Tag: books

The results

Apparently everyone expects Jerry Pournelle to produce the best story in the forthcoming RIDING THE RED HORSE. The results of both polls were as follows:

  1. Pournelle 108
  2. Day 45
  3. Torgersen 28
  4. Nelson 17
  5. Raymond 14
  6. Kennedy 4
  7. Nuttall 7
  8. Rzasa 5
  9. Mays 3
  10. Filotto 3
  11. Cheah 1
  12. Carr 1

As much as I hate to disappoint my most hard-core fans, I regret to inform you that neither my story nor the story I contributed in collaboration with Steve is likely to be regarded as the best, or even the second-best story. It’s not that the stories are bad, in fact, they are among the best I have ever written. It’s just that the quality of the stories, even from the lesser-known names and newcomers, is remarkably high.

I changed my mind about doing a poll on the non-fiction, because, with the possible exception of Mr. Lind, it’s too hard to guess what the author could possibly be writing about.

In any event, if you’re a New Release subscriber, you can now decide for yourself.

A question of anticipation

UPDATE: I changed the poll software because the other one was screwing with the blog. You don’t need to vote again since I saved the previous results, which had Jerry Pournelle in the lead with 31 votes, followed by Brad Torgersen with 13.

One of my favorite things about anthologies is seeing how the unknowns fare in comparison with the more established figures. And, of course, it’s always wonderful to discover new writers, new or established, who one hasn’t previously read. Given that many of the contributors to RIDING THE RED HORSE have their own fan bases, I think it will be interesting to see which stories are most anticipated, and which end up being perceived as the stronger ones once the anthology comes out.

In case you’re wondering where familiar names such as William S. Lind and Tom Kratman are, I’ll run another poll tomorrow addressing the non-fiction pieces.

The pain of the rejected

In which we endeavor to soldier on:

A while back, during THE WEREWOLF ERA of our blog (seems like a thousand centuries ago), someone suggested some books by Vox Day and Larry Correia.  I dismissed them because I wasn’t interested in them, seemed too tongue in cheek or wacky or silly for me.  Apparently someone told Vox Day about it, which I think is sad that anyone should make it his business that there’s someone on the internet that doesn’t want to read his books, but whatever.

Anyway just wanted to mention that I think Larry Correia does deserve some respect, especially for having THE UNMITIGATED GALL of having opinions that most artists don’t approve of.

Actually, I understand from people who frequent GoodReads that not reading Vox Day’s books is not only rather common, but qualifies as something of a badge of honor to which all good and decent people should aspire. Based on comments I have seen here and there, there even appears to be something of a competition with regards to the vehemence with which one vows never to pollute one’s eyes with words whose order I have arranged. In comparison with this, I fear Mr. Webcomics’s benign indifference is hardly likely to impress anyone.

Especially since he has committed the unthinkable crime of saying something positive about the International Lord of Hate, the Nemesis of the SJWs, Mr. Larry Correia.

I’ve never quite grasped the idea about being upset that people don’t read your books. When even Umberto Eco’s own children express what he describes as “Olympian indifference” towards HIS work, the miracle is that anyone has any interest in it at all.

The best books of 2014

For some reason, I’m on the GoodReads mailing list even though I don’t use it at all, so when I saw that the 2014 Readers’ Choice winners had been announced, I clicked on it to see if Larry Correia had won. And I literally laughed out loud when I saw the covers of the winners… now, do you notice anything that seven of these eight books have in common? Which one of these books is not like the others, which one of these books just doesn’t belong? Of course, as we know from the Hugo and Nebula Awards, it’s only a matter of a year or three before that last anomaly is viciously stamped out too. No wonder book sales are continuing to decline. Seriously, even the gamma males of science fiction aren’t going to read any of that equine ejectus.

And we are supposed to believe they’re honestly and truly going to make good, nay, even better, computer games. Really? To quote the Sports Guy: “The lesson, as always, is this: women ruin everything.”

Here is the primary difference between men and women. In the past, women would look at a male-dominated list of book awards and be struck by feelbad because she felt excluded. A man looks at that list, laughs, and thinks, do they really read that shit? THIS STAR WON’T GO OUT? Are you freaking kidding me?

Robert Heinlein was wrong. These are not the Crazy Years. They are the #GIRLBOSS Years.

SF/F before the coup

Daniel wrote an interesting post about the pre-pinkshirt state of science fiction at Castalia:

By 1995 or so, it had become fairly evident that the science fiction market had begun to experience a significant shift, one that I have been struggling to put my finger on for quite some time now.

The genre, of course, has always been one for whom change at a certain level should be something of a constant. The Romance genre (not the chivalric or ancient. I mean the “girl picks one of two boys” sort.) has remained the same since 1921’s The Black Moth, but Science Fiction (not the current “girl picks one of two boys” sort, but the traditional “having something to do with phenomena”) necessarily must adapt to any new knowledge….

In October of 1991, SF editor and reviewer, and senior editor at Omni, Robert J. Kilheffer did the world a favor by attempting a fairly comprehensive “State of the Genre” report in Publisher’s Weekly, titled Science Fiction: Expanding, Experimenting.

It’s interesting to see some of the comments from familiar names that we now know to have been responsible, in part, for the ongoing decline into necrobestiality and wereseal romance. I didn’t consciously notice the change until the award of the 2002 Nebula to Catharine Asaro’s ridiculous The Quantum Rose made me notice it, but looking back at the old Nebula winners, there is a definite point in 1988, when a nobody with a nothing novel that no one remembers beat Greg Bear, Gene Wolfe, David Brin, Avram Davidson, and George Alec Effinger, followed by Lois McMaster Bujold beating Gibson, Card, and Wolfe in 1989 (a less ludicrous result, but unjustifiable nevertheless), shows that the rot had set in.

Just for amusement’s sake, here is the description of the 1988 Nebula Award winner for Best Novel.

Elizabeth Butler is an archaeologist, and the author of several popular books that challenge her colleagues’ ideas about Mayan civilization. Elizabeth has a strange gift, connected to a suicide attempt as a young woman, which allows her to see the spirits of ancient people while she walks at dusk and dawn. The story opens with Elizabeth in the middle of an eight-week field study at Dzibilchaltún. Her team hopes to find dramatic artifacts that will spark interest and increased funding for future field studies at the site.

In the middle of the field study, Elizabeth’s estranged adult daughter Diane arrives unannounced. After the death of her father, Elizabeth’s ex-husband, Diane suddenly abandoned her life in the United States, and flew to Mexico to see her mother. It’s revealed that Diane has seen Elizabeth for only a few brief visits since Elizabeth left her as a young child to be raised by her father. Neither is sure what Diane wants from Elizabeth.

As the two struggle to connect, Elizabeth has a new experience: one of her spirit visions, a Mayan priestess named Zuhuy-kak, can see and speak with Elizabeth. Zuhuy-kak provides unprecedented knowledge about the Mayans’ departure from Dzibilchaltún, and leads Elizabeth to the major archaeological find her team needs, but demands a sacrifice to the goddess Ix Chebel Yax. As the dig progresses, haunted by bad luck and tragedy, Zuhuy-kak makes it clear that Elizabeth must sacrifice her daughter.

Of course, were this novel written today, Elizabeth would sacrifice her daughter without thinking twice about it and the plot would instead revolve around which of her two lesbian lovers Elizabeth would choose to marry in a civil ceremony in Mexico City, Zuhuy-kak or Ix Chebel Yax. It is perhaps worth observing that this “fantasy masterwork”, published in 1986,  presently has 28 reviews averaging 4.0, is out of print, and is ranked 1,640,443 on Amazon.

Interestingly enough, one reviewer observed back in 2005: “This Novel is NOT Science Fiction and is a mundane novel as well. This novel should NOT have won the award for what was called the best science fiction novel. 1987, the year of this novel, is thus the start of the Feminist takeover of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), now called the Science fiction and FANTASY Writers of America.”

Kissinger on the EU and Islam

I’ve been reading Henry Kissinger’s new book, World Order, and it is a very informative book about grand strategic world history as seen through the eyes of one of the global elite’s better-known servitors. It’s interesting how regardless of whether one looks at the world through the 4GW lens or through the NWO lens, the same diagnosis appears: the modern Westphalian state is endangered:

German unification altered the equilibrium of Europe because no constitutional arrangement could change the reality that Germany alone was again the strongest European state. The single currency produced a degree of unity that had not been seen in Europe since the Holy Roman Empire. Would the EU achieve the global role its charter proclaimed, or would it, like Charles V’s empire, prove incapable of holding itself together?

The new structure represented in some sense a renunciation of Westphalia. Yet the EU can also be interpreted as Europe’s return to the Westphalian international state system that it created, spread across the globe, defended, and exemplified through much of the modern age—this time as a regional, not a national, power, as a new unit in a now global version of the Westphalian system. The outcome has combined aspects of both the national and the regional approaches without, as yet, securing the full benefits of either.

He also, in passing, explains something that I mentioned yesterday, which is how the West planted the seeds for the third great wave of Islamic expansion that we now know as ISIS and the global jihad.

In the spring of 1947, Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian watchmaker, schoolteacher, and widely read self-taught religious activist, addressed a critique of Egyptian institutions to Egypt’s King Farouk titled “Toward the Light.” It offered an Islamic alternative to the secular national state. In studiedly polite yet sweeping language, al-Banna outlined the principles and aspirations of the Egyptian Society of Muslim Brothers (known colloquially as the Muslim Brotherhood), the organization he had founded in 1928 to combat what he saw as the degrading effects of foreign influence and secular ways of life….

The West, al-Banna asserted, “which was brilliant by virtue of its scientific perfection for a long time … is now bankrupt and in decline. Its foundations are crumbling, and its institutions and guiding principles are falling apart.” The Western powers had lost control of their own world order: “Their congresses are failures, their treaties are broken, and their covenants torn to pieces.” The League of Nations, intended to keep the peace, was “a phantasm.” Though he did not use the terms, al-Banna was arguing that the Westphalian world order had lost both its legitimacy and its power. And he was explicitly announcing that the opportunity to create a new world order based on Islam had arrived. “The Islamic way has been tried before,” he argued, and “history has testified as to its soundness.” If a society were to dedicate itself to a “complete and all-encompassing” course of restoring the original principles of Islam and building the social order the Quran prescribes, the “Islamic nation in its entirety”—that is, all Muslims globally—“will support us”; “Arab unity” and eventually “Islamic unity” would result.

How would a restored Islamic world order relate to the modern international system, built around states? A true Muslim’s loyalty, al-Banna argued, was to multiple, overlapping spheres, at the apex of which stood a unified Islamic system whose purview would eventually embrace the entire world. His homeland was first a “particular country”; “then it extends to the other Islamic countries, for all of them are a fatherland and an abode for the Muslim”; then it proceeds to an “Islamic Empire” on the model of that erected by the pious ancestors, for “the Muslim will be asked before God” what he had done “to restore it.” The final circle was global: “Then the fatherland of the Muslim expands to encompass the entire world. 

Through its attempts to impose a Westphalian order on the dar al-Islam and its development of the concept of world revolution, the secular West inadvertently created a rival it cannot possibly defeat on its own. The secular West’s advantages – science and technology – are readily utilized by the jihad, while its weaknesses of demoralization, apathy, multiculturalism, and demographic decline are both readily exploited and easily avoided.

To paraphrase the immortal words of LTC Tom Kratman, if you’re going to wage a religious war, you damn well better bring a religion. And as one reader noted: “In 100 years, either Norway will be an Islamic republic or there will be statues of Anders Breivik in every Norwegian town.”

Our first hardcover

A number of people have been asking when we’re going to be offering print edition of our books, and believe it or not, we’ve actually been doing so for two months. However, there was a glitch at Amazon that prevented the cover image from being displayed on the listing, and we didn’t want to send people there until the issue had been resolved. It was finally resolved yesterday, and so we’re pleased to be able to say that the hardcover edition of AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND is now available from Amazon for the retail price of $24.99. It’s discounted somewhat from that, of course, but I only see the converted US pricing, so I don’t know exactly what price Amazon is offering it for in the USA. We switched from the red of the Kindle version to the blue of the Kindle novella cover because the author preferred it, and I have to say, I think it was the right choice. It is 342 pages and it will make a handsome addition to the library of any discerning reader.

Now that we’ve got the process worked out and LL is helping with the layouts, we will gradually be adding more print editions to our catalog. VICTORIA: A Novel of 4th Generation War will be next in trade paperback, since we have an obligation to publish it in that format, and after that, well, it would be helpful to hear suggestions from the people who are seriously interested in buying hardcovers. AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND comes with a dust jacket, but we’re subsequently going to be switching to casebound since people expressed a fairly strong preference for that and the books will last longer.

Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War

We are pleased to be officially releasing two new Castalia House books today. The first is the novel Victoria, which is, as the subtitle suggests, “A Novel of 4th Generation War”. It is very different than our other novels, in fact, its publication might even be considered a little ironic, in light of Scooter’s recent blog post on Pink SF Propaganda vs Blue SF Storytelling. This is because Victoria can quite reasonably be described as the very sort of propaganda we detest in modern SF/F, except it happens to be against politically correctness rather than supportive of it. As one proofreader rather amusingly commented, “That was certainly an interesting work.  On a superficial level, I’ll
say it’s the most politically incorrect thing I’ve ever read in my
life.  I thought of myself as politically incorrect, and even I blanched
at a lot of it.”

I have to admit, there were moments when I found myself thinking: “he can’t possibly be going… well, I guess he is.” The difference is that Victoria is an openly and avowedly political novel, unlike Pink SF, which is politically correct propaganda marketed deceptively as science fiction and fantasy. And the secondary difference is that Victoria is more than mere traditionalist propaganda. It is also, much like Atlas Shrugged and 1984, a didactic novel. It amounts to a dramatic instruction course on how the principles of 4GW are utilized, set in a near-future fictional version of America that is unfortunately not nearly as far away from reality as one might wish. If I were to describe Victoria in a single sentence, it is as the Christian lovechild of Ayn Rand and Tom Clancy.

The same proofreader later noted, “Less than 24 hours after finishing Victoria and thinking, “Man, this isn’t very realistic,” I woke up to see that an entity named The Islamic State is moving to establish a gold-backed currency. In the same week the West landed a spacecraft on a comet for the first time in human history, but the big story today is that one of the scientists wore a shirt with girls on it and was forced to make a tearful apology to the entire world. This latter event goes far beyond anything in the book.”

Perhaps we’re the ones living in someone else’s parody. Anyhow, those who have been reading Victoria in serial at Traditional Right should be informed that the published version includes the final one-third of the book that will not be posted online. Victoria is available for $9.99 in EPUB and Kindle format from the Castalia House store and in Kindle format from Amazon.

On a thematically related note, after receiving several requests we have made the transcription of the lecture at Quantico by William S. Lind that first introduced the concept of 4th Generation War to the U.S. military available as a separate ebook in addition to the previously announced bundle with the recording of the lecture itself. The ebook/audiobook combination is still available in both EPUB and Kindle formats for $3.99 from the Castalia House store, while the ebook alone is $2.99 in Kindle format from Amazon. The lecture is only 51 minutes, so the ebook is only 24 pages, but it packs a remarkable amount of information in it and will be of considerable information to anyone who wishes to better understand 4GW in either its military or strategic applications.

And thanks very much to all the New Release subscribers who have already purchased Victoria. We hope you will enjoy it, but more importantly, we hope you will learn something from it.

SJWs devour themselves

Larry Correia is vastly amused by the spectacle of SFWA turning on an Campbell Award-nominated Asian lesbian:

Apparently a member of the literati SJW army—and super prestigious Campbell nominee for BEST NEW WRITER—has turned out to be a huge internet troll, with a bunch of aliases, attacking and tormenting people. Of course, those of you who read this blog or followed Sad Puppies are like, duh… They attack and torment Larry, and anybody who agrees with him nonstop, but not my friends… Benjanun Sriduangkaew did the unthinkable and used their regular SJW tactics of threats, insults, intimidation, and career sabotage against fellow SJWs, and that is super badthink!

Now, when you threaten, intimidate, troll, and try to sabotage the career of anybody who disagrees with the Social Justice narrative, then that is doubleplus good!

The SJWs are perfectly aware of their hypocrisy. They talk about how
Sriduangkaew was praised for “punching up”, meaning that it was okay for
her to use these tactics against non-members. Threaten somebody of the
correct sex and race, cool. Threaten somebody of the wrong sex and race,
bad. If you have a brain, you will find that sexist or racist, but you
are not thinking like a proper SJW. Anything they say isn’t sexist or
racist, but anything we do is. Simple.

As I’ve repeatedly warned, pointing out SJW hypocrisy is meaningless to any SJW. They aren’t dialectic. They aren’t rational or coherent. And deprived of any non-rabbits to attack, they naturally turn on each other. The funniest thing is, of course, that Benjanun Sriduangkaew was entirely correct to be cruelly dismissive of the likes of Jemisin and Rothfuss. At her best, Jemisin is mediocre; Rothfuss is painfully unreadable. He’s the Britney Spears of SF/F. I tried reading The Name of My Rose-Scented Wind or whatever it is called once when I was on the road and found myself turning to an Avalon Hill rulebook I’d previously read because it was more interesting. Rothfuss’s achievement is creating the only protagonist you would murder if forced to choose between him and Rand al’Thor. Larry also addressed #GamerGate:

This is one reason I’ve been enjoying the hell out of GamerGate. First,
it has been awesome having a great big group of people witness the same
bullshit that my industry has been dealing with for years. Second, SF/F
people tend to be squishy and polite, with a handful of outspoken
outliers like me and the rest of the Evil League of Evil, so SJWs have
run roughshod over my industry… But gamers? Holy shit. You really think
you can pick a fight with people whose brains are programmed to win?
Gamers will outlast, outthink, and outfight the SJWs. Tell a Gamer that
there is loot or XP in it, and he’ll grind SJWs to the grave.

That’s what SFWA never understood about me when they couldn’t figure out why I didn’t humbly lower my head and slink off the way a good rabbit who has been rejected by the warren is supposed to vanish. I’ve always been a gamer and a game developer first and foremost. It was more likely that I would go methodically through the entire SFWA directory like Michael Myers with literary taste than to even think about submitting to those ghastly little creatures. The thought literally never crossed my mind. The anti-GamerGate SJWs are making exactly the same mistake.