Tag: books

Book review: Hard Magic

BW provides the first review of the first Lions’ Den entry, Hard Magic by Larry Correia:

Hard Magic
Larry Correia
Rating: 8/10 and would buy

Hard Magic stands above several portions of mainstream culture. I’m tired of all these plucky kids and these strange worlds of elves and misanthropy. I’m tired of obvious political messages and anti-heroes being tough and unrelatable. I want a heroic big guy with a big gun in a hard boiled narration against someone or people I dislike a little. Hard Magic delivers in spades.

Jake Sullivan is a man for whom gravity is a compliant and willing mistress. Faye Vierra is a teleport spamming farm girl. Together, they must stop the Chairman, a man of elegance, strength and evil, who is planning to rule the world from Imperial Japan. Surrounding them is a colorful cast of characters which include a former radio personality who can control people’s minds, a German with a dark history involving zombies, a powerhouse of a dame and a samurai obsessed with strength above all. One might say it’s gimmicky, but this is no Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This is a logical and reasonable extension of the singular idea: What if magic showed up suddenly in the 1850’s?

Mr. Correia answers it well, he fulfills certain restrictions of Zeppelins with fire controlling Torches, lightning wrangling Cracklers and the wind shifting Weathermen. Gravity Spikers and Brutes serve as frontline troops, their natural strengths increased with their magical abilities. The Kaiser had sorcerers who raised the German dead to fight again. World War One was ended, not by armistice and treaty, but instead by Mad Scientist-made nuclear fire. At no point did I decide that the logic presented to me offended me. At no point did I say: “That’s it! I’m done, I could take the guy who could control gravity, but that one bit was too much.”

The book keeps a solid amount of suspense and rewarding action dispersed throughout in an even manner. The writing intricately changes itself according to whose perspective is the focus. Jake Sullivan’s voice is barebones and simplistic, hard boiled, even, while Faye’s is more descriptive and full of wonder. Madi’s voice feigns complexity and nobility while delving into barbarism as soon as it suits him. I was never confused as to the motivations of many characters, if it was a bit on the tell side of things.

One of the things that struck me was context. Unlike Dresden Files or other ‘hard boiled’ magical stories, this story had no questions of morals. People were good, or they were evil. Actions determined reactions, rather than stances or who they were. Even the events that lead to the death of a major character was shown to be evil, despite good long term intentions.  An example, not only were the Japanese elitist and darwinistic in the telling, they lived it in the logical fashion. They weren’t evil because they are evil conquering bastards; they were evil conquering bastards because their philosophies and values led them to that point. This brought the book to life. Details abounded, and rather than tell me the unimportant minutiae, Mr. Correia gave me tidbits that were relevant or funny. Hard Magic has no wasted space. 

Hard Magic proves that one doesn’t need a carefully crafted emotional backstory or actions for a modern protagonist. Like John Carter, Tarzan and other great action heroes of the great age of pulp, Jake Sullivan and the rest of the supporting characters do what they do because their characters were crafted from their surroundings, and personality from inherent humanity. It’s fresh, it’s great and I am entertained.

Style: 9 Writing changes itself to suit the characters. The writing never leaves me without images of the characters or actions. I won’t say it’s perfect, but my experience was very positive. There was a lack of complexity, and I was never challenged.

Plot: 10  Plot is simple, but it doesn’t need to be anything else. There’s a villain, and the story is over when he’s defeated. The heroes and villains have their own teams and motivations. It’s the solid armor protecting any weaknesses I didn’t pick up.

Characters: 10 Books like this rely on the couches of plot and characters. Failure in one can be made up in the other, but too much failure ruins the experience. It causes my boxers to get in a twist and me to put down a book. I had to be coerced by outside action before I stopped reading. I enjoyed every character who showed up and I enjoyed seeing them duke it out, especially in a teleport spam battle.

Value: 7  Sadly, this book holds little value in the big picture. All the ideas are interesting, but there is still that sense that this is a book for entertainment. That’s it. I can’t discern much to gain beyond a good tale. However, as entertainment, it succeeds admirably.

Series Draw: 6  Hard Magic is a story that could stand on its own, yet has a series attached to it. Sadly, The first book more or less deals with the characters and villains by the end of it, without pulling me into the series. Will I read the rest later? Oh yes. But if the sequels weren’t out, would I spend energy to remember the release dates? Not likely.

The book has no crippling flaws, I could read it to my not-yet living kids and I think it would look fancy on my paperback bookshelf. Would buy used, perhaps hardback if cheap enough.

Excerpt:  There was a shout and a gunshot. Sullivan’s concentration wavered, just a bit, and the real world came suddenly flooding back. The Power he’d gathered slipped from his control and the elevator gate was sheared from its bolts and slammed flat into the floor under the added pressure of ten gravities. A passenger screamed as his foot was crushed flat and blood came squirting out the top of his shoe. “Sorry, bud.” Sullivan turned in time to see one of the G-men tumbling down the stairwell, a grey shape leaping behind, colliding with Cowley and Purvis and taking them all down, “Aw hell,” he muttered, then spun back in time to see Delilah’s lovely green eyes locked on his.
“You were trying to smoosh me, Heavy!” she exclaimed, eyes twinkling as she ignited her own Power. She grabbed the big man by the tie and hoisted him effortlessly off the floor, even though he was almost a foot taller. The tie tightened, choking him as he dangled, and she finally got a good look at her assailant. “You! Well, if it isn’t Jake Sullivan. Been a long time.”
Then she hurled him. Suddenly airborne, he flew across the waiting area. Instinctively, his Power flared, and he bounced softly off the far wall with the force of a pillow. Jake returned to his normal weight as his boots hit the floor. He loosened his cheap tie so he could breathe again. “Hey, Delilah.”
“You lousy bastard.” She stepped out of the elevator and cracked her knuckles in a very unladylike manner. The other passengers had no idea what was going on, but they knew that this was not where they wanted to be. They took off at a run except for the one with the crushed foot, who hobbled as fast as he could. Every Normal had the sense to stay out of this kind of fight. “I’d heard you’d gone all Johnny Law now,” Delilah said.
“Something like that,” he replied slowly. “Bounty hunter.”
“Hypocrite.”
There was the sound of several quick blows. Off to the side, the grey shape rose and took on the form of a man in a long coat with a nightstick in hand. The G-Men were down. Purvis moaned. The man in grey stepped off the fallen agents and took a wary step away from Sullivan. He was short and tanned, with a pointy blond goatee and nearly shaved head. He picked his hat up and carefully returned it to his head. “Delilah Jones?” he asked quickly. Cowley started to rise and the stranger kicked him in the ribs, sending the agent back down.
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m here to rescue you,” he stated with a German accent, “from him.” He nodded in Sullivan’s direction. “No offense, Mein Herr.”
“None taken, but I’m gonna give you an ass whoopin’, you realize that, right, Fritz?” Jake stated calmly. He checked. The majority of his Power was still in reserve and he began to gather it.
“I can take care of myself, buddy,” Delilah told the stranger. “Were you planning on arresting me, Jake?”
“If I don’t want to go back to prison, yeah,” Sullivan answered, glancing back and forth between Delilah and the new threat. Delilah was a known quantity, the other guy, not so much. “That’s kinda the plan.”
“Too bad,” she answered as she grabbed the heavy metal luggage cart, picked it up as if it weighed nothing and threw it at him.

The bronze medal

The results for the 2013 Clive Staples Award were announced last night:

  1. Starflower by Anne Elisabeth Stengl
  2. Liberator by Bryan Davis
  3. The Throne of Bones by Vox Day
  4. Prophet by R. J. Larson
  5. Mortal by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee   

It’s probably not the best sign for a book when the awards committee doesn’t quite get the title right.  But its nomination, to say nothing of being selected as a finalist for the award, was still a nice surprise, given the fact that I didn’t think ATOB was even eligible for any awards.

Lions Den I: Larry Correia

I thought the inaugural Lions’ Den should start off with a literal literary bang, so I asked my fellow co-founder of the Hispanic-Latino Science Fiction Writers Alliance and Gun Club, Larry Correia, if he would do the honors. Being both fearless and heavily armed, he did not hesitate to kick the door down and stride right in with HARD MAGIC, the first book in the Grimnoir Chronicles.

“The Grimnoir Chronicles trilogy is kind of hard to
categorize. It is an alternative history, epic fantasy, noir-pulp sci-fi, diesel
punk saga about 1930s Great Depression superheroes battling the magical samurai
of Imperial Japan. Yeah, good luck pitching that genre to an editor. However,
they are also a lot of fun, and the series turned out really well. It starts
out with Hard Magic, then Spellbound is the sequel, and the final book of the
trilogy, Warbound, is coming out this week.
“On this project I was originally brainstorming a regular
epic fantasy story, lots of magic, big interconnected plots, lots and lots of
characters, but it kind of mutated, mostly because I was talking with author
Mike Kupari at the time about how cool the styles of the 30s were and how everybody
loves Zeppelins. So I wound up setting this epic fantasy story in an
alternative history version of the 1930s.
“As a history nut I find the period between the world wars
absolutely fascinating, and it was a period that I’d already studied a lot so I
could add some cultural authenticity. This was also when men wore hats, and
that’s just cool. I’m a big fan of hard boiled crime novels, Chandler and
Hammett especially, so this was my chance to take on those kind of characters. I
love the vibe, I love the style, and as a gun nut there was so much classy
hardware to choose from.
“This world diverged from ours in the 1850s when a handful of
people began to develop magical powers for an unknown reason. As time goes on,
the numbers with magic grow, until by the 30s it is about one in a hundred
people with some measure of power, and one in a thousand capable of truly
impressive feats. The reason it gets a superhero vibe is because each person’s
magic can screw with one part of the laws of physics (and as a writer known for
his action scenes, this meant I could do some crazy stuff). By the time Hard
Magic begins the world has been changed in a lot of drastic ways by the introduction
of magic, which as a history geek, enabled me to have a lot of fun.
“Hard Magic has two main characters, “Heavy” Jake Sullivan,
who is a war hero, ex-con, forced into working for J. Edgar Hoover to catch
magical fugitives. He can control the direction and strength of gravity. And Faye
Vierra, a teenage dustbowl Okie refugee, who is a teensy bit crazy, can
teleport, and is potentially the most dangerous person in the world. Hard Magic
is about them getting involved with a secret society known as the Grimnoir and
their battle to keep a Tesla super weapon from falling into the hands of the
deadly Imperium.

“I like to say that this is the only book I’m aware of that
features a teleporting magic ninja fight on top of a flaming pirate dirigible.
And somehow, despite my unabashed love of pulp awesomeness, Hard Magic has been
nominated for and won some awards and been really well received. I’ve got back
to back Audie wins for the audiobooks of the first two, and Hard Magic was a
finalist for best novel in France!  That
was certainly unexpected.”
     – Larry Correia

The three reviewers have volunteered and been assigned.  I will post their reviews here in two weeks.

A Den of Literary Lions

Ideas stand on their own, they are not tainted by the individual who happens to produce them.  McRapey may be a creepy little gamma male who can’t argue his way out of a paper bag or produce an original idea for a book to save his life, but he is an unusually talented self-promoter from whom better writers can draw useful examples.

One thing that I initially liked was his Big Idea series, in which McRapey permits various authors to market their books to the Whatever warren.  I’d even considered doing something similar a few years ago, but the problem is that most of the Big Ideas I’d read, conceived as they were by modern SF/F writers, were trite, obvious, derivative, and sometimes downright embarrassing.

“I thought, you know, I should just TOTALLY make this female protagonist, only she’d be, like, strong and independent and she wouldn’t take ANY crap from ANYBODY.  And she’d be just SOOO snarky, you know, and like, she’d have this total dilemma, you know, because, like, all the men are totally in love with her, but she has to, like, choose, you know, but here’s the twist.  Instead of choosing between a white male werewolf and a white male vampire who are both in love with her, she’d be, like, forced to choose between an Asian werewolf and, like, a black FEMALE vampire!  My editor’s head just about exploded when she heard that, she was like, WHOAH, it’s like a whole new science fiction GENRE!”

Anyhow, the Ideas were anything but Big and they usually left me considerably less interested in the book than I had been before. I therefore abandoned the idea.

However, I have been receiving an increasing number of requests from various writers to read their works and comment upon them, requests I simply do not have the bandwidth to accommodate.  It occurred to me that there are both a goodly number of writers as well as well-read and sophisticated readers here.  As far as exposure goes, this blog sees about 40 percent more traffic than Whatever.  So, it should be possible to take the Big Idea concept and improve upon it in a
manner that would be both useful to the writers and entertaining for the
readers

My thought is that every two weeks, a writer will have the opportunity to present his book via a post dedicated to it here.  That post can focus on the central idea behind the book, it can focus on a particular aspect of the book, or it can focus on something that inspired the book.  The book can be conventionally published, self-published or even a work in progress with a complete first draft.  In addition to sending me a link to the cover and the text for the post, the author will send me the epub.

When the book is posted, if the author is interested, I will ask for three volunteers to read and review the book.  I’ll provide a template which will inform us a) if they enjoyed the book, b) what they felt were its strongest technical elements, c) what they felt was a typical writing sample, and, d) if the author requests, where they felt there was room for improvement.  The reviews can be short, but they should be substantive.  Between two and three weeks after the author’s post, I will post the reviews here.

Think of it as three parts marketing and one part writer’s workshop.

The review aspect won’t be required; if an author merely wishes to publicize his work by talking about it here and doesn’t want it to be reviewed, that’s certainly fine.  But if there are those who express an interest in reviewing the book in the comments, I would encourage the authors to take advantage of the opportunity to receive some constructive criticism.  That is, after all, the best way to improve.

Anyhow, if you’re a writer, you’ve got a book to publicize or polish, and you’re interested in a slot, please let me know via email.  If you consider yourself a potential reviewer, please mention as much in the comments.  And if you’re a reader, feel free to throw out any suggestions you might have to improve the process.  And if it’s a dumb idea in which no one has any interest, then we simply won’t bother with it.

Random book notes

Huggums asks about other novels with military action:

I really enjoyed all the short stories leading to A Throne of Bones and
I’m halfway through the novel now. The battles are what really pull me
in. Are there any other novels with that level of tactical detail that
you’d recommend?

That’s a good question.  There really aren’t many in the fantasy genre that spring immediately to mind, and even the historical Roman fiction out there tends to concentrate on the personalities rather than the tactics.  The Malazan Books of the Fallen contain some, although it’s more akin to the Bataan Death March than anything out of Jomini or Vegetius and reading the 10-volume Malazan series feels a bit like a literary death march at times.

I haven’t read Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Chronicles, but based on his Sharpe books, which I have read, I suspect they will have a fair amount of military tactics.  In the latter, he provides some of the most detailed description of Napoleonic tactics I’ve seen in fiction. Unfortunately, I imagine the former will probably also have a character who always gets – and loses – the girl ala James Bond, even on battlefields where one would not imagine there could possibly be a girl for miles around.

Harry Turtledove’s Misplaced Legion, which I belatedly discovered was more or less ripped straight out of Procopius, is probably his best work and also contains an interesting take on tactics as a conventional Roman legion is forced to adapt to fighting foes akin to the historical enemies of the Byzantine empire.

In general, there are a lot more novels that utilize naval tactics, and ersatz naval tactics in space, than infantry tactics.  But if anyone has any additional recommendations for Huggums, please feel free to throw them out there.  As a few sharp-eyed Selenoth fans have noted, the tactical elements within the Selenoth series will remain strong; the question is who will be utilizing the Tactics of Asclepiodotus.

In other news, I was surprised and delighted to discover how unexpectedly good A Presumption of Death turned out to be.  Dorothy Sayers is my third favorite mystery writer, after Ellis Peters and Agatha Christie, (so much for the theories of my literary misogyny), and so my expectations from a book that was cobbled together from the Wimsey Papers were pretty low.  But Jill Paton Walsh did an astonishing job of capturing the essence of Sayers’s characters; she wisely chose to make Harriet Vane the center of the novel.  While the wit does not sparkle and the erudition is more plodding, both are there and the plot is considerably superior to any of the proper Wimsey novels.

Walsh doesn’t give in to the temptation to modernize either the characters or the setting; the Christianity of the English people of the World War II setting is deep and reminds the reader of the civilized world we have lost.  The nobility, the dignity, and the humanity of even the most common people is striking in comparison with the parade of vulgar fools, cowards and moral degenerates who fancy themselves a progressive advancement from their predecessors.  It’s easily the best novel I’ve read for the first time this year.

The author adds in a note:

From November 1939 to January 1940 Dorothy L. Sayers made a series of contributions to the Spectator magazine, consisting of mock letters to and from various members of the Wimsey family, about war-time conditions like blackout, evacuation, rationing, and the need for the public to take personal responsibility: ‘They must not continually ask for leadership – they must lead themselves.’

These contributions, usually now referred to as ‘The Wimsey Papers’ in effect lay out the characters in the crime novels like pieces on a chess board during the opening moves of a game. They tell us where everyone was. Lord Peter was somewhere abroad, on a secret mission under the direction of the Foreign Office; Bunter was with him; Harriet had taken her own children and those of her sister-in-law to the country, the loathed Helen, Duchess of Denver had joined the Ministry of Instruction and Morale, etc. etc.

The Wimsey Papers are almost, but not quite, the latest information that Dorothy L Sayers provided about her characters. There is also a short story called ‘Talboys’, contained in the volume ‘Striding Folly’ which shows Peter and Harriet and their children living in their country farmhouse peacefully together, and which must refer to 1942.

The Wimsey Papers are not fiction, and were not intended to be read in a continuous chunk. Some of them are about details of war-time history that would now require extensive footnotes in explication. But they do afford an authoritative foothold for an account of the Wimsey family in 1940. I have opened this novel with a selection from them, and incorporated insights and information from them in the narrative where I could.

I should be very pleased indeed if anyone playing in the Selenoth sandbox, now or in the future, manages to do so as effectively as Ms Walsh.  It has definitely interested me in her own novels.  If this is fan fiction, as a few puritans have described it, it must come very near to the Form of that despised form.

Tom Simon’s Lord Talon’s Revenge is quite good, although it is the sort of novel that is most likely to be appreciated by a writer or a student of the traditional fantasy genre.  One imagines Matthew David Surridge would have a field day with it.  I’ve also been re-reading Stephen Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels and while they remain fairly entertaining, it’s a little disconcerting to discover how socio-sexually juvenile and logically nonsensical they are.  I hope to put a few more substantive reviews together in the next week or two, but in the event that I do not, I thought I would at least mention them here.

There is no middle ground

Season of the Red Wolf fails to note two vital things in his attempt to call a pox on both houses.  First, I am neither a conservative nor a reactionary.  My positions stand on their own from first principles, they are not formed in reaction to anything. Second, he does not, (and I suspect cannot), make a case against either my position on either gays or women beyond the usual pointing, shrieking, and not bothering to go into details because his position is self-evident:

All this brings me to Theodore Beale aka Vox Day, the voice for ‘conservative sanity’ in the Science Fiction genre community. So he thinks. Yes Beale does have on occasion some sensible things to say, about the moral relativist and cultural relativist far Left insanity that pervades the SF genre community, and the odious liberal gate-keeping of the commercial and ‘artistic’ award circus. However Beale is – to put it as politely and diplomatically as possible – not the most reasonable alternative to the status quo. It’s not that he’s a little cranky, or odd, who isn’t in the genre community? Who isn’t period? It’s that his um opinions on women and homosexuality are simply eyebrow raising. There is no other way to put it.

Now I don’t care for RationalWiki any more than I care for Wiki on controversial issues. RationalWiki’s bias to so-called enlightenment values that are not always such is apparent and in-your-face. It appears to have a clear anti-religious and scientific materialist agenda, an agenda that hews to the liberal status quo across the board, and RationalWiki may well suffer from moral and cultural relativist delusions that Western liberalism suffers from as a whole. I mention this because this is Beale’s page at RationalWiki. However there are some quotes there attributed to Beale – I am talking about what he has to say about women and homosexuality – that make one wonder if they are for real or at least intended to be tongue-in-cheek. Well they are for real and no they are not intended to be sarcastic.

Here are some of his choice remarks on gays for example.

I am not going to bother going into details on why the above is just misguided, disturbing and contradictory. Either you see it or you don’t. Homosexuality is “a combination of nature…” and yet it is “a birth defect”. And ‘civilized society’ needs to treat it as such. The path down which this kind of thinking leads is not one I care to go down… Beale appears to be sincere in that he intends no personal malice or hatred to homosexuals – he makes it clear he doesn’t see homosexuality as bad per se. And yet Beale does give comfort and justification to those who are hateful to homosexuals. However Beale may vociferously deny it and not intend it at all. This is why Beale’s self-deceptive thinking on this front is so dangerous and beyond the pale. [PS No I am not gay myself, although I know some people think so]

On women in science and well, women, he is arguably misogynistic. And no I don’t take seriously the claims of militant feminists here at all, since the latter have no credibility whatsoever (witness the Malzberg and Resnick witch-hunt after all); but Beale’s more mainstream critics and his own *actual remarks* here speak for themselves (I mean one just needs to quote Beale without comment):

Now if Beale were just reacting and mocking the idiotic extremes of far Left feminism (and militant feminism in the academy for that matter), and its anti-male prejudice and out-and-out imbecility (as exemplified by the Malzberg-Resnick kerfluffle), I would and do concur. The militant feminists are the flip side of the coin to old-fashioned misogyny and excessive patriarchy in our society. However the problem with Beale is that he appears to go further than that, and his remarks on women as a whole appear to be persistently and consistently troubling, a little over the top.

The thing is Beale easily alienates or risks alienating (one assumes) half the genre community with his breezy, negative remarks on the female sex. One would think he would want as many readers as possible, as much support as he could get from SFFWA voters, when everything is rigged against you. Does Beale not realize that there are as likely to be as many genre females who are infuriated with moronic Leftism and its hold on the genre, as males? Or does Beale think that women are disproportionately in favor of selling the political status quo? Even if he does believe that, does he really want to alienate the women who don’t care for how feminism has lost its way (when it comes to militant feminism, plenty of women just roll their eyes); and women who don’t care for the Left’s and the genre Left’s love affair/apologetics for reactionary Islam? Well that’s the message Beale could easily be construed as sending out.

More recently Beale has gotten into a spat with N K Jemisin, radical US feminist genre writer over the latter’s controversial speech in Australia (just google it if you can be bothered). One wonders when Jemisin will be visiting Egypt or the Sudan or any nation in the Persian Gulf to let us know about what she thinks of how women and girls are treated there by Sharia law, but as they say when hell freezes over…  Yet Beale’s response to Jemisin  in some parts falls into the same trap, the same mold, they are both reacting off one another with stereotypes, superficial finger-pointing and offensive generalizations that are fallacious. He is reactionary, she is well a far Leftist (enough said).

Another thing that I cannot leave out, is that Beale is in bitter dispute with the SFWA given that he accuses the latter of unfair discrimination and negative attacks against Beale’s person at the latter’s (private) forums, and similar issues. Given the snakes’ nest and vile gossipy nature of the SFWA, and the latter’s odious far Left political bent on top of all that; well I’m not on the side of the SFWA here. However I don’t know what has gone on behind the scenes and thus I cannot comment on this with any real knowledge whatsoever, so will leave off. If anybody is so interested, Beale has quite a lot to say about it at his blog.

The thing is conservatives who cheer him on either haven’t noticed his uh problematic side, or they don’t care to notice, or they simply share his reactionary tendencies. We have common enemies after all, and you know let’s not look to closely at our embarrassing relatives who are effective leaders and sell lots of books… The enemy of my enemy is my friend, goes the thinking on both sides of the Isle. And this is symptomatic of why there is no hope for conservative SF. And conservatism really. The same lack of concern of prejudice, that infects the Left like a cancer. Misogyny? Yawn. Well depends on how you look at it. Gays shmays. Whatever. The far Left are misogynistic too, horribly so. This is especially the case with far Left feminists, but who knows that? Given liberal militant feminists’ running cover for reactionary Islam (as liberals are wont to do as a whole), and the latter’s in-your-face misogyny; well this shows up a core of  self-loathing, of masochism, of a strong anti-female streak within the militant feminist Movement. The ironies with the Left are beyond compare. That’s a whole other thing, beyond this article’s general scope. Just read the authentic feminist Phyllis Chesler’s Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman and The Death of Feminism. Not that these feminists ever will. None of the Left’s misogyny and the genre Left’s misogyny (that they don’t begin to recognize at all, along with the anti-Semitism) excuse such misogyny if it comes from conservative circles, in and out of the genre community. And so partisans on both sides of the isle will point fingers at the other and close ranks. We have dragons to fight after all, and you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. So it goes. Yeah well count me out.

In other words, Gould had no real competition. Although Fordham U prof Paul Levinson has served as president of the SFWA, and Levinson is a political crackpot. I’m sure there are plenty of genre pro writers and wannabe writers who don’t care for the status quo and the business-as-usual approach from Gould, but Beale as the alternative is no viable alternative.

And as I make clear further up, Scalzi is guilty of PC identity politics and its explicit racism, and likewise doesn’t have the tiniest problem whatsoever with extreme Jew-hatred from the genre community. Ditto Scalzi’s successor, Court Jew Steven Gould. So how is Scalzi better than Beale? How is Gould? Other than the fact that Scalzi’s identity politics prejudice and enforcement of deafening silence to Jew-hatred from genre writers is just going along with the zeitgeist of our times; that is the genre Thought Police’s prejudices are respectable prejudices and Beale’s are not. Scalzi (and Gould) aren’t any better than Beale and neither are the formers’ supporters.

The thing is though that Beale’s reactionary slant isn’t the way forward, heck by definition reactionary thinking is going back to the past and past mistakes. It’s answering the horrible prejudices of Scalzi and his ilk with Beale’s own neuroses. And it makes no sense to say that Beale’s prejudices are preferable to Scalzi’s or vice versa. Yet Scalzi’s race-baiting has its seal of approval from liberal America, from the White House itself, from a dumb media, the Ivy League. And it’s all branded as anti-racism, anti-prejudice. That’s what makes Scalzi and the genre Thought Police’s prejudices so very scary.

What Season is missing here is that the truth is the truth, regardless of whom it might happen to give “aid and comfort”.  If science makes him uncomfortable because it proves that all humans are not equally homo sapiens sapiens or indicates it will be possible to genetically prevent fetuses from developing into homosexuals, that just means reality makes him uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean that the science doesn’t exist or must be incorrect.

I am not saying that SF/F should go back and blindly imitate the masters of the past. Who among us can reasonably hope to equate the achievement of Tolkien, let alone surpass it?  But SF/F could do, and is doing, considerably worse than rejecting the lessons and examples set by the classics and embarking on a politically correct course that is neither scientific nor literary.  In fact, if one accepts the definition of art as that which is true to the artist’s feelings, most modern SF/F is manifestly not even artistic, being rife with cowardice, self-deceit, and derivation.

I don’t pretend to be THE alternative to the status quo, I am merely one alternative to it.  And I would encourage Seasons to read A Throne of Bones before blithely dismissing that alternative; it is as foolish to judge my novels by my blog posts as it is to judge Neil Gaiman’s novels by his choice in female companions.  In answer to his questions:

1. “Does Beale not realize that there are as likely to be as many genre
females who are infuriated with moronic Leftism and its hold on the
genre, as males?”

I disagree.  That’s simply not true. Such women do exist.  But there are far fewer of them because they observably have not fled the SF/F genre in the same numbers as men.

2.  “Or does Beale think that women are disproportionately
in favor of selling the political status quo?” 

Yes, I think women disproportionately lean politically left and tend to prefer fiction about romance to fiction about science or ideas.  So, naturally, they are more accepting of the current SF/F status quo than men; men don’t buy novels about necrobestial love triangles in space.  Women do.

3. “Even if he does believe
that, does he really want to alienate the women who don’t care for how
feminism has lost its way (when it comes to militant feminism, plenty of
women just roll their eyes); and women who don’t care for the Left’s
and the genre Left’s love affair/apologetics for reactionary Islam?” 

I don’t wish to alienate them, but I don’t care if I do.  I don’t believe feminism “lost its way”, I believe feminism, in all its forms, however, mild, is an ideology that is observably and materially more evil than Fascism or National Socialism.  If people refuse to read my fiction because they disagree with my politics or my ideology, that is certainly their prerogative.  I don’t care in the slightest so long as they don’t attempt to pronounce judgment upon it without actually reading it.

I write what I write. Perhaps my blend of traditional high fantasy and modern “realistic” fantasy will prove influential, or perhaps it will not. Most of those who have read it have enjoyed it. Most of those who are negative about it have not.  In the end, a work of fiction must always stand on its own, without the benefit or the disadvantage of its author’s views.

Attn ebook authors

If you are looking for a cover artist for your ebook, I highly recommend you get in touch with JartStar.  In addition to doing the covers for A Magic Broken, The Wardog’s Coin, and The Last Witchking, he recently produced the cover for Mr. Pritt’s forthcoming ebook, The Online Ramblings of a Foolish Sage, which can be seen to the left.

If you’re interested in checking out JartStar’s work, visit his online gallery.  I can testify that he puts in an incredible effort to make sure that the cover is one that is in line with the contents of the book, looks good at both full-size and Amazon resolutions, and is entirely satisfactory to the author.  At $250 per original cover, they are a real bargain, and as a member of the Dread Ilk, JartStar will give a discount to any fellow Ilk who happen to be publishing ebooks.

SFWA 3.0’s target market

It’s truly not fair to say that there is no market for the necro-bestial love triangles and transgendered Regency romances of color in space so beloved of the new SFWA.  The market definitely exists, as evidenced here:

it’s funny tho when ppl give u shit for not reading or wanting to get
into “classic novels” like im sorry why do i wanna read about the
ramblings of some crusty old white dude who doesn’t even know what 
clitoris is when i can read about time traveling interracial lesbian
romances in space

As to whether that is a market that merits pursuing to the exclusion of works in the mode of crusty old white dudes such as Asimov, Card, Heinlein, Herbert, Tolkien, Lewis, and Verne is a question I quite happily leave to fine SF/F publishers such as Tor Books, Night Shade Books and Golden Gryphon Press.

CS award finalists

Speculative Faith announces the finalists for the 2013 Clive Staples Award:

We have finalists. In a tight race, with only percentage points separating first through ninth place (yes, we did need to revert to the tie-breaker second- and third-place choices), the top five books are moving on to the finals….

And now, your finalists, in alphabetical order according to the author’s last name:

Liberator by Bryan Davis
A Throne of Bones by Vox Day
Mortal by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee
Prophet by R. J. Larson
Starflower by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

But now, on to the important business at hand. It is time to vote for a winner. Please follow these rules.

* You MUST have read at least two of the nominations.
* You may vote ONLY ONCE for a first, a second, and a third choice.
* Your second choice and your third choice may not be the same as your first choice.
* Your vote for your second choice and your third choice may not be for the same book.
* You may mark the “none of these” option if you do not have a second or a third choice.
* Second and third choice options will only be considered in the case of a tie.

* Voting ends midnight Pacific time, July 28, 2013.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE

CLICK HERE TO VOTEIt is, of course, an honor to be nominated.  Frankly, considering the brouhaha that surrounded the establishment of Hinterlands, I’m astonished that the book is even eligible.

SE+ now on Amazon

CA writes to inform us that the hardcover for Summa Elvetica and Other Stories is now available from Amazon:

I wrote up a review on SE+ at Amazon (the first associated with the hardcover). It should be posted within 48 hours of my submission. While it isn’t as flowing as your prose, I just wanted you to know that your writing is just flat out awesome. My first exposure to your writing was ATOB and then I recently just finished SE+. Now I am anxiously awaiting Arts of Dark and Light Book 2….

So many cultures, points of view.. and they all feel real. I am just floored by each character I read. None seems out of place. Each culture fits. Each character acts realistically. I loved how you even showed the POV of characters like Speer and Bextor and …ugh I can’t remember the Chui’s name….but the “enemy” cultures. I think that made your world feel all the more real. Anyway, thanks for the wonderful escapes into the world of Selenoth.

This is intended mostly for the serious fans of Selenoth who want the hardcover, as there is nothing in it that isn’t contained in the four ebooks: Summa Elvetica, A Magic Broken, The Wardog’s Coin, and The Last Witchking.  The general consensus is that the hardcover is pretty and makes a suitable companion for A Throne of Bones until such time that Book Two is available.

I’m pleased that many of you are eagerly anticipating Book Two, but it’s going to take a while.  In the meantime, for those of you who haven’t read through what is available to date, there are now 1,436 pages of Selenoth to keep you occupied.