he fell victim to bandits preying on travelers passing through the Kiso Mountains. But when Daikawa Tadashi, a samurai from a poor, but ancient noble house, encounters the body, he realizes that there is likely more to the tale than a simple robbery.

And when Tadashi’s attempt to dutifully report the murder to one of his daimyo’s lieutenants unexpectedly results in a second murder, he finds himself, and worse, his lover, ensnared in a dangerous web of deceit and death. For clan war looms over the mountains, the Tiger of Kai, the lord of the Takeda, is on the prowl, and shinobi stalk the shadows of the night.

SIX EXPRESSIONS OF DEATH is Mojo Mori’s debut novel. A historical murder mystery set in a mystical version of 16th century Japan, it is a unique and enthralling tale. From the reviews:

  • Fans of Medieval Japanese history or traditional Japanese culture will be pleased.
  • This is an interesting tale of murder and intrigue during the Sengoku Era of Japan. This was a time of great upheaval and conflict, when the entire country was at war. A mysterious murder of a traveler outside of a small village catches the attention of a humble samurai, and before he knows it, he is up to his neck in a plot that could embroil his whole land in an unwinnable war…. The writing in this book is quite good. The author has a nice feel for Japanese sensibilities and aesthetics.
  • The honor of the samurai is contrasted well with the cunning of the ninja, and both are presented with respect due their traditions.
  • Author Mojo Mori’s future is writ bright with this unique and sparkling debut.

SIX EXPRESSIONS OF DEATH is 218 pages, DRM-free, and retails for $5.99 at Amazon and the Castalia House store.

Fake reviews and reprisals

Happy napping
By dab2525 on February 24, 2017
This book was typically poor Day writing. Someone buy him a grammar book. Otherwise, it was dull enough to induce sleep.

Author writes like an 8th grader 
By dab2525 on February 24, 2017
Writing was juvenile, thoughts were trite, just a fraudulent trap to quench haters’ desire to feed.

I find it incredible when people try to defend these fake reviews and suggest that they might be genuine. “How can you be sure they’re not real,” they demand. Because it’s absolutely obvious when someone hasn’t bought the book, hasn’t read the book, relies entirely upon generic criticisms, uses emotionally charged language, posts several reviews on the same day, and hasn’t convincingly reviewed anything else.

I was a professional reviewer. I can spot a fake review as easily as a professional art restorer can spot a painted forgery. There are literally dozens of potential tells. Of course, it’s even more obvious when they make their political motivations unmistakable.


This literally smelled like someone got a bunch of flowers to try and
By dab2525
This literally smelled like someone got a bunch of flowers to try and hide a used feminine cleansing product. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!


I’d rather rid the country of ALL of the people who are prejudice against other legal American ethnic/religious groups, women, and gays. As a white male, I fully expect there would be many, many white males in that group that should be exiled. Great idea!
– dab2525

Now, if you want to try to convince yourself that this individual actually read two of my books after buying Ivanka Trump’s perfume, feel free to do so. But you’re an idiot.

This is why posting reviews on places like Amazon is important. The SJWs engage in this manipulative vandalism in order to try to prevent people from supporting those they perceive as the enemy by establishing a false narrative about them. There is a reason that you don’t see fake reviews like this littering the listings of of every book by SJWs and moderates; they pose zero danger to the SJW Narrative. What I’d ideally like to see is for 10 positive reviews to be posted by verified purchasers for every attack single review that appears on a Castalia House listing.  I suspect that would serve as sufficient disincentive to engage in the activity.

As the God-Emperor says, now is the time to act.

UPDATE: Three hours and 27 minutes to locate and profile David Arthur Burcher? VFM, your sloth makes your Dark Lord sad. I will grant that it is Saturday and I did post before most of you were awake, but this is simply not the extreme performance I expect out of my most rabid and loyal servitors!

No flesh or blood with your SJW bones tonight. Let that be a lesson to you.

UPDATE: I sent Mr. Burcher the following email:

I was very sorry to learn that you were so disappointed with two of my books that you recently reviewed. As Castalia House always hopes to satisfy our customers, I would be pleased to offer you two alternative Castalia House ebooks that you might find more to your taste. We have a number of excellent authors from whom to choose.


Our catalog is below. If you will let me know which two books are of interest to you, I will be happy to send you the epubs.


With regards,


Vox Day

SOMEWHITHER now in audio!

The 2016 Dragon Award-winner for Best Science Fiction Novel, Somewhither is the first part of A Tale of the Unwithering Realm, a new science-fantasy series from science-fiction master John C. Wright. It is an adventure, it is a romance, and it is a coming-of-age story of a young man who is not a man, in a world that is only one among many. It is a tale of a greater and darker evil with longer reach than anything he could imagine, of despair without bounds, of pain beyond measure, and of the faith required to surmount all three. It is a story of inexorable destiny written in the stars and the stubborn courage that is required to defy it.

Ilya Muromets is a big, ugly, motherless boy who does not look like anyone else in his Oregon town. His father is often absent on mysterious Church missionary work that involves silver bullets, sacred lances, and black helicopters. Ilya works as a janitor for Professor Achitophel Dreadful of the Cryptozoological Museum of Scientific Curiosities, and he has a hopeless crush on the Professor’s daughter, Penelope, who pays him little attention and appears to be under the impression that his name is Marmoset.

One night, when Professor Dreadful escapes from the asylum to which he has been temporarily committed, he sends a warning to Ilya that not only is his Many Worlds theory correct, but those many worlds are dominated by an unthinkably powerful enemy determined to destroy anyone who opens the Moebius Ring between the worlds. And, as it happens, prior to his involuntary absence, the Professor left his transdimensional equipment in the basement of the Museum plugged-in and running….

So it is that Ilya, as he has secretly dreamed, is called upon to save the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter. With his squirrel gun, his grandfather’s sword, and his father’s crucifix, Ilya races to save the girl, and, incidentally, the world.

Narrated by Jon Mollison, Somewhither, The Unwithering Realm, Book One is 22 hours and 9 minutes long.