Tag: books

The new iron dream

It was amusing to learn about a new Kickstarter entitled The Old Iron Dream, which is intended to be “an in-depth piece of long-form journalism, a no-holds-barred, no-punches-pulled look at the sci-fi far-right”. The author mentions dangerous right-wing figures from John Campbell and Robert Heinlein to Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, as well as Orson Scott Card and me.

They haven’t seen anything yet.

Castalia House is my new publisher and we intend to give Mr. Forbes and his fearful left-wing friends a good deal to worry about over the next few decades. We are working off the new publishing models which will provide authors better royalty rates than they can get anywhere without self-publishing, and we are encouraging the participation of the various readerships involved. We are intentionally keeping prices down with an eye to maximizing the ongoing technological disruption of the existing publishing companies; we do not view every free reader of one of our books as a lost potential customer, but rather, as a reader who has been rescued from the confining intellectual chains of the SF/F gatekeepers.

We are asking everyone who has ever wondered whatever happened to the golden age of SF, who has ever felt ripped off by being subjected to yet another left-wing lecture instead of being entertained, who has ever wondered how on Earth that dreadful PC schlock was ever published in the first place, who has ever bitten his tongue rather than say something that might end his career, to not only support us, but to join us in this neotraditionalist rebellion. Remember, the future belongs to those who show up for it.

We are looking for excellent authors. We are looking for committed translators. We are looking for merciless slush readers. We are looking for talented cover artists. We are looking for people who will spread the word that an alternative to what John C. Wright so aptly described as the relentless heart of darkness exists.

By the end of this month, Castalia House will be announcing the addition of four new books to the existing arsenal of science fiction and epic fantasy, one of which will be mine, one of which will be a novella from an even better-known author, one of which will be an out-of-print novel from the public domain, and one of which will be an obscure ancient military text.

If you have any questions about Castalia House or our future plans for it, please feel free to ask them here.

The revolution continues

I know some of you have been wondering when I was going to get my books back online. I think I’ve received between 35 and 50 emails informing me that the Amazon links were broken over the last month, which is always an intriguing lesson on the inefficient nature of transmitting information via blog posts. The process of changing over from Marcher Lord took a little longer than I’d hoped, but we are at last finally getting somewhere. And since it is based in Finland, it seems fitting that the new publisher, Castalia House, should launch with  Särjetty taika, the Finnish translation of A Magic Broken.

Särjetty taika on fantastinen tarina häikäilemättömyydestä, urheudesta
ja petollisuudesta. Novelli kertoo kapteeni Nicolas du Meren tarinan.
Hän on maanpaossa hänen kapinaan nousseen lordinsa kuoleman vuoksi. Se
kertoo myös Lodista, Dunmorin pojasta; rohkeasta kääpiöstä joka yrittää
pelastaa kääpiötoverinsa orjuudesta. Heidän vaaralliset polkunsa
kohtaavat, mutta tavalla joka on kaikkea muuta kuin ennalta-arvattava.

We’d like to get a few Finnish reviews on Amazon, so if you speak Finnish and would like a review copy, please let me know. However, since the SF/F world doesn’t revolve around Helsinki, we have also published a number of the books in English today, including QUANTUM MORTIS: Gravity Kills, The Wardog’s Coin, and The Last Witchking. The first four books are already live and the other books are in the works; most of them have already been uploaded to Amazon. I’m not sure why QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted is not yet live, as it was the second book uploaded, but it appears there might be some technical conflict with the books that were published in print by Marcher Lord. But that should be resolved reasonably soon as Amazon has already acknowledged Marcher Lord’s unpublishing requests.

With a bit of luck and a tailwind, all the books should be live by the weekend with the possible exception of Summa Elvetica and Other Stories which hasn’t been created yet. Unfortunately, the process of transferring publishers appears to have caused the various reviews to disappeared. So, if you previously reviewed the books, or if you’ve read them but haven’t had the chance to get around to writing a review, I’d appreciate it if you’d consider taking the time to post a review again. I was told they would transfer over automatically, but that does not appear to be the case.

If you have any questions about Castalia House, please feel free to ask them here. My long-term expectation is that it will become a new model publisher and a key element in the Blue SF revolution. The publisher does intend to eventually publish other authors besides me, but please don’t send any inquiries in yet since we still have our hands full getting all of my books into print as well as publishing the various translated versions. Unfortunately, Amazon does not support Bahasa Indonesian or we would be publishing Mantra yang Rusak today as well.

But, if you’re interested in getting involved, as a slush reader, a translator, a blogger, or in some other way we haven’t anticipated, don’t hesitate to let me know. We haven’t even begun to put the web site together yet, as our first priority was to get the books online again. We have a long way to go to tear down the walls and towers of Pink SF, but we fully intend on having a good time in the process. After all, what is the point of sacking and pillaging if you’re not going to enjoy it?

Puhutko suomea?

Thanks to the two translators and JartStar, the first two translated ebooks are now finished and will be released once the process of republishing my Selenoth and Quantum Mortis books is complete. The Finnish and Bahasa Indonesian versions of A Magic Broken will be released then, and I’m told there is a chance that the French version may be ready by then as well, depending upon how long it the process actually takes. Some of the books should enjoy broader distribution than they did as Hinterlands books, as we will be putting them into the Apple Store and other distribution outlets that hitherto went unaddressed.

Those who speak English and have no interest in the translations may, however, be interested to know that there will be a new English ebook released as well. (No, it isn’t TAODAL 2. That will be December with some luck and a strong tailwind.) I won’t say anything more about the new book for the time being, but if everything goes as planned, we should have the previous QM and Selenoth books, as well as the four new additions, all out and available by the end of the month. The seven other translations in the works will be published as they are completed; I am myself particularly fired up about the Wallisertiitsch translation of Quantum Mortis:Gravity Kills.

In the meantime, if you happen to speak either Finnish or Indonesian and you are willing to proofread the relevant ebook, please shoot me an email and let me know. I’m still looking for more translators too, so if your mother tongue is something other than English and you have been considering a new challenge in the new year, this might be an interesting one to tackle. It has certainly been fascinating for me to learn which  English idioms don’t translate well, and frankly, I am just a little shocked to have been informed of some of the Finnish quasi-equivalents. They are a naughty people.

UPDATE: Okay, I didn’t anticipate any problem finding a Finnish proofreader. But I was a little surprised to learn that there is more than one regular reader who is a native speaker of Bahasa Indonesia.

A warning to fake reviewers

Someone should send news of this legal decision to the attention of Virginia Conterato of Minneapolis, the fake reviewer of A Throne of Bones. As well as the various fake reviewers on GoodReads.

In a decision that could reshape the rules for online consumer reviews, a Virginia court has ruled that the popular website Yelp must turn over the names of seven reviewers who anonymously criticized a prominent local carpet cleaning business.

The case revolves around negative feedback against Virginia-based Hadeed Carpet Cleaning. The owner, Joe Hadeed, said the users leaving bad reviews were not real customers of the cleaning service — something that would violate Yelp’s terms of service. His attorneys issued a subpoena demanding the names of seven anonymous reviewers, and a judge in Alexandria ruled that Yelp had to comply.

The Virginia Court of Appeals agreed this week, ruling that the comments were not protected First Amendment opinions if the Yelp users were not customers and thus were making false claims.

It will be interesting to learn what position GoodReads and Amazon take on this, since in most cases the reviewers are customers, but are provably making false claims with the complicity of the site host given its ability to check if they have purchased the book or not.

Given where this appears to be going, I think Amazon would be well-advised to take a strong position against fake reviews and only permit those who have a) bought the books and b) are willing to click a checkbox affirming that they have read the book in its entirety are permitted to post reviews there.

I have always felt that it was fraudulent to post a fake review and it is good to see that this is indeed the case.

Mailvox: The Fahrenheit Registry

Anang laments his inability to continue supporting authors who are his political enemies: 

As an author you
obviously want your works reaching the widest possible audience without
sacrificing your own creative vision. At the same time, I believe an
author’s ideology, his Weltanschauung is
reflected in his works. I’m a new and proud male American citizen. Why
should I pay my good money to read or watch something that ignores and
insults my gender, my politics or the things that made me want to be an
American?

 It’s
a little sad actually, having discovered I think this way. It means I
can never enjoy some of the most creative artists currently living. I
threw away my collection of Naomi Novik’s fantasy books after I realized
she was a local party volunteer for John Kerry’s 2004 election. All her
meticulous research into creating an alternate, fantastical history of
the Napoleonic Wars was just to insert leftist ideology and harp on
social justice/race theory/gender inequality.

It’s
a very lonely feeling, to know you are cut off from nearly every work
of popular entertainment and art if you wish to avoid propaganda-filled attacks on your existence. I suppose that is why most men watch
sports.

I knew Novik’s books fell completely apart upon the visit to Australia, (never managed to finish that one), but I didn’t realize there was a sound political reason for it. I think Anang forgets that there are actually many excellent writers who support and sustain the Western intellectual tradition; the fact that they have been exiled by the Left’s gatekeepers doesn’t mean their works don’t exist or can’t be found. In fact, increasing the exposure and awareness of Blue SF/F writers is one of my objectives in the coming year.

Perhaps it would be helpful to maintain a political registry of SF/F writers so we can permit those who don’t wish to financially support their enemies to avoid doing so. This doesn’t mean one has to avoid reading them entirely, of course, as The Pirate Bay, LibGen, and other sites have far more books that one can hope to read in a lifetime. For example, here is LibGen’s list of the current SFWA president Steven Gould’s books, in the unlikely event that anyone feels any pressing need to read them. As an added bonus, I can tell you that the SFWA absolutely hates and fears those sites; the idea that people can download their books for free seems to bother them considerably more than simply being ignored.

Never mind that there is no evidence indicating that pirated books actually harm an author’s book sales. As I’ve noted, about one in five free Amazon downloads turns into a purchase of A Throne of Bones, which is why I’d love to give away more than the 21,760 copies that were downloaded in 2013.

My thought is that one can rate an author in terms of “noviks”, in honor of Anang’s epiphany.  10 noviks would indicate an author that conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, and traditionalists should avoid at all costs on the basis of his anti-civilizational beliefs and activities. On the other side, 10 “kratmans” would indicate a staunch defender of Western civilization. Here are a few suggestions for the scale:

Naomi Novik: 5 noviks
China Mieville: 9 noviks
Charles Stross: 7 noviks
Larry Corriea: 8 kratmans
JRR Tolkien: 10 kratmans

I leave it to the rest of you to provide the ratings. I shall merely post them as they are added.

Reading List 2013

Of the 81 books I read this year, the one I enjoyed most was Jill Paton Walsh’s remarkably good revival of Dorothy Sayers’s famous characters in A Presumption of Death, followed by Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 and Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile. The
worst book I read this year was, without question, Isaac Asimov’s Forward the Foundation,
which is one of those ill-considered prequels that makes one wonder how the author ever managed to write the books that inspired them in the first place. I couldn’t even bring myself to start the third book in the trilogy, which was so dreadful that it almost caused me to reconsider the merits of the original Foundation trilogy. The
most disappointing book was Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery. It wasn’t bad or poorly written, (in fact, it was remarkably well-researched), but it was unpleasant, the protagonist was a cipher, the literary device employed was both irritating and unnecessary, and there was little point to the plot itself other than to provide a creative explanation for the authorship of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

On the non-fiction side, I read a number of truly excellent books this year. Rothbard’s An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought: Vol I is an epic must-read for anyone with any interest in economics, (I’m halfway through Volume II now), and Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile articulated some very important concepts towards which I’d been fumbling over the last ten years. I finally got around to actually reading Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in its entirety, and re-reading Mere Christianity was, as always, both thought-provoking and encouraging. However, PJ O’Rourke’s Don’t Vote It Just Encourages The Bastards read as if it had been phoned in; either O’Rourke has lost his fastball or his effervescent conservativism was fatally discouraged by the Bush ’43 administration.

Keep in mind these ratings are not necessarily statements about a book’s
significance or literary quality, they are merely casual observations of how much I
happened to enjoy reading the book at the time. 

FIVE STARS
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought: Vol I, Murray Rothbard
Panzer Commander, Hans von Luck
My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok 
A Presumption of Death, Jill Paton Walsh
Antifragile, Nassim Taleb
Mere Christianity, CS Lewis
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn
Dune, Frank Herbert
Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
Inherit the Stars, James Hogan
1Q84, Haruki Murakami

FOUR STARS
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
Il Cavaliere Inesistante, Italo Calvino
Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
King Rat, China Mieville
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
Officers and Gentlemen, Evelyn Waugh 
Red Country, Joe Abercrombie
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, PG Wodehouse
Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino
Five Red Herrings, Dorothy Sayers
Clouds of Witness, Dorothy Sayers
Spellbound, Larry Correia 
Warbound, Larry Correia
Monster Hunter International, Larry Correia
Defense of the Divine Revelation against the Objections of the Freethinkers, Leonhard Euler
The Art of Game Design, Jesse Schell
The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, James Hogan
Giant’s Star, James Hogan
In Search of Stupidity, Rick Chapman

THREE STARS
The Theory of Money and Credit, Ludwig von Mises 
Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams
The Meaning of It All, Richard Feynman 
Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh 
Sharpe’s Battle, Bernard Cornwell 
Sharpe’s Company, Bernard Cornwell 
Sharpe’s Sword, Bernard Cornwell
The Desert Spear, Peter Brett 
Macroscope, Piers Anthony
Greenwitch, Susan Cooper
Down on the Farm, Charles Stross
Terms of Enlistment, Marko Kloos
Men on Strike, Helen Smith  
Looking for Jake, China Mieville
Hailstone Mountain, Lars Walker 
Tales of the Dying Earth, Jack Vance
The Jewels of Paradise, Donna Leon 
Lord Talon’s Revenge, Tom Simon
Jhereg, Stephen Brust 
Yendi, Stephen Brust 
Teckla, Stephen Brust 
Taltos, Stephen Brust
Hard Magic, Larry Correia
Monster Hunter Vendetta, Larry Correia 
Monster Hunter Alpha, Larry Correia 
Tour of Duty, Michael Z. Williamson 
The Gap into Conflict, Stephen Donaldson 
Lights in the Deep, Brad Torgersen 
The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks 
Busman’s Honeymoon, Dorothy Sayers 
A Desert Called Peace, Tom Kratman 
The Prague Cemetery, Umberto Eco 
Big Boys Don’t Cry, Tom Kratman
Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert 
Frostborn: The First Quest, Jonathan Moeller
On Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

TWO STARS
 Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik
The Daylight War, Peter Brett
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
Imperialism & Social Classes, Joseph Schumpeter
Phoenix, Stephen Brust 
Athyra, Stephen Brust 
Songs of the Dying Earth, Dozois and Martin, ed.
The Gap into Vision, Stephen Donaldson 
The Gap into Power, Stephen Donaldson
The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky

ONE STAR
Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov
Forward the Foundation, Isaac Asimov
Tactics, Asclepiodotus
Don’t Vote It Just Encourages The Bastards, PJ O’Rourke

Unpublished

For reasons that will become clear in a few weeks, and which I am not presently able to disclose, I am no longer publishing my books with Marcher Lord Hinterlands as of today. There haven’t been any problems or a falling out, and indeed, even our most recent collaboration has been successful, with 1,100 copies of QM being sold in its first month of release. I have merely arranged to reacquire the full publishing rights to my books.

What this means in the short-term is that neither the Selenoth books nor the Quantum Mortis books will be available from Amazon or anywhere else for that matter. I expect the books to again be available on Amazon, the Apple Store, and elsewhere, by the end of January.

I very much appreciate what Jeff has done with Marcher Lord. Were it not for his contacting me a few years ago and asking me if I had anything that my other publishers weren’t likely to publish, I would never have written Summa Elvetica. And were it not for Summa Elvetica, I very much doubt that I would have proceeded to write A Throne of Bones or to write the nine shorter works that presently make up the land of Selenoth.

Rest assured I am still hard at work on both QM2 and TAODAL 2. I’m hoping for September and December releases there.

Due to some vagaries with regards to the Kindle Select program, please note that it is possible that AMB, TWC, TLW, and QM:GK will continue to be available on Amazon in some capacities until the end of February. If that is the case, it is not necessary to inform me that they are still being loaned or sold.

Mailvox: starting out in SF

CR asks for some advice concerning science fiction:

Hey man… so I’ve never been a fan of science fiction involving elves and dragons and all that so I’ve never given a science fiction book a try. The only scifi movies I’ve watched are the ones that could conceivably be true at some point, such as Oblivion, Europa Report, Moon, etc…

You’re probably one of the most intelligent people I know of and you certainly seem to be a fan of this genre… since I have some free time on my hands over the holidays, can you recommend a starter list of sci fi books? That whole Quantum Mortis series looks interesting… what’s the correct order to read them in?

With regards to Quantum Mortis, I recommend reading A Man Disrupted first, then Gravity Kills. As for elves, dragons, and science fiction, I should first point out that elves and dragons are typically indicative of fantasy, whereas rocket ships, scientist progagonists, space empires, and future technologies are indicative of science fiction.

The distinction is an important one, even if all the major science fiction organizations and awards refuse to recognize it. The fact is that Fifty Shades of Grey is every bit as legitimately science fiction as A Game of Thrones; it is certainly pure fantasy.

In answer to the question, this would be my SF starter list, listed in order of recommended reading.

  1. Nightfall (short story) by Isaac Asimov
  2. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  3. Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein
  4. Flowers for Algernon (short story) by Daniel Keys
  5. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  6. Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan
  7. Neuromancer by William Gibson
  8. Dune by Frank Herbert
  9. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
  10. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

If you can read through the first five books on the list and find yourself to be largely indifferent, then science fiction is simply not for you. Upon re-reading three of the best-regarded SF series, however, I have to conclude that it may actually be the underrated Giants trilogy by James P. Hogan that is the height of science fiction achievement to date, combining as it does physics, evolution, creation mythology, and the great secular dream of a united Man take his first steps out into the wider universe.

It was fascinating to discover how much better I liked Dune Messiah and Children of Dune as an adult. They’re not epic like Dune was; Herbert literally turns the usual “show, don’t tell” mantra on its head by refusing to show anything at all of Muad’Dib’s jihad. But I think some of the two books’ subtleties are lost on a teenager, as well as the full scope of Herbert’s incisive commentary on failure and human tragedy.

A must-download

The Seal Queen is a free download on Amazon today.

“The Seal Queen tells the story of Briah, an escaped slave, who finds
sanctuary for herself and her unborn child on an enchanted beach. There
her life is filled with contented solitude, the joys of motherhood, and
even the possibility of love with a merman whose song haunts her dreams.
But Briah’s magical world is shaken when she discovers that
her son is the long-awaited savior and future king of the roane (the
gentler cousins of the selkies).”

Can you say… WERESEAL FICTION!

Lions Den VIII: Jonathan Moeller

The Pulp Writer throws Frostborn: The First Quest into the Den and takes a decidedly different approach in introducing it to everyone here. If you’re interested in being one of the book’s three reviewers, shoot me an email. You may also be interested in noting that both his Demonsouled and Child of the Ghosts are free downloads today.

Today I am going to tell you a story about the dangers of opening doors.

Long ago, before humans ever came to my world,
before humans even existed, the high elves ruled this world. We
believed that God had put us here to care and maintain this world, for
God had indeed created it for a purpose. A great darkness had been
imprisoned within the skin of the world, inside a place the humans would
one day call the Black Mountain. Our responsibility was to guard the
prison and serve as the world’s caretakers.

And so we did.

For spans of
time so vast that no human tongue has the vocabulary to describe them,
the high elves kept watch over this world, dwelling in great bliss and
splendor as they went about their task.

But for some of us, that was not enough.

Those
of us with wisdom and courage, those of us with the strength to cast
aside old ideas and grow beyond our purpose, used our spells to examine
the Black Mountain, to consider the darkness sealed within as a bored
child might pick at a scab. In time the darkness spoke to us. At first
we spurned it, but we came to see that it spoke wisdom, words of
strength and power.

And the darkness reached out and possessed one of
us, and we fell to our knees and worshipped him as our new god, the
bearer of shadow, the teacher of new ways.

The
high elves turned against us, the shortsighted fools. They called us the
dark elves, but we were the true elves, the stronger elves, for we
alone had been brave enough to cast off our shackles and make ourselves
more.

They made war upon us for millennia, and we laid the
world waste. Spells beyond the capacity of the human mind to understand
shattered the land, and mountains crumbled and deserts froze and
forests burned. Yet for all our power, the high elves had the mastery,
and drove us back mile by mile.

But the bearer of shadow walked among us, whispering
his secrets into our ears. He taught us spells of necromancy, of
shaping flesh and bone into weapons of death. And he taught us the
secret of opening doors between the worlds. For there are as many worlds
as there are stars in the night skies, and as many kindreds that live
upon them. Our wizards opened the doors between the worlds, and brought
forth new kindreds to serve us as slaves and soldiers.

The orcs were the first. They made superb slave
soldiers for our armies, and we brought hundreds of thousands of them
through the gates. Then came the beastmen and the manetaurs. They were
harder to control, but served well as shock troops. Halflings were too
weak for battle, but made useful slaves. The dwarves proved impossible
to control, and soon rebelled and sided against us, but they were a rare
error

And one day, we found the urdmordar.

We
had never seen anything like them. They wore the form of spiders, yet
wielded great dark magic. They disdained the use of tools and weapons,
yet had intellects of genius, and dominated lesser creatures with ease.
They feasted upon living flesh like any rude predator, but were so
cunning and so clever that they remained hidden and their victims rarely
knew their true foes.

What slaves they would make! With their power, we could at last crush the high elves.

And so we opened the door to their world and brought the urdmordar to ours.

Fools, fools, fools.

For the urdmordar were too powerful to control.

They
swarmed the gate, and devoured the wizards that sought to bind them. We
were the rightful masters of this world, mighty in sorcery and wisdom
without peer, but the urdmordar saw us as only one thing.

Food.

Within five years
the dark elven kingdoms had been enslaved and forced to serve the
urdmordar. Our armies of slaves transferred their allegiance readily
enough. The high elves briefly rejoiced, thinking they had found an
ally, but the hunger of the urdmordar was insatiable.

One by one the high elven kingdoms fell, until only Cathair Solas remained.

And then the urdmordar met a new kindred coming up from the south.

The
humans, the exiles of Old Earth, the heirs of Arthur Pendragon, fleeing
through a magical gate from the fall of their realm. Heedless of the
ancient conflicts of their new world, they blundered into the path of
the urdmordar.

There is danger in opening doors…but there is also opportunity.

For in the humans, after long millennia, I see the key to my freedom.

– The Warden of Urd Morlemoch